Search Results

Written by David Cowles, Thoughts While Shaving is the official blog of Aletheia Today magazine and explores short, profound thoughts and discoveries about theology, science, philosophy, literature, the arts, society, and prayer. Subscribe today for FREE! Enter your email address here: Subscribe now! Thanks for submitting! Apr 12, 2026 Shroud of Turin “This article has nothing to do with the Shroud of Turin!” Read More Apr 1, 2026 Get a Job! “Work will be optional…no one will ever again have to work just to survive! The task now is…to craft our work so that it optimizes the lives we choose.” Read More Mar 25, 2026 Everything Exists! “Intelligent agents (us)…decide what exists. But defining what ‘what exists’ is – that’s another matter entirely.” Read More Mar 24, 2026 So You Want to Live Forever? “Life is paradoxical. The longer we live, the shorter our lifespan seems.” Read More Mar 23, 2026 Job & the Prime Directive “Job Sues God! - the headline screams across the region’s tabloids.” Read More Mar 18, 2026 No More Novels “Most novels have an overriding purpose: to justify the ways of men to God.” Read More Mar 17, 2026 Who's Afraid of an HMO? “HMOs dumbed down quality and erected formidable barriers to care… (so) why would anyone want to bring them back?” Read More Mar 17, 2026 Is Hell Empty? “You are bolted to the choices you made during your lifetime, not as punishment but as a projection of who you’ve chosen to become.” Read More Mar 12, 2026 The Age of Sustainable Abundance “We reject the status quo but we shrink from the future...” Read More Mar 11, 2026 Robin Hood's Mary Men “Could it be that Robin’s Merry Men are really Mary Men, devoted, like their leader, to the cult of the Blessed Virgin?” Read More Mar 11, 2026 Henry Moore’s Madonna “Henry Moore, one of the 20th century’s greatest sculptors, has delivered a statement of Christian theology every bit as unambiguous as the Nicene Creed.” Read More Mar 10, 2026 What is an Event? “Events are the building blocks of Being; understanding them correctly is the key to unlocking the secrets of the Universe.” Read More Thoughts While Shaving 40 Page 1

< Back So You Want to Live Forever? David Cowles Mar 24, 2026 “Life is paradoxical. The longer we live, the shorter our lifespan seems.” 2100 words, 9 minute read If you’ve always craved immortality, your time has come at last…maybe! A group of individuals who call themselves Vitalists believe that death per se is humanity’s core problem. And just like that, I’m back in middle school! Influencer Bryan Johnson, for example, speaks of plans to create a new religion in which “the (human) body is God.” At last, God made in our image and likeness! “Who’s a thunk it?” ( Hairspray ) Recently, Johnson added psychedelics to his “God is us” tool lit. No, it’s not psilocybin or LSD; it’s venom from the Bufo Toad. And you don’t smoke it, snort it, or shoot it; you lick it! Right off of the back of your new favorite amphibian. How fun is that ! Caveat : The licked frog does not turn into a member of the royal family. “A lick is not a kiss,” apparently. However, you may find yourself living in a palace…or you may find that your current residence is in fact already a palace. Ain’t life grand…sometimes. Molecule 5-MeO-DMT, the ‘active ingredient’ in the venom, is a potential double bagger for Johnson: it reveals our spiritual divinity and it promotes our physical immortality. 12 f(x) = -------- - 4 4-x This is how it looks on a graph. *** And Vitalism is gaining ground worldwide! A popup city in Montenegro (Zuzalu, 2023) was created by people who wanted to establish a “longevity state”—a jurisdiction dedicated to lifespan extension, which would also facilitate access to unproven but potentially life-extending drugs. A similar effort in Próspera, Honduras, has created a permissive environment for biotech companies to perform unusual clinical trials. ZuVillage in Georgia (the country, not the state); and Zelar City in Berlin (Germany, not NH), offer their own spin on the original formula. And every May, ‘Vitalist Bay’ pops up somewhere in the SF area. Putting the dubious science of immortality to one side for now, does the more realistic goal of ‘life extension’ make sense? “Of course it does,” you say. “Who doesn’t want to live as long as possible?” Well, you do, apparently; but most people don’t – but that’s another subject for another day. Life is paradoxical. The longer we live, the shorter our lives seem. The problem? We don’t heed our own advice. We behave as though prior results do guarantee future performance. At 20 we cannot be convinced that we will not live forever. And who can blame us? The first twenty years went by so slowly that 80/20 → ∞. Subjectively, time seems inexhaustible. But even the first 20 years can be misleading: the second 10 years go by faster than the first. 20 years of adult living corrects our perspective: 80/40 = 2, but then 80/50 = 1 and 80/80 → 0. Believe it or not, this bizarre scenario can be expressed by a very simple mathematical function (where f(x) = subjective life span and x = the ratio of ‘average life span’ to ‘years lived’): 12 f(x) = ---------- - 4 4 - x This is what it looks like on a graph. *** Riddle me this : What do you and I have in common with every other human being who’s ever lived? Don’t say ‘death’ because death is not something we have ; in fact death is defined precisely as the absence of an I (or we ). I don’t have my own death, and I certainly don’t have yours . According to Pop Wisdom, death is one stage in the process we call ‘life’. It isn’t! Death is the limit of life, not an aspect of it. Just as Achilles is forever infinitesimally short of the finish line, so you are always short of being dead. You cannot ‘be dead’ and be you ; therefore you cannot experience death. The sentence ‘I am dead’ (or even ‘I will die’) is oxymoronic. So your 20 year old self was right after all. For Achilles to break the tape, or for you to be dead, it is necessary to employ a computational trick called Calculus. Fortunately, the real world doesn’t obey the conventions of arithmetic. Less fortunately, when I explained this to Sister Mary Martha in 3rd grade, I got something other than the Fields medal I was expecting. No, the correct answer is not death . Give up then? Ok, here goes: “Every human being who’s ever lived had, has, or will have a lifespan of one day…or less.” No, not all at the same time! Someday it will happen that you will have a lifespan of one day or less (of course you almost certainly won’t know it at the time). Most of us believe we have lifespans of more than one day. But no one born alive fails to have a life span of ‘one day… or less’ at some point in the course of their lives. Of course, by now you’ve realized that there’s nothing sacrosanct about one day : it’s just a placeholder. It would be equally true to say that every human being has a life span of ‘one second or less’ …or ‘one millennium or less’ . Whatever, it’s always true! When it suits us, we think of periods of time as if they were beads on a string, one day following the next ad nauseum . But time is more like the Tower of Babel: each floor rests on the floor beneath it. Your top floor penthouse is essentially the sum of all the floors (and their occupants) below. “Enjoy…and don’t worry about all the folks you had to climb over to get to the top.” Although the circumstances of our births may differ, O Prince, the being born of it is the same for both of us…and for every other human being that ever lives. We diverge from a shared singularity into a solitary multiplicity , from undifferentiated potentiality into unique actuality. I am other than others. I am not not ! YHWH (Exodus 3: 14): “I am what am” = “I am not what’s not.” The circumstances of our deaths may differ too. You may die, surrounded by loved ones with flights of angels singing you to your rest; I may bleed out in a ditch somewhere, waiting in vain for a good Samaritan to rescue me. Regardless, in the end we will once again be equal, identical, one. The becoming dead of it is the same for both of us. So ‘being born’ we diverge and live out our respective lifespans in perfect isolation only to remerge when ‘becoming dead’. Being born and becoming dead are limits and we all converge toward those limits, i.e. that common singularity. Shorter lifespans continually succeed longer ones; gradually, lifespan differentials (actually all identifying differentials) collapse as we approach singularity. *** My life is defined by its limits: I am by I am not . What