< Back Christ and the Cosmic Fractal David Cowles Dec 27, 2025 “A process is recursive when it applies to itself… (but) doesn’t every process apply to itself?” 1600 words, 8 minute read. Have you ever been to a Carnival? Did you visit the Hall of Mirrors ? You enter and all around you are, well you guessed it, mirrors . You shut the door behind you…and yikes, it’s another mirror! You are struck inside a polyhedron, the inside faces of which are all mirrors. Look into one mirror, any mirror, and you see yourself reflected endlessly but at ever smaller scale. The mirrors are reflecting each other’s images over and over again until the images are too faint for you to see…but know that they continue infinitely, albeit imperceptibly. They create the ‘illusion’ of adding another dimension to space. The mirrors have height, width, and thickness just as you’d expect; but now they also appear to have a 4 th dimension… depth . Adding this 4 th dimension does not increase the overall information content of the complex. The mirror images simply repeat, over and over again, what already is. They add nothing new. In the same way that all the information related to a Black Hole resides on its surface, so all the information related to a Hall of Mirrors resides in just 3 dimensions. The images are self-similar ( congruent if you’re currently sitting in a high school geometry class); only the scale changes! If you’re not too hung over after spending Saturday night at the Carnival, I’ll pick you up Sunday morning on my way to Mass (Roman Catholic Liturgy). I know you’re not into religion, but I think you’ll find this interesting. Christians believe that God (Father) made ‘the heavens and the earth’ but they also believe that God (Son) was ‘born of the Virgin Mary’ 2025 years ago. Ridiculous, you say! Who could believe that? How soon you have forgotten last night’s trip to the Carnival! ( Suggestion : Drink less next year!) May I remind you? Last night your image was incarnate in endless reflections of your reflection. ( Note : a reflection of reflection is recursive.) But you don’t need to wait for the carnival to come to town next year to be reminded. Fractals are all around us and they are a frequent subject of artists working in various media. For example, Escher’s Print Gallery (1956) depicts a city and in this city is an art gallery and on the wall of that gallery hangs a painting and, guess what, that painting is Print Gallery …a painting that depicts a city with an art gallery that has Print Gallery hanging on one of its walls. Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1938 novel Nausea offers a literary example of this relationship. It chronicles a young intellectual’s anguished discovery of the principles of Existentialism, and it concludes with him deciding to write a novel based on those ideas. Of course, the intellectual is Sartre and the novel is none other than Nausea itself. Sartre’s novel is itself recursive. As such it joins a rich literary tradition stretching from Don Quixote to Neverending Story . In Volume Two of Don Quixote , our hero learns that he is the subject of an eponymous novel and he takes time to respond to critics’ comments on Volume One. The novel has become a ‘character’ in its own story. That’s recursion! When we first hear this idea, our instinctive reaction is to say, “No, that’s not possible! The whole cannot be one of its own parts. It’s illogical.” And yet, through carnivals, liturgies, paintings, and novels, we clearly see that it is not only possible but actual, perhaps even necessary… Bertrand Russell notwithstanding. We are used to vectored processes that impact things outside themselves but there is no good reason why a process shouldn’t act on itself as well, why it should not be recursive. In fact, most process is recursive. Processes directed exclusively at another, if they exist at all, are special cases of, or abstractions from, process generally. Sidebar : Does every process apply to itself? Is that the meaning of Karma ? It’s certainly the message of Judeo-Christianity’s Great Commandment: “…love your neighbor as yourself.” And of Newton: Every action entails an equal and opposite reaction. Every subject has itself for an object. There is ever increasing evidence that the cosmos itself is fractal in nature. The distribution of galactic groups in space is self-similar to the distribution of galaxies within those groups; that distribution in turn is self-similar to the distribution of stars within individual galaxies…which is self-similar to the distribution of quarks in an atomic nucleus. Many great works of literature (e.g. Joyce) and music (e.g. Bach) are structured as fractals. Fractals also have applications in math, logic, and computer science. But here we are exclusively concerned with metaphysical applications, applications in ontology, cosmology, and theology. The Christian world view suggests that Being itself has a fractal structure. Let’s start with God! Why not? The Christian idea of God is Trinitarian. God is three persons (Father, Son and Spirit). But these ‘persons’ are not ‘parts’ of God; they are God, individually and collectively. The Father is God, the Son is God, the Spirit is God. According to the Nicene Creed , the Son is “begotten not made, God from God, light from light, true God from true God.” The Spirit “proceeds from the Father and the Son”, i.e. is the relationship between the Father and the Son. But the Spirit is also a ‘divine person’; the Spirit is also God. So according to Christian theology, God is ‘triple-self-similar’: Father ( est ), Son ( incarnatus est ), and Spirit ( procedit ). If we map Christian cosmology onto English syntax, God is the subject, the object, and the verb. What about the ‘world’ and God’s relationship to that world? Does the fractal structure of Trinity extend to the physical world? What are the fundamental things we can say about God’s relationship to the world? God creates the world, primordially ( Genesis ) and perpetually ( John ). God redeems the world ( I Corinthians ), immediately and eschatologically. God is incarnate in the world in the person of Jesus Christ. So the world, which God encompasses, encompasses God. The whole is part of itself. ( Colossians ). The fractal pattern we identify with Trinity extends at least one level beyond…to the relationship of God with the World. The pattern of Creation, Incarnation and Redemption is self-similar to the structure of Trinity. God incarnate (Jesus Christ) is one element of a whole (world) which in turn is encompassed by a higher order whole (God) which, of course, is also a part (Son) of the whole (world). While God “created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1), it is through Christ ( Logos ) that “all things came to be…and without whom nothing came to be” (John 1:3). Christ the part ( logos ) on one scale is Christ the whole ( Logos ) on another. God and Creation are self-similar (not identical or equivalent); it is by the power of the Holy Spirit (God) that we are the image and likeness of God. While everything is ultimately subject to God, it is subjected to God through Christ. “When everything is subjected to him (Son), then the Son will be subjected to the one who subjected everything to him (Father) so that God may be all in all” (I Corinthians 15:28). Christ, an element on one scale, is Christ the whole on another: “Christ is all in all.” (Col. 3: 11) So at scale N, God creates and saves the world and is incarnate in that world in the person of Jesus. At scale N-1, all things are made through Christ and ultimately subjected to God through Christ. Christ (the whole) becomes Christ (the part) first through Incarnation and then through each of the Sacraments (especially Eucharist), i.e. reiterations of Incarnation. Christ is wholly present in every sacrament. In Eucharist, however, bread and wine (parts) are transubstantiated into the Body and