< Back The Concept of the Circle David Cowles Aug 31, 2025 “Imagine what it would be like to live in a world where circles actually existed! Perhaps that’s what Hell is.” Where would we be without circles? Well, I guess we’d have to make do with polygons. But that’s ok since a circle is simply a polygon (an n-gon) with n = ∞. So plane (Euclidean) geometry, from the lowly triangle (n = 3), the minimal building block of the material world (Plato, et al.), to the infinitely sided circle (n = ∞), is consistent. And solid geometry is just the projection of 2-dimensional plane geometry (d = 2) into 3-dimensional space (d = 3)…and so on (d’ = d+1). So what do all n-gons have in common? They divide a plane into two distinct regions: inside and outside. What is in is in and what is out is out and never the twain shall meet. Well, that’s not exactly true. Every ‘normal’ n-gon (including a circle) has an (n-1) dimensional border region consisting of points that can be considered both in and out (or neither in nor out), but those points are fixed. A point inside a circle is inside forever; a point outside is forever out. Imagine what it would be like to live in a world where circles (n-gons) actually existed! Perhaps that’s what Hell is. Since events often occur in the context of broader events (e.g. many battles in one war), our universe would consist of a nearly infinite progression of Russian dolls. Every ‘inside world’ would be a universe unto itself, entirely sealed off from, and unaware of, whatever might be outside it. On the other hand, an outside world could potentially experience the existence of an inside world, but only as an interruption, as a hole in the whole. But would a point in the outside world really experience the existence of an inside world or would the hole be imperceptible…like the ‘blind spot’ in humans’ visual field? Or the experience of a patient under general anesthesia who awakes unaware of any ‘hole in time’? Would we imagine a continuous plane? Does Swiss cheese even know it’s full of holes? If we lived in a world where circles (n-gons) were real, every definable entity (every object, event, experience, etc.) would be the functional equivalent of a ‘super black hole’: – a black hole because its event horizon, the circle, is a point of no return; what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Sin City is not part of the USA any more than Vatican City is part of Rome. – a super black hole because the circle would function as a ‘double event horizon’. In the case of a black hole, the outside world is unaware of anything inside the event horizon…but the inside world is still aware of whatever’s outside it. In the case of an n-gon, however, neither the inside nor the outside is aware of the other (except perhaps as a hole). Who’s afraid of a big black hole? Literally, everyone! And if you’re not, you darn well should be. Your body is ripped apart (spaghettification) and you are forever unable to communicate anything to anyone in the outside world. Hmm, sounds a lot like death! Now imagine a ‘super black hole’. You cannot communicate with anyone and no one can communicate with you. The outside world behaves like its own black hole from the perspective of the inside world. The universe would then consist of two black holes with a single, shared horizon which functions as a double-sided mirror; it precludes cross border communication, it precludes cross border awareness. Everything is reflected back on itself. Yup, this is Hell alright! Or call it Narcissus’ Paradise ? To see nothing but one’s own reflection for all eternity…I’ll pass on that, thank you very much. Alleluia, Alleluia, thanks be to God, we do not live in a world with n-gons. Ok, that sounds crazy: I can see 100 polygonal objects from my desk chair. Of course, n-gons exist in our world! Except they don’t. We’ve developed a massive series of hacks that allow us to model the world using n-gons while escaping the implications of total isolation. These ‘hacks’ allow us to imagine that we live in a polygonal world when in fact we do not. Take the biological cell for example; it’s the basic structure of all life on Earth. Every cell is ‘separated’ from its environment by a cell wall resulting in a closed geometric shape. But cell walls are not ‘walls’ at all; they are membranes that allow molecules inside the cell to migrate out and molecules outside the cell to migrate in. Ok, but is this cross border traffic anything more than a trickle? Not unless you call a billion molecules per second a ‘trickle’! If the walls of cells were not permeable, no cell could live more than a few seconds and all life on Earth would vanish in a matter of minutes. Who needs nuclear annihilation when sclerotic cell walls could do the trick so much quicker? But that’s organic chemistry. Flunked that class anyway. What about the inorganic world? Surely functional n-gons exist there, right? Sorry, no! First, “things fall apart.” (Yeats) Even inorganic matter ‘decays’. The polygonal books on my shelves are deteriorating, albeit imperceptibly; they are obeying the Second Law of Thermodynamics (entropy). Second, inorganic matter consists of subatomic particles but these so-called ‘particles’ have no hardwired location. They enclose nothing and they are enclosed by nothing. In fact, it is impossible to determine the precise location of any particle at any moment. Every particle is a field and every field is cosmo-spanning. Position is a function of probability, not locale. Well, black holes then. Surely they have impermeable event horizons! I mean, we just said so (above). But we were ‘speaking loosely’, as my grandfather used to say. In fact, event horizons are never impermeable. Stephen Hawking proved that all black holes radiate mass (Hawking Radiation)! Does this mean that we must give up the dream of a geometry that approximates real world phenomena? By no means! We just need a different geometry, one that eliminates the bifurcation of the world into insides and outs. But how do we accomplish that? Step #1 : Add a Mobius Strip to our model. Any space that includes a Mobius Strip is ‘non-orientable’: (1) surfaces are ‘one sided’, (2) objects have no inside or out. Step #2 : Remove the Archimedean Property from our model. This property limits us to the set of Real + Complex Numbers. It specifically excludes infinite and infinitesimal quantities. Without the Archimedean Property, regions cannot overlap. C can be embedded in B (or vice versa)…or B and C can be disjoint. B and C can, in turn be embedded in A. But when B and C are disjoint subsets of A, a common metric across all three regions is no longer required for coherence. Each space is measured by its own metric. The size of a region measured internally need not be the same as the size of the same region measured from an external vantage point. In the long running BBC series, Doctor Who , there is a certain phone box/booth, the TARDIS, whose interior is vastly larger than its exterior. So, the volume of B (and/or C) and/or the volume of (B + C) can be greater than the volume of A...even though B and C are subsets of A. There is a region of A called X that is not part of B or C; in some cases the volume of X can actually be negative. If (B+C) > A, then X < 0. The Archimedean world imagined in our traditional geometries is a mere shadow, or surface, of the non-Archimedean world that underlies it. Think of the shadows in Plato’s cave ( The Republic ). Or think of the ‘skin’ that sometimes forms atop a liquid. If B and C are disjoint subsets of A, then B and C can impact A and A in turn can impact B and C. Influences flow freely and reciprocally between parts and wholes, but never directly between parts. B and C retain their autonomy at all times, but that does not mean they are locked in separate supermax cells. Step #3 : Remove the Axiom of Foundation (FA) from set theory. FA prohibits any set from being a member of itself. Step #1 eliminates the concept of inside/out. Step #2 allows entities to be embedded and to influence one another without compromising their independence and integrity and without lapsing into solipsism. Step #3 makes it possible for us to acknowledge that every set is a subset of itself. Combining these tweaks allows us to build a model that better resonates with the phenomenal world. It enables us to account for the permeability of the cell wall, the entropic decay of ordered systems, and the existence of cosmos-spanning fields (e.g. EM and Gravity). It accounts for Karma – “What goes around comes around”, for the Great Commandment – “Love your neighbor as yourself’, and for Newton’s Third Law of Motion - “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.” Language is Logic’s fraternal twin. Orientable, Archimedean Geometry and the Axiom of Foundation are well suited to a language of active/passive verbs and subject/object nouns…like ours, for example. Of course, this language is just as unrepresentative of reality as its logical counterpart. But is it even possible for a language to model a non-orientable, non-Archimedean universe with no Axiom of Foundation? You bet it is! In fact, Indo-European used to be just such a language. Our active/passive voices are corruptions of a single reciprocating voice, the Middle Voice . The Middle Voice redefines ‘subjects and objects’. Now every subject is its own object (reflection) and every object its own subject (recursion). Bonus : Middle Voice allows us to talk about ‘what we talk about when we talk about love ’. (Raymond Carver) And as we all know, Love is what makes the world go round. ( Carnival ) No one knows better than lovers the gulf that separates a loved one’s objective exterior from their subjective interior. “Lord, we don’t need another (Archimedean) mountain…what the world needs now is love sweet love.” (Jackie DeShannon) But to realize that vision, we first need to overcome our addiction to mythical enclosed spaces, like circles. *** William Blake’s The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun (1805–10) stages a vision of beings locked inside their own enclosing arcs of wings and shadow, a painterly hell of circles within circles that mirrors the isolation a true n-gon world would impose. 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< Back Pronouns David Cowles Jul 23, 2021 Today, we are all about our pronouns. This incidental part of speech has suddenly replaced the noun and the verb as the focus of popular, and linguistic, attention. Growing up in the ‘60s, we were accustomed to asking one another, “What is your sign?” Now, 55 years later, “What are your pronouns?” has become the ice breaker of choice. Even some business colleagues of mine have embedded “my pronouns…” into their electronic email signatures. Today, we are all about our pronouns. This incidental part of speech has suddenly replaced the noun and the verb as the focus of popular, and linguistic, attention. Growing up in the ‘60s, we were accustomed to asking one another, “What is your sign?” Now, 55 years later, “What are your pronouns?” has become the ice breaker of choice. Even some business colleagues of mine have embedded “my pronouns…” into their electronic email signatures. 