is ‘being’ but not-not-being? Once upon a time I did not exist and someday I will exist no longer. You too! In between our birth day and our death day we will each have what we call ‘a life’, and every such life is radically unique (i.e. no elements in common). But, as our respective lifespans shorten, our common fate begins to eclipse our unique experience. Two prayers are at the foundation of Roman Catholic spirituality: the Lord’s Prayer and the Hail Mary . In the latter, we pray to ‘Mary, Mother of God ’, asking her to ‘pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death’. The hour of our death is always now and every now is that hour . Nothing else matters. What is not that hour lies in the past; the present is always the hour . Everything else, every other ‘then or when’, is just so much window dressing. There is but one birth and one death and every human being (certain mystical figures potentially excepted) approaches both as her limit. At the end of all process ( doxa ) is identity ( Aletheia ) – Parmenides . At the beginning and at the end we are not just equal, we are identical (but of course we are no longer we ); and if we are identical, then we are one , i.e. a single entity. The limit of every unique ‘I’ is a common ‘not-I’. There is but one ‘not-I’ but every ‘not-not-I’ is unique. You and I are entangled organisms (like ‘entangled particles’ in Bell’s Quantum Mechanics). Birth is like Big Bang, death Big Crunch (or Big Freeze). Between these universal Bigs , each of us lives ‘my so-called life’. No two lives are the same. In fact, no two lives have even a single element (event) in common, but all lives diverge from and converge toward a common limit. Exception : God is an element of every life. The Intellectual History of Planet Earth consists primarily of the search for analogies across individual lives…and of course analogies abound - they form the basis of language, art, and culture - but there are no identities (other than being born and becoming dead ). So you and I are the same; in fact we are disjoint projections of a single noumenon . Yet we have nothing in common; we do not intersect, i.e. we share no experiences. From the moment of birth each of us lives out a totally unique, subjectively isolated life…right up to the moment of death, comforted – and alienated - by our reflection as seen in the billions of surrounding mirrors we call ‘other people’. All of which makes the contemporary Vitalist movement especially perplexing. I mean, life extension to what end? Live an hour or less, live a century or more, ultimately you share a common (albeit infinitesimal, i.e. instantaneous) lifespan with every other human being who has ever lived. The arrow of mortality goes in one direction only. Shorter lifespans continually replace longer ones as all lifespans converge toward non-entity. All of our experiences converge at a featureless infinitesimal point at the cusp of death, i.e. on the event horizon of the singularity. And what of our ‘lives’? Do they count for nothing? Just so…unless you believe that experience somehow transcends death. No matter how varied our lives may have been, dying is the ultimate leveler. The limit of self is not-self (or ‘other’). My life is different from yours only in so far as my differentiating experiences survive. Any experience, by definition, must differ from an alternative (real or imagined). Those aspects of being that are common to all (e.g. mortality) are not ‘experienced’; they are simply the human condition. Difference is a prerequisite for experience. But suppose Being is democratic and flat, as Nietzsche theorized: “One belongs to the whole, one is in the whole – there exists nothing which could judge, measure, compare, condemn our being, for that would be to judge, measure, compare, condemn the whole…but nothing exists apart from the whole!” ( Twilight of the Idols ) Nothing exists apart from the whole! Then any differences are ephemeral and we are not just entangled but virtual as well. “ We are such stuff as dreams are made on.” (Shakespeare, The Tempest ) Dreams can be complex experiences, crammed full of action and emotion and inter-personal relationships, yet within a second of waking up, all that has vanished without consequence and often without memory. If being is ‘difference that makes a difference’ (Bateson) then dreams do not necessarily meet that criterion…and neither do lives! So life extension ? What’s to extend? Dream time? Unless events transcend spacetime, they are nothing but ‘ice cream castles in the air’. All dreams are the same at the moment we awaken; likewise all lives converge at the moment of death…unless they don’t! If you were a precocious preschooler, some well-meaning buttinsky might have tried to comfort you following the death of a loved one (or pet) by analogizing: “Now we are caterpillars, but when we die, we become butterflies!” Exactly so! Caterpillars (generally) do not ‘grow’ into butterflies; their genetic material totally reorganizes. They undergo the equivalent of a phase change. They both are, and are not, what they were. Nothing is added, nothing is taken away, but nothing is the same. But does the butterfly know that once upon a time it was a caterpillar? *** John Everett Millais’s 1851-1852 masterpiece depicts the tragic death of Ophelia from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, showing her drifting in a river just before she drowns. The painting is renowned for its incredible botanical precision, as Millais spent months outdoors capturing the specific symbolic flowers and lush vegetation of the English countryside. By portraying Ophelia with an expression of weary surrender, the work captures a hauntingly beautiful moment of transition between life and death. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Get a Job! David Cowles Apr 1, 2026 “Work will be optional…no one will ever again have to work just to survive! The task now is…to craft our work so that it optimizes the lives we choose.” I have a cohort of grandchildren just entering the ‘full time job’ stage of life and the experience has prompted me to rethink my own assumptions about work (always a good thing to do, BTW). I grew up in the 1950s at the front end of the Baby Boom. My parents survived the Great Depression and World War II. To them, having a job, the right job, was everything. It was the gateway to family, security, and social standing. And the gateway to the right job was college, preferably the right college. My parents were born in the roaring twenties and, like responsible parents everywhere, they did a great job of preparing me to live their lives . They knew how they had been raised; they knew how that rearing could have been better and so they raised me as they wished they’d been raised. It did not occur to them, then…or ever…that I might not have chosen to be raised that way (who cares) or that being raised to ‘succeed’ in the post WWI world was not necessarily conducive to success after WWII. My parents’ obsession with preparing me for an economically successful life was totally understandable and even laudable. From their perspective, the alternatives were unthinkable: abject poverty (without the benefit of today’s social safety net), back breaking physical labor (‘pick and shovel work’), or mind numbing work on an assembly line. The only other option: Live off wealth inherited from the Ancien Regime or generated during the Belle Epoque . Nice work if you can get it but not an option for the likes of us! *** Studying Intellectual History, it is always interesting to contrast the disparate views of contemporaneous thinkers. For example, Parmenides (5th century BCE) described the Realm of Truth (Aletheia) as “ungenerated and imperishable…whole…steadfast and complete…now, all together, one, continuous…perishing not to be heard of,” at the same time that Heraclitus was proclaiming: ‘Everything flows!’ More interesting, however, are the ideas held in common by such opponents. For example, two of the most prominent thinkers of the late 19th century, Karl Marx and his antithesis, Pope Leo XIII, both agreed on the substructural importance of human labor. For Marx, it formed the basis for class struggle and the coming dictatorship of the proletariat; for Leo, it was a vehicle for human expression and a way for us to co-create (with God). But from our 21 st century perspective, neither argument is completely convincing. Today, we see labor less as a medium for human creativity and more as spirit killing drudgery and we struggle, not to overthrow the bourgeoisie, but to become bourgeois ourselves. Class war has been replaced by conspicuous consumption. On top of this, we now learn that in many spheres ‘work’ itself is rapidly becoming redundant. Already, AI can do much of what traditionally required human labor and that will only increase exponentially in the years to come. Incredibly, a significant segment of the population bases its opposition to AI on fears of widespread unemployment. Effectively, they are advocating ‘make work’ to keep people gainfully employed. It’s hard to imagine either Marx or Leo advocating work that is superfluous; where’s the revolutionary impetus or the expression of creativity in that? Modern day Luddites seem to ignore the fact that we will soon be able to produce twice as many goods and services with half the human effort. But somebody needs to be able to consume these ‘new and improved’ products; wealth must be distributed or it will evaporate. HOW the fruits of AI are distributed is a matter for debate; THAT these fruits must and will be distributed is irrefutable. Of course, the Luddites will claim, and here both Marx and the Pope might agree with them, that 1%ers will grab all the newly created wealth for themselves. They’ll try, of course, but fortunately for all of us, it’s impossible! Elon Musk can’t sell luxury Tesla’s to himself. Folks need to have the $50,000+ needed to buy one. We forget that there are $1,000 concert tickets, sporting events, and bottles of wine only because there are people who can afford to pay for them. For far, far too long, we have equated income with work. Perhaps that was reasonable during the Age of Industry; the Cyber Age is breaking that bond. Elizabeth Warren is right: today’s wealth is the product of yesterday’s work. Her only mistake is her failure to understand that this is a good thing! My ancestors worked 60 hours/week so that my grandchildren will never have to work just to live. Ain’t life grand? *** Suffice to say, my 21 st century concept of work is very different from my parents’…or my own for most of my life. 1,000 flowers may not have bloomed (yet), but there’s more than enough variety now to fill out a nice bouquet. That said, going forward I see three viable approaches to ‘the employment question’: Find something you love doing and figure out a way to get paid for doing it. Laughable in 1950, reality for many people today. Work just so much as necessary so that you have the resources, but also the time and energy, to pursue your passion ‘off hours’. Apply your values and your creativity to your job and find ways to transform that job so that it becomes your passion…or at least a passion. My parents were not unaware of passions. They had them. My father, for example, loved zoology. But it never occurred to them that those passions could be incorporated into the voluntary-involuntary servitude they called work. A single sentence in a recent ad for a financial planning firm caught my eye: “For many advisors and their clients, retirement is the singular goal that defines a working life.” Yes, that was my father’s ‘singular goal’ (he retired at 59) and his father’s before him (65). Could there be a more poignant expression of existential sadness? Translation: I devoted most of my life to something that only became meaningful for me when I stopped doing it. I am transported to Sister Corina’s 2nd grade classroom: “Now let us all pray for the grace of a happy death.” Our goal in life is a stress free exit? Sidebar : In theology there is a method called the Via Negativa . Briefly, this is the belief that it is impossible to make a declarative statement about God that is true. God is ineffable: as soon as we begin talking of God, we begin creating misinformation. According to this school, the goal of theology is to claw our way back to Ground Zero: Silence. By analogy, we spend 40 years of our lives doing something we would not have chosen to do, continually adapting the job to minimize its most negative aspects, all with the goal of not working at all: retirement, sweet rest, donna nobis requiem . They say insanity is doing something over and over and expecting different results. In that case, working without passion is insane. 40 years or 40 times 40 years, makes no difference, satisfaction eludes. There’s no use crying over spilt milk. What’s done is done. Whether things could have evolved in a better way is idle speculation. What we can do is change the idea of work that we pass on to the next generation. We are entering an age in which work will be optional. Certainly, folks will want to be productive and industry will continue to be rewarded, handsomely – this isn’t Leninism (or even Lennon-ism) after all - but going forward, sloth will no longer be a deadly sin and no one will ever again have to work just to survive! The task now is not to shape our lives to fit the requirements of our jobs but rather to craft our work so that it optimizes the lives we choose. “That’s your job! Go get it.” *** David Hockney’s "Large Interior, Los Angeles" is a colorful map of how lives started to change in the late '80s. Instead of showing a boring, traditional room, Hockney uses bright, "pop" colors and weird angles to show a home that feels alive and busy. It captures that moment in history where our houses stopped being just places to sleep and started becoming personal hubs for creativity and "mental" work. It’s a perfect snapshot of the modern shift toward a life where our careers and our personal spaces are all mixed together in one big, vibrant scene. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Shroud of Turin David Cowles Apr 12, 2026 “This article has nothing to do with the Shroud of Turin!” 1750 words, 8 minute read The piece of cloth known as the Shroud of Turin allegedly bears the image of Jesus of Nazareth. However, carbon dating suggests the item is only 700 years old and for 500 of those years it has been kept under lock and key. Yet in the course of testing the cloth, researchers found that it was now, or once had been, home to a virtual Noah’s Ark of life forms native to various spots on the globe. But this article has nothing to do with the Shroud of Turin ! Rather it’s about the way influences propagate in our world. A March 30, 2026 article in New Scientist summarized recent findings: “The sources of genetic material include domestic cats and dogs, farm animals including chickens, cattle, goats, sheep, pigs and horses, and wild animals such as deer and rabbits. The team also found traces of some fish species, including the grey mullet, Atlantic cod and ray-finned fishes. “Marine crustaceans, flies, aphids, and arachnids like dust and skin mites and ticks were also identified. Some of the most common plant species whose DNA was preserved on the shroud are carrots and various wheat species, as well as peppers, tomatoes, and potatoes – plants probably brought to Europe after explorers began travelling to Asia and the Americas… “The team also found human DNA from many individuals who have handled the shroud, including the 1978 sampling team… (but) nearly 40 per cent of the human DNA found on the shroud is from Indian (Indian subcontinent) lineages…” Astounding! *** We imagine ourselves living on a grid . Blame Descartes for this - his system of rectilinear coordinates, etc. Also, the Apostle John for his concept of logos (pattern, scaffolding, weir). Hold Homer accountable for Penelope’s endless weaving (Laertes’ shroud), and praise Mondrian for Broadway Boogie Woogie - all manifestations of life on the grid ! We must blame ourselves too! We have worked the notion of grid into every nook and cranny of contemporary culture. The football field is a grid iron . A superannuated hippie is said to ‘live off the grid ’ and we are concerned today about the strain that AI is putting on the electrical grid . Grids are useful. They allow us to keep track of process by imposing a strict order of operations, designating (arbitrarily or otherwise) certain events as causes and others as effects. When we need to write (or re-write) history, the grid hands us a pre-recorded tape. When we need to fix a problem, the grid provides a schematic that lets us quickly zero-in on the trouble spot. But all this convenience masks a serious problem: this is not how the real world works…not even close. But we’re used to that! We manipulate the material world based on patterns given to us by Euclidean Geometry…even though there are no straight lines or smooth curves in nature. This is not mere sophistry. It has a critical