Blood of Christ (whole). We (wholes) in turn ingest that Body and Blood (whole) under the appearance of bread and wine (parts). In each of us, Jesus’ body and blood comingles with our own; Christ (whole) becomes a part of each of us so that we in turn each become the Body of Christ (whole). A part (Christ) of a part (us) is also a whole of which we are each a part. According to the theology of the Eucharist, when we (whole) ingest Jesus’ Body and Blood (part), we (part) are simultaneously uploaded into Christ’s Body (whole). St. Paul summed it up beautifully: “Now you are Christ’s body and individually parts of it.” ( I Cor. 12: 27 ) In Eucharist, Christ becomes part of us who become part of Christ who becomes part of us ad infinitum . Reminiscent of our Hall of Mirrors , wouldn’t you say? Eucharist is a special example of a fractal because it is not concerned with space (mirrors) but with time. It is a Time Crystal . Linear time is suspended and replaced by perpetual loops. Therefore, Eucharist is an indivisible quantum of time ; as such, it is the eternal now . Eucharist is a process which, fractal-like, repeats the Incarnation perpetually. So does Being itself have a fractal structure according to Christian theology? Q.E.D. *** The Heavenly and Earthly Trinities by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (c. 1675–82) juxtaposes the Holy Family (Mary, the Christ Child, and Joseph) with the divine Trinity (God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as a dove) to visually express Christ’s dual nature as both human and divine. 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 Cosmic Crossroads David Cowles You say, "Big Bang;" we say, "Genesis." You say, "Constantine;" we say, "Ascension." 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. Previous Next

“Achilles is still sulking, humiliated by a…tortoise; but at least we have a universe and…we can be assured that its ultimate trajectory is toward Good.” < Back Zeno's New Paradox David Cowles Oct 15, 2024 “Achilles is still sulking, humiliated by a…tortoise; but at least we have a universe and…we can be assured that its ultimate trajectory is toward Good.” You know the story of the famous tortoise who beat the great Achilles in a road race, and you may have heard about the arrow that remains suspended in mid-air over Athens, but you may not know about Zeno’s latest paradox. Here’s how it came about: One day Zeno of Elea and I were reclining on freshly mowed grass in the shade of a eucalyptus tree. Then Zeno had one of his bright ideas. (That’s when you knew that you could be in trouble. Another day without lunch!) “Let’s build a universe,” Zeno began. Zeno didn’t suffer from false humility. Naively I replied, half napping, “What will we use for materials?” “Our minds, of course, dear boy, our minds.” How foolish of me! BTW, he always called me ‘dear boy’ even though I was many years his senior. “Let’s make it a good universe,” he said. “Let’s fill it with variety and intensity. Everything’ll be a ‘happening’, an event. Let’s have people in this world, let’s give them freedom to do as they will but let’s make sure they’re aware of themselves and their surroundings at all times. And we’ll fill the world with other living things and with enduring objects to boot.” “Sounds good, Zeno,” I muttered as soon as I heard him pause for air; but he paused longer. I hate his pauses. Hope that he’s not working up another one of his famous paradoxes…but prepare to be disappointed. Finally, he broke the silence: “This won’t work!” Wait for it! Will he let it drop? Or will I, by which I mean you , have to listen to a long, boring lecture explaining just exactly why it won’t work – as if anybody cared . “There’s no incentive, we’re missing motivation!” Yup, we be doomed! “Why would a world like this ever will itself to be? Why would any event ever happen?” “I dunno, Zeno, why not create an incentive? Give events a reason to happen, like a reward or something… something ‘good’.” “That’s it! The ‘Good’. I’ll add goodness to my world. Everyone prefers what’s better over what’s worse. So that will work. Thank you.” Another pregnant pause. The rabbits stop hopping, the birds stop chirping, the meadow is in a state of suspended animation. “No it won’t; it won’t work!” “My friend,” Zeno began in an avuncular tone inconsistent with his youth, “In the real world, things do not follow straight lines. If I build Good into the world, like I did gravity, events in my world will naturally tend toward the Good so my World Line will have (-y/x) as its overall slope. But that slope will not be uniform. It will be more steeply negative (‘negative’ is a positive thing in this context, i.e. closer to Good) over some intervals, less so over others. “At some point(s) along the way, my World Line will arrive at a ‘local minimum’, a point from which all slopes are positive, i.e. uphill. To continue, my World Line would have to move away from the Good and that is not possible in my model. “Nothing can ever freely elect to move in any direction other than toward the Good (∞, є). All events must bring the world closer to the Good. Therefore, no event with a positive slope is possible. But my model inevitably includes such pseudo-events; therefore my model is defective. It won’t work.” Ever the optimist, I venture, “So, it doesn’t work all the time, so what? It works most of time; isn’t that good enough?” I’ve never seen Zeno more exasperated…and I’ve seen him exasperated many times, often with me, sometimes with other muggles . (Yup, there were ‘muggles’ even then, in the 5th century BCE.) “After all our time together, do you still not understand?” His Jesus’ complex was kicking in, 400 years before the Nativity. Some Advent! “Real numbers are continuous. 2 is ½ of 4, 1 is ½ of 2. Every interval on the Real Number Line (RNL) is a fractal of every other interval. So if there is even one point where the World Line can assume a positive slope, then any point on the World Line is potentially ‘slope-positive’. “Yes, it works most of the time, but we can’t know when it’s working and when it isn’t so it’s useless. Wherever slope > 0, my world ends; and if my world ends, it is as if it never began in the first place. Simply put: ‘It is not.’ But slope may be greater than 0 at any point on my trajectory. Therefore, since my world can ‘not exist’…it cannot exist.” This reminds me of the time many centuries later when my best friend’s family got the first TV in our neighborhood. Of course, I ran over to his house. We stared at the screen forever. Hmm, not much happening. “Is it turned on,” I ventured. “I don’t know,” he replied, “It always looks like this.” All of Zeno’s paradoxes take a similar form: “Either Real Number Theory and therefore the rules of arithmetic are wrong, or there is no world as we know it. But of course, there is a world, and it is as we know it (Descartes meets Wittgenstein), so arithmetic must be invalid.” What’s going on here? My Life Ball is rolling along the World Line, heading toward the Good. Suddenly, I hit a randomly occurring dip and enter a ‘local minimum’. My next step, in any direction, is ‘up’; it requires me to invest energy to overcome the gravity-like attraction of the Good. But that’s impossible according to my model. Therefore, the world as we know it is impossible,,,but the corollaries are even worse: Any world similar to the world we know is impossible if it allows even a single quantum of ‘anti-good’, a single point, t, where y/x > 0, a positive slope. A world in which there could be even a single quantum of ‘anti-good’ is impaled on the horns of Manichean, gnostic dualism. Any possible world, including our world and all worlds like our world, must uniformly tend toward Good. But that does not seem consistent with experience. Even Augustine, who did not believe in the existence of evil per se , did not insist that every moment, t, be uniformly