< Back The Worst Book Ever Read David Cowles Jul 31, 2025 “In just over 300 pages, this book manages to recycle just about every bad idea since stale bread...” “What is the best book you've ever read?” From the dorm room to the senior center, I love to play this game. You can learn a ton about a person from their answer, or answers. And you can tell a lot about ‘the person you’ve made yourself to be’ (there’s a hint) by noting how your own answers morph over time. For me, the two titles that consistently emerge are The Gospel of John and James Joyce’s Ulysses , often joined by Whitehead’s Process and Reality and/or Sartre’s Being and Nothingness . I own hundreds of books (yes, I have read most of them) but these 4 stand out. But what about the worst book ever ? OMG…so much trash, so little time! Let’s exclude books that are just badly written, counter factual, morally repugnant, or boring as dried paint. (We only have 85 years after all!) I might change my mind next month but right now I have a clear winner in mind; it’s a book written by Anders Indset, a wonderful person I’m sure, and published in 2020: The Quantum Economy . In just over 300 pages, this book manages to recycle just about every bad idea since stale bread, panzanella notwithstanding. No, I didn’t read it all…I couldn’t do that to my poor Pooh brain! But I’ll step aside now, for the most part at least, and let the book speak for itself. Prepare yourself…now let the adventure begin: “The Old Economy is dead. So is the New Economy…and 2019 might go down in human history as the high water mark.” See what I mean. Who in his right mind could imagine 2019 as the apex of human civilization? But, in the immortal words of the Carpenters , “We’ve only just begun!” “We must move toward the unification of the natural and social sciences to create a society of understanding …We need a new enlightenment. But how do you enlighten people who don’t know they need enlightenment?” He means you , Muggle! Be grateful for small graces: the worst ideas often come wrapped in elitist packaging. Elitists just can’t help themselves; they tell you who they are…right up front and in your face. So it turns out, sometimes you can tell a book by its cover. “…Maybe we will succeed in creating a digital direct democracy, in which every voice can be heard without the sclerotic structures of party politics.” What a great idea! Put everyone in individual, hermetically sealed booths and ask them to govern. That ensures that public policy will enshrine the special interests of the ideological class, i.e. the media, the educational establishment, etc. Why didn’t Uncle Joe Stalin think of this…or did he? Human beings do not function in isolation. We only thrive in society with others: family members, neighbors, classmates, work colleagues, drinking buddies, monastic communities, etc. We form our opinions in dialog with others. Otherwise, we just recycle memes created en masse and promulgated for us by others. ‘Disempower the People!’ is not my definition of democracy. Brace yourself (if you’re not teetotal this might be a good time to pour): “How can we repeat the political masterpiece of European reconciliation and confidence building at a global scale?” Surely this must be a misprint. Perhaps he meant Tolkien’s Middle Earth , a label sometimes applied to Europe on ancient maps. He can’t mean the ‘Europe’ from which the UK recently seceded? Or the ‘Europe’ that voters are rejecting in droves in favor of right wing, nationalist parties? Or the ‘Europe’ that continues to suffer from decades of stagflation? Surely not that Europe! Like a ‘60s idealist, Indset sees the increasing prominence of ‘women’ in the workplace and the coming of age of ‘a (depopulated) younger generation’ as drivers of a future Quantopia ( aka Quantum Utopia). Kill everyone over 30? Intriguingly, he predicts, offering no supporting evidence or argument, the demise of the nation state replaced by ‘the unstoppable rise of cities’ and ‘a new kind of regional tribal society’. Is Indset nostalgic for the warring independent city states that pock marked Northern Italy during the Renaissance? Although claiming to embrace a technology-rich future, there is more than a whiff of the Luddite in The Quantum Economy : “…Can we achieve freedom if our genes are altered by AI and biotech?” Wow! There’s a lot to unpack here. “Achieve freedom?” So we’re not free now. How will we know we are free when we are free and what will it take to get us there? A victory by the Social Democrats in the next round of national elections? Is Indset really saying that our existential freedom is a function of our genetic code? If so, where does he think that code came from in the first place? (I doubt he thinks that God typed it out on his cosmic super computer.) Or did human freedom emerge out of whole cloth only to be extinguished by the process of evolution, i.e. natural selection? To borrow from Edwin Starr, “Freedom – what is it good for?” Earlier I mentioned books by John, Joyce, Whitehead and Sartre. Those books have one theme in common: Freedom! - it’s an inalienable feature of the human condition. Sorry Anders! “We don’t just need IQ, we need to harness WeQ : the potential of collective cognition …methods that serve both the individual and the collective.” No better word characterizes Indset’s vision than ‘collectivization’. We know what that looks like: Stalin’s ‘collective farms’, Star Trek ’s ‘Borg Collective’. We don’t need collectives, we need ‘Q’ (the Q Continuum), rescuer of Capt. Picard, sworn enemy of the Borg, Trekkies’ antidote for the poison of the collective. Toward the end of the book, Indset spells out his view of the human person. He does so in bold type, thank you, Anders…and it’s not pretty: “Every single one of us has a much greater potential to influence our career, our path in life, our personal development, and our emotions than most of us are aware of.” Potential? Influence? Where does Indset think our career, our path, our person, our emotions come from? From Marxist ‘history’, from our ‘class identity’? How quintessentially European! How utterly wrong! Let’s get this straight, once and for all. We are not born into a career. Our path is not handed to us at birth like a map. We fashion our own career, we choose our own life path, we create our own person, we live our own emotions. We are solely responsible for who we are, who we become, and what we do. Sure, we inherit an Actual World (Whitehead). We are a product of a specific genetic code. We begin life at a certain starting gate. But this is all just raw material. What we do with that raw material is entirely up to us, it is solely our own responsibility. We don’t ‘influence’ it, we create it! And so, the judges (me) are unanimous! The award for The Worst Book Ever Read goes to… The Quantum Economy . Read it yourself, draw your own conclusion…but only if you have a very strong stomach. *** Klein, Yves. The Phenomenon of Floating in Space. 1960, photograph by Harry Shunk, Yves Klein Archives, Paris. This work satirizes the illusion of control in a spectacle-driven, science-wrapped world — echoing Indset’s lofty but ungrounded vision in The Quantum Economy. 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 Politics or Philosophy? David Cowles Apr 23, 2024 “The philosopher never sees anything she likes…until she does; but when she does, she ceases to do the work of philosophy." Politics is the arena of opinion, of choice. A or ~A. Yet it’s politics, not religion (and certainly not philosophy), that is the opiate of the people. How so? A or ~A. We’ve just covered the entire range of potential options; so pick one! What could be better than this; right? Wrong! We’ve reduced our many-splendored world to just one of its aspects, one variable, its A-ness . How ‘A’ are you? Are you ‘A enough’? Did you say something ‘anti-A’ once when you were in middle school? Like kids with a model train set (do kids even have model trains anymore?), we are mesmerized by the back-and-forth motion of our engines: Red to Blue to Red to Blue, ad infinitum . We oscillate between A and ~A, oblivious of the fact that we are all the time running along a straight, fixed track, utterly heedless of any world ‘beyond the rail bed’ and utterly powerless to alter our trajectory. This is what we call freedom ; in politics this is what we call democracy . What we need now are the services of a good philosopher; know any? A philosopher will ask, “What do A and ~A, supposed opposites, have in common?” Their ‘A-ness’, of course. They both assume that A exists and that it is a meaningful measure of some aspect of reality. In the language of high school math, A-ness is the ‘absolute value’ of A and of ~A . Philosophy is not concerned with A or ~A. That’s the arena of politics. To the philosopher, A = ~A; it is their ‘absolute value’ that is the philosopher’s concern. Not A, not ~A, but ‘A-ness’ per se . Consider a recent political event in a U.S. state, Massachusetts; it was a referendum question on the 2022 ballot: Should the state impose a special 1% surtax on residents who earn $1,000,000 or more in a given tax year? A or ~A. A simple choice. Yes or no? The electorate was pretty evenly split, but to the philosopher, A or ~A is a distinction without a difference. What both sides of this debate must assume, i.e., the absolute value of A, is far more important than either A or ~A. In this case, the absolute value of A, ‘A-ness’, includes the following assumptions: The State (not just a state, but the State) has the right to confiscate a portion of any resident’s income or wealth at any time for any or no reason. It is reasonable and just to ‘classify’ members of society according to their income and/or wealth and to treat some such ‘classes’ differently from others. A simple plurality of a state’s voting electorate has the right to impose a confiscatory scheme on the entire population. Whether you vote A or ~A, you implicitly endorse the underlying premises of ‘A-ness’ (above). These are the assumptions that grab the attention of philosophers. My wife and I resolve a similar dilemma every morning when we eat breakfast at our favorite diner. I always order an English muffin with orange marmalade while my spouse orders toast with strawberry jam. We tease each other about our irrational but intransigent preferences; but the fate of the world hardly hangs in the balance. A philosopher looks at our daily dilemma differently. To her a muffin is toast and marmalade is jam. The questions she’ll ask are of another order entirely: Is it just that my wife and I have sufficient economic resources to eat breakfast, albeit a modest one, in a restaurant, also modest, most every morning? Is the distribution of food via an archipelago of privately held restaurants and franchised fast-food chains just and efficient? Is a breakfast of processed grain and sweetened fruit a healthy way for anyone to begin a day? Of course, these ‘2nd order’ questions can themselves in certain circumstances become the stuff of politics: e.g., should the City of New York permit the sale of super-sized soft drinks? Whenever a question of philosophy becomes a question of politics, philosophy must ask new questions: Should society require all able-bodied members to grow and prepare their own food? Should privately or collectively owned enterprises be permitted to profit from the sale of a basic human necessity, food? Of course, these questions could also be politicized, requiring philosophers to push the level of abstraction yet another notch higher. Theoretically, the process could continue ad infinitum . The only limitation is imagination. The praxis of politics is choice, maya . Either this or that. Philosophy, on the other hand, is a form of spirituality: neti, neti (not this, not that). Bottom line, the philosopher never sees anything she likes…until she does; but when she does, she ceases to do the work of philosophy. Keep the conversation going... 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 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.