100 years ago, someone else was focused on pronouns. Jewish theologian and existentialist philosopher, Martin Buber. His seminal work, “I and Thou”, understood the world as a network of relationships. He divided those relationships into two categories: ”I – it” and “I – Thou”. I – it relationships are all about the I, the subject. The it is pure object. We usually have an I – it relationship with the canned goods on a supermarket shelf. Unfortunately, we often extend that relationship to the human beings who work in that supermarket. Imperialism and colonialism are paradigms of I – it relationships. Derek Chauvin had an I – it relationship with George Floyd. An I – Thou relationship, on the other hand, eliminates the subject-object duality. It posits the absolute equality of the I and the Thou. In fact, it requires that we see ourselves in the other and that the other sees him/herself in us. Buber made a great contribution to Western philosophy, but I would go much further. “My pronouns” are it and Thou…not I or me. That’s because when I enter into an I – it relationship, it immediately becomes an it – it relationship. The object of the relationship (e.g. canned goods) transforms the subject of the relationship (me) into an object, into an ‘it’. Conversely, when I enter into an I – Thou relationship, I am immediately transformed into a Thou. 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 Barry Goldwater David Cowles Jun 11, 2024 “When people show you who they are, believe them.” – Maya Angelou If you’re not as old as me – how could you be? – you might not remember Barry Goldwater, Senator from Arizona (1953 – 1987) and Republican nominee for President (1964). You may be forgiven. While we are used to presidential elections being decided by margins of less than 3%, Goldwater managed to lose by 23%. After a bruising but successful primary campaign, Senator Goldwater walked into San Franciso’s ‘Cow Palace’, buoyant with optimism, preparing to proclaim a new era in American history. Goldwater brought the convention to its feet with a message that will live forever in the annals of political rhetoric: Extremism in the defense of Liberty is no vice… Moderation is the pursuit of Justice is no virtue! The nation’s founding documents celebrate as divinely conferred the rights to ‘Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness’. Nowhere in these documents will you find reference to any qualifiers, such as: … But don’t kill the goose that lays the golden eggs (Don’t mess with success…or Texas), And never, ever tip over a money changer’s applecart. Yet, since the Gilded Age, the Populist critique of US culture has focused on the ‘extra-constitutional’ role of the State in the preservation of the socio-economic ‘status quo’ ( aka ‘inequality’). It’s ok to nibble around the edges with various schemes of social reform, designed to shore up support for the system ; but it’s ok only to the extent that such lofty ideals don’t compromise society’s actual guiding principles, as personified by money changing geese. Somehow, Goldwater missed the memo! Taking a page straight out of Jesus’ revolutionary handbook ( aka the Gospels), he strode into San Francisco’s Cow Palace and proclaimed a Jubilee (i.e. a redistribution of economic power)…this time in America. I said earlier that Goldwater’s electrifying speech brought the Republican Convention to its feet. I neglected to mention that about 1/3rd of these feet were headed for the exits. As soon as the Senator delivered his iconic lines, Nelson Rockefeller, then Governor of New York and subsequently US VP, led a delegate walk-out. From that point on, Goldwater’s candidacy was effectively doomed. We didn’t realize it at the time, but he would never fully recover from Rockefeller’s bovine theatrics . But what’s interesting here is not so much the vagaries of U.S. presidential politics, but the unstated, yet clearly implied, ideology of the peripatetic dissenters: Liberty should be defended… And Justice should be pursued, Both in moderation. “When people show you who they are, believe them” – Maya Angelou. By their actions, Rocky’s Roadsters (and the many others who doomed the Goldwater campaign) betrayed what was most literally a pact with the devil. How so? Liberty and Justice, along with Beauty and Truth, are Divine Values. They constitute God’s essence. They’re what it’s like to be God. While these values are often compromised in our everyday lives, such compromises can never be ‘justified’. Call them what they are: ‘accommodations at the expense of Liberty and Justice’. 1964 saw the public proclamation of a new, apparently successful, social ethic. Liberty and Justice were ‘reclassified’ as preferred states of affairs rather than absolute imperatives. They are now just two factors, among many others, to be considered in the formation of public policy. ‘Liberty & Justice’ (Goldwater ’64) must never be allowed to replace ‘Peace & Prosperity’ (Eisenhower ‘52). Is this ringing any bells? Does it call to mind any other times in the life of this nation when absolute Liberty was considered too extreme and true Justice could only be pursued incrementally ? Abolitionism in the 1850’s? Civil Rights in the 1960’s? Today, we are so obsessed with the vilification of all things ante-bellum that we miss some key points. Pro-slavery politicians weren’t against either Liberty or Justice per se – far from it! They simply believed that these Values needed to be ‘understood in context’ and ‘realized gradually’. True, we cannot reasonably expect total Liberty or perfect Justice prior to the Eschaton. However, that does not relieve us of our responsibility to advocate and defend these values without compromise. There is no Scriptural or Constitutional sanction for any waiver . Torah does not say, “You shall not kill unless it is convenient.” So what’s the upshot of our little morality play: Goldwater’s campaign crashed and burned, as noted, and the country descended into a second civil war. But Phoenix (Arizona, get it?) rose from the ashes. In 1980 Ronald Reagan, who had played an important role in Goldwater’s 1964 campaign, was elected president – in a landslide! In fact, 1980 nearly flipped ‘64 on its head. And whatever you may think of President Reagan, you will agree that the country has not been the same since. 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.

< Back The World According to Whitehead David Cowles Jan 5, 2023 “In the technical jargon of academia, the mashed potatoes are lumpier than we would have expected.” Since the beginning of speculative thought, human beings have been struggling to create a map of reality. Happily, we are not concerned here with Mercator or Polar Projections. We draw this map using the Ontological Projection . 20th century British philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead (c. 1930), was perhaps the last Western philosopher to attempt such a map. How come? As usual, the London media tells the story two different ways: Whitehead Nailed it! Philosophers Give-up! According to Whitehead, the world consists exclusively of actual entities (aka events ). Outside actual entities, there is nothing; but actual entities themselves have a rather complex internal structure. Each actual entity consists of (1) the actual world it inherits, (2) the eternal objects that qualify ( characterize or define ) it, (3) the subjective aim that motivates it, (4) the propositions (‘proposed superjects’) that translate motivation into praxis , (5) the subjective forms under which material from the actual world is prehended and integrated into the emerging entity, (6) the satisfaction that the actual entity ultimately enjoys, (7) the obverse side of that satisfaction, the superject , which the actual entity projects into the world and which will be (8) that entity’s objective immorality , i.e., its ultimate contribution to the actual worlds of other entities. Before (logically) there can be an actual world ( nexus ), there must be a multiplicity of unrelated superjects - pure disjunction ( kaos ). Each novel actual entity converts the multiplicity into ‘an ordered set’, its own unique actual world ( nexus ), assembled specifically to further the entity’s subjective aim. An actual entity dismisses those superjects it deems irrelevant to its project. The remaining superjects are either negated because they are at cross purposes with the subjective aim, or appropriated because they support the entity’s drive to satisfaction. Each such prehension (positive or negative) contributes subjective form to the actual entity: How do I love thee (or not)? Let me count, both ways! Each actual entity synthesizes the multiplicity into a nexus that is that entity’s unique actual world : one world – one entity, one entity – one world. Figure is not the negation of ground; the relationship is much more dynamic. Figure modifies ground and ground modifies figure, both in support of the subjective aim . This is an example of the famous ‘non-linearity of being’ that philosophers and scientists from Plato to Einstein have noticed: in the technical jargon of academia, the mashed potatoes are lumpier than we would have expected. The process of concrescence, by which an actual entity comes to be, is powered both by the entity’s positive prehensions (‘attraction’) and by the entity’s negative prehensions (‘repulsion’). Newton’s ‘equal and opposite reaction’ is Whitehead’s ‘equal and similar reaction’. Concrescence is driven by the entity’s subjective aim, the ‘idea’ (usually not conscious) that it has of itself, i.e., its idea of how it will contribute a novel synthesis (its objective immortality ) to the actual worlds of other actual entities. In the language of Viktor Frankl, it is purpose, the anticipation of meaning, that motivates every concrescence. But what about ‘time’? The multiplicity consists of superjects, settled matters of fact; they are timeless - the objective immortality of other entities. Likewise, the eternal objects (the values) that guide the entity’s concrescence are timeless. An actual entity inherits its actual world ‘from time’ and it projects its superject ‘into time’, but the process of concrescence itself happens ‘outside of time’. The selection of eternal objects is guided by ‘propositions’, images (again, usually not conscious) that an actual entity has of itself. A proposition pairs a nexus of superjects (the ‘subject’ of the proposition) from the entity’s actual world with a nexus of eternal objects (the ‘predicate’ of the proposition). If an actual entity were a movie, the world would be the hulks and husks that still haunt the long-abandoned set. They constitute part of the movie’s objective immortality; they will rest inert on set until they are recycled for the production of another film. Each actual entity is a function of order ( logos ) but that order is architectonic, not temporal. As with quantum processes in particle physics and the Feynman Diagrams that illustrate them), an actual entity’s process of concrescence has a duration equal to zero, it occupies no territory on the timeline. Contemporary Italian philosopher, Emanuele Severino, wrote: “Everything is eternal, according to its own distinctive mode of existence.” 