good. Therefore, the world as we know it can’t be a real world; it must be some sort of grand illusion. So we’ve gone from trying to create a World to realizing that no World can exist. “This is a fine mess you’ve got us into,” Zeno. Surprisingly though, there is a way out (though Zeno might not have realized it); it’s called Quantum Mechanics (c. 1920 CE). Was Zeno 2,500 years smarter than Bohr & Co.? Maybe, maybe not; either way, here’s how it works: My Life Ball is rolling uniformly along the World Line, tending constantly in the direction of the Good. Then I hit a randomly occurring ‘pot hole’. My negative slope suddenly goes ‘super-negative’ and now I will need to travel on a positive slope to get back up to my World Line. According to classical physics, this is impossible. I have fallen into an ‘energy sink’, a spot where potential energy is minimized, aka a ‘local minimum’. Any next step must be ‘up’, but it can’t be because there is no ‘up’ in my world…according to classical physics. But in a quantum world, my Life Ball has a positive probability of being any where in its universe. So when my Life Ball seems to fall into a local energy sink, there is in fact a finite probability that that ball is not located in this cul-de-sac at all; it may still be on the World Line, or even above it. Of course, the probability is miniscule but that’s irrelevant. According to the Many Worlds Interpretation of QM, every event with a non-zero probability does happen…in some universe. Therefore, at any time, t, there is a finite probability that my Life Ball will be on or above the World Line. Therefore, there always exists an extension of the universe as I know it that conforms to my model. Athens still trembles under the threat of Zeno’s suspended arrow, and Achilles is still sulking, humiliated by a lazy good for nothing tortoise; but at least we have a universe and it’s the universe we know and love. And, all evidence to the contrary, we can be assured that it’s ultimate trajectory is toward Good. 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 dtc@gc3incorporated.com ress, Literary Journal Spring 2023. Return to Harvest 2024 Share Previous Next Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Click here. Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue 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

< Back Existential Threats David Cowles Oct 8, 2024 “The risk of all-out war is greater today than at any time in the past 50 years, and it is reasonable to imagine that such a war might amount to ‘game over’.” Nobody wants to focus on the downside, certainly not Aletheia Today! We are committed to a vision of the future that includes global peace, space exploration, galactic colonization, the eradication of poverty, and the exponential expansion of economic and intellectual opportunities worldwide. Technological progress over the next 100 years could easily dwarf the accomplishments of the previous 10,000…or it could destroy Planet Earth and/or Homo Sapiens as we know them. While continuing to focus on the positive, it would be a mistake to ignore these risks. Among the existential threats we face, global war must rank #1 . The scope of the catastrophe, and the likely inability to course-correct once a tipping point is reached, place it at the top of our list. Plus, the risk of all-out war is greater today than at any time in the past 50 years and it is reasonable to imagine that such a war might amount to ‘game over’. In a rare display of bipartisanship, a specially appointed Congressional Committee (Commission on National Defense Strategy) recently released a chilling report on the risks of global war; it would be irresponsible not to reprint its most important findings and conclusions: “The threats the United States faces are the most serious and most challenging the nation has encountered since 1945 and include the potential for near-term major war. The United States…is not prepared today. China and Russia are major powers that seek to undermine U.S. influence. “The 2022 National Defense Strategy (NDS) recognizes these nations as the top threats to the United States and declares China to be the ‘pacing challenge’, based on the strength of its military and economy and its intent to exert dominance regionally and globally. “The Commission finds that, in many ways, China is outpacing the United States and has largely negated the U.S. military advantage in the Western Pacific through two decades of focused military investment. Without significant change by the United States, the balance of power will continue to shift in China’s favor…Russia possesses considerable strategic, space, and cyber capabilities and under Vladimir Putin seeks a return to its global leadership role… “China and Russia’s ‘no-limits’ partnership, formed in February 2022 just days before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has only deepened and broadened to include a military and economic partnership with Iran and North Korea, each of which presents its own significant threat to U.S. interests. “This new alignment of nations opposed to U.S. interests creates a real risk, if not likelihood, that conflict anywhere could become a multi-theater or global war. China (and, to a lesser extent, Russia) is fusing military, diplomatic, and industrial strength to expand power worldwide…. “An effective approach…relies on a coordinated effort to bring together diplomacy, economic investment, cybersecurity, trade, education, industrial capacity, technical innovation, civic engagement, and international cooperation… “The Commission finds that the U.S. military lacks both the capabilities and the capacity required to be confident it can deter and prevail in combat. It needs to do a better job of incorporating new technology at scale; field more and higher-capability platforms, software, and munitions; and deploy innovative operational concepts to employ them together better… “The Commission finds that the U.S. defense industrial base (DIB) is unable to meet the critical minerals and goods needed to run the U.S. economy and build weapon systems. They could also hold at risk U.S. space assets, which underpin much of our daily lives… “The U.S. public is largely unaware of the dangers the United States faces or the costs (financial and otherwise) required to adequately prepare. They do not appreciate the strength of China and its partnerships or the ramifications to daily life if a conflict were to erupt. They are not anticipating disruptions to their power, water, or access to all the goods on which they rely… “The consequences of an all-out war with a peer or near peer would be devastating. Such a war would not only yield massive personnel and military costs but would also likely feature cyberattacks on U.S. critical infrastructure and a global economic recession…” While we’ve chosen to focus on the threat of global war, it is certainly not the only existential threat we face. Climate change, rogue AI, and genetic engineering cannot be ignored. The biggest risk of all, however, is collective myopia. If we refuse to face these threats as real, we make them more likely to occur and the consequences more catastrophic. People like you and me, people who seek peace, are particularly dangerous at times like this. Confirmation bias keeps us from seeing that not everyone in this world shares our values or our sensitivity to the consequences of bad policy. Remember 1930’s England? The leaders could not imagine World War II…until they were in it. We are tempted to think, “Who would launch the world on such a trajectory!” And when we think that, we make it more likely that we will find out. Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to contact us on any matter. How did you like the post? How could we do better in the future? Suggestions welcome. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs 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.

