Nearly every day the news presents yet another article on sexbots, robots that are designed to take the place of women. This is the most obvious “objectification” of women that has followed upon the sexual revolution, the literal creation of an artificial object, a robotic woman, for the sexual pleasure of men degraded enough to prefer a machine to the real thing.


Note that I have not provided any links to such articles, the obvious reason being that they all very graphically depict the new and constantly “improving” sexbots. Readers do not need yet another near occasion for sin, and I don’t want to provide one, thereby racking up even more years for purgatory.


Just within the last few weeks articles report (with giddy excitement, the slightest touch of moral trepidation, and no sense of irony) that sexbots are getting ever more realistic all the time, meaning, we assume, more like an actual flesh and blood female. In other words, the ultimate aim of sexualized robotics is the creation of a new Eve, a machine so like a real woman that the two will become indistinguishable—except that sexbots aren’t actually alive and so don’t get pregnant.

Read the rest at National Catholic Register.

​Depending upon when you read this article, you can fill in the blank. As I write, the newest was in Barcelona, Spain, perpetrated (so officials think) by an ISIS-inspired Moroccan, 18-year-old Moussa Oukabir. According to reports, Oukabir had recently "joked" on social media, when asked what he might do on his first day as absolute ruler of the world, "Kill all infidels and only allow Muslims to continue the religion."

That we hope each attack will be the last, as if we're merely weathering a passing storm, attests to our general ignorance of deep history — history stretching back far beyond the latest news.

To correct that ignorance, we should go back to the beginnings of Islam in the 600s to find out what an 'infidel' is, and why he should be killed.

Read the rest at The Christian Post

​As G. K. Chesterton wisely noted, the question about technology is not whether we should have it, but how to keep it from having us. That is, how do we ensure that the machines we make serve us and the true human good, rather than make us their servants, forming us in their mechanical image?

A recent study on nomophobia reveals the deep difficulty we're having with smartphones, which so define our identity and our precious time, that we suffer separation anxiety if we are removed from them for even a few moments. In the words of the study, 

"separation from smartphones is found to cause increases in heart rate, anxiety, blood pressure, and unpleasant feelings—the symptoms of nomophobia (i.e., the feelings of discomfort or anxiety caused by the nonavailability of amobile device enabling habitual virtual communication). Although nomophobia is not formally included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as a psychological disorder, research suggests that nomophobia may serve as an indicator of a social disorder or phobia for individuals with a strong dependency on communication through virtual environments."

If you doubt the effects of "nomophobia," and you own a smartphone, just do a simple experiment: don't look at it for six hours (not even a peek--turn it off, and put it away). Record the effects--honestly. Then ask yourself: do I own a smartphone, or does it own me?

As I make clear in my In Defense of Nature, internet and smartphone addiction is a real problem, one that detaches us from the good of our own nature, and defines us in terms of a mechanical device, rather than a rational animal, a creature wonderfully made in the image of God. The literature on such addiction is growing by the minute, as you'll see in the footnotes.
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