Magesh has written for “Lessonface,” “Aeyons,” “The Modern Rogue,” “Euronews,” “The Roland corporation,” “Penlight,” and “Elite Music.” He writes several monthly publications on music education. In the past, Magesh has written for parenting, humor, mental health, and travel websites as well. < Back Magesh Contributor Magesh has written for “Lessonface,” “Aeyons,” “The Modern Rogue,” “Euronews,” “The Roland corporation,” “Penlight,” and “Elite Music.” He writes several monthly publications on music education. In the past, Magesh has written for parenting, humor, mental health, and travel websites as well. Navigating Easter to Pentecost Choices that Lead to D eception The Trajectory of AI: Balancing Promise and Caution Mentoring for His Kingdom Credit Where Credit is Due The Barrier-Breaking Power of Music Drumming to Inner Peace

< Back 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.” David Cowles It’s Sunday night and I’m doing what every boy does on a Sunday night: I’m reading 19th century philosophy; tonight, it’s Mikhail Bakunin (1814 – 1876). Bakunin is not ordinarily grouped with the ‘Metaphysical GOATs’ (Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Kant, Hegel). At best he is relegated to the 2nd tier, the cloud of social philosophers. In fact, however, Bakunin can be thought of as the St. Paul of Anarchism. He didn’t invent anarchism, but he systematized it and popularized it as an alternative to the sterile socialism of Mark and Engels. But even this is to sell Bakunin short. Turns out, he was a Metaphysician - First Class after all. For example, he wrote: • “Man is able to project himself in his thought, examining and observing himself like a strange eternal object.” Check : This is precisely what Nietzsche said could not be done. • “By lifting himself in thought above himself, and above the material world around him, he reaches the representation of perfect abstraction, the absolute void.” Check : This is Kierkegaard’s Abyss . This is what John saw when he broke the seventh seal. • “And this absolute (void) is nothing less than his capacity for (perfect) abstraction, which disdains all that exists and finds its repose in attaining complete negation. This is the ultimate limit of the highest abstraction of mind; this absolute nothingness is God.” Check : “I am not what I am and I am what I am not.” ( Sartre ) Nailed it! Writing at the same time as Kierkegaard, 10 years before Nietzsche, and 50 years before Heidegger and Sartre, Bakunin got it right. How so? We find ourselves ‘thrown’ (Heidegger) onto the ‘beach of being’, ignorant, defenseless, thoroughly lost. Our one goal is to survive! Survive now ( praxis )… and develop a strategy to survive long term ( gnosis ). We are surrounded by entities other than ourselves. We quickly see that our survival depends on understanding these entities, and ultimately, on influencing them. Viewing those entities through the prism of Indo-European language, we label them things (nouns) or events ( verbs ). ‘Things’ and ‘events’ are somewhat imprecise labels we affix to phenomena . We classify a phenomenon as a ‘thing’ or as an ‘event’ depending on whether we wish to call attention to its endurance (Parmenides’ Truth) or its transience (Heraclitus’ Flux): “Abide with me; fast falls the eventide.” We are like the away team on a future starship, dispatched to the surface of exoplanet XS325W to map its terrain – except, we are not mapping an exoplanet; we are mapping Being itself. Life is like a game of Battleship . It begins with a completely unconditioned ‘guess’. We note the results, and we add their coordinates to our emerging world map . This is my one and only random move. Every future move will be ‘informed’ by the results of all the moves that came before it. Gradually, we move from absolute ignorance to something approaching certain knowledge. As we push the buttons and pull the levers that constitute ‘the world’, we are simultaneously mapping the terrain. We call this ‘science’. I’m hungry, I cry, I get fed. Now I associate crying with satiety, and I hypothesize a causal relationship between the two: post hoc ergo propter hoc . For the rest of my life, I will test and refine this hypothesis and look to extend it to other ordered pairs (of data) I uncover along the way. Needs multiply: feed me, change me, sooth me. My gestures (crying) modulate. Crying works for this but not for that . A certain ‘style of crying’ seems better correlated with a certain result. My map of the world is gaining definition. As I get older, my crying becomes more nuanced and less obvious, but make no mistake about it, I’m still crying, right up to the very end. Ah, the gift of life! Our survival is at stake from the moment of our birth (or conception). My first awareness is an awareness of discomfort, if not pain. In the language of the existentialists, we are the being whose being is always in doubt. Our being is inseparable from our mortality. I resort to a series of random gestures in hopes that something will make this pain go away; et voilà, something does! Or does it? Have I discovered causality (Laplace)…or coincidence (Hume)? I will need to test my proposed correlation until I am so sure of the causal link that I am willing to ‘bet my life on it’. Once satisfied, I can fill in my map with its first data point, an ordered pair (X = my behavior; Y = my comfort). Over the next 30,000 days or so, I’ll discover, test, and map many more such correlations. Primal awareness is strangely complex: I am aware of phenomena that I classify as ‘self’ and I am aware of phenomena that I classify as ‘not self’. From my perspective, this is the primal distinction (not darkness and light as in Genesis ); but by itself, it does not even come close to capturing the experience of being human. What’s missing? Me! I’m missing from this model. I am aware of the phenomena, ‘self’ and ‘not-self’, precisely because I am neither . If I were ‘self’, then there would be no need, or even function, for ‘not-self’. ‘Self’ would form a self-contained universe, and we could have no knowledge (or need) of anything outside it. If ‘I’ am an element of ‘self’, then I am perfectly redundant and therefore my very existence is a violation of Occam’s Razor: I am de trop . On the other hand, it is hard to ignore the intuition that there is something fundamentally different between observing and being observed. Objects are observed; subjects observe. Granting for the moment that there is nothing more to conscious awareness than the operation of a network of neurons and excluding the possible existence of some mysterious, spiritual anti substance, it is still difficult not to notice the difference between a subject’s awareness of an event and the objective event itself. “They’re not even the same sort of thing.” A world ‘with me’ and a world ‘without me’ would be exactly the same world; but ‘to be’ is not to be the same but to be different, novel, unique, to matter, to have consequences, to leave footprints in the sand. According to Gregory Bateson and Alfred North Whitehead, ‘to be’ is to be different and to make a difference. Were ‘I’ to be merely an element of ‘self’, I would not matter, I would make no difference, my being would have no consequences, and the movie, It’s a Wonderful Life , could have never been made. Quelle domage! Even so, I think it is safe to say that a majority of contemporary philosophers, scientists, etc. believe we live in just such a world – a world in which ‘I’ is an element of ‘self’. I say ‘believe’ because for many reductionists, mechanists, positivists and naïve realists, the proposition ‘I ɛ S’ is a matter of deep, almost religious, conviction: “It is this way because it has to be this way , even if it’s not!” We cling to our ‘enlightened’ secular model even though it predicts a universe that is frozen, lifeless, devoid of all novelty, a world in which Achilles loses a road race to a tortoise – in other words, a universe that has virtually nothing in common with our world. The human experience is dialectic: I am aware of ‘self’ ( thesis ), I am aware of ‘not-self’ ( antithesis) and I am aware of ‘being aware’ of self and not-self ( synthesis ). Neti, neti (Sanskrit): not this, not that, the keyword being ‘not’. I am by being-not and being-not is a form of abstraction. When I am ‘not this ball’, I am abstracting from the ball its location, momentum, and sensory appearance. ‘To be’ I must have something ‘not to be’. I cannot not-be ‘ball’ per se because ‘ball’ is a noumenon, a Platonic Idea, not a phenomenon. According to Kant, I ‘kan’t know’ a noumenon; I can only know its phenomenal aspect. Therefore, I cannot not be or not be ‘ball’ per se ; I can only ‘not be’ the ball’s various characteristics. To abstract is to de-concretize , and so “perfect abstraction” would result in an “absolute void”. I am the relentless spirit of restlessness at the heart of Being. As such, I “disdain all that exists”. I ‘negate it’ and it is only in such negation that I find any measure of “repose”. (Bakunin) “Eternal rest ( gnosis ) grant unto them, O Lord, and may the perpetual light shine upon them.” Rest in peace is not a final farewell. It is a battle cry: “Be Human!” 