< Back How ChatGPT Robs Students Naomi S. Baron "When AI does our writing for us, we diminish opportunities to think out problems for ourselves." When the company OpenAI launched its new artificial intelligence program, ChatGPT, in late 2022, educators began to worry. ChatGPT could generate text that seemed like a human wrote it. How could teachers detect whether students were using language generated by an AI chatbot to cheat on a writing assignment? As a linguist who studies the effects of technology on how people read , write and think , I believe there are other, equally pressing concerns besides cheating. These include whether AI, more generally, threatens student writing skills, the value of writing as a process, and the importance of seeing writing as a vehicle for thinking. As part of the research for my new book on the effects of artificial intelligence on human writing , I surveyed young adults in the U.S. and Europe about a host of issues related to those effects. They reported a litany of concerns about how AI tools can undermine what they do as writers. However, as I note in my book, these concerns have been a long time in the making. Users See Negative Effects Tools like ChatGPT are only the latest in a progression of AI programs for editing or generating text. In fact, the potential for AI undermining both writing skills and motivation to do your own composing has been decades in the making. Spellcheck and now sophisticated grammar and style programs like Grammarly and Microsoft Editor are among the most widely known AI-driven editing tools. Besides correcting spelling and punctuation, they identify grammar issues as well as offer alternative wording. AI text-generation developments have included autocomplete for online searches and predictive texting. Enter “Was Rome” into a Google search and you’re given a list of choices like “Was Rome built in a day.” Type “ple” into a text message and you’re offered “please” and “plenty.” These tools inject themselves into our writing endeavors without being invited, incessantly asking us to follow their suggestions. Young adults in my surveys appreciated AI assistance with spelling and word completion, but they also spoke of negative effects. One survey participant said that “At some point, if you depend on a predictive text [program], you’re going to lose your spelling abilities.” Another observed that “Spellcheck and AI software … can … be used by people who want to take an easier way out.” One respondent mentioned laziness when relying on predictive texting: “It’s OK when I am feeling particularly lazy.” Personal Expression Diminished AI tools can also affect a person’s writing voice. One person in my survey said that with predictive texting, “[I] don’t feel I wrote it.” A high school student in Britain echoed the same concern about individual writing style when describing Grammarly: “Grammarly can remove students’ artistic voice. … Rather than using their own unique style when writing, Grammarly can strip that away from students by suggesting severe changes to their work.” In a similar vein, Evan Selinger, a philosopher, worried that predictive texting reduces the power of writing as a form of mental activity and personal expression. “[B]y encouraging us not to think too deeply about our words, predictive technology may subtly change how we interact with each other,” Selinger wrote . “[W]e give others more algorithm and less of ourselves. … [A]utomation … can stop us thinking.” In literate societies, writing has long been recognized as a way to help people think . Many people have quoted author Flannery O’Connor ’s comment that “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.” A host of other accomplished writers, from William Faulkner to Joan Didion , have also voiced this sentiment. If AI text generation does our writing for us, we diminish opportunities to think out problems for ourselves. One eerie consequence of using programs like ChatGPT to generate language is that the text is grammatically perfect. A finished product. It turns out that lack of errors is a sign that AI, not a human, probably wrote the words, since even accomplished writers and editors make mistakes. Human writing is a process. We question what we originally wrote, we rewrite, or sometimes start over entirely. Challenges in Schools When undertaking school writing assignments, ideally there is ongoing dialogue between teacher and student: Discuss what the student wants to write about. Share and comment on initial drafts. Then it’s time for the student to rethink and revise. But this practice often doesn’t happen. Most teachers don’t have time to fill a collaborative editorial – and educational – role. Moreover, they might lack interest or the necessary skills, or both. Conscientious students sometimes undertake aspects of the process themselves – as professional authors typically do. But the temptation to lean on editing and text generation tools like Grammarly and ChatGPT makes it all too easy for people to substitute ready-made technology results for opportunities to think and learn. Educators are brainstorming how to make good use of AI writing technology. Some point up AI’s potential to kick-start thinking or to collaborate. Before the appearance of ChatGPT, an earlier version of the same underlying program, GPT-3, was licensed by commercial ventures such as Sudowrite . Users can enter a phrase or sentence and then ask the software to fill in more words, potentially stimulating the human writer’s creative juices. A fading sense of Ownership Yet there’s a slippery slope between collaboration and encroachment. Writer Jennifer Lepp admits that as she increasingly relied on Sudowrite, the resulting text “didn’t feel like mine anymore. It was very uncomfortable to look back over what I wrote and not really feel connected to the words or ideas.” Students are even less likely than seasoned writers to recognize where to draw the line between a writing assist and letting an AI text generator take over their content and style. As the technology becomes more powerful and pervasive, I expect schools will strive to teach students about generative AI’s pros and cons . However, the lure of efficiency can make it hard to resist relying on AI to polish a writing assignment or do much of the writing for you. Spellcheck, grammar check and autocomplete programs have already paved the way. Writing as a Human Process I asked ChatGPT whether it was a threat to humans’ motivation to write. The bot’s response: “There will always be a demand for creative, original content that requires the unique perspective and insight of a human writer.” It continued: “[W]riting serves many purposes beyond just the creation of content, such as self-expression, communication, and personal growth, which can continue to motivate people to write even if certain types of writing can be automated.” I was heartened to find the program seemingly acknowledged its own limitations. My hope is that educators and students will as well. The purpose of making writing assignments must be more than submitting work for a grade. Crafting written work should be a journey, not just a destination. This essay was republished with minimal edits in cooperation with The Conversation . Professor Baron is interested in language and technology, written language, reading, the history and structure of English, and higher education. She is a former Guggenheim Fellow, Fulbright Fellow, and Visiting Scholar at the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Her books include Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World (which won the English-Speaking Union’s Duke of Edinburgh English Language Book Award for 2008), Words Onscreen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital World (2015), and How We Read Now: Strategic Choices for Print, Screen, and Audio (2021). Her newest book (forthcoming) is Who Wrote This? How AI and the Lure of Efficiency Threaten Human Writing. Professor Baron taught at Brown University, Emory University, and Southwestern University before coming to American University in Washington, DC, where she has served as associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences, chair of the Department of Language and Foreign Studies, Director of the TESOL Program, and executive director of the Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning. Professor Baron has appeared extensively in the media, including interviews on Good Morning America, ABC News 20/20, CNN, The Diane Rehm Show, All Things Considered, the BBC, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Chronicle of Higher Education, New Yorker, Fortune, and Time. Return to our AI Issue Table of Contents Previous Next