Some people's search takes them to Fatima or Lhasa or into Outer Space. Mine took me to the dentist. < Back Systematic Philosophy David Cowles Oct 15, 2022 Some people's search takes them to Fatima or Lhasa or into Outer Space. Mine took me to the dentist. "Systematic Philosophy," makes you think of Plato and Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas, Kant and Hegel, Heidegger and Sartre... The urge to understand the world we live in persists, but is academic philosophy the only approach? Or even the best approach? And what does it mean to understand ? We understand something in terms of something else . In other words, we find the relevant 'pattern' to explain the 'event.’ The cosmos is our 'territory' (event); we spend our lives searching for, or inventing, the best possible 'map' (pattern) of that territory. The collected works of each of the philosophers mentioned above constitutes 'maps,’ but are we limited in our search to such 'weighty tomes?’ (No, I am not speaking metaphorically. I mean 'weighty' - I challenge you to pick up all eight volumes mentioned above with one arm! Try it on TikTok or YouTube.) The Homeric epics, for example, also constitute a map. So does the fictional prose of James Joyce ( Ulysses ) and the epic poetry of Ezra Pound ( Cantos ). The music of Bach is a spectacular map ( Brandenburg Concenti ) ( Read ATM’s “The Meaning of Music.” ), as are the paintings of Kandinsky ( Read ATM’s “Is This Really All There Is?” ) The list goes on...and on. According to the Book of Job , the greatest tragedy that can befall a human being is to die 'without knowledge,’ i.e. without a satisfying map; but since by definition no map can ever perfectly reconstruct its territory, the search is never-ending. That said, I did not expect my search would take me to my dentist's office. (Some people's search takes them to Fatima or Lhasa or into Outer Space. Mine took me to the dentist.) It is often said, "No one ever wants to go to the dentist." I can confirm that by my own experience...except for now. I cannot not wait for my next cleaning, filling, extraction, etc. A trip to the dentist means a chance to get another look at the tapestry art pictured above. Ok, it's 'pretty,’ I guess, but that's not what attracts me. For me, it's part of the great quest (above). It's a map of the cosmos, every bit as compelling as anything Plato ever wrote, more detailed than anything we're likely to get from the Hubble. How so? It is both varied and uniform, dynamic and stable, undulating and rectilinear. It embodies the same paradoxes that make all of reality so difficult to decipher. Alfred North Whitehead, the last of the great systematic philosophers (not listed above...but just as unhoistable), illustrated this paradox when he quoted a traditional Anglican hymn: Abide with me, Fast falls the eventide. It is impossible, of course, to capture in mere words what is compelling about this quilted fabric. If it were possible, we wouldn't need the fabric, would we? On the other hand, I have never seen a piece of fabric that tells the story of The Timaeus . Reality is a mighty citadel. It takes all the weapons at our disposal to breech its towering walls. The verbal, the visual and the tonal - we need them all, and none can take the place of any other. That said, I feel compelled to try to tell you what it is that I find so compelling in this piece. The right thing for me to do would be to point and cry out, "Ecce rem' - Behold the thing! But of course, I have no intention of doing the right thing. So, caveats in place, here we go: The substructure of the piece is uniform but dynamic. We see it 'at the border' (on the 'frontier' so to speak), and we catch glimpses of it 'between the rain drops.’ Of course, it's a matter of gestalt . The ubiquitous pattern I'm seeing as background could just as easily be seen as the figure. What's figure, what's ground? That's in the eye of the beholder! Proceeding as if the pattern were background, our attention is drawn to the monochrome figures that sit atop it: white triangles and blue parallelograms (diamonds). They are organized into an alternating sequence of undulating and pulsating ribbons, a dynamic version of the red and white stripes on the American flag. Is this a New England quilt...or some Big Easy jazz? One thing for sure, the piece has both melody ('undulating') and rhythm ('pulsating'); but for me, the most interesting aspect of the work is its architecture. The disparate elements are not arranged sequentially or in monochromatic layers; rather, they are 'put together' in a distinctive and infinitely repeating pattern. This is how I imagine brains work, not as tiny lumps of neurons with hardwired functions, but rather as vast neural networks, capable of all sorts of mental gymnastics: factual memory, communication, counter-factual dreams. etc. This is more or less how information is stored in a computer (or on a hard drive or disk). On vinyl, the placement of the needle determines the output; on a CD, it is the address of the data. Also, the pattern of shapes on the quilt is fractal-like. It repeats with changes of scale as well as position. Plus, it has a focus, a great mystical rest, a Sabbath of the Land. Do you see it? Once you do, it's almost impossible to move your eye off from it. A recent breakthrough in mathematics may be helpful here. Imagine a three-dimensional lattice consisting of 100,000 points (or nodes). Now imagine injecting electricity into the lattice. Your job is to model the state of each node, n, at each moment of time, t. It had been assumed that it would take 100,000 equations to accomplish this task. Recently, a team of mathematicians demonstrated that it only takes four equations to do the job. Would you rather owe me $4 or $100,000? How can four equations describe 100,000 data points? Easy: it’s just a matter of seeing the patterns. At Aletheia Today, patterns are what we're all about. 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. Share Previous Next Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Click here. 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< Back Dr. Stuti Pardhe Contributor Dr. Stuti Pardhe is a dedicated professional with a broad spectrum of experience spanning social work, clinical therapy, and alternative modalities. With a profound commitment to mental and public health, she aspires to be a global Brand Ambassador and Role Model, leaving a positive impact on humanity. The Science Behind the 7-Second Rule

What do our readers have to say to our editorial staff about essays written for Christians who believe in science and scientists and philosphers who believe in God? Add your comment to the conversation. Readers React Continue the conversation. Let us know what you think about an ATM essay or a "Thoughts While Shaving" blog post. *Under website name, please include the name of or link to the essay or "Thought" about which you are commenting. Your name and email address will not be visible to website viewers. Want to chat with other readers, start a discussion, or pen a renga cycle? Join the ATM Forum! What are our readers saying about Aletheia Today Magazine? Read below. Just in the Nick of Time Commenting on "Science and the Yellow Submarine Part I" So, you have reborn your magazine just in the nick of time given the state of the world… Beginning with Yellow Submarine, of course; didn’t I see it multiple times back in the day? So, I felt I was on firm ground … This notion of people seeing the same movie is a joke. I left the movie feeling - the colors ! Dave walked out thinking, “Yellow Submarine is a cosmogenic cookbook.” Can you all spot the difference? Beginning with Yellow Submarine, you made me look up ‘ontological.' Undeterred, I read on straight into, “Picasso was painting in a Cubist style before Einstein conceived General Relativity." I believe that’s correct. Later in the article, you warn us, “more Whitehead to come.” Now, that’s some summer reading. And, by summer, I mean the whole summer. Back to saving the world cuz Time is running out, you know ? Every lively magazine needs critics, cantankerous readers who write in provocative comments causing your loyal supporters to take umbrage all over the place, provoking more offenses- creating a buzz. That’s the world right now. By the way, is umbrage a great word or what? "Hey Honey, did you remember to bring your umbrage with you?" So, a buzz is what’s needed here ... --John O’Brien Keep Me on Your List! Commenting on our June 2022 Issue Great reading. Keep me on your list! --Anonymous from Geneva, IL His Way, Not Mine Commenting on "Prayer For Resting in God's Timing, Ways, and Rhythm" Amen! His will, not mine. Thank you for this beautiful prayer. --Patti Burkett What a Lucky Guy! What a lucky guy to have found this vehicle! Of course, all the pieces came into his life with perfect timing. His concert experience when he was 14-years-old triggering his whole life in music leading to inner peace. --John E. O'Brien Commenting on "Drumming to Inner Peace"