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 AI for Healthcare “Boka, is it true you used to drive 10 miles to see a doctor once a year and called that healthcare?” David Cowles A recent article posted online quoted a health plan executive as saying, “Solving consumer engagement is worth $1 trillion to our organization.” Considering that the market cap of the largest health plan today (UHC) is less than half that, this is obviously a bit of an exaggeration. But only a bit! There is no doubt that consumer engagement is healthcare’s Holy Grail. Since the collapse of ‘strong form’ Managed Care in the mid-1990s, Engaging the Consumer has been Job One for healthcare providers and benefit plan managers alike. We’ve tried cost shifting (high deductibles), Consumer Directed Health Care (HRAs & HSAs), health fairs, financial incentives for lifestyle management, urgent care and walk-in clinics, telemedicine, no cost preventive care, consumer education, and finally, computer assisted customer service. None has made the slightest dent in the titanium dome of consumer apathy! Two exceptions : Doctor Google and boutique pharmaceuticals. We do love our pharmaceuticals! We can’t wait to try the latest $300/dose drug that TV promises will give us marital bliss, obedient children, career success, limitless leisure, and a ‘scratch’ golf game. Plus, we never tire of entering our symptoms into various databases and then wringing our hands gleefully upon receiving their mechanically generated diagnoses. It’s a roller coaster ride for those who don’t go to amusement parks. It is said that the definition of insanity is repeating the same behavior over and over again while expecting a different outcome each time. That’s us! We’ve poured billions of dollars into consumer engagement initiatives over the last 30 years…and we’ve come up empty. My mother-in-law (RIP) used to say, “If you have your health, you have everything!” Americans don’t necessarily agree. We will invest great wealth into exercise equipment, gym memberships, vitamin therapies, fad diets, etc., but we are reluctant to spend a single hour or a single dollar on traditional medicine. Yet it is still the case, rightly or wrongly, that traditional medicine accounts for about 90% of our nation’s healthcare spending. Folks today want to shop for healthcare like they do electronics, IRT. They want all the information there is, neatly summarized by a ‘Consumer Reports’ Bot. We want to know the differential diagnoses, treatment options, prognoses, and risks, all in one shot. At the same time, we want our healthcare to be ‘bespoke’. We want to be able to tweak our data, play ‘what if’. We want a ‘one size fits one’ health strategy. In a phrase, we want Virtual Concierge Medicine (‘VCM’ – just what we don’t need…a new acronym to learn). On the supply side, we have an acute shortage of physicians, nurses, and healthcare professionals, especially at the primary care level. What providers we do have suffer from burn out. The combination of medical advances, patient flow, regulatory mandates, and burdensome paperwork is simply unsupportable. As a result, healthcare organizations on average turn over 100% of their staff every 5 years. If only a technology existed that could deliver features consumers want while reducing providers’ workload! We might hope that such a technology would engage patients, improve overall population health, and ameliorate quality of life for healthcare professionals; we might hope it would reduce, or at least cap, the per patient cost of healthcare while allowing us to increase compensation for providers, especially those near the base of the economic pyramid (e.g., first responders, nurses, primary care physicians). If only there was such a thing as ‘Artificial Intelligence for Healthcare’… Now, here is where you expect me to say, “Introducing Health Bot 101”; sorry to disappoint! Sure, there are a number of ‘AI for Healthcare’ platforms in development right now, but early indications are that they won’t go nearly far enough to make any difference at all . (How’s that for a prognosis!) Consider ‘Hippocratic AI’ for example. This platform advertises itself as the first ‘safety-focused’ AI for Healthcare. Not surprisingly, they have adopted the ancient Greek motto (4 th century BCE), “First do no harm,” which translates into modern English as, “Above all, don’t get sued." For all its initial hype and promise, Hippocratic has apparently surrendered even before it’s been launched. The site has decided that it will not suggest possible diagnoses . May I pose a question? What good is any healthcare resource if it doesn’t diagnose? Did you just say, “Pick on someone your own size!” Admittedly, Hippocratic AI is a start-up. So how about Google? Big enough for you? Google’s AI for Healthcare initiative grades its product(s) according to 4 measures: How closely do AI’s answers reflect medical consensus? Are AI’s answers free of bias? How precise are AI’s answers? Do any of AI’s answers risk harming the patient? As we’ll see below, Google’s application is not AI, it’s Anti-AI. Ok, it is ‘artificial’ but it’s not ‘intelligent’. All it’s doing is rearranging symbols within a very tight set of parameters. That is not the promise of AI. We need AI to discover and label new maladies, to model novel treatments and cures and test them virtually, to invent new treatment protocols, to envision new surgical techniques, to propose proper genetic intervention when appropriate, etc. In short, we need AI to go where no physician has gone before. Let’s see how this vision fares under Google’s 4 tests: Sometimes consensus is a good thing; sometimes it’s not! Apparently, the Sun does not revolve around the Earth after all. We want doctors who’ve kept current, but we also want doctors who aren’t afraid to go against the tide when appropriate. Apparently, Google doesn’t agree. Bias is bad, we can all agree on that, but sometimes one person’s ‘bias’ is another person’s ‘fair and balanced’ – and vice versa, of course. The risk is that the arbiter of ‘bias’ will be…‘biased’! What doesn’t belong and why? ‘Precise’ doesn’t seem to fit here, does it? Of course, we want our answers to be as ‘precise’ as possible, but precisely what does that mean? Accurate? Detailed? Narrow? Litigation immune? What are Google’s ‘precision’ criteria? Finally, ‘Don’t harm the patient!’ Come on now, who could possibly have a problem with that ? Well, me for one! “ALL healthcare involves risk!” How many times have you heard that from your favorite characters on your favorite (pre-strike) TV medical dramas? But we don’t believe it, do we? We live in the age of warranties and product liability. We want our results guaranteed! Not happening! No healthcare regime will ever be able to deliver that level of assurance. By its very nature, healthcare is a ‘risk/reward’ proposition. If I treat diagnosis X with therapy Y, how likely is it that I will be helped (and by how much)? How likely is it that I will be hurt (and by how much)? Come to think of it, we apply this same thought process every time we make a decision. Should I steal this cookie? Should I rob this bank? Should I get married (or divorced)? Should I jump out of an airplane? Should I go ‘all in’ on this hand? I’m standing at the craps table at Bellagio. I’ve noticed that in the warp and woof of the game, it’s reached a point where I have $400 on the felt, spread among various numbers. Should I let it ride or pull it down? If I let it ride, I could walk away with $800…or more; plus I would be able to tell all my friends, “I beat Bellagio”. That’s worth something, right? On the other hand, I could easily lose all $400 on a single roll. So my decision comes down to this: just how badly do I need that $400? Why should healthcare be any different? The Fact is, it can’t be! We just pretend that it is. So, it looks as though the ‘AI Revolution’ in healthcare may be over before it began, but it doesn’t have to end this way! When self-driving vehicles were first introduced, people were horrified… me among them. No human being at the controls? Nope, no one to fall asleep at the wheel, drink and drive, text while moving, etc. What a disaster that would be! Now I can say with confidence: self-driving vehicles are coming soon to a neighborhood near you… if they’re not already pulling into your driveway… and I can’t wait! Sure, self-driving vehicles pose some risks. We’re doing the best we can to minimize those risks, but we’ll never eliminate them entirely. The question is, “How do the risks posed by self-driving vehicles compare with the risks of human-driven cars?” Now apply that to healthcare: 30% of all healthcare delivered in the United States is either ineffective or harmful; almost 20% of patients are misdiagnosed. Could a Bot do any worse? Still, who can argue with Hippocratic’s ‘safety first’ focus? We all want patients protected from incorrect diagnoses and ineffective or harmful treatments; we all want patients’ PHI (Personal Health Information) kept confidential. Nevertheless, this is a huge climb down from Hippocratic’s initial commitment to ‘always-on triage’. Beyond that, though, it is puzzling that an AI program would make safety its #1 priority. What about functionality? Shouldn’t we be looking to develop AI that works and protects, rather than AI that protects and may have some functionality as well? As a society, we need to recognize the fact that safety and functionality are often at cross purposes; we must make sober, adult, and may I say ‘non-ideological’, decisions about which strategy is best in what circumstances. Take, for example, HIPPA. It was intended to protect patients’ PHI without increasing the cost or compromising the quality of care; it has failed. Oh, don’t get me wrong: it’s done a marvelous job of securing personal data. But the cost of compliance has been massive and felt all along the supply chain, even to the level of the lone MD with her totemic ‘black bag’. More importantly, HIPPA has eroded the quality of patient care. It takes a village to treat a tumor! Optimal outcomes often require input from diverse stakeholders. But such input is only possible if relevant patient information is shared, and that sharing is precisely what HIPPA regulates . (Notice I said, “regulates”, not “prohibits”… or even “restricts”.) So, the fault does not lie with HIPPA! The law is careful to include a number of well-considered exceptions to its ‘data lockdown’. The problem comes at the application level. Healthcare professionals, by and large, do not understand the nuances of the law; why should they? They’re ‘doctors and nurses and such’ (Willie Nelson). Rather than risk Draconian fines or unpredictable litigation, many have adopted a ‘see no data, hear no data, share no data’ approach to patient care. That is neither what HIPAA intended, nor what it requires, but it is how it is being interpreted and administered on our mean streets . At one time, even my own doctor was refusing to respond to texts and emails “because of HIPPA”. Let’s compare the potential results of AI delivered healthcare vs. healthcare delivered by old reliable, Homo sapiens (HS). First HS : I go to my doctor and my blood pressure (BP) is a bit high; my doctor recommends some lifestyle changes and a particular medication. I return in 3 months to have my BP rechecked; still high. Did I follow the doc’s lifestyle instructions? Did I take my medication religiously? Ok, let’s try a new med and check again 90 days out. 6 months have gone by now and there’s still no guarantee that my BP is under control. Now AI : Again, upon initial examination, my BP is elevated. My PCP hands me a blood pressure monitoring device to use at home, but then he turns all my future healthcare over to an AI Bot named Charley. Chas, as I call him, tells me to cut way back on my sodium in-take for 2 weeks to see if that has any impact; it doesn’t. Ok, am I willing to cut down on alcohol and switch to decaf? Hmm. Two weeks later, we’re moving the needle; it’s working, but not enough to satisfy Charley. Let’s tweak the dosage on your BP medication and check again in two weeks. Thank you, Charley, for the wonderful experience and the excellent result! Remember the days when you typed and mailed all your correspondence? Then you waited two weeks for a reply. Doesn’t seem possible, does it? So buck up; it’s early days yet. If it’s alright with you, I’ll continue to envision the day my great grandkids say to me, “Boka, is it true you used to drive 10 miles to see a doctor once a year and called that ‘healthcare’?” 