“Right now, scientists and philosophers all over the world are engaged in the search for a ‘TOE’, a Theory of Everything…(but) we already have such a TOE.” < Back “Is God Dead?” David Cowles Oct 15, 2023 “Right now, scientists and philosophers all over the world are engaged in the search for a ‘TOE’, a Theory of Everything…(but) we already have such a TOE.” A grandchild recently surprised me with a question, “Isn’t God dead?” I hadn’t realized that Nietzsche’s tentacles stretched so far. Time Magazine posed the same question on its April 8, 1966, cover. At the time, the magazine was reporting on a handful of radical theologians who claimed to have invented “Death of God Theology” ( Theothanatology for short). In fact, first in The Gay Science (1882) and later and more famously in Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883), Nietzsche, the self-appointed cosmic medical examiner, had already pronounced: “God is dead!” No surprise really. As every superannuated hippie knows, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” Like a rebellious teenager taunting his parents, Nietzsche undoubtedly chose his worlds at least partly to shock his Judeo-Christian readers. Nonetheless, it is consistent with his overall philosophy. In the 1880s and then again in the 1960s, Christians were outraged. But why? Every year on Good Friday, Christians celebrate God’s death. Of course, ‘Nietzsche and the Death of God Theologians’ did not have Good Friday in mind when they coined their slogan. Still, their core concept should horrify no one. Today, we are asked to believe that the universe came to be, literally, in a flash. While we have well-developed theories of how the universe evolved, no one claims to know anything about why it came to be in the first place. So why is there something rather than nothing? Let’s start by looking at the world. What do we know about it? From one perspective, we see that it consists of discrete entities (objects, events) and relationships between them. From another perspective, we see that the world consists of qualities (colors, textures, values) and harmonies among them. Both perspectives are true. Entities differ from one other according to the various qualities they display, but qualities are not displayed in the absence of an entity. Without entities and qualities, there could be no Universe as we know it. So accounting for the Universe means accounting for entities (and their relationships) and qualities (and their harmonies). This is the project of Alfred North Whitehead’s Process Philosophy. To explain the world as we know it, Whitehead posited the existence of a single ‘super-entity’ that includes all qualities primordially and all entities consequently. Whitehead’s super-entity is the source of all the qualities that characterize the entities that constitute our world. It is every entity’s raison d’etre …its ‘subjective aim’, its purpose, its motivation, its goal, its destiny, and its fate. Stated differently, each entity defines itself in terms of its relation to the super-entity and in terms of its relation to its own unique, inherited Actual World. Guided by its ‘subjective aim’, each entity ‘decides’ which qualities it wishes to display and how it wishes to display them. (There is no requirement that consciousness be part of this process.) Each entity (including the super-entity) exhibits its qualities in a unique way which Whitehead called ‘subjective form’. The subjective aim conditions the subjective form, and together they constitute the entity’s identity. Entities share qualities, and shared qualities give Universe its solidarity. Every entity, of course, derives its qualities from the super-entity. Pursuing its subjective aim, each entity combines a variety of diverse qualities. The entity harmonizes those qualities so that they form an integrated, holistic pattern. That pattern is the ultimate expression of the entity’s identity and constitutes the entity’s unique objective contribution to the content of the Universe. Whitehead called this the entity’s ‘superject’. Some folks will recoil at the idea of a super-entity; the concept of God goes against their religion. They would be right to recoil if we were claiming any special ontological status for the super-entity, but we are not! This is the genius of Whitehead’s scheme: it conflates the sacred and the profane. The super-entity is an entity among entities. All the ‘rules’ that apply to ‘other entities’ apply equally to the super-entity. Our world is one world! In Whitehead’s terminology, the super-entity is not an exception to the rules, it is the paradigmatic expression of those rules. The super-entity is unique only in the sense that it combines all qualities and harmonizes them in the particular configuration we know as Summum Bonum . Whatever we say about the nature of the ‘other entities’, we need to be able to say about the super-entity as well. Likewise, whatever we say about the nature of the super-entity, we must be able to say about the ‘other entities’. At the end of the day, they are all first and foremost just entities, super or otherwise. Right now, scientists and philosophers all over the world are engaged in the search for a ‘TOE’, a Theory of Everything. The hope is that once we can explain all the fundamental features of Universe with a single, self-consistent theory, we will be able to resolve rather quickly the remaining paradoxes of physics and cosmology. Truth to tell, however, we already have such a TOE. It’s called Christianity . According to the Nicene Creed (325 & 381 CE), Christianity’s primary creedal document: God is the “maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible”. Jesus Christ is his “only begotten Son…true God from true God…consubstantial with the Father; through him all things were made…By the Holy Spirit (he) was incarnate of the Virgin Mary…he was crucified under Pontius Pilate, he suffered death and was buried…the Holy Spirit (is) the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.” This, of course, expresses the famous Christian doctrine of Trinity: one God, three Persons. But it also happens to be exactly what we’ve been talking about in this article. God the Father (Creator) is God-primordial, God the Son (Christ) is God-consequent, and God the Spirit (Holy Spirit) is God-superject. It is by the Father that we have a world (qualities), by the Son (Christ) that that world consists of entities ( logos ), and by the Spirit that we have ‘life’ (i.e., novelty, creativity, process). So is God, dead? You bet! And Jesus explains why (John 16): “If I do not go (die), the Advocate (Spirit) will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.” Jesus Christ must ‘die’ so that his Spirit, God’s superject, may infuse the world - not by way of Creation or Incarnation but by Crucifixion (the “bloody sacrifice”), Resurrection, Eucharist (the “unbloody sacrifice”) and Pentecost. Jesus explains this in a parable (John 12: 24): “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.” In ‘parable-speak’, the fruit is the superject of the seed. Without a super-entity to source qualities for other entities, there can be no world. But unless that super-entity is also an ‘other entity’ with its own unique superject, there is no way for those qualities to become part of the life of that world. So, if God eternal is also temporal (via Incarnation), then temporal entities (objects, events) must be eternal. Upon achieving Whitehead’s ‘satisfaction’, each entity contributes its unique superject, its ‘objective immortality’, to the ‘world without end’. Without an eternal dimension, the temporal world would auto-abort. Time is ‘perpetual perishing’ (entropy). On the other hand, without a temporal dimension, the eternal world would be devoid of content. The pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, Parmenides , (c. 475 BCE.), confronted this dilemma in his ontological poem, On Nature . In that poem, he describes the Way of Truth ( Aletheia ) and the Way of Appearance ( Doxa ). Re Aletheia , he writes: “What-is is ungenerated and imperishable, whole, single-limbed, steadfast and complete…it is, now, all together, one, continuous…Nor is it divisible since it is all alike…It is completed from every direction like the bulk of a well-rounded sphere…equal to itself from every direction…Thus coming to be is extinguished and perishing not to be heard of.” But re Doxa , he writes: “It has been named all things that mortals have established, trusting them to be true: to come to be and to perish, to be and not to be, to shift place and to exchange bright color…Everywhere the same as itself, but not the same as the other…Thus according to belief, these things were born and now are, and hereafter, having grown from this, they will come to an end.” For almost 2,500 years, philosophers (beginning with Plato) have debated the meaning of Parmenides’ paradox. Is he outlining a nihilist philosophy a la Nietzsche? Or does his model prefigure the Christian