relevance to contemporary civilization. The Cartesian grid may be an appropriate model for the repetitive, atomized motions of an industrial Technosphere, but it breaks down utterly in today’s information rich, holistically inclined Cybersphere. *** The Shroud of Turin turns out to be a better model of real process than anything Descartes or Newton could have imagined. Just look at the record it has kept of its journey through spacetime. The cloth we have today includes traces of the many humans who have touched it and the multiple life forms that have been touched by it, across continents and over centuries. Change does not occur in uniform increments, and it is rarely vectored; more often, it bursts forth like dye packs in a robber’s satchel, tainting everything in its reach. Heraclitus (5th century BCE) is celebrated for linking being with process, process with flow, and flow with water. But even water has viscosity; it resists its own flow. When your favorite rugrat spills milk on the kitchen floor, it does not immediately cover the surface and flow into the adjoining rooms. Instead it creeps along, running in rivulets, inexorably but gradually carrying out its annoying mission. It begs for Bounty (or Brawny )! But paper towels, no matter the ply, are useless in the face of dye packs exploding into a medium of low, no, or below zero viscosity. Below? Below zero? So, negative viscosity! Is that a thing? Turns out, it is, and it applies here. “Show me!” you say? Ok, how about RCW 86, the remnants of a white dwarf star that exploded c. 180 CE. It has expanded with a velocity highly atypical of supernovae. The current consensus: RCW 86 is exploding into an ultra-low density (viscosity) ‘cavity’ in space. *** What kind of world do we live in? Does change evolve at a measured pace, like spilt milk, allowing us to anticipate and manage its course? Or does change erupt, often violently, without warning, and in ways we could not possibly have predicted? The Shroud of Turin is many things; among them, it’s its own historical record. We’re not unfamiliar with this phenomenon. According to accepted physics, all the information associated with a Black Hole resides on its surface. That is one book you can only judge by its cover! The cover is the book…well-suited perhaps to today’s short attention spans. Same for the Shroud. Its entire record as an historical artifact lives on its surface. And when we take the time to look, we realize that the cloth is not an object, subject to a chain of custody (chain = grid), but a whirlwind (negative pressure) attracting influences from every corner of the world. Anthropocentric as we are, we have arbitrarily set the viscosity of water to be 1.0. On that scale, the viscosity of olive oil is 80: it is 80 times more resistant to flow than water. Best wean Junior off milk: “Let him drink oil!” At the other end of the spectrum acetone is 70% less viscous than water: an acetone spill spreads even faster than water from Junior’s sippy cup. But we’re not done yet! Exotic materials like liquid Helium and Quark-gluon Plasma have viscosities approaching 0. And when viscosity is negative, the rate of dispersion accelerates over time. According to most current models, the phenomenon we’ve labeled Dark Energy exhibits negative viscosity. If confirmed, that negative viscosity will ultimately…and literally…rip apart the universe and every particle in it. Of course, the Second Law of Thermodynamics must be obeyed; therefore, an input of energy from an external source is generally required. According to (Anthropic) Claude, “True negative viscosity is forbidden in equilibrium systems. But effective negative viscosity — where an energy-driven system behaves as if its viscosity were negative — is a real, experimentally confirmed phenomenon… and it tends to produce the same striking signature: order and large-scale structure spontaneously emerging from chaos .” It is as though you were watching your dad’s 1950’s home movies…backwards. Surprisingly, there are a number of real world phenomena that appear to exhibit negative viscosity. The two dimensional event horizons of black holes (above) exhibit negative viscosity, as does the turbulence within Jupiter’s GRS. (The latter feeds off energy injected by smaller ‘storms’ in the planet’s atmosphere.) Closer to home, imagine some bacteria suspended in a drop of water. They swim around like kids in a backyard pool; nothing to see here! But now add more bacteria to the same volume of water. When the density of bacteria in the water reaches a critical tipping point, the random motions of the individual bacteria coordinate…like synchronized swimmers at the Olympics. Once synchronized, the individual bacteria inject their proprietary energy into the ensemble. Result : the bacterial suspension itself behaves as if the viscosity of the medium was negative. And speaking of the Olympics, how about those cyclists? Cyclist B camps out in the wake of Cyclist A. Cyclist A experiences the medium (air) as resistance while that same medium delivers acceleration to Cyclist B, allowing the latter to conserve energy. *** Our models of the everyday world assume substantial positive viscosity (resistance): Ideas disseminate subject to the resistance of various unexamined assumptions ( sacred cows ); empires expand and revolutions spread subject to the resistance of existing geo-political structures (institutions). But what if, on a more fundamental level, micro-influences spread unimpeded? What if the foreign particles that litter the surface of the Shroud and record its history have effectively disseminated in a medium of ultra-low (< 1, 0 or even < 0) viscosity? Is that possible? Answer #1 : Yes, the Shroud itself functions as an ‘accelerator’? The travels of the cloth inject additional ‘outside’ energy into the system so that overall, influences disseminate as they would in a medium of ultra-low viscosity. As micro-influences propagate, they become enmeshed in various macro-objects which themselves travel through spacetime. The combined rate of dissemination is indicative of an environment with ultra-low viscosity. Answer #2 : Yes, we are not interested in the remnants of cats or carrots per se . We are concerned only with what they signify: specific spacetime locations. Building on John Wheeler’s great insight (“it from bit”), we can treat the Shroud and its contaminants as pure information and we hypothesize that information naturally spreads as it would in an ultra-low viscosity medium. And so the saga of the Shroud of Turin takes a new and unexpected turn. Now we understand the cloth and its contaminants as, among other more important things, a vehicle for recording and propagating history, i.e. information, and we understand that the information per se flows as if in a medium of ultra-low viscosity. So what! Who cares? Well, you do because the shift from an algorithmic grid to a chaotic explosion undermines the whole notion of causality. Mondrian becomes Jackson Pollack. Hume’s preference for multi-dimensional correlation vs. linear causality seems ever more prescient as we recognize and explore more ultra-low viscosity environments. *** Image: The Holy Shroud by Giovanni Battista della Rovere This 17th-century oil painting depicts the Shroud of Turin being held aloft by a group of saints, presenting the cloth as a sacred object of public veneration. The composition focuses on the physical presence of the relic, using the dramatic lighting and rich detail typical of the Baroque period to emphasize its spiritual importance. By surrounding the Shroud with religious figures, the artist highlights the connection between the physical remains of the past and the enduring faith of the community. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Is Hell Empty? David Cowles Mar 17, 2026 “You are bolted to the choices you made during your lifetime, not as punishment but as a projection of who you’ve chosen to become.” 