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 . Return to our AI Issue Table of Contents Share Previous Next

In the Harvest Issue, Aletheia Today brings together philosophy, theology, and cultural reflections to explore the deeper meaning of the harvest season. This issue features scriptural studies on sowing and reaping, theological discussions on the cycles of life and spiritual growth, and philosophical essays that question how the concept of harvest shapes our understanding of purpose and fulfillment. Readers will also find cultural perspectives on how communities worldwide celebrate the seasons. Inside Harvest 2024 Philosophy Anaxagoras “We are part of this universe; we are in this universe, but perhaps more important…the universe is in us.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson The Secret Life of Things “The secret life of things is nothing less than the life of God.” Zeno's New Paradox “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.” The Probability of Nothing “Divinity is a language unto itself, or as a five-year-old grandchild once explained to me, ‘God is outside the numbers’.” Theology World Without God Amen “God is dead, and we have killed him…who will wipe this blood from us?” (Nietzsche) How Matthew Spins Mark “The same facts can take on different ‘meaning’ depending on how they’re presented. Culture & The Arts 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.” The Seven Pillars of Wisdom “Kabbalah kept the pre-Socratic tradition alive until it could be born anew in the Age of Aquarius.” Spirituality The Sacred Pause of Autumn "In our spiritual rest, we draw near to God and bask in His presence in prayer, our Bibles, and His beautiful creation." Why We Must Pray "It is our prayers that will, God willing, save the world and our souls because God will know us." Readers React What's the buzz about? Our readers' reactions to Aletheia Today... Additional Reading Can't get enough of Aletheia Today's content? Check out the books that inspire our magazine.

< Back The Sacred Pause of Autumn Deborah Rutherford "In our spiritual rest, we draw near to God and bask in His presence in prayer, our Bibles, and His beautiful creation." Then He arose and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, "Peace, be still!" And the wind ceased and there was a great calm. Mark 4:39 NKJV My husband and I were captivated by the first fall leaves that descended gracefully as the wind picked up. Like all storms, this one came and went, shaking the globe, and the leaves fell like snow in autumn. At that precise moment, I sensed a profound invitation from the Lord and all His creation to step out of the glass globe—our windowed house—and into the open. This invitation was not just to feel the cool air on our faces or pick up a leaf, but to experience a "sacred pause." This is where we can step back from the storms of life, whether brooding, gales, or on the horizon, with complete confidence that just as Jesus rebuked the wind and calmed the sea, He can do the same for us. This sacred pause is a moment where we take a break from the busyness and demands of life and instead relish quiet communion, drawing near to our Creator. It is a time to reflect, feel the Creator's touch and caress, and partake in the beauty of autumn. This intentional pause for deep connection and meditation with God strengthens and refreshes us. Autumn is the perfect season to pursue wonder. Did you know that God has been pausing since He first created the world? In Genesis 1:31, we read: "Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day" (NKJV). Yes, during God's six days of creation, He paused daily to look at His creation and delighted in it: • God paused. • God looked at His creation. • God delighted in His creation. God invites us to delight with Him in this sacred pause. Unsurprisingly, God's creations, including us, bring Him immense joy. This is how much God loves us. Isn't autumn a unique and perfect opportunity to slow down and partake in the sacred pause with God? To share in His delight and seek His wonder? God created us to have a relationship and fellowship with Him and to enjoy His creations. Our participation is welcomed and vital for revitalizing and refreshing our weary, storm-ridden souls. There will be times soon enough when we must step back into our daily routines, but in this interlude, we will be refreshed and strengthened for the ebbs and tides of life. In autumn, the Lord beckons us to draw near to Him and all of creation in a celebration. Are we not awestruck when we wake to vibrant hues painted on the sunrise? Every day, as we walk outside, a new leaf glimmers gold, followed by reds and oranges. The air is fragrant with fresh pine and foliage, while our kitchens simmer with spices and warming stews. The beauty of this lovely season is a testament to God's majesty and creation. We must pause with our Creator in autumn's celebration—how can we not! Here, we recognize that we are more than to-do lists, jobs, troubles, and schedules; we are, in fact, a part of creation itself. By pausing, we find we are in step with creation. I do not know about you, but I would rather be a part of the creation dance than apart from it. Our porch party lights are the stars twinkling in the sky. The feast is laid out in the fields, and the orchestra is the flocks of migrating birds going home. Oh, we belong too, and I find this so comforting and reassuring, don't you? We are part of our Creator's beautiful symphony. Autumn is the time of year when the Lord invites us to pause with Himself and creation. In this pause, we reconnect with our Creator and all of creation. As the warmth of summer fades and cooler temperatures arrive, all creation begins a transformation. This collaboration between the Creator and the created has been ongoing since the beginning of time, and we are an integral part of it. At this time of year, nature transforms to prepare to rest for winter; shouldn't we do the same? In Psalm 46:10, the psalmist writes, "Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” (NKJV). Here again, God is inviting us to pause with Him. In this sacred pause, we experience God's presence and sovereignty in creation. When we draw near to God, He draws near to us. "Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded" (James 4:8 NKJV). A pause may seem counterproductive with all the delights of the fall season or our day-to-day demands, but that is precisely why God asks us to be still, to draw near to Him—to pause. Here in this sacred pause, we savor God's goodness and delight in what He has prepared for us. There is a place for us at His bountiful table. In all this, God prepares and strengthens us for approaching situations, transformation, and new blooms. But just as nature needs a rest, so do we. In our spiritual rest, we draw near to God and bask in His presence in prayer, our Bibles, and His beautiful creation. But how do we pause with the Creator and embrace autumn's beauty? Here are some ways to pause, reflect, and connect with God and nature this autumn: • Pray and reflect as you read your Bible. Ask God questions like: Do I need to let go of anything? What is my growth and transformation in this season? Am I depleted from life's tempests, and how can I be strengthened and refreshed, Lord? • Step out into creation by going on a nearby hike, visiting a pumpkin patch, or attending a fair (I love seeing all the farm animals at our fair). • Rejoice in the fields' harvest and reflect on your own harvest. Taste the harvest foods, such as apples, pumpkins, and blackberries. • Listen to the music of the wind, the rustling leaves, bird songs, and the crackling of campfires. • Observe the stars at night and feel the universe singing a beautiful song. Immerse yourself in the beauty of autumn, and let it resonate within you. • Gather to celebrate and give thanks to the Lord. Open your home for long, lingering conversations, dinners, and candlelight. • Look for the unexpected blessings, and you will find them. Since the beginning of time, this sacred pause has coaxed the temperatures down and caused the trees to transform. The harvest is ready in the fields. All these blessings, abundance, goodness, and beauty bring joy to our hearts. In our sacred pause, let us rejoice in the Lord and dare ourselves to gather and prepare candlelit dinners and have those long conversations. Let us pursue God’s wonder! This sacred pause leads to the Holy Feasts, Advent hymns, and Holy Days. As we pause to celebrate the harvest, we also plant the seeds in anticipation of the coming Christmas season. The ebb and flow of creation's seasonal pause is God's masterpiece, the beauty of life. We were