cosmology of John and Paul? In either event, Parmenides clearly understood the problem: a purely eternal world must be featureless, while a purely temporal world must self-destruct. But back to our story. Primordially, all qualities exist in God in perfect harmony, no conflicts! So consequently, all entities must exist in God in perfect harmony. All conflicts must be resolved into contrasts, and all contrasts must contribute to God’s harmony. Every temporal entity is initially responsible for its own subjective aim, and ultimately responsible for its own superject. Pursuant to that aim, each appropriates the combination of qualities that it wishes to exhibit and determines how it wishes to exhibit them to achieve satisfaction, its superject. That is our work and when it is done, God takes over. It is God who harmonizes each entity’s superject, including his own, with the superjects of every other entity. This is what we mean by Grace. As a result of Grace, every entity shares in eternal life. That is what we mean by Salvation. Finally, our participation in the Consequent Nature of God is what we mean by the Kingdom of Heaven. From our earliest musings, humans have been confronted with the task of explaining how it is that there is a world and what purpose that world has, if any. Christian theology answers those questions. It offers a comprehensive model…and the model works. But could there be other, non-Christian, atheistic solutions? Aren’t there secular models that accomplish the same thing? First, as far as I know, there are not! But second, and much more importantly , any such model would have to account for the presence of qualities (Values) and entities (Creation). It would have to account for the occurrence of solidarity and novelty. It would have to bridge temporality with eternity. Would such a model be anything other than‘ Christianity by another name ’. So now I can answer my grandchild: “God is not dead, And it’s a good thing too, Or there’d be no me… And there’d be no you.” 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 Share Previous Next Click here. 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! Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, Fall Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back Special Issue Ahead--Your exclusive look at ATM's Summer Issue David Cowles Jul 14, 2022 All of us at AT are super excited about what we’re building: a hyper-active community of folks dedicated to the convergence of science, philosophy, and theology in the 21st century. Tomorrow is a banner day for Aletheia Today (AT): we are publishing Issue #2 of AT Magazine (ATM), our first “Special Issue.” As before, we are releasing Issue #2 a day early (i.e., today) for our loyal subscribers, Facebook Friends, etc. What do you want to do today? Coach (or play for) an undefeated football team; we’ve got that! Teach a 10-unit course (tween-aged) on Science and the Yellow Submarine ; we’ve got that too! Planning to take in some ‘theater in the round’ this summer? See if you can spot the nihilism in Shakespeare; let us help! The Nicene Creed is 1800 years old. Does it need a face lift? Ever wonder how it would read if we asked a committee of present-day intellectuals to rewrite it? Well, we have! And it’s not pretty . All of us at AT are super excited about what we’re building: a hyper-active community of folks dedicated to the convergence of science, philosophy, and theology in the 21st century. History will remember the 20th century as ‘The 3rd 100 Years War’ and as the century of exponential growth in science and technology? How will history remember the 21st? As ‘The 4th 100 Years War, or as a century of momentous intellectual convergence? History is not a done deal! It’s not written in the stars! It’s up to us to live the 21st century the way we’d like it to be remembered. It’s up to us to create our own history! Click here to enter our Special Issue . Thoughts While Shaving is the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine ( ATM) . To never miss another Thought, choose the subscribe option below. Also, follow us on any one of our social media channels for the latest news from ATM. Thanks for reading! 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 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 Kaddish David Cowles Aug 24, 2023 “God is our fellow traveler. He suffers along with us; we are simpatico… like Bill Clinton, God feels our pain.” It is a commentary on our times that entering ‘Kaddish’ in a search engine is more likely to deliver an Alan Ginsberg poem of the same name than the 2,500-year-old prayer on which Ginsburg’s poem is based. Not that I have anything against Ginsberg; after all, he was Bob Dylan’s John the Baptist. Ginsburg’s Kaddish is great, but so is the original! The Kaddish is a prayer that observant Jews recite at the death of one who is loved and/or a member of the House of Israel . Praying over the dead is certainly not a uniquely Jewish practice. Both in Pharaonic Egypt and in Buddhist Tibet, for example, it was customary to recite long prayers over the body of one dead or dying. These ancient funerary rites are preserved for us in each culture’s distinctive Book of the Dead . The stated purpose of such prayers was to guide the departed soul through the After World , to deliver it unscathed into ‘Objective Immortality’ (Whitehead’s term). Fast-forward, in many Christian churches today it is still customary to pray for the souls of the ‘dearly departed’, that they may ‘rest in peace’, and that their spirit may be ‘borne by flights of angels’ unto the ‘bosom of the Lord’. Kaddish is different! It is certainly meant to benefit the deceased, but it is also intended to benefit the mourners and, perhaps less expectedly, to benefit God. According to the underlying eschatology, every death rips a hole in the fabric of Being. As such, it causes the pain of loss which is felt by all those in the ‘society’ of the deceased, i.e., co-religionists, friends, relatives, and of course, that member of every society, i.e., God. In Eastern cosmologies, the divine is ineffable and utterly transcendent (Nirvana); in Classical cosmology, we are effectively gods’ pets, sometimes loved but often mistreated. For the most part, the gods regard us as an inferior life form. There are no ‘civil rights’ on Mount Olympus. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, however, God is our fellow traveler. He suffers along with us; we are simpatico . God sees the suffering of his people in Egypt, so he acts to free them. In the New Testament, God suffers and dies on a cross for the sins of the world ( pecata mundi )…our sins! We are God’s creatures, but we are also his co-conspirators. Our relationship is governed by a series of Covenants (cosmic constitutions). Torah should be read, not as an elaboration of the Ten Commandments but as ‘the Civil Rights Act of 1564 BCE’. We are responsible to and for God, as God is responsible to and for us. So, of course, it falls to us to comfort God in our moments of shared grief. In fact, these are the times when our role as God’s comrades may be most evident. Kaddish means ‘holy prayer’ in Aramaic (the language of its composition). It begins, “May the great name be exalted and sanctified ( kadash ).” As in the Christian Lord’s Prayer, the Name of God is God’s presence in the world, his ‘role’ in society; it is to be ‘hallowed’. According to the Magid of Mezritch, we are ‘limbs of the Shekinah ’ (God’s Presence); so, like Bill Clinton, God feels our pain. A Christian parallel is found in the Mystical Body of Christ . Any death dims God’s light in the world. Reciting Kaddish restores it. According to Rabbi Dovber Pinson, “the function of Kaddish is to comfort the Divine Presence.” We are comforted as well. We have been basking in God’s light ( Ohr ), as reflected ( Chozer ) by our beloved; now we can experience that same light directly ( Yashar ). Every experience requires both Light (God) and Vessel (us). In the cosmology of Alfred North Whitehead, this ‘Light’ corresponds to God’s Primordial Nature (the source of all values) while ‘Vessel’ points to God’s Consequent Nature (the objective immortality of all Events). The alignment of Light and Vessel is Meaning. In other words, events (vessels) acquire meaning from the values (light) they manifest. Vessel without Light is Kelipa - concealment, division, separation, randomness, negativity, darkness, death, and void. Is that all ya got? It is popular today to say that we don’t need God. Ok, maybe not, but Kelipa gives a sense of what the world would be like without Light, i.e., without God’s Presence . Genesis’ second verse describes such a world: “…Without form or shape, with darkness over the abyss and a mighty wind sweeping over the waters.” Reciting Kaddish rescues us from Kelipa (‘Deliver us from evil’) and it enables us to see the Great Name through the events of the day (‘our daily bread’). “May his Kingdom be established…and may his Anointed One (Messiah) come soon…May it happen in your lifetime and in your days…” This is undoubtedly a reference to Job (19: 25 - 27): “As for me, I know that my redeemer lives and that he will at last stand forth upon the dust…and from my flesh I will see God…my own eyes, not another’s, will behold him.” “Amen. May his great name be blessed forever and for all eternity.” At this, the climax of the prayer, God is comforted, the wounded world is healed, and the gates of Gan Eden , the ultimate destination of all souls, have opened wide to greet our comrade. “May there be abundant peace ( Shalom ) from Heaven and…may he (God) make peace for us...Amen.” Shalom is one of the names of God, so when we pray for peace, we pray for God’s Presence. Roman Catholics celebrate shalom , “the peace that the world cannot give” every day in Eucharist. So a tip of the cap to Alan Ginsberg but an invitation to all of you to pray the Kaddish for me when my turn comes. Shalom! 