< Back God and Consciousness David Cowles May 28, 2026 “Ironically, the solution to both problems turns out to be the same…and that is the solution!” 1150 words, 6 minute read These days, we have all accepted David Chalmbers’ characterization of consciousness, its origin and its nature, as the ‘hard problem’. Prior to society’s collective lobotomy ( aka the Enlightenment), we struggled with a different ‘hard problem’, the existence and nature of God. Ironically, the solution to both problems turns out to be the same…and that is the solution! Yes, you read right, but just to be clear, the solution to both problems is that the solution to each problem is also the solution to the other. Wow! The concept of consciousness informs our concept of God, and our concept of God (whatever it may be) informs our concept of consciousness. In fact, an analysis of the Trinitarian (Christian) model of God and a parallel analysis of the phenomenon of consciousness reveal a common underlying structure. Consciousness occurs whenever an entity (A) is aware of a world (W) external to itself and is also aware of itself (A’) being aware of that world. I diagram it here: A ↙ ↘ W ← A’ A experiences W stereoscopically, first directly, second by perceiving itself perceiving W. The infinitesimal differance between the two experiences is what we call consciousness , aka fuzziness, dissonance, angst, deja vu , the vague sense that things aren’t quite as they seem, that the door is ajar. We can take for granted that every living organism is ‘aware’ at some level of its environment; even single celled prokaryotes respond to environmental stimuli. So the determining factor is whether the organism in question is aware of itself being aware of its environment. It ‘knows’ but does it know that it knows? *** According to Friedrich Nietzsche, God’s harshest critic, if the World is whole, flat and ontologically democratic, then there is no room for a transcendent entity such as ‘God’: “… 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!” But the phenomenon of consciousness, at least as modeled above, proves Nietzsche wrong. The subject of conscious experience transcends herself and the world. God or no god, transcendence is not only possible but actual. The conscious subject perceives her surroundings, and she experiences herself perceiving those surroundings. Theoretically at least, she could perhaps perceive herself perceiving herself perceiving… ad infinitum . Bottom line : The phenomenon of consciousness does not prove the existence of God per se , but it does demonstrate its feasibility. Sorry, Nietzsch’. *** The model we are proposing for the phenomenon of consciousness is far from original. It turns out to be the same model the Council of Nicaea (325 CE) used to define Christianity’s unique experience of God (one God/three persons). Of course, these bishops had no idea they were incidentally modeling consciousness at the same time. Nicaea labeled three persons, ‘Father (F), Son (S), and Holy Spirit (H)’ respectively, but a different terminology could be adopted by the theologically squeamish: F ↙ ↘ H ← S What is essential is the structure, the process, the pattern: the Father ‘begets’ the Son and the Holy Spirit ‘proceeds’ from the Father and the Son, exactly as modeled above. So Trinity and consciousness share a common structure; therefore, according to the tenets of 20 th century Structuralism (Levi-Strauss), they enjoy congruent identities. “At the foundation/beginning ( arche ) was the logos (pattern)”, wrote the Apostle John to open his Gospel. At its deepest level, the World consists of patterns; they define everything (e.g. objects and actions). And whenever two distinct entities share sufficiently similar patterns, their identities are entangled . So, our consciousness is entangled with God. That is not to say that our consciousness is God, but it is to say that there is a ‘statistically significant’ affinity, i.e. congruence, between consciousness and Triune God. According to one metaphor, infinite and eternal God ‘sees’ the World through the conscious experience of mortal ‘beings’ like us. We are to God as ‘organelles’ are to a cell or organs to a body; i.e. we are independent but functionally aligned. This is not so surprising. Christian theology refers to us as ‘members’ (cells) of Christ’s Mystical Body , and conversely, Christ becomes part of our bodies in Eucharist . To be clear, I am not God…as if there were ever any doubt on that score. Rather I am the image and likeness of God: we share a common structure , we are inexorably template, like it or not we are entangled. This realization makes both hard problems disappear. We know that God exists because we are conscious and we experience consciousness because God exists. Here, we are reminded of the simple profundity of Medieval Irish poet, St. Dallan : “Naught be all else to me save that thou (God) art!” Quite literally true…according to our analysis. There could be no meaningful (i.e. conscious) ‘you’ without God! Therefore, absent God, you are naught . Dallan is not talking here about God the Creator; his God is much more immediate and immanent. Life itself, and every drop of experience it contains, is both the experience and the manifestation of divinity. “A shout in the street, that’s God.” ( St. Joyce , 1250 years later) Dallan writes (in part): Be thou my vision , O Lord of my heart; Naught be all else to me save that thou art! Thou my best thought by day and by night; Waking or sleeping, thy presence my light . Be thou my wisdom , and thou my true Word ; I ever with thee and thou with me, Lord… Be thou my breastplate, my sword for the fight; Be thou my dignity , thou my delight … Heart of my heart, whatever befall, Still be my vision , O Ruler of all. God is in every nook and cranny of my being. Or to put it another way, “I (Christ) am in the Father and you are in me and I am in you.” (John 14: 20) My relationship to God is not in the least bit remote. God and I share a common structure. God is my foundation, my scaffolding, my logos . God is in every nook and cranny of my being; God permeates me. Enriched (hopefully) by this insight, we can read the words of Saint John (Apostle,1st century CE) and the ‘other John’ (Lennon, 20th century) with renewed awe: “I am in the Father and you in me and I in you.” (John 14: 20) “I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together…” (I am the Walrus ) 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 Turing, Searle, & Penrose David Cowles Feb 10, 2022 According to Alan Turing of ‘Turing Test’ fame (1950), we can have no privileged insight into the state of another entity’s consciousness. Turing taught that we can only evaluate the consciousness of another entity by experiencing the behavior of that entity. If a machine interacts with you in a way that is indistinguishable from the way another human being would interact with you, then you have no logical grounds for regarding the machine’s thinking process as different in any meaningful way from your own. Who knows, as we subject a machine to the Turing Test, that same machine may very well be conducting a Turing Test on us! According to Alan Turing of ‘Turing Test’ fame (1950), we can have no privileged insight into the state of another entity’s consciousness. Turing taught that we can only evaluate the consciousness of another entity by experiencing the behavior of that entity. If a machine interacts with you in a way that is indistinguishable from the way another human being would interact with you, then you have no logical grounds for regarding the machine’s thinking process as different in any meaningful way from your own. Who knows, as we subject a machine to the Turing Test, that same machine may very well be conducting a Turing Test on us! John Searle (1980) granted that a machine could conceivably pass a Turing Test, but he argued that that would not prove that the machine had a ‘mind’ in the same sense that we have minds. Searle believed that ‘mind’ requires a recursive loop of the sort that we call ‘intentionality’ or ‘understanding’ – the ability of an entity to reflect on itself as well as on its environment. Searle argued that no machine could be self-aware in this sense. Roger Penrose (1989) went even further. Essentially, he questioned whether any machine could ever pass a Turing Test (provided the tester knew the right questions to ask). According to Penrose, the human mind is capable of certain mental feats that cannot be duplicated by any ‘program’. He cites Kurt Gödel’s ‘Incompleteness Theorem’ as a prime example. According to Gödel’s theorem, which is proven, mathematics contains certain self-evidently true statements which can never be proved. 