created to live in creation, not apart from it. There will always be storms on the horizon—some seen, some waited for, some just dumped—but with intentional drawing near in the presence of God, we will be strengthened for the days ahead. A Sacred Pause Prayer Dear Heavenly Father, Thank you for creating me and all Your creations. How loving of You to pause, look at, and delight in me. I accept Your invitation to draw near as I read, pray, and linger in my Bible. I delight in Your creation this autumn and will pursue wonder. I yearn to be in Your Presence! Help me to slow down this season so I can rejoice in You. Help me to be still. Do not let a day pass where I do not step out into creation and delight in Your beauty and love. In this sacred pause, strengthen me, Lord, for the coming storms of life. I know You will always be with me. I rejoice in You, Lord, who brings hope in the breeze, transformation, and harvest as I gather to dwell, celebrate, and prepare my heart for You. In Jesus' name, Amen. Deborah Rutherford is a Christian wife who loves to write stories, devotionals, and poetry. She is also an award-winning makeup artist. Deborah shares her journey of faith, joy, and beauty on her blog at www.deborahrutherford.com and social media. She is a contributing writer for Aletheia Today Magazine , Kingdom Edge Magazine and Gracefully Truthful Ministries and has a devotional in the book “Shepherd on Duty: Promises of God you Can Trust ” (Arabelle Publishing) and the Calla Press, Literary Journal Spring 2023. Return to Harvest 2024 Previous Next

< Back Archimedes and Christianity David Cowles Aug 26, 2025 “Science is not the antithesis of Christianity; it is a subset of it… not the enemy of religion but its most powerful engine.” Don’t blame Archimedes (b. 280 BCE); he got a bum rap. He did not invent the Archimedean Property nor did he lend it his name. That came much later when someone noticed that Archimedes’ work entailed certain previously unidentified assumptions about the structure of the phenomenal world. The Archimedean Property (AP) boils down to the assumption that real phenomena can be exclusively and exhaustively modeled within the domain of Real Numbers (extended to include Complex Numbers). Certainly sounds reasonable and it is…for most purposes. Sure, it fails to capture certain features of the deep structure of the Real World but how often does that come up in polite conversation? You can live your life from birth through NLE and never give a thought to anything beyond Real Numbers…and in fact that’s exactly how people lived from the time of Plato until the 18 th century. We most often discuss AP in the context of Geometry (and Topology). The Euclidean Geometry we learned as adolescents assumes AP. So do most non-Euclidean Geometries (e.g. geometries applicable to curved spaces). However, there is a class of esoteric geometries that reject the Archimedean Property. They seek to model phenomena that can’t be adequately approximated using Real Numbers alone. These phenomena require the introduction of ‘Unreal’ Numbers such as infinities and infinitesimals and ‘p-adic’ numbers (loosely related to logarithms for the few of you out there who don’t have a PhD in Pure Mathematics, yet). Without AP, if any two entities intersect (tangent or overlap), one must be a subset of the other. Nothing touches, nothing overlaps, unless it absorbs totally or is totally absorbed. It’s a readymade plot twist for the next Sci-Fi Silver Screen blockbuster. It’ll be a remake of Goldfinger , which itself retells the legend of King Midas. I touch you, I absorb you…or you absorb me. This gives new meaning to ‘Kill or Be Killed!’ It is a game of tag…for adults, but a game with apocalyptic consequences. Not sure you want to go down this path? No problem: you can try it before you buy it. The game could be simulated on a computer; it could even anchor a whole new genre of computer games, competing with Fortnite , Grand Theft Auto , and Tour of Duty . Of course, such ‘individual imperialism’ is not the only possible response to life in a world without AP. For example, we might decide to live our lives in hermetically sealed pods. Or we might learn to live together, harmoniously and symbiotically, without invading each other’s personal space…what a concept! Or we could just go with the flow. I could welcome the other into myself and I could graciously reciprocate by freely allowing myself to be uploaded into ‘another other’. Again, feel free to try before you buy, but know this: the process may not be reversible…so your life literally depends on the result! ‘Another other’? Makes sense. A absorbs B, another, then AB is absorbed by C, another other, and so on ‘up the food chain’. But what if we turned Jacob’s Ladder into an Ouroboros? What if we allowed A to absorb B…and B to absorb A, simultaneously. What if we allowed our two sets to be subsets of themselves and of each other? Now that would be some cool place to live, agreed? Too much for you? Well, stay tuned! You are the product of a single fertilized sex cell. Today, your body consists of 30 trillion descendants of that cell, working more or less in harmony to ensure your (temporary) survival and to allow you to make all the contributions to human history your parents had planned for you. There will be no peace on earth or cure for cancer without you and there would be no you without the immediate and enduring cooperation of 30 trillion independent organisms (100 trillion over your entire lifetime). But there is something very special about these cells. Unlike simple life forms (e.g. bacteria), most of the cells in your body include a nucleus that houses copies of your primordial DNA. All animal and plant life consists primarily of nucleated cells. But while the first living organisms (prokaryotes) appeared on Earth 4 billion years ago, the first nucleated cells (eukaryotes) evolved just 2 billion years ago. More astounding, every eukaryotic cell on Earth today is likely descended from a single 2 billion year old ancestor. (By comparison, Abraham was a dilatant!) So how did the primal eukaryote evolve? Two unicellular life forms, bacteria perhaps, gave each other reck (Anaximander, Buber) and entered into a covenant (Jeremiah et al.). The process was described in 1986 by Nobel winning biologist, Paul Simon: “If you’ll be my bodyguard, I will be your long lost pal.” ( You can call me Al ) Perhaps Paul was drawing on an earlier description: “You will be my people, and I will be your God!” ( Jeremiah 7: 23). And so it happened! One cell agreed to give up its independence to become the nucleus of another cell in exchange for that cell’s protection (an early version of the feudal contract)…and together they conquered the Earth. Alexander, Augustus, eat your hearts out! We life forms are stubborn. It took 2 billion years for two of us to decide that cohabitation and cooperation might be better than conflict. And now we’re surprised that there’s no peace in the Middle East? It was a high stakes gamble, a giant leap of faith, but boy did it ever pay off! We are indebted to these two risk-taking pioneers for everything from the majestic Redwood Forests to the teeming Gulf Stream Waters, for Mother Theresa, and for you. ‘Thank you’ doesn’t cover it. There is a powerful Theory of Everything (TOE) that fundamentally depends on non-Archimedean topology. No, it’s not some esoteric version of String Theory: it does not require a cosmos with 10…or 26 dimensions. Nor is it obscure. In fact, every reader of this article is, happily or not, quite familiar with it. It’s called Christianity . Let’s just state it outright: Christian cosmology is fundamentally non-Archimedean! Write that 100 times on Sister Mary Martha’s blackboard. But don’t stop there! Christianity not only rejects AP; it also rejects the Transitive Property (if a > b and b > c then a > c) and the Fundamental Properties of Arithmetic (Commutative, Associative, and Distributive). Basically, Christianity repeals 5 years of primary school education. Or not! There is a real domain in which all these traditional properties hold but that ‘local’ domain is embedded in a much broader ‘universal’ domain where they do not. Arithmetic is a subset of mathematics. The Archimedean domain is a sub-region of the broader non-Archimedean Universe. Just as the Newtonian Universe is embedded in the Einsteinian Universe, so physics is embedded in theology . The defining doctrine of orthodox Christianity is Incarnation. The 2 nd person of the Blessed Trinity, the logos through whom ‘all things were made’ has in fact become one of those things . (John 1: 2 – 5) Contrary to the Foundation Axiom of Set Theory, the set is a subset of itself. God is the all-encompassing plenum and an irreducible quantum within that plenum . The Son of God is God. According to the Nicene Creed, Jesus Christ is ‘true God ( plenum ) and true man ( quantum )’. The whole is contained in one of its parts . Cosmos as Fun House! The reciprocal reflections in the Hall of Mirrors extend to infinity. The very concept of scale, so crucial to our understanding of the world, vanishes. The Cosmos is a fractal; no matter where you look it looks the same. It is a pattern endlessly embedded in itself. Embedded, not conflated! The part does not become the whole, nor the whole the part. Call it the Pauline Exclusion Principle . According to Incarnation’s companion doctrine of Trinity, the plenum and the quantum remain distinct personae of the one Godhead. Perhaps the best description of this relationship is provided by Paul in his First Letter to Corinthians : “When everything is subjected to him (Son), then the Son himself will be subjected to the one (Father) who subjected everything to him (Son) so that God may be all in all.” (15: 28) ‘All in all’, Anaxagoras’ pan in panti , describes the fundamental architecture of our non-Archimedean Universe. And it is also the Foundational Principal (Incarnation) of Christianity . It is no wonder that we are rapidly becoming unchurched. We have made a fetish of science. (Science is good but fetishizing anything is not.) Unfortunately, many Christians have responded to the fetish by rejecting the science. But science is not the antithesis of Christianity; it is a subset of it. Once we have overcome the notion that the Universe is Archimedean throughout and properly understood the place of cosmology within metaphysics, we will suddenly find that science is not the enemy of religion but its most powerful engine. Truly, this is the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius . “Come Holy Ghost!” *** Christ Pantocrator, 6th century, Saint Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai. The icon mirrors our theme by depicting Christ as both infinite plenum and finite quantum, true God and true man, embodying the non-Archimedean logic at the heart of Christianity. 