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 Mass Casualty Events David Cowles May 9, 2023 “There is broad consensus that loss of identity and a sense of belonging has played a huge role in the mental health crisis, especially among teenagers… I’d like to throw another log on that fire.” Through April, we have had more mass shootings in the US than there have been days on the calendar. In other words, we are averaging approximately one mass casualty event per day. Long prior to the pandemic, folks were already feeling lost. Ever since the virtual started to replace the real, ever since chat rooms took the place of barrooms, we have been unmoored: today, nobody knows your name ! The pandemic only served to accelerate processes that were already well under way. The honeycomb of civil society that furnished robust social networks in the past has all but vanished. 40 years ago, a successful parent might have served on a parish council, coached a pee wee soccer team, joined a country club or fraternal organization, and still found time to make an occasional appearance at the corner tavern. Our lives are being reorganized…with no input from us. No more one-income households, no more 40-hour work weeks, no more fiercely guarded family time , no me-time at all! We are urged to balance life and work. A great idea! You should try it. Going, going, pre-pandemic, gone! The collapse of civil society checks all the boxes on the mental health admission form. It has taken away important confirmations of my personal identity; it has greatly restricted my opportunities to experience ‘belonging’, i.e., to join with others in a common enterprise. Finally, it has robbed me of the chance to share ideas with others in reasoned, respectful dialog - to make a contribution to the public debate – to be a citizen. Ok, but what does this have to do with mass shootings ? I think there is broad consensus that loss of identity and a sense of belonging has played a huge role in the mental health crisis, especially among teenagers. I agree with this analysis, but I’d like to throw another log on that fire. Once upon a time, politics was our national pastime – ok, along with baseball. If we weren’t talking about the one, we were talking about the other. These conversations were often heated. As the 1950s became the 1960s and beyond, the rhetoric got extreme…but the conversation never stopped…until now. The 1960s was no golden age, no matter what anyone says. Political dialog was fierce…but there were unwritten rules! First, there was an assumption that ‘ something is true’ and that efforts to discover that ‘truth’ could bring us closer to it. I’m not sure we make any such assumption today. Wow! Think about the implications of that ! It is not ‘truth’ that’s under assault; it’s the concept of Truth itself. A world full of lies is not a good thing, but it is paradise compared to a world without lies. In such a world, all propositions co-exist. None has pride of place over another. None links to another, none crowds-out another, they all just sit there, inert. Hmm, doesn’t this sound a lot like political speech today? Sit there? Inert? Second, there was an expectation that everyone’s hierarchy of values would include the sharing of truth with others. Again, we do without such an assumption now. So with our identity supports and our social networks already depleted, it’s also dawning on us that we will have no voice in the public discourse going forward. We can’t talk politics at work or at home or when we’re out with another couple for dinner. One thought injudiciously phrased or inadvertently shared could have consequences for you and yours, down to the third generation . Society is moving at lightning speed to marginalize the input of its citizens. Could there be a cost to this? Could someone who feels permanently frozen out of any meaningful participation in public life decide to ‘cast a vote that can’t be canceled’? Tragically though, such overtly political acts rarely come with any agenda, except no mas ! I have traded the bustling political life of the hive for a solitary spot in the rookery carved into the mountain side by wind and rain; and I’m not most pleased! Millions of Americans will have this same experience, but few of them will perpetrate a mass casualty incident. One differentiator is the presence of a pre-existing psychiatric condition. So there are four ‘I-beams’: Identity loss - a fading sense of personal identity. Who am I? Isolation – a deterioration in one’s social support network. Impotence – I’m frustrated by everything that’s going on around me, but I have no one I can share this with and, worse, there’s nothing I can do about any of it anyway. Illness – a pre-existing psychiatric condition, psychological problem. Imagine you’re a Hollywood mogul charged with making the next Lawrence of Arabia . Here’s what you’ve been given to work with: “A person with psychiatric issues loses the daily ‘identity confirmation’ of a trusted partner. In response, our anti-hero withdraws from society and isolates himself from everyone in his orbit. In the background, you can hear the drone of the CNN anchors.” You take it from there! Who among us would fail to turn an opportunity like this into a blockbuster? By seeking to understand the psyche of the mass shooter, I in no way mean to justify these horrible acts. However, I think we do ourselves a favor when we try to see the world through the eyes of others. I am hoping that properly labeling the four pillars of alienation – identity loss, isolation, impotence, and illness will contribute toward the development of more effective, comprehensive, and holistic therapeutic strategies. Keep an eye on this space! 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 George Washington Carver David Cowles Jan 26, 2026 “I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour if we will only tune in.” “George Washington Carver invented the peanut.” – That nugget of misinformation was what passed for Black History in my monochromatic 3rd grade classroom c. 1955. Not exactly true (what was in 1955?), but Carver did have a lot to do with the development of the peanut as a cash crop (remember Jimmy Carter?) and with its use in crop rotation strategies; and he discovered more than 300 new uses for the nut and its by-products. His work significantly improved the economic prospects of poor farmers, particularly Black farmers in the post-Reconstruction South. Carver believed he had discovered a classic win-win-win paradigm. Planting peanuts enabled farmers to (1) rejuvenate their soil, (2) bring a new cash crop to market, and (3) address a number of pressing social needs - nutritional, pharmaceutical, etc. Today, most of us would call such a convergence Serendipity; Carver called it Providence. The dominant paradigm of our time is mechanism. Progress is a function of probing, testing, and measuring the world. Carver’s relationship with the world might better be described as mutualism. Bridging Anaximander (6th century BCE) and John Bell (late 20th century CE), Carver believed that all being was being with. He viewed his own life as an ongoing conversation with God, though he most often encountered God, not in seclusion via formal prayer, but in the process of interacting with Nature: "I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in." Since the dawn of the great darkness ( aka the Enlightenment), it has been our style to view Nature as insentient. In valid pursuit of knowledge we perform experiments on inanimate matter…but we don’t stop there. We subject organisms from all branches of life, including animals, mammals, even primates, and in some awful cases, human beings, to invasive procedures. Laplace, et al. desensitized the world, giving us a ‘00’ license to kill…and we’ve taken full advantage of it. We’ve even allowed the reification of Nature to include members of other ethnic groups and social classes, children and the elderly. At the height of this barbarity, only propertied adult white men were deemed to merit the NFL’s ‘franchise tag’. In such a world, Carver was the counterculture! As kids, we’re taught that ‘life’ includes a hierarchy of values: “It’s not ok to hit your sister but it is ok to squash ants on the sidewalk.” “It is ok to slaughter birds to make chicken nuggets, but it is not ok to throw stones at birds on your front lawn or to knock down their nests.” “It’s not ok to kick the dog but it is ok to chain it to a tree, lock it in a cage or board it in a kennel.” “There are 8 billion people living on Planet Earth today. All of them are ‘created equal’ but they don’t all have the same social utility (aka value).” (Explain that one in 500 words or less, Mr. Jefferson.) This graded approach to ‘being’ gets us through the day, but it is profoundly unsatisfying at every level; it pleases no one. Molly wants to test a nuclear weapon on a newly discovered Pacific Island, but Jane is concerned with the wellbeing of any indigenous humans who might (or might not) be living on the island, and Billy is focused on the welfare of several endangered species known to inhabit this remote outpost. No compromise or meeting of the minds is possible because this is not a ‘difference of opinion’; it is not even a difference of perception…or ethics; it is a difference of ontology. Simply put, Molly, Jane, and Bill are all good, well-intentioned people (even if their values are different from yours). They mean to do well. And when they look at ‘K-pop Atoll’ (as my grandniece calls the newly discovered island), they all see the same sand, unexplored caves, flora and fauna, but they understand what they see very differently. Even conversation among them is impossible. They use the same words and they apply them similarly, but by those words they understand very different realities. Meaning does not reside in words or in the objects (or processes) to which they refer but rather in the interpretive framework (aka Mythology) that lies beneath these semantic layers. To distinguish Carver’s ontology from that of Laplace or Marx, I mentioned Anaximander and John Bell but the notion that nature is animate and life a dialog pervades intellectual history globally. For example, the apostle John calls Christ ‘ o logos ’, the Word. Whatever has come to be has come to be through that Word and that Word became flesh in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. 1500 years later Hasidic Judaism embraced a superstrong version of panentheism. According to the Ba’al Shem Tov and others, God ( Shekinah ) is present as a spark in everything that is (animal, vegetable, or mineral). The human project is simply to facilitate the reunion of these sparks, and we do that by treating everything we encounter with respect, using it appropriately, granting it ‘reck’ (Anaximander & Heidegger). I am reminded of Native Americans. They depended on the biosphere for their livelihood, but they never failed to express gratitude to the animals and plants that fed, housed, and clothed them. The intellectual history of the West may be understood as an effort to combine the material and spiritual into a single model. How’s that going? At the end of the day, there may be only two viable models of the World. Either (1) it is inanimate, insentient, unconscious, and accidental with no objective or transcendent values operative, or (2) it is organic, self-aware, intentional, and value driven. For better or worse, we live in the shadow of ‘the Valley of Death’, aka ‘the Enlightenment’, so inanimate materialism is the paradigm du jour. The 20th century, however, saw some important challenges to this world view: psychoanalysis, wave/particle duality, quantum indeterminacy, and non-locality stand out. Where we are headed now is anyone’s guess, but I am more than happy to set my sail on the course laid down by Dr. Carver. *** The 1944 oil painting of George Washington Carver by Irving Bacon depicts the scientist outdoors, holding a milkweed pod, symbolizing his pioneering agricultural research and deep connection to plants. The portrait captures Carver’s calm and thoughtful demeanor, highlighting both his scientific achievements and his gentle, contemplative character. 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.

“Sir, you are quite simply insane. We know exactly what holds our universe together; it is electromagnetism, gravity, and the strong force…not Christ.” < Back Christ the King David Cowles Nov 30, 2022 “Sir, you are quite simply insane. We know exactly what holds our universe together; it is electromagnetism, gravity, and the strong force…not Christ.” Since 1970, the Roman Catholic Church has celebrated the Feast of Christ the King on the last Sunday of the liturgical year. It is a fitting close to a year that began with Old Testament prophesies of a coming Messiah, a Messiah who Christians believe is Jesus. The scripture readings (Cycle C) that the Church has chosen for this feast day introduce us to three distinct but related aspects of Christ’s kingship: First, a reading from 2 Samuel recalls the inauguration of the historical King David, chosen by God, anointed by Samuel, and ratified by the leaders of Israel’s twelve tribes: “All the tribes of Israel came to David in Hebron…and at Hebron King David made a covenant with them in the presence of the Lord; and they anointed David king over Israel.” Jesus, of course, is of the House of David and, therefore, has a valid hereditary claim to David’s throne. As David’s successor, Jesus represents the historical kingship of God. Yet, Jesus never suggests that he should have universal political authority. He did not come to depose Rome and inherit its empire so that ‘Rome’ could be reborn in Jerusalem. On the contrary, political power was the third and final temptation offered by Satan and rejected by Jesus during Jesus’ 40 days in the desert (Mt 4: 9). Instead, scripture and the Church teach that all political rulers, whether emperors, kings, presidents, or legislatures, derive their authority from God but maintain that authority only in so far as, and to the extent that, their policies are consistent with God’s laws. According to this model, God rules! But he rules through the agency of his priests, prophets, and kings . Christ the King is not Christ the Bureaucrat. God does not dictate the details of public policy but rather establishes guidelines and principles that all laws, if they are to be valid, must respect. There are many legitimate roads to Ecbatan , but no human law is binding if it conflicts with a law of God. So, Christ’s royal authority does extend to the historical realm, but it is exercised through secular rulers chosen according to the culture and tradition of each political entity (e.g., nation). The second reading is a reading we’ve encountered before in ATM ( Christology ) . F rom Paul’s Letter to the Colossians : “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and invisible…all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together… For in him all the fullness was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things for him, making peace by the blood of his cross, whether those on earth or those in heaven.” This is not Jesus, the historical successor to King David; this is Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God, King of Creation, Ruler of the Universe. And what are the royal powers that Colossians claims on Christ’s behalf? 1. Since all things in Heaven and on Earth were created in him, through him and for him, his sovereignty is absolute. The Kingdom of God is not a democratic republic, nor is it even a constitutional monarchy…but it is a utopia. 