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 Comfort for Clumsy Believers: What the Disbelief of the Disciples Means for Us Deidre Braley "There is evidence that, in the backs of the disciples' minds, there was always the glimmer of the same question that shimmers on my frontal lobe today: 'But what if we’ve gotten it all wrong about him?'" Every quarter or so, I have an existential crisis. It’s not something I typically bring up in conversation; it turns out that questions like, “What if everything we’ve believed about God and the universe is wrong?” tend to dampen the overall mood of dinner parties and coffee dates. Plus, it just isn’t polite Christian talk. Nobody wants to hear the late night doubts of a so-called believer—least of all me . These questions are unwelcome; these doubts, disturbing. But I’ve found comfort as of late in the recountings of Jesus’ death and resurrection in the Gospels. For the first time in all of my rereadings, it’s striking me that the disciples really didn’t understand the entirety of what Jesus was up to and who he was. There is evidence that, in the backs of their minds, there was always the glimmer of the same question that shimmers on my frontal lobe today: “But what if we’ve gotten it all wrong about him?” How have I missed it until now? How did I not see that these men—just like me—grappled with the pesky whispers that poked and prodded at the foundations of their faith, their security, their eternal futures ? I’ve always assumed that since they knew Jesus personally, it was a given that they also understood he was really the Son of God. That every moment they were in his presence, his essence of saving grace would be so palpable that they’d know for sure who they were dealing with. That there would be no way they could touch and see, eat and banter with Jesus himself and still hold on to any shred of disbelief that mumbled, “Maybe he’s just a really good guy. A stellar prophet. Ten out of ten, as far as leaders go.” The Disbelief of the Disciples But looking around at Jesus’ closest handful of friends in the days surrounding his death and resurrection, we see a group of people thrown into the confusing waters of uncertainty, fear, and doubt. Judas acts a traitor. Simon Peter denies knowing him. The disciples in the upper room refuse to believe Mary when she tells them Jesus has left the tomb. The men on the road to Emmaus can’t even see past their discouraged hopes to realize that Jesus himself is walking alongside them. In short, even though they knew Jesus and he’d told them exactly what would happen, they still couldn’t seem to bring themselves to the point of certain, unwavering belief. Doubt is often seen as a character flaw. Society loves the certain. But maybe certainty is such a hot commodity because it’s what we all actually lack, addled by our own human condition. The disciple, too, were humans, and I see now that they each struggled with varying degrees of disbelief. What is significant to each of their stories does not turn out to be their level of dubiety, though—it is the way they end up responding to their natural predisposition to doubt. Judas, for example, is consumed by his disbelief. I have always wondered how he possibly could have betrayed Jesus, knowing he was the Son of God. Because honestly, how did he think that was going to work out for him? But now it strikes me: he didn’t know it, not really. If he had, he never would have traded him for thirty pieces of silver. He would have understood he was making a preposterous exchange (a bagful of coins for the Savior of the world) and that his treachery would have eternal consequences. My theory is that it wasn’t about the silver at all; it was about the fact that he heard the crowds all around him saying, “He is not who he says he is,” and allowed them to feed the doubts that niggled there in his soul. You can almost hear the snake in the Garden whispering the same lie in Judas’ ear that worked with Adam and Eve: “Did he really say that?” Judas justified his betrayal by shaking his head alongside the others, letting the disquiet of his disbelief overwhelm even the intimacy, miracles, and teachings he’d experienced in his close walk with Jesus. It isn’t only Judas, though, who questions the truth of Jesus’ words. Before it happened and on multiple occasions, Jesus himself had explicitly told his disciples that he would be mocked and shamed, beaten and killed, and then would rise on the third day. But it is written, “...they understood none of these things. This saying was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what was said” (Luke 18:34). This proves to be true, for on the day of Jesus’ resurrection, when Mary and the other women burst in to tell the eleven that the tomb was empty, Luke says, “these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them” (24:11). And when a disguised Jesus meets the two men on the way to Emmaus and asks why they look so sad, they respond, “...we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel” (Luke 24:21). The unspoken implication is obvious here: But he wasn’t. It is clear that belief and doubt had done battle in their souls; their belief had told them that Jesus was the Messiah, while their doubt had told them he was just a man. In his death, disbelief had won, and the men succumbed to despair. A Closer Look at Simon Peter Simon Peter was not immune to doubt either. He walked on the water to Jesus, yes, but he also began to sink the moment he saw the wind and the waves. And later, his three denials of Jesus are evidence that he did not have enough faith to stand against the enormous fear mounting within and around him. And yet, throughout the Gospels we see Simon Peter among the first to surrender to belief. At Caesarea Philippi, Simon Peter confesses that Jesus is “the Christ, “the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). On the mountain with Jesus during the Transfiguration, he is the one to (albeit awkwardly) embrace the seemingly-impossible fact that Moses and Elijah are there too; he offers to set up a tent for each of them (Matthew 17:4). When the other disciples balk at the notion that Jesus has risen, Simon Peter dashes from the room and arrives in breathless wonder to see the folded linens for himself (Matthew 24:12). And when the resurrected Jesus later appears on the beach where they are fishing, he is the first to recognize him as Lord and jump in the water in his haste to get to him (John 21:7). Simon Peter is not set apart in these stories because of his absence of disbelief or his stunning quality of character. In fact, he seems like a bit of a hothead—rash and impulsive and imperfect as any of us. But now I see that his superpower is his utter willingness to surrender to belief and, like a clumsy jump off the high-dive, to submerge himself in holy mystery. It’s not always pretty and he doesn’t always stick the landing, but he does keep jumping. Comfort for Clumsy Believers I’m comforted to know that those who walked with Jesus—who heard things of heaven directly from the Master’s mouth—also struggled against insidious doubt. I’m even more comforted by Jesus’ response to their clumsy attempts at belief. On the road to Emmaus, he admonishes the two disheartened men, saying, “‘O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?’” (Luke 24: 26). But he doesn’t leave them there; he goes on to interpret “to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (v.27)—starting all the way back at the beginning as if to gently lead their analytical minds into the territory of total belief. And to Thomas who says, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe” (John 20:24), Jesus appears and lets him do just that, as if to say, “I know this handicap you’re working with—humanity—is a tricky, finicky thing. Come, let me lead you to belief.” He helps his friends believe with their minds and their physical beings, appealing to wherever the incredulity has laid siege. He encourages them to touch, think, and feel. He helps them do whatever it takes to clear the shared hurdle of humanity: a quizzical nature. I have to believe that if there was grace for them, there is also grace for us clumsy believers—the ones who are troubled with unwelcomed doubts as we lay awake at night, and who sometimes tremble under the weight of our own existential crises. But let’s also take inspiration from Simon Peter. He was sifted by the devil and, like so many of us, heard the echoes of the original lie reverberating in his eardrums. But instead of letting disbelief win out, he still jumps out of the boat. He still lunges toward his Lord. When the enemy and all the world cry, “Is he really who he says he is?” Simon Peter waves them off as if to say, “Yes—he is I AM. And I am here for it.” Jesus responds to his friends’ varied degrees of doubt with tenderness and grace. He is not surprised by their disbelief, nor does he turn away because of it. But as Thomas puts his fingers into his wounds, Jesus does say, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe” (John 20:29). Remember—it is not our disbelief that defines our faith, but rather how we choose to respond to it. So the next time we find ourselves in the turbulent waters of late-night doubting, we needn’t give in to despair, nor chastise ourselves for having questions. Instead, we can consider ourselves normal, and then remember that our response is what drives the narrative. Judas had doubts and betrayed the Savior of the world. Simon Peter had doubts, and Jesus gave him the keys to the kingdom. The difference? Judas leaned into disbelief of what he couldn’t see, while Simon Peter leapt into the mystery. Let us be followers who, addled with doubt though we are, choose to keep jumping from the boat, to keep lunging toward our Lord, and to keep on believing what we can’t see. It is our willingness to surrender to belief that will ultimately define our faith. Deidre Braley is a freelance writer and editor. She lives in Maine with her husband and two children, and most days can be found savoring an overly cheesy bagel or drinking a second cup of coffee while working on her weekly newsletter, The Second Cup . She is a strong believer in the power of poetry, picking roadside flowers, and blowing past small talk at all costs. Follow her on Instagram @deidresecondcup or on Facebook — she loves meeting new friends. Return to our Holy Days Table of Contents Previous Next