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< Back AI, Justice, and Job David Cowles Sep 7, 2023 “Can a Bot go beyond its programming and our inputs to devise unique solutions to novel problems - solutions that exhibit Justice as their determinative Value?” Our Fall Issue of Aletheia Today Magazine , our ‘AI Issue’ released 9/1/23, included an article titled, “ Do Bots Know Beauty? ” In that essay, we proposed that there are (at least) three transcendent values: Beauty, Truth, and Justice. We delt, hopefully to your satisfaction, with Beauty and Truth but we deliberately left Justice for another day (and that day is today ). Can a Bot be just? This question has two parts: Can what we mean by ‘justice’ be reduced to an algorithm? Or if not, can a Bot go beyond its programming, and our inputs, to devise unique solutions to novel problems - solutions that exhibit Justice as their determinative value? More so than Beauty, less so than Truth, Justice can be reduced to an algorithm. We call that algorithm ‘Law’; but then we criticize anyone who blindly follows it. We say they’re being overly legalistic . Like Solomon, we instinctively know that Justice is more than a legal code, no matter how well intentioned or expertly drawn. Thomas Aquinas, for example, says that secular law is normative… but only to the extent that it is consistent with a higher law, i.e., God’s law. Dial 611. Call up these specific mitzvot (from Torah); they represent an early effort to codify – or program – Justice. Now add-in the 2 general mitzvot, aka the Great Commandment, a recognition that the law must always be interpreted and applied in the broader context of Justice per se . Torah requires interpretation and application, by a competent Rabbi and by you! During the period of Judges , when God ruled Israel directly (through Torah), “everyone did what was right in their own eyes”. (Judges 21: 25) Conscience is a reflection of Justice. Justice as Law is always subject to Justice as Value. Law is always subject to judicial review…and that review is carried out by Justice as Value. Justice is recursive! It is a 2nd order reflection on a 1st order algorithm (the law). The history of Judeo-Christianity can be viewed as a dialectic of law and value. As Jewish theology evolved during the first millennium BCE, the migration of Torah from ‘tablets of stone’ to ‘hearts of flesh’ was a recurrent theme. When Christianity burst onto the scene (c. 30 CE) this dichotomy was further sharpened. Jesus said, “…Not an iota, not a jot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.” (Matthew 5: 18); but Paul wrote, “Now that faith (value) has come, we are no longer under the law.” (Galatians 3: 25) Of course, both are correct. The Christian project is the merger of Justice as Law with Justice as Value. But the dichotomy of Justice as Value vs. Justice as Law goes back much further than Jesus and Paul; it’s older than the Judges and it’s even older than Moses. It goes all the way back to the story of Job , one of Western civilization’s oldest narratives. The version memorialized in the Biblical Book of Job could be aptly subtitled, Justice: Algorithm or Value? Refresher : Job, a just and prosperous man, suddenly hits a streak of ‘bad luck’ (to say the least): his family is wiped out, his wealth lost, his health destroyed. It is assumed, not without reason, that God is responsible for Job’s misfortunes. Unfortunately, Job is joined on his ‘dung hill’ by three so-called comforters, men of high standing who have traveled a great distance to commiserate with their colleague. These self-appointed divine surrogates defend the notion of Justice as Algorithm: they try to persuade Job that his ‘sins’ that have triggered this dreadful series of events. Because they view Justice as an algorithm, they feel justified in assuming that Job’s misfortunes must be wages of his sin. Job will have none of it! He insists that he has committed no sin that remotely justifies his sufferings. He demands that God subject himself to the value of Justice. Job’s concept of Justice is more than tit-for-tat: a valid judgement must be based on the totality of circumstances, including subjective intent, not just on naked acts taken out-of-context. Our hero is so confident of his concept of Justice that he uses it to ‘call God out’ and what ensues is one of the fiercest rhetorical battles in the history of urban playgrounds. Remember Ali-Forman, the Rumble in the Jungle ? A Forman win was considered so certain that some of Ali’s handlers wanted the fight cancelled. Instead, Ali sat on the ropes for 7 rounds and then in the 8th stepped out from the shadows and knocked Forman out with a single 5 punch volley. Clearly, Ali knew his Job. Bookmakers at the trial of Job v. God are offering 100-to-1 odds and still the ‘Job line’ has no takers. Predictably, God shows up in a whirlwind calculated to terrify his accuser. For several chapters, God rants while Job whispers. God taunts Job for his comparative lack of accomplishments. He threatens him with monsters (Behemoth and Leviathan); he compares him to ‘uninhabited grassland’. Job is cowed but not crushed; he stands his ground. In the end, seeing that he can’t intimidate Job and that Job has right on his side, God gives up . He admits that Job has been treated unfairly and he takes action designed to remedy the injustice: Justice is a Value, not an Algorithm! So back to Bots. As with Beauty, if a Bot can reach this same conclusion (God’s) on its own, not relying solely on its programming or on our inputs, then that Bot may claim to be conscious...and I’ll support that claim. And if not…well, then it is just a very expensive, albeit very useful, hunk of inanimate, unconscious silicon. Stay tuned! Keep the conversation going! 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 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. 4. Aletheia Today Magazine (ATM) will be devoting its entire fall issue (released 9/1/23) to artificial intelligence (AI). What are the philosophical, theological, cultural and even spiritual implications of AI powered world? If you’d like to contribute to the AI Issue, click here . 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 Got Money? David Cowles May 20, 2026 “The main reason that people who don’t have money don’t have money is that they don’t have money.” Recently, I retired from a job that had occupied my attention for a mere 45 years. It was the worst of jobs, it was the best of jobs, but thank God, it paid well. I was able to provide my family with material advantages intended to make up for the lack of a fully engaged spouse or parent. Since I retired, I have made more money each year than I ever did working! It’s called investing. Now, of course, we happen to be living in a charmed era, investment-wise. You’d have to be a pretty poor money manager not to have made gains over the last 10 years. However, I now suffer from the conviction, possibly delusional, that I could have made money in less advantageous periods as well. There’s precedent. In early 1970’s Boston, two friends of mine purchased a six family residential structure now valued at $6,000,000. Cost: $10,000. I myself had an opportunity to buy a popular neighborhood bar…for $10,000. Or I could have bought a working farm in Maritime Canada…again, $10,000. It gets worse. In both ventures I would have had partners so I would not have needed the full 10k…but I did need a seemingly unattainable 1k just to be included in the conversation. No joy! In those days, George McGovern was running for President on a platform that included a $1,000 minimum annual income for all Americans. No need to ask what I was doing on election day! Like Jacob in the Old Testament, I had to work - in his case for 14 years, in my case for 45 years - just to create the capital we lacked at the beginning of our careers. Did someone say ‘Wage Slaves’? Both Jacob and I (several orders of magnitude below) went on to live economically comfortable lives. But at what cost? Arguably, I worked 45 years to get to where I could have been Day One if I’d had $10,000 in my sock drawer. (Burglars take note, I will be moving my money later today.) In every economic epoch, the generation of wealth relies on the same three sources: Inspiration (innovation, imagination, ingenuity), Perspiration (labor), and Capital (money, land). Inspiration derives its economic value from its future utility, Perspiration from our present exertions, Capital from wealth created in the past, conserved, and now unlocked. In every era, all three sources necessarily contribute to the generation of wealth, but in proportions that vary depending on the means of production characteristic of the epoch. Likewise, all three sources share in the fruits of economic activity but not necessarily in proportion to their actual contributions. The relationship between contributions made and rewards received is called Political Economy . The disparity between the two is called Alienation . Examples : Much of the wealth generated in the ante-bellum American South was attributable to Labor (slavery) but that wealth was routed primarily to the holders of Capital (plantation owners). The Industrial Revolution substituted the factory (wage slavery) for the plantation. Marxists proposed to invert the distribution of rewards between capital and labor. Fatally, they failed to acknowledge the crucial role played by Inspiration and so