2. All things hold together in him. Like any charismatic leader, he is the glue that binds society together as a single community with a common task and a common destiny. Because the Son of God is also fully human, we humans have ‘legal standing’ to enter into a binding contract (covenant) with YHWH. 3. He is the medium and the process through which all things in Heaven and on Earth are reconciled… for him . Through Christ, conflicts are resolved into contrasts and contrasts into harmonies. Today, most members of the cognoscenti believe that Universe came into being on its own. causa sui . Modernists that we are, we take it for granted that this is at least possible. But what if it isn’t? What if an independent, self-created universe is intrinsically unstable and, therefore, not possible after all? It is beyond the scope of this essay to resolve that question, but the question per se underscores the importance of Colossians for contemporary cosmology. Safe to say, Colossians presents a very different model of cosmogenesis than we are used to hearing. Imagine a visiting professor from Colossae addressing a classroom of eager graduate students in Cambridge (either Cambridge, MA or Cambridge, UK): “In order for a non-trivial universe to emerge, evolve and endure, a number of factors must come into play simultaneously. First, there must be a creative force that gives rise to novel entities (events); second, those entities must occur within some sort of defined ontological locus; third, all the events that make up Universe must be oriented toward a common end ( teleos ); and fourth, the creative force must not only bring novel entities into being, but it must also work ceaselessly to resolve conflicts among those entities. “Creation is as much about the ends of things as it is about their beginnings; it operates throughout the entire life of every entity. Ultimately, it is a process by which a multiplicity of simple things becomes a complex unity. It is that process that binds entity to entity in a way that constitutes Universe. “Otherwise, anything that might emerge randomly and spontaneously from the void would either be isolated and inert or cancelled out by conflicting ‘counter-events’. The net informational content of any such universe would always be approximately zero.” Now, one of our ‘sophomore’ cosmologists might be expected to interrupt vehemently at this juncture. Lacking the reverential deference characteristic of a by-gone era, our would-be Hawking might say, “Sir, you are quite simply insane. We know exactly what holds our universe together; it is electromagnetism, gravity, and the strong force…not Christ.” “Not so fast,” our Anatolian professor retorts. “Can you fully explain the nature of any of these forces? Can you explain how it is that each has the exact quantitative value it does? Do you understand that if any one of these apparently arbitrary values varied even slightly, Universe as we know it would be impossible? Is it not much more likely that these forces are simply the physical manifestations of something deeper in the structure of the cosmos? Something like Christ, for example?” “Isn’t this just Creationism repackaged?” “It’s more profound than that. I am equating Cosmology with Christology! And note: this is not the same as equating Christology with Cosmology. The math is not commutative.” The final reading, taken from the Gospel of Luke , tells the story of Jesus’ crucifixion: “The people stood by and watched; the rulers meanwhile sneered at him and said, ‘He saved others, let him save himself if he is the chosen one, the Messiah of God.’” Even the soldiers jeered at him…they called out, ‘If you are King of the Jews, save yourself.’ Above him there was an inscription that read, ‘This is the King of the Jews.’ Enigmatically, Pontius Pilate had ordered that placard nailed onto the cross above Jesus’ head. The Jewish leaders complained to Pilate, “Do not write ‘The King of the Jews’, write that he said he was the King of the Jews.” But Pilate answered with his own statement of proto faith, “What I have written, I have written.” “Now one of the criminals hanging there (Jesus was crucified between two ‘thieves’) reviled Jesus, saying, ‘Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us.’ The other, however…said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ He (Jesus) replied to him, ‘Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’” This is the first time that anyone (other than Jesus himself) has clearly acknowledged the other-worldly nature of Christ’s Kingdom. Before Pilate, Jesus says, “My Kingdom does not belong to this world…my kingdom is not here.” Before that, he has tried many times to educate his disciples on the eschatological nature of his reign – without any apparent success. But the so-called ‘good thief’ gets it…and just in the nick of time. The reading from Luke’s Gospel introduces us to yet a third aspect of Jesus’ Kingship. While his laws are normative on Earth, they are often ignored in practice; but in the Kingdom of Heaven, Christ is the supreme ruler. That is what we mean when we pray, “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.” Looking for Heaven ( aka Paradise)? It’s located at the intersection of History and Eternity! It consists of historical entities but historical entities that have somehow been ‘glorified’ (i.e., reconciled and eternalized). So, on the Feast of Christ the King, we justly celebrate Christ as Sovereign of this world, Ruler of the Universe, and Heavenly King. But how are these aspects of Christ’s kingship related? The reconciliation of all things through Christ and for Christ can only occur based on the consistent application of specific values: beauty, truth, and justice, for example. How do we know which ‘values’ are necessary for reconciliation to occur? And which ‘anti-values’ are incompatible with reconciliation? Could reconciliation be successful if it was based on the absence of beauty, truth, justice, i.e., if it was based on ugliness, falsehood, injustice? Obviously not! On the contrary, such anti-values are the sources and symptoms of conflict in the first place. Ugliness is inherently unstable, as the urge to beautify is universal, even at the level of pre-conscious entities (e.g., molecules). Falsehood eliminates any objective basis for consensus. As for injustice, who has not chanted, “No justice, no peace!” at least once? Making such a list of values and their opposites quickly identifies the sources and styles of conflict in our world and points out the avenues that are available to us for the resolution of that conflict. These values, once identified, must guide all valid law making in the historical realm. Laws that explicitly and intentionally undermine beauty, truth, and justice, for example, are invalid on their face. Sidebar : we are not concerned here with legitimate differences of opinion. For example, well-meaning people may disagree about which laws would be most effective in promoting justice. It is the purview of secular governments to choose among such potential laws; any one of those choices would at least be valid, even if suboptimal . What would be invalid is any law that aims to undermine justice per se . There is a single thread that unites Christ’s historical, cosmological, and heavenly kingship. It is the set of values that form the basis for universal reconciliation, that are normative on earth and that are realized perfectly in Heaven. No better way to celebrate the end of the liturgical year! Image: Painting of Christ in Majesty from the Ghent Altarpiece by Hubert and Jan van Eyck (AD 1427) 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 Click here. 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! Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, Fall Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back Is Universe a Quantum Computer David Cowles Aug 8, 2024 “We create a classical likeness of quantum reality. We run a virtual machine on the quantum software that is the universe.” Recently, a friend I’d made in the 60’s asked, “What is the Universe, really?” Immediately, the standard answers sprang to mind: Space and time, matter and energy, position and momentum, inertia and acceleration. Then my friend’s question got me thinking. (Heaven forbid!) Before we transcended gender dimorphism, we relied on sexist memes to order our social world: “Girls are sugar and spice and everything nice; boys are snips and snails and puppy dog tails”. Might cosmology’s accepted wisdom be similarly facile…and wrong? Fortunately, my friend supplied his own answer: “I think the universe is a quantum computer.” Of course it is! What else could it be? The known universe consists of at least 10^80 bits of information. According to classical cosmology, each bit has one of two values: 1 or 0. That’s what makes ‘information’ information. Flip a bit! 1 becomes 0 or 0 becomes 1. Either way it’s an isolated event; the rest of the Universe remains as it was. All change, like ‘all politics’ (Tip O’Neil), is local. In quantum cosmology, however, each bit is in a state of quantum superposition: not 1 or 0, but 1 and 0. While in classical computing, each bit has but one value (1 or 0) at time, in quantum computing, each bit has two values (1 and 0). In classical computing, all events are local; their impact on one another is mitigated by Newton’s inverse square law. In a quantum computer, on the other hand, each bit is potentially ‘entangled’ with other bits so that determining the value (1 or 0) of one bit simultaneously determines the value of another bit, regardless of that bit’s relative position in the cosmos. According to Hugh Everett’s Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (1957), every time a bit flips a new universe comes into being. The result is powerful, albeit extravagant…and