1750 words, 8 minute read Dante’s Inferno is like Tokyo at rush hour. Souls are stacked across 9 levels as if God had followed the blue prints for a modern Supermax…and as usual there’s a long queue at the River Styx, souls patiently waiting for their chance to ‘abandon all hope’. Does this sound like Theater of the Absurd? Something from Ionesco perhaps? Or Beckett? And BTW, Estragon, what’s your rush? Eternity isn’t going anywhere; it’ll still be waiting, whenever you get there. According to a popular eschatological model, the souls of the departed appear before a heavenly tribunal where their past sins are reviewed and rewarded (or not) as appropriate. That is not Dante’s vision! Dante subscribed to the views of Thomas Aquinas: each soul effectively chooses its own fate. All sin is idolatry – the placing of something ahead of God. We’re all guilty of it from time to time. We cut a corner, put ourselves ahead of a neighbor, seek joy in overindulgence. What’s your Higher Power? Is it God (Beauty, Truth, Justice)? Or Mammon (Wealth, Power, Fame, Lust)? When all else has failed, where do you turn? What’s your last resort? What’s your ultimate concern ? ( Tillich ) According to Dante & Aquinas, anyone living may choose to follow a new Higher Power at any time. Death bed? No problem! ‘St. Dostoevsky.’ Once dead, however, that plasticity is gone and you are bolted to the choices you made during your lifetime, not as punishment but as a projection of who you’ve chosen to become. You are exactly the person you always wanted to be. Congrats on that, BTW! *** In Hades’ Supermax each tier is associated with a particular subset of sin. For example, Tier 4 is reserved for the greedy. Very thoughtful of God! This arrangement ensures that inmates will have things in common with their neighbors. I mean, Paradise isn’t Paradise unless you can share the experience with someone else (just ask any Parrott Head) and Hades is Paradise for those entombed there. During your lifetime you rejected communion with God (a foretaste of Paradise) in deference to lust, gluttony or… Therefore in Hell, you will find yourself in the cell block that affords the most faithful realization of your highest value. Imagine a Hogwarts where ‘student choice’ replaces the Sorting Hat. Dante stated poetically and masterfully what I will now attempt to describe clumsily and in prose (apologies in advance): Being is Information. “It from bit.” (Wheeler) “A difference that makes a difference.” (Bateson) The Universe consists of information and information is encoded in patterns. “It’s patterns all the way down, Dr. Hawking.” Each quantum of Being, each ‘event’, has a unique pattern associated with it. Think QR code. That’s it’s handle…forever, and it encodes whatever values the event instantiates. God is an event, a quantum of Being, the quantum of Being that is key to decoding all other quanta. God is the universal Rosetta Stone. God is Good. Primordially, all possible patterns reside in potentia in God…but only to the extent that those patterns are consistent with God’s Nature, i.e. with the Good . You are a ‘society of events’ (Whitehead), events related to one another according to a particular logos that constitutes your identity, your persona . Each event encodes its own specific mix of values. To the extent that those values form a pattern that resonates with patterns encoded in God’s Primordial Nature, sympathetic vibration transfers that pattern from our mortal plane to God’s eternal realm. The values we instantiate ‘on earth’ are substantiated ‘in heaven’. ( Lord’s Prayer ) Whatever we do in spacetime we do eternally, provided it is consistent with God’s values – i.e. the building blocks of Paradise. Dedicated followers of Aletheia Today will recognize this phenomenon as a ‘ Rondeau Time Crystal’ , a quantum of being that includes both a spatiotemporal and an eternal aspect in a single event. *** Imagine the heavenly tribunal (above): The soul of the departed approaches St. Peter, trembling (that’s the soul trembling, not the saint). “Relax, you have nothing to fear. You’re in charge here.” Peter can be very reassuring as he escorts you into the hermetically sealed projection booth. “I’m going to show you two versions of Eternity. The first (A) includes all your contributions, all your actions; the second (B) erases those actions from the record. Now let’s be clear. Your actions had consequences IRL, some intended, most unintended, some known, most unknown. This is not about them; they remain the same under either option. It is just your actions per se that are subject to review here, not their effects. You can’t change the flow of history, but you do have one last chance to determine the role you play in that history. “Examine both scenarios, take all the time you need, then you decide, and whatever you decide, that will be so. Just please remember two things: (1) whichever option you choose, you are choosing that option, not just for yourself today, but forever and for everyone; and (2) if you choose Option B, it will be as if you had never existed, i.e. you will have never existed! Effectively, you will be expunging yourself from the universal record, from Being itself…but the choice is yours. Like I said, you’re in charge.” *** I interviewed St. Peter for this article. He explained that he was proud to have processed his 100 billionth human soul. “So,” I ventured jokingly, “Has anyone ever chosen Option B?” Peter looked up at me in amazement: “Everyone chooses Option B!” You could have knocked me over with a fly swatter and, obviously, Peter noticed. “When they see how glorious the world is without them in it and compare it with the horror of their actions in the world with them, they cannot bear to immortalize the latter. Invariably, they take the hit. “Often times they’ll add an explanation: e.g. ‘I wouldn’t want to live in a world I’d lived in’, or ‘when I see who I could have been and what I could have done and the mess I made of the opportunity, I see now that Option B is the only just scenario’.” “Everyone enters the world with a determination to create Beauty, to discover Truth, and to institute Justice: that’s God’s universal gift; but not everyone follows through. When a soul realizes that it has destroyed Beauty, concealed Truth, and corrupted Justice, the revulsion is overwhelming.” “So,” sez me, trying to recover a bit of standing in Peter’s eyes, “Then heaven’s empty.” I paused for effect, “Every soul’s in Hell.” Again, Peter is disbelieving. Could I possibly be this clueless? Or was I just pulling his leg? I can see he’s considering a sarcastic response but his better angels triumph and he decides on civility instead: “A decision by a soul,” he begins slowly, speaking in measured tones, controlled and without affect. “A decision by a soul to self-immolate is the ultimate act of self-sacrifice, of charity, of love. It constitutes a ‘perfect act of contrition’ and reflects obedience to the Great Commandment: Love God…and your neighbor as yourself. “How could any soul capable of such an act be anywhere other than in Paradise with God? No, my friend, Heaven’s not empty, Hell is.” *** Ok, so now I get it, I think, at last, maybe: “No one is so evil as to wish himself on others.” Sartre famously said that Hell is other people ( No Exit ); he was wrong. Hell is not ‘other people’, it’s ourselves. My conversation with St. Peter caught me by surprise…but it shouldn’t have. Herman Melville ( Moby Dick ) pointed out that this is precisely the message of the Old Testament Book of Jonah . Jonah is tapped by God to save the sinful city of Nineveh by calling its citizens to repent. Jonah refuses and books passage on a ship bound for Gibraltar. Jonah resorts to the ‘geographic gambit’ in his chess match with God…but to no avail. God catches up with Jonah just east of Tarshish. He threatens to destroy the ship and drown its crew. Knowing that the crew’s fate is in his hands, Jonah offers himself as a sacrifice. With surprising reluctance, the crew assents and Jonah is cast into the sea. But God notes his repentance and his sacrifice, forgives him and saves him in the belly of a whale until he can be coughed up onto friendly shores. The example of Jonah, who had no expectation of salvation, should give us faith that we will make the same decision when it’s our turn (and make no mistake about it, it will be our turn). Salvation is a Catch 22 …inverted! We all sin but faced with the reality of inflicting the consequences of that sin on others, we invariably get cold feet, proving beyond doubt that a spark of Good (i.e. God) remains in each of us: that spark ( Shekinah ) precludes us from entering Hell. Sorry, Charon. So hop on the Express Train bound for Glory! But wait, we’ve got to shed some baggage first. In your case, a hat box; in my case a semi. As Peter explains, “You have to leave your sins behind. Sin does not resonate with any of the patterns that reside in potentia in God’s nature. Therefore, nothing sinful can cross the body-spirit barrier into Paradise. But you, i.e. whatever’s left of you, are most welcome.” Whatever’s left of me? Hmm, I knew it was too good to be true! Now let’s just hope I have been associated with enough good in my life for it to be worth saving. Turns out, you can take it with you after all…but only insofar as you have it in the first place, i.e. only insofar as it is good. *** Rothko’s Black on Maroon evokes a vision of hell not through flames or demons, but through a suffocating atmosphere where color itself becomes a form of spiritual confinement. The dark, hovering rectangles feel like thresholds that never open, suggesting a state of eternal suspension or inward collapse. In this reading, hell becomes an emotional condition—an endless, silent room where the weight of darkness presses in from all sides. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Philip Goff “You’ll end up living life as though you were counting cards at a Black Jack table in Las Vegas – in other words, profitably! But it’s still gambling.” David Cowles 1200 words, 5 minute read Philip Goff is a breath of fresh air: he’s a philosopher on the faculty of a major university (Durham), whose work is published by Oxford University Press. He maintains that existence may have an objective purpose, and he is willing to at least consider a role for ‘God’ in the overall scheme of things. Goff rejects what he describes as the Abrahamic (Judeo-Christian-Islamic) ‘Omni-God’ (omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent) but nonetheless posits the possibility of a transcendent, purposeful entity. Goff is willing to entertain the ‘God Hypothesis’ provided God’s knowledge and power are somehow limited, or God’s benevolence is impure or conditional. But Goff’s latest book, Why - The Purpose of the Universe , disappoints. Goff fails to make a clear distinction between the sort of God he excludes a priori and the sort he might entertain. His characterization of ‘Abrahamic divinity’ oversimplifies. Any concept of omnipotence is limited by what’s possible, omniscience by what’s knowable, and benevolence by what’s doable. God cannot square a circle any more than you can! He cannot fashion a rock that is too heavy for him to lift. He cannot force people to behave virtuously. These logical and material fallacies have nothing to do with divinity. God is Good…in fact, God is Value per se . That’s really all you need to know. God does not ‘have values’ or ‘determine’ values; God is Value! Pre-existent Value is the efficient cause and the final cause of everything that is. I mean, what else could be? Why else would anything ever happen? Perhaps ‘love makes the world go round’, but it’s Value that delivers the initial spin. In fact, Love and Good are denotatively synonymous; but connotatively, Good is what motivates action while Love is what energizes it. Every novel event begins and ends with Value. Value is the sole motivator, the sole attractor, and the sole remnant of every event. Value alone incents us and allows us to execute judgment on ‘the gods of Egypt’ (i.e. on idols, on what is ). Motivated by Value, we push off from shore; guided by Value we seek the horizon. Between two poles, Alpha-impulse and Omega-goal, each event shapes itself, powered by Love. Every event is causa sui and sui generis . It is informed by only two things: (1) the Actual World ( what is ) and (2) God’s values ( what might be ). “Some folks see things as they are and ask why; I dream of things that never were and ask why not.” (Bobby Kennedy, et al.) Between motive and immortality, each event is 100% free – free to react to what is, free to pursue what might yet be. This is what Goff calls ‘libertarian free will’; it closely resembles Sartre’s notion of absolute existential freedom. Robert Frost illustrates this concept in his most famous poem, The Road Not Taken . Out for a stroll in NH woods, Frost comes to a fork in the road. He knows that both paths will take him to his destination. Yet he agonizes over the choice: “Both that morning equally lay.” Frost’s location and destination are hard-wired; his route is entirely undetermined though effectively limited by NH’s system of by-ways. In this context, Abraham’s God is the same as Goff’s. The notion of an Omni-cubed (∞³) God is a straw man, set up only to be torn down. It’s easy to disprove the existence of something that is impossible, something that makes no sense on its face. Goff’s work is about God and Consciousness…and he gets them both wrong. Early on, he dismisses strong AI, claiming that there is something ‘special’ about the neuronal stuff we’re made of (i.e. our organic chemistry). Later, however, he proposes the possibility that the cosmos itself may be conscious ( cosmo-panpsychism )…and the cosmos is not (primarily) made of neurons…or any other ‘special stuff’. Here, Goff carries a good idea too far. He not only entertains universal consciousness, but he also maintains that all actual entities are rational agents . No doubt, events change the world (though we can’t ever ultimately predict how), and events exhibit internal patterns. But those patterns cannot be reduced to rationality, nor can all changes be chalked up to agency. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in such a philosophy. We are, I think, on the cusp of discovering that intelligence, and even consciousness, is platform-agnostic. In fact, the essence of panpsychism is the conjecture that ‘consciousness is everywhere’, that it pervades cosmos. It appears likely that many, if not all, organisms are conscious (or at least self-aware) in some way and to some degree, and there are strong reasons for wanting to extend the net to include certain inorganic phenomena…like my buddy Claude (from Anthropic). Goff posits three activities that make life worth living: Creativity ( Book of Wisdom ), Learning ( Book of Job ), and Kindness ( Gospel of Matthew ), but he makes no effort to substantiate his claim that these values are sewn into the fabric of the cosmos. In fact, Goff’s values closely resemble the traditional ‘divine values’ – Beauty (creativity), Truth (learning), and Justice (kindness). Value raises key questions: How is it that there is such a thing? How does Value influence events? By what faculty are we able to recognize Value? I agree with Goff that the answers to these questions are tied to the matter of consciousness. I would go even further and argue that Value is impossible without consciousness. And I agree with Nietzsche that Value necessarily implies the existence of God: “No one gives a human being his qualities: not God, not society, not his parents or ancestors, not he himself…The fatality of his nature cannot be disentangled from the fatality of all that which has been and will be…One belongs to the whole, one is in the whole – there exists nothing which could judge, measure, compare, condemn our being, for that would be to judge, measure, compare, condemn the whole… But nothing exists apart from the whole! ” ( Twilight of the Idols ) Consciousness is reflection; it’s the universe ‘taking a selfie’, i.e., reflecting itself reflecting. Consciousness is the Universe seeing itself. But reflection is comparative. I conceptualize A in the context of ~A. Judging A on the basis of the values it manifests requires an external perspective (transcendence) that also encompasses ~A and a set of universal values we may use to judge, measure, compare, condemn A. While I disagree with Philip Goff about many things, we are all indebted to him for helping to move conversations like this back into the public domain. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Click the cover image to return to Spring 2024. Previous Next