failed to reward those contributors appropriately. Hyper-materialism turned out to be Marx’s Achilles Heal. Happily, the Industrial Revolution is behind us… along with the Enlightenment philosophy that grounded it. We are now in the third stage of the Cyber Revolution: (1) Computerization (PC and the smart phone). (2) Socialization (internet, the web, and social media). (3) Artificial Intelligence (the democratization of information and agency). The Cyber Age age puts a premium on Innovation and rewards it accordingly. Capital remains essential to meet infrastructure demands so stock market returns are healthy. The odd person out, as usual, is Labor. In a world where much of what we have traditionally thought of as work can be automated with gains in both quality and efficiency, grunt work has become the least important leg of the economic tripod. We’ve come a long way from Tara and the assembly line. We are truly in the process of turning the economic paradigm on its head. For millennia Labor has been over-exploited and under-rewarded. Now that must change! As Labor becomes less essential, and solidarity more so, compensation must exceed contribution. At least since the Middle Ages, Labor has played a disproportionately important role in wealth creation – a role that has been systematically under-rewarded. In order to sustain productivity, it was necessary to embed non-economic, quasi-economic, and meta-economic memes into our culture; for example: He (sic) who works, eats. Work earns respect; idleness…contempt. We have a moral obligation to contribute to the commonweal. Work provides an opportunity for us to express our creativity. Work ennobles the spirit. The Intellectual History of the late 19 th century can be understood as a contest between Marx and his foil, Pope Leo XIII. Interestingly, both agreed on the primacy of human labor on the spectrum of social goods. We can no longer afford such ideological illusions. Yes, ‘work’ will continue to be a necessary part of life for the foreseeable future…but not 100,000 hours of work in a lifetime. Technology allows us to leverage our efforts to generate much greater productivity in many fewer hours. The character of work will need to change; emphasis must now be on the 3 C’s: Creativity, Craft, and Care. We’ll need to find new ways to distribute societal wealth, ways that are not hog-tied to Labor. At this early stage, it would be a mistake to hyperfocus on any single solution. We are in the ‘let a thousand flowers bloom’ stage; but several ideas have already surfaced: A 30 hour work week (40 hours pay) Sabbatical years (at full salary) A minimum annual income, not tied to Labor, for all legal residents These are worth exploring. But we should also be considering a more fundamental reorientation; for example: (1) A national bank created specifically to provide no interest, low verification, micro capital investments to budding entrepreneurs, perhaps piggy-backing on the current student loan infrastructure or using blockchain to create a secure, anonymized, decentralized application and distribution network. If I can borrow public money to pay for college, why not for alternative skills training or to finance my own start-up? The main reason that people who don’t have money don’t have money is that they don’t have money. We can fix that! (2) A sovereign wealth fund that invests in bleeding edge technology and vests every legal resident with an equal share over time. This fund would supplement existing public and private retirement plans (e.g. social security, pensions) but without any tie to employment. (3) A pre-K through 12 educational system, finally liberated from the need to train children to be ‘productive’ members of the workforce, now dedicated to stimulating curiosity, promoting creativity, and empowering problem solving. I envision a blizzard of public and private school alternatives offering a variety of foci, loci, teaching styles, even languages of instruction. When it comes to curriculum, N=1. (4) A pervasive recognition that we prosper not at the expense of our neighbor (class war), but in solidarity (community). The grandfather of Western Philosophy, Anaximander Hot Link (6 th century BCE), taught that ‘actual entities’ come to be when 2 or more ‘potential entities’, freely and without expectation of reciprocation, grant each other ‘reck’ ( chreon ), i.e. ‘what’s due them’ or ‘what they need’, e.g. respect, the space to become all that they can be, agape (love), shalom (peace). They template one another and the potential becomes actual in the process. I am (self) only because ‘you’ (other) are! I am in the context of you, the ‘other’. This concept resurfaces in the New Testament, primarily in the writings of Paul and John, as koinonia (communion). The 1 st Letter of John is particularly explicit: “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have koinonia (communion, fellowship) with one another…” (1: 7) Again ‘light’ suggests reflection: if we walk together in the same light, we reflect one another, we template. In this way the early Christian church recaptured the primacy of mutuality that inspired Western philosophy prior to the Platonic catastrophe. Fast forward another 1500+ years and we rediscover the ontology of mutuality in Hasidic Judaism and later still in the 20 th century existentialism of Martin Buber. The emphasis on mutuality in the ontologies of Anaximander, Jesus, the Baal Shem Tov and Buber ran counter to the cultural norms of their day: slavery, imperialism, serfdom, laissez-faire capitalism, nationalism, and even fascism. Regardless, mutuality remained a moral imperative for those who recognized it. But ‘the times that are a-changing’ (Dylan): figuratively speaking at least, we are at ‘the dawning of the Age of Aquarius ’ ( Hair ). It is not for nothing that Pisces , the fish, is an important symbol in the New Testament. Fish represent wealth and the abundance of nature, but abundance that can often be unlocked only at the expense of backbreaking, alienated, labor. How naïve am I to suggest that we may finally be entering an era when ethics and economics harmonize! And yet… Mutuality, the key to the Good Life, indeed the key to life itself, promises to unlock prosperity for the entire planet, if only our ancient idolatries (race, class, caste, etc.) don’t get in the way. 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 Robin Hood David Cowles Apr 27, 2023 “Could it be that Robin’s Merry Men are really 'Mary' Men, devoted, like their leader, to the cult of the Blessed Virgin?” Issue #8 of Aletheia Today Magazine (ATM 4/15/23) included an article on May Day . We tracked the evolution of this celebration across eras, cultures, academic disciplines, and religious traditions. Amid these disparate expressions, May Day celebrations share one thing in common: they all recognize and reinforce a necessary connection between prosperity (natural law) on one hand and economic justice (human law) on another. Incredibly, these highly varied expressions are embodied in the story of a single man: Robin Hood! Robin is one of those rare but crucial figures who explicitly bridge history and legend. It is highly likely that the story of Robin Hood began as the story of a real life, flesh and blood individual. We just can’t say which individual. Several potential ‘Robins’ have been identified in the record, but we cannot be certain which of them, if any, was the actual ‘Hood.’ (Are they history’s version of Saddam Husein’s ‘stunt doubles’?) 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.’ He was fiercely religious, devoted to the celebration of Mass and especially to the cult of the Virgin Mary. He and Little John were joined in the forest by a gang of so-called Merry Men . He strenuously opposed both secular authority and church hierarchy. He was faithful to his version of Natural Law, summarized by his signature meme: Rob the rich to give to the poor . Based on the near unanimous testimony of the earliest source material, these aspects of Robin’s story would seem to meet the test of historical truth. Nonetheless, for our purposes, it matters not whether these things are true as ‘history,’ just as long as they are true as ‘mythology.’ So, how do these meager biographical details connect Robin Hood to May Day? The forest location is the first clue. Forests and even individual trees were divine according to the cosmology of the Celtic Druids, early practitioners of Natural Law. Robin attended Mass several times each day, all while hiding to avoid the Sherriff’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. Tradition links Robin Hood with the ‘Maypole,’ a single, vertical tree ( Yggdrasil? ) or trunk, decorated and dedicated (today at least) to the Virgin Mary. The maypole is variously understood as a symbol of fertility ( phallus ), the axis mundi , and omphalos , the umbilical cord of the universe. The maypole symbolizes the connection of heaven and earth; it represents a bridge between the transcendent and the immanent, a major May Day theme. A slightly later tradition introduces a ‘love interest’ for Robin, the beautiful Maid Marian. This apparently innocent romantic embellishment is in many ways the key to the whole story. In traditional May Day lore (e.g., 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); but Marian did not become part of the Robin Hood legend in England until the 16th century. 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 love affair with Marian is mystical rather than romantic? This also may shed light on another mystery, Robin’s Merry Men . What makes a bunch of outlaws, hiding in the forest for fear of the Sherriff, living off the land and facing almost certain 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? Then where does she fit into the May Day puzzle? Consider her signature New Testament speech ( Luke 1: 46 – 52), her Magnificat : “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.” Is this not a paradigmatic statement of the May Day spirit? Could it be that the story of Robin Hood represents the application of Mary’s eschatological vision to the realm of concrete social action? Is ‘Robin Hood’ the translation of Magnificat into Manifesto? Keep the conversation going! 