messy! Nonetheless, most cosmologists today subscribe to some version of Everett’s model. Everett ‘interpreted’ quantum phenomena according to a classical framework. He had drunk the Kool Aid: ‘the quantum world is embedded in the classical’. But by treating the entire universe as a quantum phenomenon, we’re able to conserve the power of Evertt’s interpretation…without the mess. Everett assumed that each unique combination of 1’s and 0’s constitutes a novel universe. Without superposition and entanglement, it’s hard to come to any other conclusion. Reframing this model in quantum mechanical terms allows us to achieve the same result within a single universe, as long as that entire universe is entangled and in superposition. Why didn’t Everett think of that? Well, for one thing, the principle of ‘non-locality’ (entanglement) was not discovered until 1964 (Bell). But beyond that, it was scientific dogma at the time that quantum phenomena could occur only on extremely small scales...certainly not on the scale of the cosmos. How do local systems in superposition acquire classical values? Schoedinger’s cat, basking in a sort of suspended animation, learns its fate only when some ‘outside agent’ interacts with the experimental apparatus. Interestingly, if puss discovers it’s dead, it will have been dead for some time prior to realizing it. Quantum mechanics does funky things with time. (Feynman) Universe, however, by definition, has no outside agent – unless you wish to invoke God. But that is not necessary, at least not at this point. A feature of Universe, indeed a feature of all systems, is that it interacts with itself. It is incurably recursive. Contrary to Bertrand Russell, IRL every ‘real’ set is a subset of itself . The whole is one of its parts. So the concept of Incarnation applies not only in theology but also in cosmology. Incarnation is not an exception to the laws of physics, it is a law of physics. To paraphrase Alfred North Whitehead, God does not reflect a suspension of the ‘rules’; God is the paradigmatic expression of those rules. Therefore, a change in one part of a system entails a change in the whole while a change in the whole entails a change in at least one part. Sets that are not recursive in this way are merely useful mathematical abstractions. The universe, the set of all sets including itself, is in a permanent state of ‘self-assessment’. As a result, it manifests classical values at all times. But this is misleading. Those contingent classical values (Kant’s phenomena) mask substructural quantum reality (noumena). As Universe observes and interacts with itself, we experience consciousness and agency (free will). The phenomenon that you, acting recursively, experience as ‘you’ is a function of the Universe being aware of itself (consciousness) and acting on itself (agency). Every time an agent (e.g. you) makes a choice, i.e. exercises free will and acts on it, multiple potential values collapse down to a single actual value, mimicking a classical world. We create a classical likeness of quantum reality. We run a virtual machine on the quantum software that is the universe. We convert pure potentiality into settled actuality. So yes, Virginia, Universe is a quantum computer. 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. Keep the conversation going. 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 Hypothesis David Cowles Nov 29, 2021 A much beloved friend and family member sent this to me T-day morning. Much appreciated! But I could not help but notice the care taken to avoid any reference to “God, the father almighty, creator of Heaven and Earth”. I am not suggesting that everyone must believe in God. Far from it. But I am suggesting that substituting various ‘pagan’ alternatives does not work: “god (as if God could be anything else but a proper noun), universe, life, earth”. Imagining that any of these could be sui generis capable or creating all that is ex nihilo is absurd. If you don’t buy into the “God Hypothosis”, ok, well and good, but suggest a viable alternative. A much beloved friend and family member sent this to me T-day morning. Much appreciated! But I could not help but notice the care taken to avoid any reference to “God, the father almighty, creator of Heaven and Earth”. I am not suggesting that everyone must believe in God. Far from it. But I am suggesting that substituting various ‘pagan’ alternatives does not work: “god (as if God could be anything else but a proper noun), universe, life, earth”. Imagining that any of these could be sui generis capable or creating all that is ex nihilo is absurd. If you don’t buy into the “God Hypothosis”, ok, well and good, but suggest a viable alternative. 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 Home Alone “Macaulay Culkin is ‘every boy’ and his Home Alone family is ‘America’s family’ – except it’s not!” David Cowles Another season of holiday specials has passed, but it was reassuring to see that the Home Alone movie franchise remains alive and well. In addition to being immensely entertaining, these films prompt some ‘AT ( Aletheia Today ) worthy’ questions, beginning with, “How do we come to know about the world we live in?” Seriously? Isn’t the answer obvious? We know about it because we live in it! Living is knowing, right? Well…maybe not: Imagine you’re a toddler. You’re certainly living in the world…but how much do you really know about that world? On the mappa mundi you drew for your Park Avenue therapist, 60% of the ‘canvass’ was taken up by your house and yard. The scrub pine at the corner of your lot was the tallest landmark, and your so-called ‘caretakers’ were pictured as giants. You are in the world, but your knowledge of that world is rudimentary at best. But come on! You're a toddler; you’ll learn, right? How? By living, of course. But if our knowledge of the world came from living in it, our maps would look more like Escher than Euclid! Things would recede geometrically from here and now. Bostonians could be forgiven for mistaking the Connecticut River for the Mississippi. Once upon a time, it’s possible that people did learn about the world by living in it…but not now! Today we learn about the world, not from our experience of that world but from representations projected at us by the media. Roland Barthes called such images mythologies . What’s a family and what’s it like to live in one? Turn on the TV and find out! Most of us grew up in families; many of us live in families now, but we don’t trust our experience. For our ideas about family, we rely on television and the movies. The contemporary American family has been defined for us by shows like Leave It to Beaver , The Simpsons , and Modern Family . Of course, we don’t live on the set of a TV sitcom. My own dad was less like Phil Dunphy than he was like Sir Robert ( Downton Abbey ), but I never expected to grow up like Prince Charles. I might have hoped to grow up like Luke Dunphy. Confronted with these images, we have two options: either (1) we ignore actual experience and imagine that our own families are ‘just like’ these sitcom families, or (2) we honor our experience and accept that we live in ‘failed families’. I think I do a bit of both, but either way, we do it to our detriment. Today, our social scientists are focused on the twin phenomena of Entitlement and Privilege . Our media diet certainly reinforces both. But it sets our socio-economic expectations as well. Macaulay Culkin is ‘every boy’ and his Home Alone family is ‘America’s family’ – except it’s not! The McCallister family is rich. Rabbit rich! They are unapologetic ‘one-percenters’. They live in a McMansion in a posh Chicago suburb. In 2023, the estimated price tag was a mere $2,800,000. Plus, the family can afford (money and time) to take an extended vacation in Europe. (Two vans to the airport; parents fly first class.) Both parents work, but the nature of that ‘work’ is posh-vague. Suffice to say, neither works in a sweat shop, coal mine, or cube. Economists estimate that in 2024, a family would need an annual income of at least $750,000 to support such a lifestyle. Yet, the Home Alone franchise encourages all of us to imagine ourselves Growing Up McCallister . Nice work if you can get it. The McCallister Life is the way life’s z’posed to be. It’s the way all of us were meant to live. According to Bernie Sanders, our actual lives fall short because our patrimony has been stolen from us by greedy robber barons. Sadly though, most of us locate the fault, neither in the stars nor in the social system, but in ourselves. “What’s wrong with my parents that they did not provide me with the McCallister lifestyle? What’s wrong with me that I cannot provide that lifestyle for my own children?” These questions seem ‘natural’, if self-denigrating, but they are anything but. They contain anaerobic assumptions that will not survive exposure to oxygen…or sunlight. First, the questions assume that the McCallister lifestyle is within the reach of median members of society. Of course, there are Families McCallister, and in a sense, any family could be a McCallister Family (they could hit on a scratch card, for instance), but such outcomes are at best loosely related to the skills, efforts, abilities, or virtues of the beneficiaries. Somebody’s got to win life’s lottery, but, Immanuel Kant and Bernie Sanders notwithstanding, not everyone can win. That’s not how lotteries work. Second, and even more perniciously, the questions assume that the McCallister lifestyle defines ‘the good life’. It is good to live in a mansion in a monochrome neighborhood. It is good for siblings to have their own rooms (and not to share). It is good for families to spend the holidays in Europe. Sez who? The consequences of these hidden assumptions are nothing short of ‘socially catastrophic’. Think I exaggerate? Think again! We have decided to view life in terms of winners and losers. That’s problematic at best. Do winners earn immortality? Then what’s the point? We have told all participants that they will win or lose based on their performance on a ‘standardized test’ called childhood. What the players don’t know is that their answer sheets are shredded the minute they are turned in; no one will ever even look at them. Winners and losers will be determined instead by a secret algorithm unrelated to test scores. After a suitable interval, our beloved founder, Gordon Oliver Day, enters the exam room to announce the results. James Astor – winner; Jonathan Baskin – loser; and so on through the entire roster. (Note: there are many more losers than winners.) After tears of grief, the losers are left to mourn: “I’ve let myself down, and not just myself, but my parents, my coaches, my teachers and any future spouse(s) and children.” After tears of relief, the winners begin to compare notes and quickly realize that they did not all perform brilliantly on the test; they begin to intuit that something else must have intervened in the selection process. Their euphoria turns to insecurity…or even guilt. In the down-under film Hunt for the Wilderpeople , the 12-year-old lead says, “I didn’t choose the Skux (gangster) life; the Skux life chose me.” Kevin McCallister might have said the same thing about the Posh life. So, we’ve managed to create a value system in which we are all designated ‘losers’, at least in our own minds. Not easy to do but we’ve done it. Brilliant! I’m not done! I’m not rich, but I’m not poor either. I have a ‘nice’ lifestyle; I’m ‘satisfied’. But it’s not the McCallister lifestyle. So I am dissatisfied with being satisfied, and I take every opportunity to mimic the Family McCallister. Some people ask, “What would Jesus do?” I ask, “What would Kevin McCallister (or his parents) do?” So, I buy a house bigger than I need…or can afford, and I take the family on a trip to Europe, even though I have no interest in things European. These are the things one does if one wants to think of oneself as an honorary McCallister...or Dunphy. Like everyone else in the game, I was dealt an average hand. It was all I needed. But I squandered it by trying to live someone else’s life. Looking back, I wish I had paid more attention to the Rolling Stones : “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try some time, you just might find, you get what you need.” Image: Home Alone. 20th Century 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 . Return to Yuletide 2023 Previous Next

< Back A Universal Quantum Computer Is Possible! David Cowles Sep 10, 2024 “We are living in a version of Universe in which some quantum bits are still in superposition (potentiality) and others are already ‘decohered’ (actuality).” In a recent edition of Thoughts While Shaving (August 8, 2024) , Aletheia Today (AT) proposed that the Universe might itself be a giant Quantum Computer with every bit in superposition. Now scientists have released new findings that support that possibility. Physicists have created a new model for quantum computers that could more easily scale them up to make them more powerful than previously thought possible. The new theory, outlined in a recent study published in the journal PRX Quantum , proposes linking qubits, the fundamental workhorses of quantum computers, over vast distances to work as if they were part of a single super-powerful machine . These qubits can then be stitched together through quantum entanglement , linking their data across vast spans of spacetime, to process calculations in parallel. The more qubits are entangled, the more exponentially powerful a quantum computer can become. According to our (AT’s) version of this model, there is one ‘Universe’ with 10^80 bits, all potentially in a state of quantum superposition (i.e., not 0 or 1 but 0 and 1). Accordingly, there are 10^160 possible ‘universes’, i.e. unique combinations of decohered (0 or 1) quantum states. Perhaps unexpectedly, the Book of Genesis captures this model explicitly. Prior to the primal creative act ( Fiat Lux! ), “…the earth was without form or shape with darkness over the abyss and a mighty wind sweeping over the waters” (1: 2). What better metaphor could there be for ‘universal quantum superposition’? At any given moment in time, we are living in a version of Universe in which some quantum bits (Q-bits) are still in superposition while others have already decohered. (Time is not an element in Universe if decoherence is either 0% or 100%.) Imagine a bucket of water. As the temperature cools, the water will gradually, not suddenly, transition from a liquid to a solid (ice) state. Like the surface of a shallow pond, ice first forms at the surface and along the edges and then gradually spreads until the entire body of water is frozen solid. The constituent molecules, randomly jumbled in the liquid state, gradually assume a fixed alignment according to the principles of crystallography. Our Universe is currently in such a process of crystallization. We experience that process as ‘time’, the gradual transition from ‘pure potentiality’ (Aristotle) to total actuality. This model potentially resolves the perennial philosophical challenge of reconciling stability with flux. This problem fascinated the founders of Western philosophy (e.g. Parmenides and Heraclitus, 5th century BCE) as well as its last great systematic thinker, Alfred North Whitehead (c. 1930 CE). The challenge is transmuted into a prayer in an Anglican hymn: “Abide in me, fast falls the eventide.” Permanence amid flux! From here and now, we would expect additional Q-bits to decohere, ultimately resulting in a universal and eternal steady state. Could that be the much anticipated Kingdom of Heaven (Whitehead)? Or much dreaded Heat Death (Penrose)? Or the Block Universe we hear so much about these days? Our model, however, raises an additional question: If the Universe is in a state of superposition, how is it that any of its Q-bits ever decohere? According to standard quantum theory, decoherence only happens when a Q-bit comes in contact with an outside agent, a measurement tool, e.g. a nosey physicist. Decoherence, like ice, is contagious. But if the entire Universe is in a state of superposition, how is it that any portion of it can decohere? Traditionally, the role of universal outside agent, the cosmic other, has been assigned to God. But for those of you who are ‘enlightened’ and therefore God-phobic, we don’t need that hypothesis. The phenomenon of universal, reciprocal Incarnation will do the trick. The Universe is incarnate in each of its component entities just as each such entity is incarnate in the Universe. Anaxagoras realized this 2500 years ago. Pan in Panti he called it. Therefore, everything has the potential to function as an outside agent relative to anything else. The end is implicit (not necessarily determined) in the beginning. Bertrand Russell notwithstanding, just as ø is a member of every set, so every set must be a member of itself. Universe is maximally recursive. Universe is recursion. What we experience as ‘time’ (above) is the process of the Universe decohering. This model reflects our everyday experience in realms far removed from icy lakes. For example, assume 20 legit candidates announce plans to run for President of the United States in the next cycle. The outcome is highly uncertain. Gradually, the number of possible ‘final states’ (outcomes) reduces. On Election Day, the remaining Q-bits ‘collapse’ and we are left with one bit with a value of 1 (all others are 0). We call that Q-bit POTUS. Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to contact us on any matter. How did you like the post? How could we do better in the future? Suggestions welcome. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.