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 Jesus & the Prime Directive David Cowles May 19, 2026 “Are we growing into a civilization governed by the Prime Directive? Or are we finally heeding Jesus’ call to keep off the grass?” “The Prime Directive, or Starfleet General Order 1, is the foundational, non-interference principle of the Star Trek United Federation of Planets. It prohibits personnel from influencing or intervening in the natural, cultural, and technological development of alien civilizations…” (Wikipedia) Wisdom is universal and eternal; but expressions of that Wisdom vary by culture and era and, who knows, perhaps by species, chemistry, planet or galaxy as well. In that light, Starfleet General Order 1 makes a useful contribution. But we should not lose sight of the fact that it restates an expression of Wisdom at least two millennia old: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us…” ( Lord’s Prayer ) If it is not immediately obvious why these two statements are semantically equivalent, you may be forgiven – forgiven because these two pearls connect only through the mediation of an obscure 6 th century BCE Greek philosopher (Anaximander) and his less obscure 20 th century avatar (Heidegger). Intrigued? Homo Sapiens did not evolve in isolation. We exist only in the context of community and community comes about only when you and I grant each other ‘reck’ (i.e. recognition, deference). We grant reck when we sublimate our own interests to those of another. I ‘make space’ for you; and when you, simultaneously and without any expectation of reciprocity, make space for me, then voila , we have community ! The unobvious opposite of ‘reck’ is ‘trespass’. Instead of making room for you to emerge and grow, I impinge upon you, stunt your growth, expropriate your property and perhaps cut short your stay or even abort your arrival. In short, I ‘trespass against’ you. We ask God to overlook, to overcome, to forgive all our trespasses, i.e. all the ‘days and ways’ we use to limit others’ being, growth, or optimization (“be all that you can be”). “As we forgive those who trespass against us.” Forgiving others’ trespasses is granting them reck, granting and forgiving being two sides of the same coin. “Whatever you bind on earth (in time) will be bound in heaven (eternally) and whatever you lose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” (Matt. 18: 18) God operates in the world through the world. Granting reck and forgiving trespasses, we become co-creators and co-redeemers with God. When we forgive, we operate in loco Dei . We realize God’s eschatological objective in a concrete context. What happens in spacetime ‘happens’ (potentially at least) in eternity: “On Earth as it is in Heaven.” Forgiveness of others is Step One in the process of universal reconciliation and redemption. We’ve come a long way since Anaximander, 2500 years to be exact, but our progress has not been entirely fortuitous. The local (in space & time) successes of our engineers and our generals have convinced us that qualia (values) are best realized when imposed externally, not cultivated internally or agreed mutually. We have built an entire language around this ethic. Sentences are our ‘quanta of meaning’ and in modern Indo-European (IE) languages, most sentences connect a subject with an object through the mediation of an active (or passive) voiced verb. In the raging ‘60s, Marshall McLuchan famously said that ‘the medium is the message’. Extending that insight, we can say that the structure of language (medium) determines what is communicated (message) through that language. Example : A baseball bat and ball are lying together on the ground. We immediately imagine someone using the bat to hit the ball which we would express as “the bat hit the ball” (subject-verb-object) or “John hit the ball with the bat”. We do not consider that the two artifacts might have an entirely different relationship: Perhaps we are playing a darts-like game where the object is to throw the ball from a distance to hit the bat. Or the object of the game is to balance the ball on the knob of the bat for as long as possible or to use the bat as a chute, seeing how far you can roll the ball at a 45° angle before the ball hits the ground. Inquisitive? Use the bat as a tool to crack open the ball so you can explore its rubbery core and the clump of elastic string tightly wound around it. Hostile? Attach the ball to the end of the bat and use it as a mace. Cheeky? Place the objects in the royal nursery and watch them instantly transubstantiate into orb-and-scepter. Pragmatic? They form a clock ‘hand’ worthy of Big Ben…or a measuring rod for surveyors. Add a swivel and you have ‘spoke and rim’ construction. When writing a message on a deserted beach for a passing plane to read, use our combo to create the letter ‘i’ or better yet, as the exclamation mark ‘!’ at the end of “Help!” But to fully understand the semantic range of a ‘sphere and cylinder’, hand the ball and bat (taking all necessary precautions of course) to a 3 year old; she will show you things you can do with them that neither you nor I could possibly imagine. Civilization evolves organically and holistically. Our need for tools and weapons prompts us to scan the environment for suitable objects. We name those objects, we transform them, and we create a language around their role in hunting, herding and construction. Language, in turn, draws our attention to additional objects that might thrive in our technosphere. Like the set of a Disney movie, our ho-hum world is instantly transformed into a wonderland of obstacles and tools, somehow magically suited to our projects; our language itself is one such talisman. The traditional values of Beauty, Truth and Justice are reinterpreted in context as Efficiency, Efficacy and Economy. We have embedded this ethic in our language; we have divided the world into intentional actors (subjects), passive ‘beneficiaries’ (objects) and their transformations (verbs). *** It doesn’t have to be like this…and it isn’t. Ancient IE languages and some modern non-IE languages have a much richer and more deeply expressive syntax. Ancient Greek and Old Norse, for example, had a dominant Middle Voice that interprets events as products of mutuality rather than agency. In such a grammar, nouns are co-subjects and co-objects, verbs are recursive, and process is reciprocating. A variety of non-IE languages, some perhaps with Neolithic roots (e.g. modern Basque), solve the problem of Active Voice bias by different means. For example, Basque uses ergative-absolutive alignment (rather than the nominative-accusative system universal in IE languages). In ergative grammar, the subject of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb both take the absolutive case, which has no suffix — it's the bare form of the word, the root. The implication is that this is the primordial case: being, not doing. The subject of a transitive verb (doing) takes a different case entirely — the ergative, marked with the suffix -k . Ergativity is found in other languages worldwide (Chechen, Tibetan, many Australian languages, some Mayan languages) but is completely absent from the IE family. Another grammatical feature characteristic of Basque and, perhaps, certain Neolithic languages, is polypersonality - a single verb form simultaneously encodes the person and number of the subject, the direct object, and the indirect object. The verb also encodes the tense, aspect, mood, and the social register (formal vs. informal, and in informal speech, the sex of the person addressed). Polypersonality is found in other unrelated language families, perhaps most notably, in the indigenous languages of North America and the Arctic Rim. Let’s revert to our original example: ‘John hit the ball with the bat’. There is just one event here; it is a singularity in space and time. But our IE syntax breaks down that event into its participants and presents it as something that unfolds in time. Our language draws attention away from the event itself and focuses instead on its various parties (John, bat, ball; it distorts a quantum event so that it appears to occupy a region of spacetime. This is a highly structured view of reality that requires a library of metaphysical assumptions. Ergative, polypersonal, and middle voiced languages are more respectful of the ontological integrity of the event itself. This cross cultural analysis of language shines a light on a familiar problem: the chicken or the egg! Ergative, polypersonal, and middle voiced languages see the event as primary and its participants as secondary. On the other hand, our modern IE languages reverse the gestalt: participants are primary, events secondary. Who am ‘I’? An intentional subject who makes things happen…or the distillation of a process? Philosophically, the Middle Voice paradigm is reflected in the philosophies of Anaximander, Buber, and Whitehead (among others). But how does any of this connect to