Nature (AI) by Alan Warburton (CC BY 4.0). In 2014, users on LessWrong, an internet forum, encountered a post by a user named Roko, who posited that humanity would invent a superintelligence. This superintelligence would have the power to create fully accurate computerized simulations of people, essentially ending death. The AI, knowing that its creation…
Tonto National Forest by Janet Ward (CC BY 2.0). Among the Supreme Court’s most significant decisions on religious exercise this term was the decision not to act. The case—Apache Stronghold v. United States—was relisted 13 times before the Court issued a denial of certiorari indicating they would not hear the case. The conflict involved a…
St. Andrew’s Catholic Church in Roanoke, Virginia by Joe Ravi (CC-BY-SA 3.0). With the election of Leo XIV, who chose his name in an acknowledgment of Leo XIII, the pope of Rerum Novarum, Catholic Social Teaching (CST) might be back in an even stronger way. Hence, there were great expectations for the apostolic exhortation, Dilexi…
Shah Faisal Mosque, Islamabad, Pakistan via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). The Islamic Republic of Pakistan’s legal system presents a distinctive pluralistic model, intertwining secular common law inherited from British colonial rule with Islamic jurisprudence, or fiqh, under a single constitutional framework. The 1973 Constitution declares Islam as the state religion and mandates that all…
AI image made by the author to demonstrate Aldous Huxley‘s writing. “Mysticism” – the experience of union with ultimate reality – is often described as a summum bonum of human religious experience, and a central feature of the psychedelic experience. Indeed, in describing psychedelic experiences, “mystical experience” is one of the most frequent terms…
United States Department of Defense Building (US-PD). The executive order of President Trump to turn the Department of Defense into the Department of War is profoundly ominous. Especially when combined with the president’s desire to eliminate the United States Institute of Peace, thereby discouraging a search for alternatives to war, and to portray the U.S. military as “ruthless,” as both he and…
A Church Interior by Pieter Neefs the Elder (PD-US). I wrote this essay following the mass shooting at Minneapolis’s Annunciation Catholic School. Demonization of entire groups has only intensified since then—toward Blacks in the wake of the public-transit stabbing of Iryna Zarutska, and toward transgender people and leftists after the Charlie Kirk assassination. I believe…
Blue Mosque, Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan by Françoise Foliot (CC BY-SA 4.0). The right of women to participate in communal prayers is explicitly affirmed and encouraged within Islamic sources, particularly the Prophetic traditions. Historically, women actively participated in congregational prayers alongside the Prophet and his Companions, praying collectively under the same roof. Across the Sunni legal schools,…
Church of St. John at Kaneo, Ohrid by Kallerna (CC BY-SA 4.0). The perception that Christianity is under attack has long animated American political culture. Conservative American Christians even claim that Christians are the most persecuted religious group worldwide. Vice President J.D. Vance recently tweeted that, “All over the world, Christians are the most persecuted…
This image is an AI-generated depiction based on descriptions of similar events. The recent renewed public outrage over a video showing the brutal execution of Bano Bibi and her alleged partner, Ehsan Ullah, has once again brought the issue of honor killings to the forefront. These murders, which were ordered in May 2025 by a…