“Chaos is not an absence of causality, as is generally supposed, but an excess.” < Back Causes of the Civil War David Cowles Dec 1, 2024 “Chaos is not an absence of causality, as is generally supposed, but an excess.” When I was a bit younger, it was almost guaranteed that any major high school exam covering American History would include the question, “What were the causes of the American Civil War?” In those days, if you wrote “Slavery” across your exam paper, handed it in and headed for the beach, you probably weren’t going to get college credit for your efforts. Today…? But the question is a good one for several reasons: It concerns something we still care about. It allows for weighted consideration of economy, technology, ideology and culture. It encourages the precocious student to reflect on the nature of causality per se , especially in the context of historical process. The American Civil War did not spring unheralded from the head of Medusa but neither did it evolve with billiard-like efficiency. Two hours into exam time, you think, “Everything caused the Civil War…and nothing caused it,” and now you’re on to something! Now you’ve earned that college credit. Marxists call this ‘over-determination’ – events are the intersections of multiple causal chains. Like peaks and troughs on the screen of an oscillator, some waves reinforce, others dampen, and some cancel. You are face to face with the ‘3 Body Problem’, dumbed down for us social science majors. On one hand, history is not magic. It does not rely on spells and incantations; nor does wishing make things so, not even “when you wish upon a star,” Pinocchio. On the other hand, spells and incantations need to be studied as phenomena in their own right and the wishes of various population groups can be a powerful historical force. Yup, it’s the 3 Body Problem, for sure. Everything interacts with everything else. We understand each interaction on its own, but we are flummoxed by the search for an overarching algorithm. For all our erudition, we are ultimately forced to conclude that anything could have happened…and been explained in terms of everything else. This leads to an odd cognitive state in which we can predict nothing…but explain everything. The eyes in back of my head see 20/20; my other eyes…not so much. The 2024 US Presidential election is a case in point. Long expected to be the ‘closest race ever’, it wasn’t close at all. But no one knew that 5 days before. Sure, some may have guessed right, but guessing is not knowing…even if you think it is. It’s impossible to know the future; that’s what makes it future . So no one knew ! No one, that is, except a certain woman in Iowa. She had been polling Iowans for decades and had a reputation for uncanny accuracy. Iowa was not even one of the so-called Battleground States . It was Trump +8% in 2016 and in 2020 and in most 2024 polls. Suddenly, on the weekend before the election, pollster Ann Selzer announced in the Des Moines Register that she had detected a major groundswell of support for Harris: Iowa was now Harris +3%. If that had happened in Iowa, TV networks would have been able to call the nationwide race for Harris by 10PM EST. Suffice to say, they didn’t! The Harris-Walz Wave turned out to be a trough. Iowa ended up Trump +13%. Selzer was off by a whopping 16%. How’s that for a margin of error? The first polls close in some states at 7PM EST. We were on the edge of our seats. If the Selzer Effect were real, it would be evident in the first returns from Indiana and Kentucky. Could one person be so right and everyone else so wrong? 7:05, 7:20, 7:35 – nothing unexpected in the data! No sign of any last minute migration from Trump to Harris…because there wasn’t one. But if there had been such a shift, would that have meant that Selzer was ‘right’? Not necessarily. A broken clock displays the exact time…twice a day; but referring to those moments, we don’t say ‘the clock was right’. A football co-captain calls, “Tails” and it is tails! But we don’t say that the captain ‘got it right’. Being right is more than just being correct. Right is anchored in reason. Why did you think what you thought and was that reasoning valid and/or supported by the relevant evidence? Back to Iowa. Had it gone Harris’ way, folks would have said that Selzer was right. But note, it’s the same Selzer. The outcome , unrelated to her work, just happened to be different. Now libraries are filling up with articles explaining Trump’s triumph; but no one was prepared to publish such a column on the Monday before. The fact is, we are always flying blind into an unknown and undetermined future; looking back, ‘it was always obvious all along’. But to whom? God? Or not even? Science has a name for this state of affairs; it’s called Kaos (chaos)! Chaos is not an absence of causality, as is generally supposed, but an excess . Our Civil War exam taker figured it out: if everything causes everything else then nothing causes anything! Anything overdetermined is everything undetermined, and by the exact same amount. Yet events do not seem entirely random either. They relate to one another but not in mutually reinforcing causal waves. But what’s the alternative? Short of pure mysticism, how else can we account for the regularities of experience? Every event is an expression of the entire Universe. It is a synthesis of what has been and what is coming to be. The event itself samples and weights everything that is and projects it forward into what is to become. Every event is a dissipative membrane, templating settled matters of fact with pure possibility. Events live in the space between what has passed away and what may yet come to pass. The event itself includes no past or future but the event swims in a sea of time. ‘Event’ then is what we mean by ‘Present’. As such every event must begin by executing judgment on the world it inherits (the past). To act as judge, our event must include elements of a different ontological order. We can only judge the contingent from the perspective of the necessary, the actual from the perspective of the ideal. This realization was Plato’s greatest gift to Western philosophy, and it is what connects Plato to Nietzsche , strange bedfellows indeed. A box of Cracker Jacks cannot execute judgment on a Beethoven symphony. Judgment must be from the transcendent perspective of eternal and universal values (e.g. Beauty, Truth, Justice). Only ‘what is not of this world’ can judge ‘what is of this world’. Jesus nailed it during his brief interview with Pontius Pilate: “My kingdom is not of this world…the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the Truth.” (John 18: 36 – 37) Scripture doesn’t give Pilate his due. He was no slouch. He answered Jesus in his best Oxbridge accent: “What is truth?” thereby earning himself posthumous degrees emeritus from 3 Ivy League colleges. The creative advance is always fueled by the desire for Good. “I set before you life and death; therefore choose life.” (Deut. 30: 19) However, we live in an alienated, entropic, post-utopian world. Our goals are pure, but our pursuit of those goals may not be. We do not always follow through on our good intentions. Because of this, there’s often “a slip ‘twixt cup and lip.” In other words, we can’t get out of our own way. Accordingly, as we pursue our initial objective, we entertain new objectives along the way. We get distracted. “What I wish to do, I do not do; what I hate, I do.” (Romans 7: 19) Our beautiful sweater ends up more like a bundle of yarn. And so the academic discipline known as History is born. 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 . Return to Yuletide 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. 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Where does artifical intelligence and Chat GPT fit into philosophy, theology, and science? Aletheia Today is the magazine for believers in God and science. Process philosophy, scripture study, and critical essays bring science and faith together with western philosophers like Alfred North Whitehead and Jean-Paul Sartre. Deep dives into the meaning of the Old Testamant, the New Testament, and where the Bible fits into modern-day society. Is God real? Does Heaven exist? Inside Our Special AI Issue Philosophy Chatting With C.S. Lewis “It is the very mark of a perverse desire that it seeks what is not to be had… As long as you are governed by that desire, you will never get what you want.” AI for Healthcare “Boka, is it true you used to drive 10 miles to see a doctor once a year and called that healthcare?” Do Bots Know Beauty? “I…propose…that we make this the test, not Turing’s, of whether a bot is conscious." Neurotech Challenges Mental Privacy: New Human Rights? "Advances in neurotechnology do raise important privacy concerns. However, I believe these debates can overlook more fundamental threats to privacy." Theology ChatGOD "ChatGPT can be smart, but it can never be holy. In being an e-being, precisely because its intelligence is artificial, it is necessarily alienated from the Divine. It can only be 'as if,' never truly as." Navigating the Nexus of AI "Imagine if AI had its own commandments, like 'Thou shalt treat all data equally.' Encouraging ethical principles in AI programming can keep its decisions in line with virtues like fairness, justice, and empathy." Culture & The Arts Divine Connection or Digital Dalliance? "Prayer, for many, is more than just a laundry list of requests. It's a profound act of opening oneself to the divine, a dialogue between the mortal and the eternal." Wilber’s New Wife: A Theatre Odyssey©2023 "The evolution has begun, and I believe that the arts are going to be a very important partner for technology. Could this be the beginning of the next Golden Age? Absolutely." How ChatGPT Robs Students "When AI does our writing for us, we diminish opportunities to think out problems for ourselves." The Ease of Burden "Writing is not like Athena, springing fully formed from Zeus’ forehead. Writing is like all of Zeus’ other children, where he has to relate to someone for creation (and boy, does he relate). To create things, we need other people. It takes two to tango, two to make a child, and around 12 to make a sitcom." AI - Our New Frenemy AI and the Human Quest for Love AI - The Next Big Test of the Human Soul "The longing is powerful. Perhaps because this is the longing for unconditional love and acceptance with which every human being is born." AI and the Quest for Humanity’s Answers "AI will virtually obliterate the barrier between what can be known and what is known." Spirituality Call Me a Dinosaur, I Won’t Use ChatGPT "The fact of the matter is, we will never be like God, nor will we ever be able to create a system that knows everything, is capable of anything, and controls all things." The Trajectory of AI: Balancing Promise and Caution "Placing faith in AI to originate creations like art and music may lead to disillusionment. Ultimately, the true creator is a higher force." 