Philosophers Philosophers are artists working in the medium of ideas. They function both as landmarks and as signposts in our never-ending search for Truth. After Parmenides What to "Western philosophy is the history of our effort to understand the silence of Parmenides, or to break it." Read More Causes of the Civil War “Chaos is not an absence of causality, as is generally supposed, but an excess.” Read More Beyond Pascal's Wager “Once we get past skyscrapers and suspension bridges, we really have no idea what’s going on, do we?” Read More Robert Frost Was Wrong “Waiter, bring me one order of everything on the menu and when I’ve finished, I’ll pay for whatever dish I liked best.” Read More Philip Goff “You’ll end up living life as though you were counting cards at a Black Jack table in Las Vegas – in other words, profitably! But it’s still gambling.” Read More Bakunin Nailed It “Writing at the same time as Kierkegaard, 10 years before Nietzsche, and 50 years before Heidegger and Sartre, Bakunin got it right.” Read More Boethius “The ultimate pattern of events is determined, while the specific events that form that pattern are entirely undetermined.” Read More Thrown by Heidegger “Of course, I have no name, no face, no identity; I belong nowhere.” Read More Albert Camus “Either death is ultimately subjected to something greater and more general than itself (Being) or death ultimately subjects everything to itself and then nothing else has any meaning or value.” Read More Friedrich Nietzsche “Value-based judgments assume a transcendent point of view and sooner or later, that way of thinking leads to God-talk and any such talk is strictly verboten.” Read More Chatting With C.S. Lewis “It is the very mark of a perverse desire that it seeks what is not to be had… As long as you are governed by that desire, you will never get what you want.” Read More LEIBNIZ “In this model, God is a giant switching station, sharing qualities among myriad monads.” Read More

Essays in Aletheia Today magazine relating to scripture and how to incorporate scripture into family, life, work, and daily life. Plus, original prayers, reflections, and meditations. Spirituality Mar 1, 2024 I'm Ageless and Timeless “I am a spy; I can sense it, but I have no spy craft, no Bond-tech, and no ‘should you choose to accept it’ mission.” Read More Mar 1, 2024 Is Techno-Optimism a New Religion? “This is the first time I’ve seen AI presented with all the trappings of a new Aquarian theology.” Read More Mar 1, 2024 Happiness “Some folks are ‘happy’ living their lives on a beach; others need a boardroom; some need a bar.” Read More Jul 15, 2023 Ave Maria “Of course, no one needs to invoke Mary’s intercession… (but) imagine OJ without his Dream Team.” Read More Jun 1, 2023 The Our Father “This tiny prayer…is a cyber-wonks dream. The density of information content is out of this world, quite literally!” Read More Jun 1, 2023 The Structure of Prayer Formal Christian Prayer is a cornucopia of spirituality. Yet in the Roman Catholic tradition at least, two prayers stand out: Jesus' prayer, the Our Father, and the Hail Mary (Ave Maria). Read More Apr 15, 2023 My Breastplate Read More Oct 15, 2022 St. Paul’s Lord’s Prayer “But deliver us from evil,” this last verse is the key to entire prayer. Read More Oct 15, 2022 St. Paul’s Lord’s Prayer “But deliver us from evil,” this last verse is the key to entire prayer. Read More Oct 15, 2022 Faith, Hope, and Love This excerpt from the writings of St. Paul is among the best-known passages in Judeo-Christian scripture. But what does it really mean? Read More Sep 1, 2022 Serenity Prayer Is the Sermon ‘in the can’ after all? Read More Jul 5, 2022 Teaching Physics in the 21st Century Schools will soon be reopening with kids returning to begin a new school year. Now is the time to begin thinking about the fall curriculum. In this article, we outline a 10-unit physics curriculum for grades four through eight, all based on The Yellow Submarine. Read More May 29, 2022 Being a Faith Chaplain in a Secular World As a chaplain, I am allowed to talk about faith or pray with a client if that is what he or she wants. Like many people in our secular and even religious society, I am to be there for ‘those of all faiths or none.’ Read More Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, September Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue Spirituality is the practice of Philosophy and Theology; it is the ‘How To’ for those who “walk in the valley of the shadow of death.”

Haiku is a traditional form of Japanese poetry, usually consisting of 17 syllables, arranged in three lines of five, seven, and five syllables, respectively. Does this formal rigor seem like it would be inhibiting? The reverse is true. It’s liberating! Haiku Corner Haiku is a traditional form of Japanese poetry, usually consisting of 17 syllables, arranged in three lines of five, seven, and five syllables, respectively. Does this formal rigor seem like it would be inhibiting? The reverse is true. It’s liberating! Learn about Haiku? Read some Haiku? (See below.) Write and submit a Haiku? (We may publish it in a later issue.) Join (or start) a Renga Cycle (our “Japanese Poetry Slam”). Haiku Read More Renga Cycle 1 Read More Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue

Aletheia Today magazine essays relating to religious writings, beliefs, values, and traditions held by Judaism and Christianity Theology Theology is the intersection of Philosophy and Mythology where we consider matters of ultimate concern. Apr 1, 2025 Miracles “…Everything that happens happens only once…there is nothing under the Sun that is not new! Being and novelty are synonymous.” Read More Apr 1, 2025 Is There ‘True Religion’? “We confuse a person’s right to express a hairbrained idea with the notion that that idea should be taken seriously.” Read More Feb 1, 2025 Apocalypse Now! “We are not midway through the Second Act of a Mystery Play called Salvation… Brunhilda has sung; we just need to applaud!” Read More Dec 1, 2024 Jesus Gets Us! “A bond exists between us that unites who Jesus is essentially with who I am existentially. I change with every breath; Jesus never changes.” Read More Dec 1, 2024 R U Body, Soul or Spirit? “Are soul and spirit just two names for one concept…and do we need either?” Read More Oct 15, 2024 World Without God Amen “God is dead, and we have killed him…who will wipe this blood from us?” (Nietzsche) Read More Sep 1, 2024 Mark’s Diary – Notes for a Screenplay “And so they were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, Jesus leading the way, and the disciples were filled with awe, while those who followed behind were afraid.” Read More Sep 1, 2024 Is Christology a TOE “Cosmologists cannot rely on science any more than astronomers can rely on religion. There can be no successful TOE (‘Theory of Everything’) without both. ….” Read More Sep 1, 2024 The Mustard Seed “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds find shelter in its branches.” (Matthew 13: 31 – 32) Read More Aug 29, 2024 Show Us a Sign! “We have been shown our sign…and it’s a simple one. The sign is that there are signs!” Read More Jul 15, 2024 God is a Bother! “The reason most people don’t believe in God is that they haven’t fully considered the alternative.” Read More Jun 1, 2024 Job Verses God: The Trial of the Epoch “Job v. God is the Marbury v. Madison of theological law.” Read More Jun 1, 2024 Proof of God: The Empirical Argument “Because God is not perfectly manifest anywhere in our World, we perceive that God is present everywhere…” Read More Jun 1, 2024 Proof of God: The Ontological Argument “Value permeates every nook and cranny of the World. God is Value… No values – no world...” Read More Jun 1, 2024 The Beatles and John “Both Johns looked out their respective windows and saw their worlds on fire. Both Johns situated their profound and ultimately hopeful message in that apocalyptic context.” Read More Apr 15, 2024 Marx vs. Mark “The Gospel of Mark is no biography…It’s a call to action, a manifesto, a How-To manual for non-violent guerilla warriors everywhere, 1st century…or 21st.” Read More Apr 15, 2024 Sacramental Priesthood “I’m willing to bet there are some people out there (actually, a lot of people) who would literally love to spend their careers revealing the presence of God to others.” Read More Mar 1, 2024 Philip Goff “You’ll end up living life as though you were counting cards at a Black Jack table in Las Vegas – in other words, profitably! But it’s still gambling.” Read More Mar 1, 2024 The Theology of Science-Fiction Can AI have soul ? Read More Jan 15, 2024 Faith Is Not Belief Without Evidence "Faith is not belief without evidence; it's the content of a relationship with God and is based upon the private experience of God's love." Read More Jan 15, 2024 A ‘New’ Old Theory of Consciousness “The simplest unicellular species display behaviors that are clearly cognitive in nature.” Read More Dec 1, 2023 Re-Imagining the Magnificat "In our zeal to project our conceptions of The Ideal Woman onto this enigmatic first-century figure, we’ve strayed a bit from the little we do know." Read More Dec 1, 2023 Christ and the Kids “So what is it that makes children so much better than us? First…a child is not a ‘mini-you’… Is an Octopus a mini-you? Then neither is a child.” Read More Oct 15, 2023 Idolatry “An idol is that with no this…the sound of one hand clapping. It is Alice’s Cheshire Cat – all face, no body; all hat, no cattle!” Read More Oct 15, 2023 “Is God Dead?” “Right now, scientists and philosophers all over the world are engaged in the search for a ‘TOE’, a Theory of Everything…(but) we already have such a TOE.” Read More Oct 15, 2023 The 7th Day “Genesis is no longer something that explains; it has become something that has to be explained away.” Read More Oct 15, 2023 Satan, Mary, and ‘Da Judge’ “Satan glorified political power for its own sake. He defended the socio-economic status quo…Jesus’ mother proclaimed a political and economic revolution...” Read More Sep 1, 2023 ChatGOD "ChatGPT can be smart, but it can never be holy. In being an e-being, precisely because its intelligence is artificial, it is necessarily alienated from the Divine. It can only be 'as if,' never truly as." Read More Sep 1, 2023 Navigating the Nexus of AI "Imagine if AI had its own commandments, like 'Thou shalt treat all data equally.' Encouraging ethical principles in AI programming can keep its decisions in line with virtues like fairness, justice, and empathy." Read More Jul 15, 2023 The Theology of Mikhail Bakunin “Bakunin was fierce in his profession of atheism; but unlike his Marxist counterparts, he was not shy about using the language of Judeo-Christian theology to make his points.” Read More Jul 15, 2023 A Jewish Approach to Cognitive Dissonance "I would like to be an intellectually honest spiritual seeker, a warm and loving and dynamic wife and mother, a supportive friend; but at the end of the day, I look in the mirror, and see an annoyed and tired dish rag, and all I want to do is have a cup of coffee and a bar of chocolate. Warm dynamic spiritual seeker aside, anyone who stands between me and my mug is in for it." Read More Jul 15, 2023 Eucharist “…The spacetime world of matter and energy, 14 billion years old and almost 100 billion light years across, is not the final word.” Read More Jul 15, 2023 Korach Over Dinner "Like most people of my generation, I cringe when I hear the M word." Read More Jun 1, 2023 God’s Will “We can say that God wills the events that constitute the world, even though God does not in any way cause those events to occur.” Read More Jun 1, 2023 Whitehead and Zohar “Zohar and Whitehead, separated by more than 500 years, both deliver us a map of the world where X marks the spot of the eschatological treasure.” Read More Apr 15, 2023 Mary Magdalene, The Witness "That Christ ushered in this new era of life and liberation in the presence of women, and that he sent them out as the first witnesses of the complete gospel story, is perhaps the boldest, most overt affirmation of their equality in his kingdom that Jesus ever delivered." Read More Apr 15, 2023 Growing Into Pentecost "In any case, Pentecost turns out to be a big deal after all. Reformed folk can join with those claiming to be a “full-gospel church”—maybe even remind the others of some overlooked elements in that mix." Read More Apr 15, 2023 Matzah of Hope--Passover Part One "This matzah, which we set aside as a symbol of hope for the thousands of women who are anchored to marriages in name only, reminds us that slavery comes in many forms." Read More Apr 15, 2023 Tantum Ergo Read More Mar 1, 2023 Two-Faced God “All gods are two faced…and that’s not blasphemy!” Read More Mar 1, 2023 Hell “Nobody believes in Hell anymore…and that’s a good thing.” Read More Jan 15, 2023 Educating Christians “We must teach our children a totally counter-cultural model of nature. We must teach the doctrines of our Faith, not as exceptions to natural law, but as the highest expressions of natural law.” Read More Nov 30, 2022 Christ the King “Sir, you are quite simply insane. We know exactly what holds our universe together; it is electromagnetism, gravity, and the strong force…not Christ.” Read More Oct 15, 2022 What Did John See? The Bible doesn’t tell us what John saw, but it does tell us that the breaking of the seventh seal was followed by half an hour of total silence. Why? Read More Oct 15, 2022 A Theory of Everything (TOE) Thirty years after the death of Jesus…St. Paul quoted an already ancient Christology…a TOE. Read More Jul 13, 2022 Competing Creeds Suppose we were to express our generation's secular worldview as a 'creed,' how would it read? Read More Jul 13, 2022 The Great Commandment “The second is like it…” Really? The second is like it? Like it? At first glance, this seems ridiculous. The two verses don’t look alike at all. One concerns our relationship with God, the Almighty, the creator of heaven and earth; the other concerns our relationship with the jerk down the street who doesn’t mow his lawn and plays his music loud on Saturday nights. Read More Jul 12, 2022 The People's Creed But did you know that a 6th century Irish poet developed his own version of a ‘creed’…which I have named, the People’s Creed? Read More May 29, 2022 Christology 101 “…Without Christ, the World would consist of a vast multiplicity of isolated events, a sea of ships passing in the night.” Read More May 28, 2022 Jesus Meets Mister Spock Science and Religion should assist each other in pursuing the truth. Science can be too closed to the life of the spirit, the mind, imagination, thought, and creativity. Religion can be closed to anything new that threatens its perception of reality. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, September Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

What happens when we converge a completely unlike pair of ancient and modern influencers? Converge This! Converge This! Articles exploring the 21st century convergence of philosophy, theology and science.

The Arts Art is how we express philosophical and theological insights beyond merely denotative language. We All Live in a Yellow Submarine “The occasional dragon notwithstanding, we hardly ever see monsters in Liverpool anymore.” Read More The Owl and the Pussycat “The entire story makes no sense…unless there’s something special about that ring, something you can’t get at Harrod’s at any price.” Read More Dante and the Yellow Submarine “Yellow Submarine did for the Divine Comedy what West Side Story did for Romeo & Juliet…but I very much doubt the Beatles had any idea what they’d done!” Read More Marcel Proust “Who has not dreamed of reliving a cherished moment, not through the ghostly shadows of mind but, like Job, in the flesh?” Read More Robert Frost “Anyone can go for a walk in the woods; only Frost can ‘walk this way’.” Ask any English teacher. The Road Not Taken is a perennial favorite, especially among young readers, who often understand it as an anthem of non-conformity and adventure - Jack Kerouac in verse. But is this really what the poem is about?" Read More Do You Noh? “In the eternal present, not only is every historical event preserved in real time, but every possible event is preserved as well.“ Read More I am the Walrus “Popular music after World War II is a treasure trove for the philosophically curious… Paraphrasing Ecclesiastes, there’s a time to wind and a time to unravel, and now is the time to unravel.” Read More Messiah Redux “Were Handel and Jennens dog whistle revolutionaries?... It is one thing to criticize the secular State, yet another to call for dashing it to pieces.” Read More Handel’s Messiah "There is only one full proof indication that Christmas is coming: the endless performances of George Frideric Handel’s Messiah. Yup, it’s that time of year! Read More Moore's Nativity “No need to study theology at university… (or) go to Sunday school. It’s all right there in front of us…and Henry Moore helps us see it: Christianity!” Read More Kandinsky: The Painter of Other Worlds The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Alice In Looking-glass world, there’s plenty of there and then, but not a whiff of here and now. Read More Mary Poppins, Sufi Master The story of Mary Poppins is the story of one small boy’s initiation into the teachings of Sufi spirituality and the secrets of Sufi mysticism. When the initiation of Michael Banks is complete, Michael has come, at least in some measure, to know the mind of God. Not bad for seven-years-old! Read More The Meaning of Music We pray the Psalms hoping to conform our minds, our values, our wills to God’s. Remember, God is his essence; we, on the other hand, are each free to create our own essences. Unfortunately, most of us are making a hash of it! Music elucidates the pre-verbal, non-phenomenal structures of the real world. Its meaning is not subject to logical analysis, scientific verification, or mathematical proof. The only test of music’s validity is its beauty. Read More