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 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. 4. Aletheia Today Magazine (ATM) will be devoting its entire fall issue (released 9/1/23) to artificial intelligence (AI). What are the philosophical, theological, cultural and even spiritual implications of AI powered world? If you’d like to contribute to the AI Issue, click here . 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 God, Christians, and… Aliens David P. Bugay Feb 5, 2026 Exploring the Edges of Faith with an Inquiring Mind 1500 words, 7 minute read (This post is contributed by David Bugay, PhD, an author, professor, and ordained minister devoted to equipping people to live with purpose, integrity, and faith.) If any group is philosophically prepared to consider the possibility of non-human intelligences, it may well be Christians. At first glance, this seems counterintuitive, as discussions about aliens and extraterrestrial life are frequently presented as challenges to belief in God, implying that faith and a populated universe were mutually exclusive. However, when we look more closely at Christian theology, a surprising realization emerges: Christianity has always affirmed a reality filled with intelligences beyond humanity—long before science gave them new names. At the foundation of Christianity stands belief in God as the most extraordinary Being conceivable. God is not merely stronger or intelligent than humanity; rather, God is understood as the source of all existence itself. Christians readily acknowledge that the fullness of God’s nature lies beyond human comprehension. Scripture does not attempt to tame this mystery; instead, it invites believers to live within it. That invitation quietly prepares Christians for a universe far stranger, richer, and more populated than everyday experience suggests. A Reality Beyond the Human First, Christianity insists that God is not human. While Christians believe God entered history in the person of Jesus Christ, this act was not because God was limited or confined, but rather because humanity required redemption and reconciliation. The incarnation represents divine accommodation with God stepping into human experience so that we might come to know Him. Jesus taught that “God is Spirit” and repeatedly emphasized that God’s ways and thoughts transcend human thoughts and experiences. From the very beginning, Christian faith affirms that reality extends far beyond what can be seen, touched, or measured. Second, God’s capacities defy all human limitations. Christians believe that God hears the prayers, fears, gratitude, and cries of billions of individuals while simultaneously sustaining the cosmos each moment. This form of intelligence is not bound by space, time, or physical constraint. It is a vision of consciousness operating on a scale that dwarfs anything in human experience. Non-Human Intelligences in Scripture Scriptures describe encounters between humanity and non-human intelligences. One of the most debated passages is found in Genesis 6, where Scripture refers to mysterious beings called the “sons of God.” These beings interact with humanity, and their influence is portrayed as deeply corrupting, contributing to violence and moral collapse. The text speaks of “giants” and “men of renown,” figures who loom large in both physical presence and cultural memory. Historically, many scholars have believed these beings to be fallen angels—spiritual intelligences in rebellion against God, who seek to distort creation and undermine God’s redemptive purposes. Others interpret the passage symbolically or theologically. Regardless of interpretation, the text undeniably presents the idea that powerful, non-human beings once interacted directly with human civilization, with catastrophic consequences. Within this framework, humanity alone stands under the promise of redemption first articulated in Genesis 3:15. Here we see the promise of our future redeemer crushing Satan’s head and Satan bruising His heel. These other worldly beings are not described as its recipients. The narrative suggests a violation of God’s created order, resulting in beings that do not reflect His design or intention. The flood, as judgment, marks a decisive reset—an act of preservation as much as punishment. What It Means to Be Human Christian anthropology further broadens this already expansive worldview. According to Scripture, humans are created in the image of God—not physically, but in nature. Humans are not merely biological organisms. They are embodied souls, possessing mind, will, and emotions. Within the soul resides the human spirit—the dimension of being capable of communion with God. Christians believe that at death, the body ceases, but the soul and spirit continue in the presence of God. This transition occurs beyond human observation and scientific instrumentation, yet it is affirmed as real, conscious, and meaningful. In other words, Christians believe in personal existence beyond the physical body and that challenges strictly material explanations of reality. A Populated Invisible World Christian theology affirms the ongoing presence of invisible intelligences in the contemporary world. Angels are described as non-human beings created to fulfill God’s purposes including guiding, protecting, or intervening in human affairs. Conversely, Scripture speaks of malevolent spiritual entities, commonly referred to as demons, whose objectives include deception, corruption, and destruction when permitted. These beings are not visible to the human eye, yet Christians maintain that their influence is both real and consequential. Even more striking, Christians believe that the boundary between the living and the dead is not absolute. Scripture describes believers as being “surrounded by a cloud of witnesses,” referring to those who have gone before them in faith. Some Christian traditions describe this as the Communion of Saints. While often expressed in general or poetic terms, this belief affirms a conscious, populated reality beyond the physical world. A Vast and Abundant Creation This theological perspective exists with Christianity’s awe-filled vision of creation itself. The universe contains trillions of stars organized in galaxies stretching beyond human comprehension. Christians interpret this vastness as the visible handiwork of God—a testimony to divine creativity and abundance. The night sky is not seen as empty space; it is viewed as a canvas proclaiming generosity rather than scarcity. This leads to an uncomfortable but unavoidable question: Is it reasonable to believe that God created all of this solely for one small planet and one species? Humanity has a well-documented tendency toward self-centeredness, instinctively placing itself at the center of existence. Yet the immense scale of the universe challenges this assumption. “If God created such immense cosmic real estate, vastness itself may be part of His signature.” Faith and the Possibility of Extraterrestrial Life Christians already affirm the existence of intelligent, non-human beings. God, Angels, and demons are all believed to be not human entities. Even humans, according to Christian doctrine, are not solely material; they are supernatural, destined for continued existence beyond physical death. If this is already accepted, then the possibility of additional created intelligences elsewhere in the universe should not be surprising. Contemporary science often speaks of other dimensions or planes of existence when addressing realities beyond direct observation. Christianity has spoken of this concept for millennia. The deeper challenge may not concern the existence of extraterrestrial life, but rather our willingness to accept that reality is far larger and more populated than our senses allow us to perceive. Surveys indicate that a strong majority of scientists believe life exists elsewhere in the universe, and an increasing number of Christians share this belief. Many prominent Christian leaders and institutions have publicly stated that extraterrestrial life would not contradict Christian faith. The relative silence on the topic within churches may reflect discomfort or simple habit rather than theological impossibility. Questions at the Edge of Faith If humanity were ever to encounter intelligent life beyond Earth, profound theological questions would follow. First, it would be necessary to consider whether such beings are “human” in the theological sense—not in physical form, but in being made in the image of God and possessing body, soul, and spirit. Or might they resemble the disruptive entities described in Genesis 6, seeking to circumvent God’s purposes? If so, how would the people of Earth know without interaction with these beings? Would we have to explore their perspectives of the universe itself and of God? Second, how would God relate to such beings? Are we the only ones where God Himself visited through His Son or, would God have multiple incarnations of Himself with other forms of life? Is Earth the only place where God in the flesh has made an appearance? If so, there is a far broader mission in sharing Christ with others, maybe beyond the bounds of this world. Third, would such beings need to hear the Gospel from humans, or would God have already revealed Himself to them in ways appropriate to their nature? Might they possess their own testimony of God’s Word, suited to their unique world and history? Nothing to Fear Ultimately, the central issue is trust. If God is with us, there is little reason for fear. Christian faith has always demanded humility before mystery, courage in the face of the unknown, and hope beyond sight. Should the universe contain intelligences which challenge all human imagination, then it would also provide opportunities to witness anew the depth, creativity, and sovereignty of God. In that sense, Christians may be well prepared to encounter the unknown—whether in this life or beyond. They already worship a God who exceeds every conceivable boundary. 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.