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 Scientific Method And Its Limits David Cowles Feb 11, 2025 “We must squeeze every practical advantage we can out of science, but we must not mistake it for reality…” “Science is everything.” More and more this meme is inserting itself into the dogmatic cannon of the 21st century; but it didn’t start here. The idea that science is ‘all ye know on earth and all ye need to know’ dates back at least as far as the mid-18th century. Determinism (Laplace), utilitarianism (Mill), liberalism (Smith), materialism (Marx), behaviorism (Skinner) and positivism (James) trace a fairly smooth 200 year trajectory, culminating in various schools of Logical Positivism (LP), ranging from A(yer) to W(ittgenstein). LP finally stated what everyone had been hinting at for 200 years: Propositions can only be True if they are meaningful, and they can only be meaningful if they are subject to falsification via the process known as Scientific Method . Is that true? Is science everything? Yes, but with limitations…and no, but with exceptions. Science has given us an incredibly powerful tool, enabling us to identify and explain regularities in our environment. The principle might be summarized as ‘same input → same output’. Whenever outputs don’t agree, we immediately check the inputs: Did we really duplicate the prior experiment? Or was there something different about our set-up or our procedure? Flashback : In high school chemistry, my lab partner and I frequently reported unique outputs . Question : Were these disparate outputs discoveries ? (If so, where are the Nobels?) Or were they the products of human error? When it comes to understanding the regularities of our world, Scientific Method is the undisputed heavy weight champion. It outperforms superstition, magic, and even child sacrifice. Horry for science! Alcoholics Anonymous is known for its memes; for example, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over (e.g. drinking) and expecting a different outcome.” But not everything in our experience is repeatable. Some things are ‘one-offs’. In so far as an event is unrepeatable, Scientific Method is of no use. And so Western Civilization classifies events (Science vs. Art) according to the ‘relative repeatability’ of each event. Relative repeatability? No two events can ever be the same…or they would be one event, not two. They must differ in some respect, if only place and/or time. On the other hand, no two events in the same Universe can ever be entirely unrelated. Therefore, every event intersects with the realm of Science and with the realm of Art. We turn to Science when we wish to study what we share; we turn to Art when we don’t. The existence of technology per se testifies to the fact that conditions can often be reproduced to an acceptable tolerance. Of course, ‘acceptable tolerance’ is different in every case. Example : I wish to confirm the boiling point of water. For that I need a heat source, a beaker of H₂O, and a thermometer. Bingo! 100°C…or not! Not? What went wrong? Before we throw out centuries of science, let’s take a moment to confirm that all relevant conditions were ‘adequately approximated’ for our experiment. A few things we might check: the purity of the water, the pressure of the air, extraneous forces impinging on our experimental apparatus. I’m enough of a believer in science to assume that we will be able to trace our discrepant output back to some discrepant input. Of course, there are times when no such discrepancy can be found. That’s called ‘discovery’. Eureka! The Cosmic Microwave Background, for example. We may justifiably hope that Science will ultimately reveal to us ‘everything’ there is to know about ‘everything’…but only to the extent that everything is repeatable. But we must not expect Science to shed any light whatsoever on anything to the extent that it is unique. We have Art for that! Science is the Queen of its castle…but only its castle! Alfred North Whitehead was fond of quoting the Anglican hymn, “Abide with me, fast falls the eventide.” For contemporary process philosophers, as for the pre-Socratics (Heraclitus, Parmenides, etc.) before them, the task of philosophy is to account for continuity amid novelty and flux amid solidarity. Every event is threefold unique. First, it arises out of a unique multiplicity, its own past, its own ‘light cone’; second, every event organizes that multiplicity into its own, unique World, i.e. its ‘personal history’; and finally, every event comes to be via the injection of a creative spark into that World. On the other hand, multiplicities massively overlap, actual worlds can be maddeningly similar, and the creative impulse may be muted. One ball bearing can look and function very much like another; often they can be swapped with no discernable effect. Yet they are not absolutely identical, but “Close enough for government work,” as we used to say. So science is fiction, all science; it relies on the false premise of absolute repeatability. Yet science has conferred unimaginable adaptive advantage on the one species that has mastered it ( homo sapiens ). Therefore, despite its limitations, it satisfies William James’ (Pragmatism’s) Truth Test (“does it work?”). We need science, more and more, but we must remember that it is a tool, not reality itself. A Roman Catholic may venerate a statue of a saint; but if that worshipper comes to believe that the statue is the saint, that’s idolatry. We must squeeze every practical advantage we can out of science, but we must not mistake it for reality. Science is a map, not the territory; we must not turn it into a ‘golden calf’. Einstein said it best (he usually does): “…As far as the propositions of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.” 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.

< Back Refresh the Crèche Deidre Braley "Maybe it was that I, myself, had just given birth—but as I held the perfectly composed Mary in my hand, she no longer felt believable." A bejeweled nativity scene sits atop our mantle every year at Christmastime. Despite baby Jesus’ missing arm (somewhere in the handing down, he came down one hand ), the whole crèche is quite elegant. The camel looks regal in his saddle, the livestock are radiant, and the three wise men wear gems upon their fashionable turbans. Mary is glowing in golden frocks—naturally—and Joseph remains stoic, despite having just witnessed the horrific, beautiful shock called childbirth. All of the figures are white, clean, and blushing. I studied each figure this year as I unwrapped them from fragments of bubble wrap and paper towels, blowing a dead fly from Jesus’ cradle. In past seasons, I have felt a swelling in my throat as I unveiled and arranged the scene with nostalgic care. But this year felt different. Maybe it was that I, myself, had just given birth—but as I held the perfectly composed Mary in my hand, she no longer felt believable. She was no warm-blooded woman who had just had a baby without medical care or epidural; she was just cold and ceramic. The same went for the wooly sheep, gleaming white despite living in a barn, and baby Jesus, looking resplendent with his crown of golden hair and impressive pectoral muscles. I’m sure these figurines were fashioned by well-intentioned people—devout Christians, even—who meant for such finery to display the glory of the Lord and the divinity of his birth. Won’t these look beautiful on the mantle, I bet they sighed, imagining families across the world gazing upon the flaxen scene and feeling the comforts of Christmas. But in that moment, I was struck by the irony that this crèche meant to point us toward Jesus’ wondrous demonstration of humility had the odd effect of removing it, instead. These figurines were decked out and dignified; they weren’t at all the type one might feel akin to. How odd, I thought. I want to be drawn to these, but they feel so…lofty. I couldn’t help but notice that this nativity’s portrayal of Jesus made me feel distant from him, looking so magisterial there in his manger. Jesus’ birth should remind us that holiness cohabitates with the common. So why do we feel inclined to dress up the humble bits in emeralds and gold? Sure: a bedazzled manger looks lovely amongst our twinkling lights and hand-me-down heirlooms, but do we inadvertently set Jesus aside when we make him look like the least believable human of all time? Do we begin to see him as ethereal—with his flowing locks and bulging biceps—and fail to grasp that he was born in the same bloody fashion that we all were, that his entrance to the world was plebeian as the rest of ours? When we admire his ceramic countenance upon our mantles, do we miss that God actually stooped down and became fully man—coming down to us so we could walk alongside him? Have we still not grasped that the Lord doesn’t give a hoot about finery or putting on airs? It is Christ’s example of humility, and not haughtiness, that draws us toward him. And yet, we perpetuate the narrative that he is untouchable and unlike us by adorning him with jewels. We reject the revelation that Paul writes about in Phillipians: “...Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of man” (2:5-7). Jesus demonstrated his total power in the way he neither clutched it nor strutted it about; he could become a baby who relied on his mother for milk and diaper changes without losing an ounce of his majesty. Gaudy portrayals of Jesus’ birth reveal we don’t understand his true majesty—or his heart—at all. They remind me of the final scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade , when Indy and the antagonist Walter Donovan both guess which cup is the Holy Grail. Amidst a dazzling selection of chalices, Donovan chooses a golden goblet that’s set with emeralds, while Indy reaches for a dusty and well-worn cup in the back. Donovan drinks from his goblet and instantly turns to a mummified shell of himself. (In the words of the ancient knight protecting the grail: “He chose…poorly.”) Indy, on the other hand, chooses wisely, and in doing so, avoids mummification and uses it to save his mortally wounded father. The lesson from this scene is clear: Donovan failed to choose the correct cup because he did not actually know Jesus; if he had, he would have known that he is “gentle and lowly in heart,” and that the humblest cup actually represented his power best. Why does it matter? you may be asking. Why can’t this girl just sip her eggnog and leave our pretty nativities alone? It’s because I desperately need Jesus to be real . I need him to be a man who ate fish and warmed himself beside fires and wept aloud and bled red blood. I, like Thomas, need to be able to hold his hands in my own and put my fingers in the places where he was pierced so that I can believe that resurrection is really true and not just some happy fable we can tell the children. I can’t make do with pretty, substanceless things . I am not comforted by white ceramic skin and a muscular baby in his shimmering trough. I am not kindred to a Mary who smiles as though she didn’t just give birth in a cave. And I have no business with rubies or emeralds, royalty or riches. I need Jesus, the baby who cluster feeds and pulls his mother’s hair. I need Mary and Joseph, the young kids who had a baby together and weren’t even married. I need to see sheep and cows with manure stuck to their coats, and a camel that looks travel-worn and moody. I need to see wise men with weathered skin and relieved faces, because they trusted God about this baby and they half-can’t-believe he’s really here. And the rest of the world needs that too. I can say that with confidence, because isn’t that the very reason Jesus bothered to humble himself in the first place, to empty himself of