Jesus or the Prime Directive? Modern IE is the language of imperialism – military, political, economic, cultural and spiritual. That is why our ‘Enlightened’ civilization (1492 – 1969) was so determined to convert ‘savages’ and ‘heretics’ to the ‘right shade’ of Christianity…and to exterminate all others. After Columbus and Machiavelli at least, all history is the history of trespass . Our so-called ‘explorers’ raised cultural, and sometimes ethnic, genocide to an art form, all in the name of God and civilization. Columbus was the anti-Kirk. Far from preserving indigenous culture, its extermination was Job One. It was not until the global Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s that diversity was recognized as something worth preserving. The advent of political liberalism in the second half of the 18 th century extended only to propertied while males of European extraction, the guardians of modern Indo-European. It became the life’s work of the post WWII generations to extend the franchise to people of different classes, races, genders, cultures and even perhaps to some non-human life forms; we are still in the middle of this process with no defined end in sight. Are we growing into a civilization governed by the Prime Directive? Or are we finally heeding Jesus’ call to keep off the grass, i.e. to avoid trespassing against others and to forgive those who trespass against us? Either way, we are hopefully in the throes of the greatest cultural transformation in 500 years…or not! 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 Job vs. James, Rex “God is good because he’s good, not just because he’s God.” David Cowles Recently, we posted King James on TWS ( Thoughts While Shaving ), highlighting the Stuart king’s ‘different’ theological and political ideas. As we saw, James was an ultra-nominalist who rejected the idea that God does what he does because it is ‘good’; rather, James believed that things are ‘good’ simply because God does them. Similarly, laws are ‘just’ simply because a king proclaims them, regardless of their content. Just as James’ political philosophy deviates from today’s consensus, so his theology conflicts with much of Judeo-Christian tradition. In King James , we challenged James’ theology with a verse from Chapter One of Genesis : “Then God said: Let there be light, and there was light. God saw that the light was good.” This idea that God acts according to an objective standard (Good) runs throughout Scripture, but it is the primary subject of the Book of Job . Job presents an ancient narrative shared by many Middle Eastern cultures (think Iliad ), bookended by a prologue/epilogue probably added by a Commentator at a later date. However, these literary bookends help situate the epic in an overtly theological context. According to the prologue, God tries to act unjustly, but according to the Epilog, he can’t ! Sorry, King James, that’s ‘game, set, match’; correct? Yes… but let’s dig deeper: Like any fresh-faced 6th grader on the first day of middle school, God is challenged by a more worldly classmate (Satan) to do something ‘naughty’: Be bad for once! I dare you! As we know from The Christmas Story , no tween can resist a ‘double dog dare’ and God is no exception. God accepts Satan’s challenge, and they agree on the terms. Unfortunately, God being God and Satan being Satan, the stakes are quite a bit higher than they normally would be for a school yard prank. God agrees to ‘break into’ the world and inflict unimaginable physical, emotional, and spiritual torture on his BFF, Job; and he does just that! No, it’s not a good look for God. (But remember, there’s a deeper purpose to this story.) When the body of the Job poem begins, we find our hero, sitting in a pile of ashes outside his home, skin covered in boils, taunted by passers-by, scorned by his wife and the rest of his family, all his possessions ‘confiscated’. Satan bets God that Job will not withstand this torture: he will turn his back on his best friend, he will curse God. God, perhaps a bit naively - it is the first day of school after all – believes that Job will remain loyal to him through thick and thin. In fact, Job splits the difference. He does remain loyal to God, but he’s not happy about it and, if you happen to walk past his ash heap, Job will let you know just how unhappy he is. And then Job has a stroke – no, not that kind of stroke - a stroke of genius! Job believes that God is behaving unjustly (Job’s right, of course). What would you do today if someone treated you unjustly? You’d take them to court, wouldn’t you? Well, Job had the same idea more than 2,500 years before you. But how do you sue God? How do you summon him to court? What court has jurisdiction, and what judge has the power to compel God to respect the legal process and accept the verdict? It’s a heavy lift, but Job is up for it. He invokes an ancient legal formula then current throughout the Middle East; it includes a lengthy and detailed oath of innocence. For a year and a day, God has ignored Job’s complaints, however justified; now he can’t! You see, God has a Covenant with his people. Under the terms of this Covenant, God acknowledges that the law is binding on all, creator and creature alike. God has renounced any claim of ‘executive privilege’. God will comply with Job’s subpoena, but he’s not happy about it: What a pain in the neck this Job is! (God did not say “neck”.) God appears, but he appears in a whirlwind. Keeping up his bad boy persona, God hopes to bully Job into dropping his action: “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations.” Job is unflappable: no justice, no peace! But how is it that Job dares to challenge God like this, right to his ‘face’? First, Job has faith in himself; he knows he’s right. Second, Job has faith in God; he respects ‘right’ and he won’t violate the terms of his Covenant. Third, Job has faith in his relationship with God, in the primal love that bound them together for decades; he will not forget me. Job believes: God will obey my summons, he will uphold the law; therefore, I will be found ‘not guilty’ , and he won’t smite me for my impertinence! Job has followed proper legal procedure. He can state his case, having faith that the verdict will be just; but there are complications. According to legal norms, God is judge and jury, the sole and final arbiter of all disputes. But God is also the defendant in this suit. Today, we would cry, “Conflict of interest!” Not Job! Job has faith that God can and will build an impervious firewall between ‘God-the-defendant’ and ‘God-the-judge’. Put this in the perspective of today’s Realpolitik . A President of the United States has been impeached by the House of Representatives and now must be tried – but not in the Senate. Under this alternative constitution , only the President has the power to remove someone from office. So, in this hypothetical example, the House would present its case to the President and the President would decide whether or not to remove himself from office. Imagine the outcry! I can ‘hear’ you rolling your eyes! You’re thinking, “I guess we all know how this is going to turn out!” You’re right, ‘the fix is in’ as we used to say, but not in the way you might think. In any event, Job is perfectly happy with these legal arrangements: "I would speak to Shaddai ; it is an argument with El that I desire… I will accuse him of his ways to his face…only he can be my salvation.” “Would that I knew how to find him, that I might come to his dwelling! I would set out my case before him…he himself would heed me!” “I know that my redeemer lives; the respondent will testify on earth…while in the flesh I’ll see Eloah… For even now my witness is in the heavens. The one who knows the truth is on high.” Job maintains his faith in God, right up to the end… Up to the end, not necessarily through the end. Let’s continue… Much to everyone’s surprise (except Job’s), God complies with Job’s subpoena. Whirlwind notwithstanding, God shows up. Implicitly, if not explicitly, he acknowledges the jurisdiction of the court. But as deep as Job’s faith was, so is his disappointment. God appears, but he ‘takes the 5th’; he doesn’t respond to any of Job’s allegations. He won’t debate the origin and destiny of the universe with an insignificant speck; and he won’t stand still for a lecture on right and wrong from a mere human. To be fair to God, to get a sense of his understandable frustration, imagine trying to explain to an ant why it’s not a good idea for it to walk through a puddle of molasses. Try it! See how far you get. On the other hand, to be fair to Job, he’s had to sit through two long-winded speeches intended to scare him and convince him of his worthlessness. This is God being ‘fatherly’, but certainly not in a fatherly way. In fact, God behaves more like the ham actors Shakespeare always complains about: “a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage…” (Macbeth) God doesn’t engage Job on any of the issues. Instead, he storms and blusters and, by implication at least, threatens, and in the end, he appears to win after all. He has worn Job down; our hero, unconvinced, nonetheless concedes: “As a hearing by the ear I have heard you. And now my eye has seen you. That is why I am fed up; I take pity on ‘dust and ashes’ (i.e., humanity).” Pause here for a moment. Put yourself in Job’s sandals. A long and virtuous life, an unshakable faith, all for naught. Job has accomplished the unimaginable. He has summoned God and God has appeared, but only to turn his back on Job. He has demanded that God account for his actions, and after a fashion at least, God has complied. Yet, Job is left with nothing: no justification, no apology, no restitution, no admission of responsibility. He is truly “dust and ashes”. Whatever Job and his hangers-on might have imagined, they certainly did not expect God to turn out to be an empty windbag. That was not even on the menu of possible outcomes. Job has given up; he has lost. He’s not even going to wait for the judge to deliver the verdict. No matter! The judge will deliver the verdict anyway, per proper legal procedure. Is anyone besides me old enough to remember the O.J. Simpson trial? The trial lasted 8 months, but the jury only deliberated for 4 hours before handing Judge Ito their unanimous verdict. It was a stunner…but no more so than the verdict in Job v. God : Decision for the plaintiff! Job wins after all. He’s entitled to restitution plus liberal damages. God complies with the findings of the court… because God is good. This is the message of Job . In a word, King James was wrong. God is good because he’s good , not just because he’s God . Image: From Job, The King James Version. Here’s what Loyal Books has to say: “ The Book of Job is one of the books of the Hebrew Bible. It relates the story of Job, his trials at the hands of Satan, his theological discussions with friends on the origins and nature of his suffering, his challenge to God, and finally a response from God. The Book itself comprises a didactic poem set in a prose framing device and has been called ‘the most profound and literary work of the entire Old Testament’. The Book itself and its numerous exegeses are attempts to address the problem of evil.” 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 . Previous Next

< Back Robin Hood's Mary Men David Cowles Mar 11, 2026 “Could it be that Robin’s Merry Men are really Mary Men, devoted, like their leader, to the cult of the Blessed Virgin?” Our post-Enlightenment North Atlantic culture draws a bright red line separating fact and fiction. Where the line is drawn and by whom is another matter entirely. We believe there is such a line IRL, even if we can’t say exactly where it is. Most other cultures, however, are a bit more flexible. They understand that history and mythology represent theoretical poles of a fuzzy continuum. George Washington, for example, is certainly an historical figure but many legends (e.g. a certain cherry tree) traditionally attach to him as well. Rarely, but occasionally, a character appears for whom the overlap of history and legend is essential , not just accidental. Think King Arthur or Jean d’Arc. Robin Hood is one of those who explicitly bridge history and legend. It is highly likely that the story of Robin Hood began as the story of a flesh and blood individual. We just can’t say which individual. Several potential ‘Robins’ have been identified in the historical record, but we don’t know which of them, if any, was actually ‘the Hood’. Here’s what we can claim to know about Robin with a reasonable degree of confidence: He lived in a forest near Nottingham with a man called ‘Little John’ and assorted other Merry Men . He was fiercely religious, a ‘daily communicant’, and specially devoted to the cult of the Virgin Mary. He strenuously opposed both the rapacious secular authority (King John) and the opulent church hierarchy. He advocated for a fundamental redistribution of wealth. His signature meme could double as a 21 st century political slogan: Rob the Rich to Give to the Poor . 2500 years earlier, it would have simply been: Jubilee! He was an early practitioner of what’s now called Propaganda of the Deed , defined by Wikipedia as “direct action intended to influence public opinion…(and) meant to serve as an example for others to follow, acting as a catalyst for social revolution.” The lives of Jesus and the Apostles are paradigms of Direct Action, i.e. communicating the Gospel message by living it. Likewise, the early church ( Acts of the Apostles ). Others associated with Propaganda of the Deed include monastic orders, various utopian communities, the Black Panther Party, the Fruit of Islam, Hippies, Yippies (vs. Yuppies) and the Weather Underground. Today, Propaganda of the Deed is associated with the Anarchist Movement. He subscribed to a cosmology and an ethics grounded in the concept of Natural Law: Nature’s Processes x(Oral Torah) instantiate, reveal ( Aletheia ), and communicate God’s laws (Written Torah). The moral quality of a society is reflected in the fecundity of its land and the health of its monarch. (Grail Legend) Based on the near unanimous testimony of the earliest source material, these aspects of Robin’s story would seem to meet the standard criteria for ‘unambiguous historical truth’. Nonetheless, for our purposes, it matters not whether these things are true as history just so long as they ring true as mythology. Accordingly, the character of Robin Hood , as reported and/or imagined, can be understood as the intersection of disparate cultural and intellectual threads: Popular opposition to King John in favor of his brother Richard Coeur de Lion . Revolt of the nobles leading to the Magna Carta . The Virgin Mary as the Christian cognate of various pagan Earth goddesses - Mother Nature, Gaia , Easter , et al. The Magnificat (Luke 1: 46 – 52) – militant Mary’s prescription for socioeconomic justice: “He (YHWH) has thrown down the rulers from their thrones but lifted-up the lowly. The hungry he has filled with good things but the rich he has sent away empty.” May Day - the date traditionally set aside to celebrate fertility (human & agricultural) and to promote economic justice. Also, the first day of the month chosen by the Church for special Marian devotions and the date most often set aside for the secular celebration of labor. The Maypole, symbol traditionally associated with Robin Hood – a single, vertical tree, Yggdrasil , the axis mundi , Joyce’s omphalos, the umbilical cord of the universe. The maypole symbolizes the connection between heaven and earth, the transcendent and the immanent. Today, a Maypole is decorated every May in honor of the Blessed Virgin. But how does Robin’s sparse biography allow us to connect him to the cult of the Virgin Mary? The forest location is the first clue. Forests and even individual trees were divine according to the Celtic Druids, early disciples of Natural Law. Robin attended Mass several times each day, all while hiding to avoid the Sheriff's posse. With Robin, the grove has its altar! (Ezra Pound) Robin ignores the contingent laws of church and state and instead follows the necessary precepts of Natural Law. A slightly later tradition introduces a ‘love interest’ for Robin, the beautiful Maid Marian. In traditional May Day lore (late 13 th century France), Maid Marian was a shepherdess who was also “Queen of the May” (a title now reserved for Mary, the Mother of God). So, who is Robin’s Marian, really? Texts suggest an alternate spelling of her name: ‘Marion’, a derivative of ‘Mary’. Is it possible that ‘Maid Marian’ and ‘Mary, the mother of Jesus’, are one and the same person? Is it possible that Robin’s storied love affair is a metaphor for his mystical attachment to Mary? This may also shed light on another mystery, Robin’s Merry Men . What makes a bunch of outlaws, hiding in Sherwood Forest for fear of the Sherriff, living off the land and facing almost certain torture and execution if caught, so darn merry ? Could it be that Robin’s Merry Men are really Mary Men , devoted, like their leader, to the cult of the Blessed Virgin? In that case, can we understand Robin’s ‘movement’ as the manifestation of Mary’s eschatological vision ( Magnificat ) as concrete social action? Is the phenomenon we call ‘Robin Hood’ a translation of Mary’s Magnificat into a political Manifesto, communicated broadly via the language of Direct Action (above)? *** Daniel Maclise’s Robin Hood and His Merry Men (1839) presents the outlaw band as noble, theatrical figures gathered in a lush, idealized Sherwood Forest. The painting captures the Victorian fascination with medieval heroism, turning Robin Hood into a symbol of camaraderie, justice, and romantic rebellion. 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