pretense, to take on a form we could relate to? So that we—dusty and broken and limping as we are—could somehow look at the Master of the Universe and believe we could draw close? We have a high priest that can sympathize with our weakness. This truth is ground-breaking, counterintuitive, ingenious, earth-shattering. His ability to sympathize with our weakness is one of his greatest gifts to humanity—so why are we so hesitant to portray it? So I guess this is just me, on behalf of the drunks and the postpartum mothers, making the case for a crèche that reveals Jesus’ humanity. It is me, along with the tow-truck drivers and nail technicians and juvenile delinquents, who need to see the earthiness of his birth. We do not need more imagery that makes Jesus inaccessible or unbelievable. Keep the jewels and wooly white animals. Give us instead reminders of how he entered this world amidst dirty surroundings, so that he could grow to walk with dirty people, washing our filthy feet and filthier hearts. Yes, this is the Jesus this world needs. This is the Jesus that God actually sent. And this is the Jesus I want to gaze upon—at Christmas, and all the other times of the year, too. Deidre Braley is a freelance writer and editor. She lives in Maine with her husband and two children, and most days can be found savoring an overly cheesy bagel or drinking a second cup of coffee while working on her weekly newsletter, The Second Cup . She is a strong believer in the power of poetry, picking roadside flowers, and blowing past small talk at all costs. Follow her on Instagram @deidresecondcup or on Facebook — she loves meeting new friends. Return to Yuletide 2023 Previous Next

< Back LEIBNIZ “In this model, God is a giant switching station, sharing qualities among myriad monads.” David Cowles Gottfried Leibniz (GL): When several predicates are attributed to a single subject and this subject is attributed to no other, it is called an individual substance (monad). Monads must have…qualities; otherwise they would not even be beings…there would be no way of perceiving any change in things…and they would be indiscernible from one another. Aletheia Today (AT): To be is to be unique, and it is the unique constellation of qualities that constitutes the identity of every novel entity. GL: There must be a plurality of properties and relations in the simple substance, although it has no parts…It is also necessary that each monad be different from each other. Change is continual in each thing…the monad’s natural changes come from an internal principle, since no external cause can influence it internally. AT: Every event is causa sui . It is what it makes itself be, but it does so in the dual context of God and other monads. GL: There is no external cause acting on us other than God alone, and he alone communicates himself to us immediately… AT: Universe consists entirely of monads. God is a monad and everything that exists is Imago Dei , the image of God. It is through God that monads share qualities. In this model, God is a giant switching station sharing his qualities on demand, distributing them among myriad other monads. GL: God has power…knowledge…and finally will…and these correspond to what, in created monads, is the subject, …the perceptive faculty, and the appetitive faculty. The passing state which involves and represents multitude in unity…is nothing other than what one calls perception…the internal principle which brings about change…can be called appetition. AT: Every monad is its own subject. It is initially constituted by its perceptions, and it becomes what it becomes by virtue of its appetition (its ‘subjective aim’). GL: Souls act according to the laws of final causes, through appetitions. Bodies act according to the laws of efficient causes (through perceptions). And these two kingdoms, that of efficient causes and that of final causes, are in harmony with each other…According to this system, bodies act as if there were no souls…and souls act as if there were no bodies. AT: ‘Soul’ and ‘body’ are alternate ways of describing a single phenomenon. (Ryle) That phenomenon is ‘body’ in so far as it is causal , ‘soul’ in so far as it is teleological . GL: Since something rather than nothing exists, there is a certain urge for existence… in a word, essence in and of itself strives for existence. AT: Note that this is simply a version of Anselm’s ‘ontological proof’ for the existence of God. GL: We also see that every substance has a perfect spontaneity (which becomes freedom in intelligent substances). AT: Universe is characterized by what the 20th Century British philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead, called “creativity”…a primal urge to existence, but Whitehead wisely distinguished ‘creativity’ from ‘essence’. GL: God is not only the source of existences but also of essences insofar as they are real…Without him there would be nothing real in possibles, and not only would nothing exist, but also nothing would be possible. AT: This is the sense in which we say, “God is Being!” God makes it possible to be. GL: For if there is reality in essences or possibles, or indeed, in eternal truths, this reality must be grounded in something existent and actual, and consequently, it must be grounded in the existence of a necessary being, in whom essence involves existence, that is, in whom possible being is sufficient for actual being… The ultimate reason for the reality of both essences and existences lies in one thing, which must of necessity be greater than the world… AT: Without God, subjects (monads) would not exist, and essences (predicates) would not be real. God is the source of both quantum coherence (potential)…and decoherence (actual), the collapse of the wave function. Essences by themselves are mere ideas; they do not become real potentiality until they participate in some actual entity. Therefore, if there is a world, and there seems to be, there must necessarily be a real entity (God), logically prior to that world, in whom all real essences participate. We are standing Descartes on his head here: “it is, therefore, He is.” By the same token, no entity (not even God) can exist unless there are real essences (values) according to which one entity can come to exist in preference to another entity. Otherwise, the existence of all theoretically possible entities would be equally probable…which means that the existence of any actual entity would be impossible. GL: Beyond the world, that is, beyond the collection of finite things, there is some One Being who rules…for we cannot find in any of the individual things, or even in the entire collection and series of things, a sufficient reason why they exist. We will never find…a complete explanation for why, indeed, there is any world at all, and why it is the way it is. The excellence of God’s works can be recognized by considering them in themselves…it is by considering his works that we discover the creator…Thus when we see some good effect or perfection occurring or ensuing from God’s works, we can say with certainty that God had proposed it. AT: God is the solution to the “ Problem of Good ”: How is it that anything good exists? Why aren’t all things morally or aesthetically neutral…or worse? The answer is God. When we see Good, we see God. What is Hell other than a world without God? GL: Every substance bears in some way the character of God’s infinite wisdom and omnipotence, and imitates him as much as it is capable. For it expresses, however confusedly, everything that happens in universe, whether past, present, or future… AT: According to Whitehead (above), Universe consists exclusively of events, but every event is in turn an expression of the entire universe. Every created monad reflects in part, but only in part, God’s essence. If a created monad imitated God perfectly, then it would be God and not a created monad. (This is a metaphysical version of the doctrine of ‘Original Sin’.) GL: He (God) views all the faces of the world in all ways possible…The result of each view of the universe, as seen from a certain position, is a substance (monad) which expresses the universe in conformity with this view… There are, as it were, just as many different universes, which are, nevertheless, only perspectives on a single one, corresponding to the different points of view of each monad. Every substance is like a complete world and like a mirror of God or of the whole universe, which each one expresses in its own way…Thus the universe is in some way multiplied as many times as there are substances… AT: Does Leibniz anticipate Hugh Everett’s Many Worlds Interpretation of QM (1966)? There is one Universe and one God who perceives (or reflects) that Universe, but Universe may be perceived internally from innumerable perspectives. Each such perspective corresponds to a unique monad, a unique version of Universe. According to Everett, everything that can happen does happen…in its own universe. GL: Our soul expresses God, the universe, and all essences as well as all existences… The notion of an individual substance includes once and for all everything that can ever happen to it…If I were capable of considering distinctly everything that happens or appears to me at this time, I could see in it everything that ever will happen or appear to me. This would never fail…provided there remained only God and me. AT: God exists outside of spacetime, and each monad is a reflection of God. Therefore, each monad per se exists outside of space-time. Space-time is an emergent property of the multiplicity of monads. Everything that is, was or will be, everything that might be or might have been (real possibles), is reflected in some way in each created monad. The perpetual change that characterizes all monads pre-exists in each monad…but only insofar as there is just the one created monad and God. Novelty is a function of plurality; I can only become ‘me’ in the context of you becoming you. (Buber) GL: Each substance (monad) is like a world apart, independent of all other things, except for God; thus all our phenomena, that is, all the things that can ever happen to us, are only consequences of our being… God alone…makes that which is particular to one of them public to all of them; otherwise, there would be no interconnection. This, then, is how one can conceive that substances impede or limit each other and…act upon one another and…accommodate themselves to one another… God alone brings about the connection and communication among substances, and it is through him that the phenomena of any substance meet and agree with those of others, and consequently, there is reality in our perceptions. AT: Each monad relates to God and God alone. But God is also a medium through which the unique ‘properties and relations’ that characterize each monad are shared with every other monad. Therefore, each monad relates to every other monad, albeit only through God. GL: God alone operates on me…the other substances contribute only…because God…requires them to accommodate themselves to one another. AT: Absent God, Universe would either be silent or, which amounts to the same thing, cacophonous. God is the ordering principle that allows the one to emerge from the many and the many to incorporate the one. GL: A monad rightly demands that God take it into account in regulating the others from the beginning of things. It is in this way that actions and passions among creatures are mutual. For God, comparing two simple substances, finds in each reasons to adjust the other to it. AT: Note that this is a highly non-linear process of perpetual co-modification. GL: This interconnection or accommodation of all created things to each other, and each to all the others, brings it about that each simple substance has relations that express all the others, and consequently, that each simple substance is a perpetual, living mirror of the universe. Everybody is affected by everything that happens in the universe, to such an extent that he who sees all can read in each thing what happens everywhere, and even what has happened or what will happen, by observing in the present what is remote in time as well as space. AT: This is the ontological premise that underlies the work of James Joyce ( Ulysses ). GL: Our body receives the impression of all other bodies, since all the bodies of the universe are in sympathy. “All things conspire,” said Hippocrates. AT: Each monad reflects Universe from a unique vantage, and each monad undergoes a process through which its content is adjusted to the content of every other monad. Therefore, each monad is unique, but each monad also templates in a unique way all other monads. Ultimately, no two monads conflict, but every two monads contrast. In the language of Quantum Mechanics, monads might be seen as universally ‘entangled’ (John Bell). Measuring one local quantum can immediately reveal information about another, remote quantum. (Note: Bell’s non-locality is not causal.) Ultimately, this model of Universe is holographic. The whole is imminent in each of its parts (David Bohm) but with less and less definition (clarity) as the part grows smaller in relation to the whole. There is no such thing as ‘scale’, only ‘focus’. GL: No substance perishes, although it can become completely different… Where there are no parts, neither extension, nor shape, nor divisibility is possible…there is no conceivable way in which a simple substance can perish naturally…there is no conceivable way a simple substance can begin naturally…they can only begin or end all at once, that is, they can only begin by creation and end by annihilation. Minds…are to persist as long as the universe itself does, and they express the whole in a certain way and concentrate it in themselves so that it might be said that they are parts that are wholes. God had ordered everything in such a way that minds not only live always, which is certain, but also that they preserve their moral quality so that the city does not lose a single person, just as the world does not lose any substance. We may say that although all substances express the whole universe, nevertheless the other substances express the world rather than God, while minds express God rather than the world. Thus one can state that not only is the soul (mirror of an indestructible universe) indestructible, but so is the animal itself. AT: A mind cannot perish because it is, in a sense, the whole. This whole is reflected in God and reflects God, and God is imperishable. Therefore, the ‘whole’ must be imperishable, both ‘mind’ and ‘animal’. God is both the primordial essences that define him and the created monads that are reflected in him; in God, essence and existence, origin and destiny are one. Leibniz appears to distinguish mental monads (minds) from physical monads (bodies). Alfred North Whitehead (referenced earlier) takes a different approach: every actual entity has both a “mental pole” and a “physical pole”. Each monad perceives essences as they inhere in God primordially (mental pole) along with existences (other monads) as they are reflected in God consequently (physical pole). There is nothing else. Therefore, every monad aims to imitate God but in a unique way: life as liturgical dance. The monad projects (Superject) itself into the community of created monads in order to play a certain role vis-à-vis the other monads in that community. That is the Objective Immortality of the particular monad. The monad’s contribution of a functional contrast is the objective expression of subjective conformation to God’s values. In the New Testament, the Letter of James puts it this way: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows.” (Jas. 1: 27) Further, the monad’s appetitions influence its perceptive selections just as much as the monad’s perceptions help form and define its appetitions. We can learn everything there is to know about a monad simply by focusing on the dialectic that occurs between those perceptions (Actual World) and those appetitions (Subjective Aim). Finally, we know that through God’s agency, monads are adjusted to other monads. Since a monad consists only of perceptions and appetitions, these adjustments must be reflected in those perceptions and appetitions…and nowhere else. The hunger to imitate focuses on God directly, while the hunger to innovate focuses on the other monads as they are reflected in God. Like the Federal Reserve, we have a ‘dual mandate’; we are called upon to imitate and to innovate. That tension is what we call ‘Life’. 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 Harvest Issue 2023 Previous Next

< Back The Zohar David Cowles Apr 25, 2023 ‘The Zohar’ is a TOE (a theory of everything) - everything from Big Bang to Big Freeze, from Creation to Eschaton. The Zohar was either written by a Rabbi who lived in a cave in northern Israel in the second century CE, or by a different Rabbi who lived in the bustling city of Leon, Spain, c. 1400 CE, or by person or persons unknown. The evidence one way or another is inconclusive. This is just the first ‘strange’ thing about one of the world’s strangest books. Strange, because we can pinpoint the authorship of many New Testament (NT) texts down to a single decade. Worst case ( Hebrews , Revelation ), we’re talking about a window of no more than 25 years, not 1,000+ years as in the case of the Zohar . (We use context clues to date NT material. The problem is, Zohar provides no context clues. It is a book about eternity, written in the language of eternity. Ugh!) Like any book worth its salt, The Zohar is a TOE (a theory of everything) - everything from Big Bang to Big Freeze, from Creation to Eschaton. Put it on your bookshelf next to Moses’ Torah , Homer’s Odyssey , Plato’s Timaeus , John’s Revelation , Joyce’s Ulysses, and Pound’s Cantos . The Zohar is yet another illustration of Heisenberg Uncertainty: the more comprehensive something is, the more incomprehensible it is! Corollaries : the better I understand something, the less useful it is to me; the more important something is to me, the less likely it is that I’ll understand it. Sounds just like my high school! Via Negativa : God is my ‘ultimate concern’ (Tillich); therefore, I can know nothing of God. The Zohar is ‘all ye know on Earth and all ye need to know’(Keats) – if only it were written in a language we could understand (and I don’t mean the Aramaic used in its composition). The Zohar , like Torah , is the story of our search for God and God’s search for us. Anything beyond that is just metaphor . According to Zohar , there are five ‘gates’, openings that connect Heaven and Earth; together these gates make up what Kabbalists call the Tree of Life : Keter , Crown ( Le Neant ) Hokhmah , Wisdom Bihah , Understanding ZA, God’s essence… Hesed, Love Gevurah or Din, Judgment (justice) Tif’eret, Beauty (harmony) Netsah, Eternity Hod, Splendor Yesod, Righteous One Malkhut or Shekinah , Kingdom (Israel, ‘Middle-Earth’) Well, it’s not everyday lingo , but it’s certainly not incomprehensible, not yet…but we’re far from finished. Each of these five gates consists of five ‘sub-gates’, and guess what? The five sub-gates are also called Keter, Hokhmah, Binah, ZA, and Malkhut . So we have five gates, each with five sub-gates: 25 ‘openings’ altogether, ranging from Keter-Keter to Malkhut-Malkhut . Are you still with me? Ok, how about now: each ‘sub-gate’ consists of five ‘sub-sub-gates’ also called… Get where we’re going with this? Now we have 125 ‘openings’ to describe, catalog, and account for, ranging from Keter-Keter-Keter to Malkhut-Malkhut-Malkhut . Will it ever end? Mercifully, The Zohar stops at three iterations, but in theory, at least, this pattern could go on forever. Next stop: 625 openings, and so on. I don’t care who you are; at some point you’re going to run out of bandwidth! What we are describing here is what mathematicians call a fractal – a pattern that repeats indefinitely regardless of scale. Another way of saying this: the universe is ‘self-similar’; it is continually mapping itself. Sidebar : Is that what we mean by consciousness? The structure that The Zohar identifies at the heart of Being is not imposed on Being or deduced from beings ; it is Being per se ! To be is to be a ‘piece of fruit’ on the Tree of Life but also to be the Tree of Life itself. Every part is the whole. What? Outrageous! Well, not so much. Consider the lowly acorn that you just ran over and crushed in your driveway. It is a piece of ‘fruit’ that once hung on an oak tree, but it is also a ‘seed’ consisting of a blueprint for a new oak (RIP). According to Kabbala, the fruit is the seed, and the seed is the fruit. Botany 101 = Cosmology 404. But there’s a problem here! The mathematical concept of a ‘fractal’ was not fully formed until the mid-20 th century! The ‘theologians’ who wrote The Zohar , whoever they may be, had a thorough working knowledge of the concept of ‘fractal’ many centuries before mathematicians formalized it. Now that we have our bearings, such as they are, it’s time for us to do a walk through of ‘the world according to Zohar ’: We begin our walk at Keter , nothingness (always a good place to start). Keter manifests as a point, Hokhmah , wisdom. Wisdom is the point where the transcendent ( Keter ) and the immanent ( Malkhut ) intersect. But like the ‘Planck point’ known as ‘Big Bang’, Hokhmah ‘inflates’, becoming Binah , Understanding. Binah is the womb of all things. Like Janus , Binah is two faced: one face turns toward Keter-Hokhmah , the other toward Malkhut . Keter (nothing) and Hokhmah (point) do not require or disclose any ontological structure that we might recognize as ‘spacetime’. Crown and Wisdom are eternal, period. So is Understanding; but within the eternity of Binah lies spacetime, Malkhut , the Kingdom, aka our World. Binah is where Crown-Wisdom meets Kingdom-World; but between the two lies ZA , God’s essence, which is God. ZA consists of the six virtues, qualities, behaviors of Emmanuel , ‘God with us’. God’s essence is God’s substance! ‘Simply’ stated, we ( Malkhut ) encounter Keter as ZA in Binah . ‘Crystal’, right? Don’t worry, we’ll be returning to The Zohar in future articles. (We couldn’t escape it if we tried.) 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.

“Team is not a collective noun; it’s a verb: to team.” < Back How to Coach an Undefeated Football Team David Cowles Jul 27, 2026 “Team is not a collective noun; it’s a verb: to team.” 1500 words, 6 minute read My grandfather, J. Leo Foley, was Athletic Director and Head Football Coach at The Roxbury Latin School (Boston) for over 40 years. Among other things, he led his team to 4 consecutive undefeated seasons. He was nicknamed “the Fox”, allegedly because of his unorthodox play designs. He was recruited (unsuccessfully) for a college coaching job by none other than Hall of Fame Head Coach, Robert Zuppke (University of Illinois, 1913 – 1941). Over the summer, he’d study the high school football rule book as if he were a Rabbinical student pouring over the Torah; in the fall, he’d carry it with him as if he were a radicalized French student waving Mao’s Little Red Book in the late ‘60s. Famously, he insisted on meeting with the officials before every game. He would go over the plays he expected to run, explaining in advance why they were ‘legal’ under the rules. He identified and exploited ‘loopholes’ many of which have since been ‘corrected’ by judicious rule changes. Whatever I know about football, I learned from my grandfather. What I don’t know, he didn’t teach me; or rather, he taught me, but it went in one ear and out the other. Imagine if I had known at age 10 that I would be writing this article at, well, let’s just say ‘a considerably more advanced age’; perhaps I wouldn’t have thought that running after the ice cream truck was more important than learning the intricacies of the single wing. The ethos my grandfather taught produced winning football teams. But it occurred to me much later that this same ethos is a prescription for winning at all facets of life. Of course, I can’t quote the Fox verbatim but here are some of what I take to be his guiding principles. If you’re a head coach, you may find them helpful ; if not, you may find them indispensable ! If you’re a football coach, these are lessons you may want to pass on to your charges; if you’re a life coach… Every team should be Undefeated : It takes just as much energy to lose as to win…so why not win? To paraphrase the Old Testament Book of Deuteronomy , “I set before you to winning and losing. Therefore, choose winning !” Every play (offense) should result in a Touchdown : Every play is designed to score 6 points. Just execute! (Add liquid and stir.) Do your Job ( before Bill Belichick): Successful football is not about players performing above their ability level; it’s about players faithfully executing their assignments. Don’t just do your Job : A player who repeatedly fails to do his job is not a good player; but neither is a player who only does his job. On every snap, each player has a primary responsibility; but once that responsibility has been met (or not), a good player immediately begins to look for other ways to be productive. Good players complete two ‘football moves’ on every play, one scripted, one improvised. Great players can complete three. Everything Flows : (Heraclitus, 5 th century BCE): Of course, Heraclitus was referring to the cosmos, not the football field. And yet, there is no better illustration of his principle than what happens between snap and whistle. A football play is more like an organism than a mechanism. Sure, football begins with designed plays and set formations; that’s a play’s DNA. But like snowflakes, no two plays ever turn out the same. Even if you ran the same play on every snap, no two plays would be identical. Football is an art, not a science! Teamwork makes the Dream Work (New York Hilton, et al.): Teamwork can amplify the skills of each player leading to a better result than could have been predicted solely from stat sheets. Other players elevate my performance. As a coach, I not only want my players to do their best; I expect them to help my other players do their best as well. Success has an ethical dimension: If it’s to be, it’s not just up to me. It’s up to you too…but maybe I can help. It’s not about how I look ; it’s about how you do . A collection of individual superstars will win games; but they won’t win every game. When you think of history’s greatest pro dynasties - Ruth’s Yankees, Russell’s Celtics, Jordan’s Bulls, Brady’s Pats, etc. - first and foremost you think ‘team’. Team is not a collective noun; it’s a verb: to team . When I team, I play better than I could on my own; and as I play better, I empower the players around me to play better too. It’s a Virtuous Cycle ! When in Doubt, Help out : They say two heads are better than one. If so, then 4 arms should be better than 2. Assume that the players around you need your help: they do ! Block: You did your job. You threw a great block. Good work. Job done? Not a chance! There’s always another player to be blocked as the play unfolds. And Tackle: All tackling should be gang tackling. Gang tackling prevents “second efforts”. It also increases the chances of a possession changing fumble. Stay onside : Penalties are not nuisances. They are not ‘just’ about field position; in fact, they are not primarily about field position. Penalties are about possession…and possession is key to scoring. Penalties = Turnovers! A penalty can make the difference between a very makeable 3rd and 2 and a much more challenging 3rd and 7 or 3rd and 12 or even 3rd and 17. A ‘nuisance’ penalty may well result in a change of possession on the very next snap. Penalties randomize the game, giving weaker teams a chance to out-perform…and ‘steal’ the win! Be the Ball : When you’re lucky enough to have the football in your hands, you need to think of it as part of your body. Would you let a tackler remove your right arm? Then why allow him to remove the ball? You and the ball must become a single organism. Be bionic! Suggestio n : Carry a regulation football around with you during the day and sleep with it at night. Who knows, it might even replace your stuffed animals. Eventually, with any luck, you’ll start to feel incomplete when you’re not carrying a ball. Visualize : It’s off season. Or you’re stuck in chemistry class. Or you’re in bed and can’t fall asleep. Or your parents have bundled you off to overnight camp for the summer (and they don’t even have a football program there). Wherever you are now, you’d rather be honing your football skills…but you can’t. Ugly circumstances have gotten in the way! Or have they? The fact is, you can work on your game any time, 24/7/52! Right now, you can’t practice…or lift weights; but there is something you can do: you can visualize! Depending on the position you play (or want to play), imagine yourself: Blocking a defender to protect your QB Creating a hole for your RB Taking a hand-off and hitting the hole Making cuts in the open field to avoid defenders Completing a forward pass; then catching that same pass. And if defense is your thing: Tackling a ball carrier in the open field Breaking a block to sack the QB Busting up a double team Covering a receiver; staying with him as he makes his cuts Knocking down a pass Intercepting it. When you visualize, it’s important to do so in slow motion. Slow it down! Relish every detail, every nuance. Fully experience every move your avatar makes. You can create muscle memory…maybe even in your sleep! Final Thoughts : But what if you don’t play football, have never played football, don’t want to play football? What if, God forbid, you don’t even like football? Did you just waste 6 minutes of your life reading this ‘how to’? Not necessarily! If football is nothing else, it’s a metaphor for life. The values of determination, responsibility, teamwork, flexibility, and focus apply everywhere, not just on the football field. You can visualize yourself performing in Carnegie Hall or acing a math quiz or accepting a Nobel Prize. Practice ‘structured day dreaming’. My grandfather was acutely aware that the formula for success on a football field was also a formula for success in life. No matter what we do, we are responsible for being ‘all that we can be’ (US Army), and we are equally responsible for helping others ‘be all that they can be’ as well. Follow this game plan…on and off the field, have an undefeated season, an undefeated life…and give a tip of your hat to the Fox. 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. Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Fall '22 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue