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

< Back Perfect Moments, Holy Moments David Cowles Nov 2, 2023 “Every moment, every event originates and culminates in God’s values.” Jean-Paul Sartre introduced the concept of a Perfect Moment in his debut novel, Nausea . Annie, a former girlfriend of Sartre’s hero (Roquentin), seeks salvation in the creation of "perfect moments"—choreographed events where action, speech, and context all work together to produce an experiential gem. The ‘salvation’ I’m talking about here is not the version preached by Christians (Christ, Heaven, etc.). Annie’s ‘salvation’ is an existentialist version. It has nothing to do with an ‘afterlife’; it is an immediate rescue from the absurdity of the world and the angst of being in it. If I can create a Perfect Moment (which I can’t), I can reassure myself that the world is not utterly absurd (which it seems to be). Annie pursues ‘salvation’ by creating and arranging scenes. For her, life is scripted but never rehearsed. Her ‘actors’ are given directions (sometimes explicit, sometimes implied): how to act, what to communicate, and when to emote. But the film is one-take only, with no reshoots, no edits, and the dialogue is improv. Annie’s life is one of perpetual frustration, disappointment, and despair. Annie’s world is a world of ideals, images, and forms. But that’s not the real world—a world stubbornly resistant to direction (alienation) and perpetually overflowing every ‘form’ we attempt to impose on it. That resistance, that overflow, is what ‘nauseated’ Sartre. Annie seeks salvation in the world. She arranges her moments to reflect back to her iher mage of herself. If she ever could actually create such a Perfect Moment, a physical expression of her spiritual essence, then she could be sure of her own salvation. The moment occurs, and it is perfect, so it (and by extension, I) is saved…in the mind of God. “Yeah, prove it!” Ok, the perfection of any event, any moment, is measured in relationship to God—his essence, his values. If a moment incorporates God’s values perfectly, it reproduces, on the temporal plane, the eternal order of things (“on earth as it is in heaven”). Therefore, the essence (order) of any ‘moment’ or event pre-exists the event itself…on the eternal plane, qua God. So it is necessarily saved, waiting to happen in history. The Perfect Moment is created by Annie for Annie; it reflects her. In that reflection, Annie can be assured of her own salvation. Very neat, very wrong! Annie is the ultimate narcissist. She is the God that came before YHWH, you know, when “the earth was without form or shape, with darkness over the abyss and a mighty wind sweeping over the waters.” Annie is trying to make a world that will reflect her image of herself to herself for herself. Claustrophobic? According to Judeo-Christian theology, YHWH also made a world ‘in his image,' but with two big differences: (1) YHWH’s world is free, i.e., unscripted. Its only limitations are the limitations imposed by the stage itself (Sartre’s ‘facticity’); (2) YHWH’s world reflects back to him…but it also projects out onto every other event in Universe. It is a projected image shared for the benefit of others, rather than an image reflected solely for the benefit of self. Of course, YHWH sprinkles his stage with various props, signs, arrows, etc. But what the actors choose to do with these props is entirely up to them. Like Annie, God is looking for himself in the world. Annie is building a mechanical apparatus in the hope that it will reflect her spirit. God says, “Here I am; copy me.” In the first case, Annie is the agent; in the second case, you are. According to Sartre, Freedom is the only Value. According to Pope Leo XIII, Value is Freedom. Therefore, God’s primal gift to the world is one gift with two faces. True freedom empowers (but does not compel) one to ‘do good’. In fact, according to Leo, one is only truly free - free from attachments, idols, etc.—when one is actively engaged in doing good. We are born free! But we voluntarily exchange our freedom for power and pleasure. We ‘sell our souls’ to honor our attachments and to feed our addictions. So just as Beauty, Truth, and Justice are each The Good as it expresses itself in various contexts, so Freedom…as it expresses itself in every context. Thus, Freedom is the uber-value, and Beauty, Truth and Justice are its subsets. Where is Keats when we need him most: “Value is Freedom, Freedom, Value.” Annie is motivated by the selfish desire to find her own personal salvation, or at least to confirm it, in one perfect moment. YHWH is motivated by his love for others; Annie is motivated by her love of self. Matthew Kelly’s book, Holy Moments , offers a bridge. Like Annie, Kelly is hyper-focused on the moment, and he finds salvation in that moment. But Annie’s salvation comes from an ‘artificially arranged material world’; Kelly’s comes through an ‘organically evolved spiritual world’. Now if I were you, the phrase ‘organically evolved spiritual world’ would have set off my ‘BS’ alarm: “metaphysical mumbo jumbo.” (For those of you religiously inclined, yes, the BS alarm is the voice of the Holy Spirit.) But in this instance, you can safely ignore the warning. Don’t turn off the alarm, though; just press the reset button! Every moment, every event, originates and culminates in God’s values. The event itself is the response of our created world to its creator’s values as they are projected into the material world (grace). My ‘organically evolved spiritual world’ is simply God’s nexus of values as they express themselves in the historical context of a specific moment. To the extent that you act out of those values only, you create a Holy Moment, not a Perfect Moment, a Holy Moment. 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 Mother of God David Cowles Mar 1, 2026 “Mary is the Gate of Heaven…the on-ramp for Jesus coming into the World and the off-ramp for the World returning to Christ.” 1000 words, 5 minute read In Roman Catholic theology, Mary, the mother of Jesus, has a prominent, unique, and controversial role. Despite persistent efforts to associate Mary with the multi-cultural White Goddess of Global Mythology (Robert Graves), Pope Leo XIV recently reiterated the Catholic doctrine that Mary can in no way be regarded as co-redemptrix with her son. But subject to that one restriction, it seems the sky’s the limit when it comes to Mariology. So let’s jump in! Jesus Christ, as understood by Christians, is a unique theological phenomenon. Unlike the dime-a-dozen godmen of Mythology, Christ is not a blend of human and divine characteristics. Christ is ‘true God and true Man’, i.e. wholly divine and wholly human. The ability of these seemingly incompatible natures to co-exist in one integrated person is Christianity’s defining characteristic. According to the Nicaean Creed (325 CE), Jesus was ‘begotten…before all ages’ by God the Father, ‘Maker of Heaven and Earth’, and ‘born of the Virgin Mary and made man’. Jesus was not born fully formed from the head of some god; like us, Jesus was conceived in his mother’s womb and developed there over 9 months prior to his birth. This alone confirms Mary’s exalted position in salvation history. She provided the thread that tethered the eternal, transcendent Christ to the immanent, spatiotemporal world. To reiterate : Jesus is true God and true man (sic). Mary is fully human but not divine. But this takes nothing away from Mary. Far from it, Mary’s unique and critical role in Salvation history precludes her sharing Christ’s divinity in any way. First, Mary is the 2 nd Eve, the ‘mother of all the living’; Eve in turn is ‘flesh of Adam’s flesh’ and Adam simply means ‘man’. Mary, like Eve, must be incurably mortal. Second, Mary is the point from which Christ entered into the material world. She is also the point at which that world first enters the Kingdom of God ( aka Eternity, Eschaton , Heaven). Literally and in more ways than one, Mary is the Gate of Heaven . Jesus Christ is the union of heaven and earth, time and eternity. Mary is the unique material locus which serves both as the on-ramp for Jesus coming into the World and the off-ramp for the World returning to Christ. At the Incarnation, the Universe quite literally turns itself inside-out. Simple! One and done. The Transcendent becomes Immanent so that the Immanent may become Transcendent. As a pre-teen boy (1950 – 1960), I wore a round neck, pull over jersey almost every day of my life. Every morning (or afternoon if it was a school day), I put on the jersey; every night, as I took it off, I automatically turned it inside out. Little did I know that each night I was reenacting the Incarnation. I had unwittingly created a new sacrament. And speaking of the Immanent becoming Transcendent, that process is anything but one and done . It unfolds in stages, beginning with the Death of Jesus, his Resurrection and Ascension, the Gift of the Holy Spirit (Pentecost), and the Assumption of Mary…and continuing through the Apocalypse, the General Judgment, and the Parousia . The great unfolding also extends backwards in time to embrace the Prophets, Judges, and Patriarchs in a universal eschaton stretching from Alpha to Omega. Origami was not part of my culture growing up but had it been, it might have served as another sacramental reenactment of the Incarnation. Mary ‘wraps around’ Jesus: she conceives him, births him, raises him, cajoles him, buries him and witnesses his Ascension into Heaven. Likewise, she is the ‘first fruit’ of his Resurrection, being assumed into Heaven, body and soul. For Jesus – and for us too? – his mother encapsulates and embodies the material world. This is appropriate. The life of Christ is a fulcrum, the tipping point in cosmic history. From Christ grace flows forwards and backwards in time and Jesus’ mother is the first beneficiary of both (Annunciation & Assumption). Earlier, we dismissed the notion that Mary was a goddess in the mythological tradition. Rightly so! Mary personifies the spatiotemporal. If she participated in divinity in any way she would not be able to play her critical role in Salvation history. Among the titles conferred on Mary by the Catholic Church’s preferred Litany , several strongly reinforce her significance as the locus of Christ’s entry into the material World and the World’s physical reentry into Christ: Mother of Christ Mother of the Church Mother of our Creator Mother of our Savior Ark of the covenant Gate of Heaven. Other epithets, however, connect Mary with functions in the material world that do seem to recapitulate those of various pre-Christian goddesses such as Sophia, Gaia & Easter: Mirror of justice Seat of wisdom Health of the sick Comforter of the afflicted Mother of Good Counsel Queen of peace Morning star. Interestingly, Themis, daughter of Gaia and the Greek goddess of Justice, is also referred to as Mother of Good Counsel. Others of these titles also connect Mary with pre-Christian goddesses (e.g. Sophia → Wisdom, Morning Star → Venus ). These are some staggering attributions: ‘Mother of our Creator…Mirror of Justice…Ark of the Covenant…Gate of Heaven…Queen of Peace?’ Wouldn’t you love to have Mary’s resume? Now imagine the world without these things…imagine a world without Mary! Can you do it? If you can, then you’re imagining a dystopian world on the order of Mad Max or Bazil . But more likely, you can’t. In that case, Mary’s unique contribution is ‘necessary’ (but never ‘sufficient’) for the existence and redemption of our world. Ave Maria, Mater Dei . *** Henry Ossawa Tanner’s Virgin Mary in Meditation (1905) portrays Mary in a quiet, lamplit interior, her face lowered in deep, human contemplation rather than idealized perfection. The soft, diffused light and gentle brushwork give the scene an intimate, Impressionist‑inflected atmosphere that emphasizes her inner spiritual life. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! 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< Back What We Know and What We Don’t David Cowles Feb 13, 2025 “From Parmenides’ squinting eyes to the Electron Microscope and the James Webb, we’ve come a long way in 2,500 years.” It is a commonplace of modern culture to assume that we are rapidly closing in on a TOE – A Theory of Everything. Given that knowledge is growing exponentially, can omniscience be far off? Imagine a sphere comprising every ‘bit’ of information that constitutes the Cosmos. Inside that sphere imagine 3 additional spheres of varying volumes, each concentric with the outermost (Cosmic) sphere. Within the Cosmic Sphere lies the Sphere of the Ontologically Knowability; it contains everything any conscious being within any cosmos could ever know about that cosmos. Whatever is between these two spheres is forever unknowable due to ontological constraints. Within the Sphere of the Ontologically Knowable lies the Sphere of the Epistemologically Knowable. Between these two spheres lies data about the cosmos that is theoretically, but not actually, knowable given the present state of theory and technology. Finally, there is a sphere of things we could know now but just don’t. We haven’t got there yet; these are our frontiers. Of course, all of this ‘unknowing’ wraps around a Nucleus which consists of everything we think we do know, right now, about our Cosmos. Here’s the schematic: Nucleus of what we think we Know Now (Nucleus). Sphere of the Epistemologically Knowable (SEK). Sphere of the Ontologically Knowable (SOK). Sphere of the Cosmos (Cosmos). While the absolute size of these spheres is of interest, the relative size is more instructive. The music of these spheres is anything but a monotone. Start with Nucleus, what we think we know; obviously, it’s expanding and not at a steady rate. It appears to be accelerating; if so, is the rate of acceleration smooth? SEK is also expanding. Every day, new advances in theoretical physics and experimental techniques push out the reach of human intelligence. It seems like every day new niches and entire levels of reality become accessible to our investigations. We can only know what we can know. We can’t know what we can’t know but we can know that we don’t know it. SOK is presumably fixed. And Cosmos? That’s beyond my pay grade. What we do know is that both the Nucleus and SEK are expanding…but at variable, and varying, rates. For example, until fairly recently, Cosmos was thought to be no more than 14,000 years old; now we know it’s 14,000,000,000. We were only off by 6 orders of magnitude. Likewise, its size was thought to be about 1/10th the size of what we now know to be our Solar System. We equated Cosmos and SOK with SEK. Clearly, our Nucleus and our SEK are expanding rapidly, and at an accelerating rate. Surely something approaching omniscience is right around the corner! But commonplace wisdom is not always correct; correction : commonplace wisdom is usually not correct. And this is case in point! Knowledge is not a static commodity. My six year old grandchild once asked his mother, “Tell me everything you know!” Knowledge is not like that. There is no end to what can be known, although there are certain limitations permanently imposed by SOK and temporarily by SEK. When we thought we knew that the cosmos could fit inside what is now known to be Jupiter’s orbit, we weren’t wrong. It was as much as could be known at the time given the epistemological constraints in play. We knew what we knew but we didn’t know what we didn’t know; we were entitled to feel cocky. With the advent of the telescope, Palomar, the Hubble, and the Webb, it’s now possible to know more, a lot more; and we do know more, much more! But we have our own epistemological barriers to reckon with. For example, we can only go as far as the speed of light can carry us! Every day, we watch from a window table at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Douglas Adams) as whole galaxies slip across the event horizon. We are watching Cosmos ‘set’ as it expands. Someday, there will only be Milky Way; someday only Solar System; someday… Even now, we are walled off from the Multiverse and from Penrose’s Cosmic Cycles (CCC: Big Bounce). Not only does the extent of our current cosmos exceed our ken but we believe that our cosmos may be one of many, perhaps infinitely many, ‘alternatives’. As much as we do know, what we don’t know vastly exceeds it. Even the unknown is nuanced. We need to identify three ‘flavors’ of ignorance: (1) I could know it but I don’t; (2) it’s knowable but I can’t (epistemological constraints); (3) as far as we know, it’s not knowable (ontological constraints). So how much do we know? That depends on which flavor of ignorance you choose for your baseline. Compared to what we can know but don’t (flavor #1 ), I’ll stipulate that we’re in pretty good shape. Let’s face it, we know a lot. But do we know more, proportionate to what we could know, than Parmenides knew 2500 years ago? Or Copernicus 500 years ago? I believe that Parmenides and Copernicus were aware, broadly speaking, of epistemological and ontological constraints; however, their sense of ‘what lay beyond’ is much vaguer than our own. And within the realm of the fully knowable, I conjecture that they understood about the same percentage as we do today. I am proposing the following: knowledge is growing at an accelerating rate…but so is the Sphere of the Knowable. The ratio of what is known to what is unknown may not be growing, as most suppose; it may be level…or it may even be decreasing. What say you? 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. 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< Back Neurotech Challenges Mental Privacy: New Human Rights? Laura Cabrera "Advances in neurotechnology do raise important privacy concerns. However, I believe these debates can overlook more fundamental threats to privacy." Neurotechnologies – devices that interact directly with the brain or nervous system – were once dismissed as the stuff of science fiction. Not anymore. Several companies are trying to develop brain-computer interfaces, or BCIs, in hopes of helping patients with severe paralysis or other neurological disorders. Entrepreneur Elon Musk’s company Neuralink, for example, recently received Food and Drug Administration approval to begin human testing for a tiny brain implant that can communicate with computers. There are also less invasive neurotechnologies, like EEG headsets that sense electrical activity inside the wearer’s brain, covering a wide range of applications from entertainment and wellness to education and the workplace. Neurotechnology research and patents have soared at least twentyfold over the past two decades, according to a United Nations report, and devices are getting more powerful. Newer BCIs, for example, have the potential to collect brain and nervous system data more directly, with higher resolution, in greater amounts, and in more pervasive ways. However, these improvements have also raised concerns about mental privacy and human autonomy – questions I think about in my research on the ethical and social implications of brain science and neural engineering. Who owns the generated data, and who should get access? Could this type of device threaten individuals’ ability to make independent decisions? In July 2023, the U.N. agency for science and culture held a conference on the ethics of neurotechnology, calling for a framework to protect human rights. Some critics have even argued that societies should recognize a new category of human rights, “neurorights.” In 2021, Chile became the first country whose constitution addresses concerns about neurotechnology. Advances in neurotechnology do raise important privacy concerns. However, I believe these debates can overlook more fundamental threats to privacy. A glimpse inside Concerns about neurotechnology and privacy focus on the idea that an observer can “read” a person’s thoughts and feelings just from recordings of their brain activity. It is true that some neurotechnologies can record brain activity with great specificity: for example, developments on high-density electrode arrays that allow for high-resolution recording from multiple parts of the brain. Researchers can make inferences about mental phenomena and interpret behavior based on this kind of information. However, “reading” the recorded brain activity is not straightforward. Data has already gone through filters and algorithms before the human eye gets the output. Given these complexities, my colleague Daniel Susser and I wrote a recent article in the American Journal of Bioethics – Neuroscience, asking whether some worries around mental privacy might be misplaced. While neurotechnologies do raise significant privacy concerns, we argue that the risks are similar to those for more familiar data-collection technologies, such as everyday online surveillance: the kind most people experience through internet browsers and advertising, or wearable devices. Even browser histories on personal computers are capable of revealing highly sensitive information. It is also worth remembering that a key aspect of being human has always been inferring other people’s behaviors, thoughts, and feelings. Brain activity alone does not tell the full story; other behavioral or physiological measures are also needed to reveal this type of information, as well as social context. A certain surge in brain activity might indicate either fear or excitement, for example. However, that is not to say there’s no cause for concern. Researchers are exploring new directions in which multiple sensors – such as headbands, wrist sensors and room sensors – can be used to capture multiple kinds of behavioral and environmental data. Artificial intelligence could be used to combine that data into more powerful interpretations. Think for yourself? Another thought-provoking debate around neurotechnology deals with cognitive liberty. According to the Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics, founded in 1999, the term refers to “the right of each individual to think independently and autonomously, to use the full power of his or her mind, and to engage in multiple modes of thought.” More recently, other researchers have resurfaced the idea, such as in legal scholar Nita Farahany’s book “The Battle for Your Brain.” Proponents of cognitive liberty argue broadly for the need to protect individuals from having their mental processes manipulated or monitored without their consent. They argue that greater regulation of neurotechnology may be required to protect individuals’ freedom to determine their own inner thoughts and to control their own mental functions. These are important freedoms, and there are certainly specific features – like those of novel BCI neurotechnology and nonmedical neurotechnology applications – that prompted important questions. Yet, I would argue that the way cognitive freedom is discussed in these debates sees each individual person as an isolated, independent agent, neglecting the relational aspects of who we are and how we think. Thoughts do not simply spring out of nothing in someone’s head. For example, part of my mental process as I write this article is recollecting and reflecting on research from colleagues. I’m also reflecting on my own experiences: the many ways that who I am today is the combination of my upbringing, the society I grew up in, the schools I attended. Even the ads my web browser pushes on me can shape my thoughts. How much are our thoughts uniquely ours? How much are my mental processes already being manipulated by other influences? And keeping that in mind, how should societies protect privacy and freedom? I believe that acknowledging the extent to which our thoughts are already shaped and monitored by many different forces can help set priorities as neurotechnologies and AI become more common. Looking beyond novel technology to strengthen current privacy laws may give a more holistic view of the many threats to privacy, and what freedoms need defending. This essay was republished with minimal edits in cooperation with The Conversation . Laura Cabrera's interests focus on the ethical and societal implications of neurotechnology and neuroscientific advances. She has been working on projects that explore the media coverage and the attitudes of the general public toward pharmacological and novel neurosurgical interventions for the treatment of psychiatric disorders. She has also worked on the public perceptions towards the use of different modalities of neuromodifiers for enhancement purposes, as well as their normative implications. Her current work also focuses on the responsible governance of neurotechnology. Return to our AI Issue Table of Contents Previous Next

< Back Deconstructing Popeye David Cowles May 25, 2023 “…then I am basically an automaton. I am carbon-based AI. I am the product of nature (inherited traits) and nurture (upbringing)…my parents’ mini-me.” As a boy growing up in the 1950’s, Popeye the Sailorman was a major cultural influence. He willingly ate his spinach, something my friends and I would do only if forced, and he was stubbornly self-assured. His slogan: “I am who I am and that’s all that I am.” How we all longed to say just that to parents, teachers, and schoolyard bullies! In an era when everyone was committed to forming you according to their ideas of what a prepubescent boy should be like, someone (flesh or celluloid) with the courage to say, “No, I am me, I know who I am and I will be who I am, not what you want me to be” was an instant hero and role model. A decade later, I began to read the existentialists, especially Sartre and Camus, and found they offered a very different idea of identity: “I am not what I am, but I am what I am not… I know who I am, and I know that I can be whoever I want to be… I am the being whose existence precedes his essence.” So, who’s right, Popeye or Sartre? And does it make any difference? Well, turns out, it makes all the difference in the world, and for my money at least, Popeye comes up short…way short. Question : how did Popeye come to be who he is? If he chose that identity, then he could just as easily have unchosen it…and he could still unchoose it, even now. But if he is who he is and that’s all that he is , then he does not have the power to change. Change implies the formation of a counter-factual intention prior to its execution. According to mythology, Popeye did not have the capacity to form, much less execute, a counter-factual proposition . He was who he was and there was nothing left over, nothing that could form the basis of being someone else. So Popeye did not choose to be who he is, and he has no power even to conceive a different identity, much less to actually change his identity. Popeye was the fondest dream of almost every 1950s parent! If I am what I am and that’s all that I am, then I am basically an automaton. I am carbon-based AI. I am the product of nature (inherited traits) and nurture (upbringing). In other words, I am my parents’ mini-me. I did not get to create myself and I do not get to change myself. I am and I always will be what someone (or something) else created. No wonder we tried to burn down the world! Pity we didn’t succeed: “Revolution for the Hell of it!” (Abbie Hoffman) Popeye, who masqueraded as our liberator, was just our parents in nautical garb. You’ve heard that story before…many, many times: “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” (The Who) In the end, Popeye wanted us to be who our parents wanted us to be. No wonder our generation was obsessed with the question, “Who am I?” We were like amnesiacs just awakening after a major trauma. We rebelled! But here’s the dirty little secret about rebellion: it always presumes aspects of the hated status quo. For example, we rejected the made-to-order identities glued onto us by our parents and their ‘secret agents’ (Popeye), but we still assumed that each of us had some hidden identity – just not the identity chosen for us by our parents. We relentlessly peeled off the layers of our respective onions in hopes of finding the hidden gem inside. There was no end to the things we tried: sex, drugs and rock and roll, of course. Not to mention meditation and political action. In the end, we found exactly what we should have expected to find all along: nothing! There is no secret identity. There is only the freedom to choose our identity and forge it. But who knew? And so what ? Well, if I am what I am and that’s all that I am, then I’m not really responsible for my actions, am I? If I commit a crime, it is my nature to do so (a modern version of “the devil made me do it”). If my politics are racist, they are merely the reflection of the racist culture I grew up in. The very idea that identity could be bound to nationality or race is vintage Popeyeism (though there’s no reason to suppose that Popeye was a racist!). The stratification of society into classes is reinforced by the idea that I am destined to follow in my father’s footsteps when it comes to ‘work’ (i.e., my relationship to the means of production). Disparities in education trace to the tyranny of standardized testing (especially the all determining IQ). By the age of 13, many children in the North Atlantic community have already been assigned to “tracks” that in turn determine what they will have the opportunity to learn and what work they will be able and expected to do as adults. So, in the true spirit of deconstruction (Jacques Derrida et al.), we see that Popeye only masqueraded as a liberator. When he said, “No!” he was really saying, “Yes,” because his “No” presupposed the culture of conformism that he nominally opposed. In reality, he merely projected the ethos of 1950s culture (conformism, keeping up with the Joneses, etc.) onto his adoring fans, us – and all the more brutally and effectively because he did it in disguise. 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 Jean-Paul Sartre and Pope Leo XIII “Separated by c. 75 years, these men nonetheless faced a common challenge: Rebuild civilization!” David Cowles Jean-Paul Sartre, existentialist philosopher, prolific author, and perpetual social critic is not often linked with Pope Leo XIII, leader of the Roman Catholic Church from 1878 to 1903. Yet, these two men share an important intellectual legacy: a focus on freedom. Separated by c. 75 years, these men nonetheless faced a common challenge: Rebuild civilization! Sartre faced a Europe shattered by two world wars, the collapse of the liberal republics, the meteoric rise and gradual decline of fascism, and the rampant spread of Stalinism. He was at various times a communist, an existentialist, a ‘man of letters’, and a member of the French resistance. After WW II, Sartre wrote prolifically in an effort to influence the course of Europe’s reconstruction. And what of Leo XIII? The crisis he faced was more cultural than it was political. In fact, you can think of Leo as ‘politically agnostic’…and proud of it. Leo’s pontificate occurred at a dark time for European civilization; he inherited a ‘war’ on three fronts: Intellectually, the so-called Enlightenment had undermined belief in God; the promise of science and technology replaced the Good News and gave rise to colonialism, militarism, and the humanitarian horror known as the Industrial Revolution. Politically, a flurry of new ‘isms’, liberalism, socialism, communism, and anarchism, threatened to marginalize Leo’s ‘ism’ of choice, Catholicism. Morally, these were the early days of modern permissiveness. The cult of ‘license’ was rapidly replacing the practice of ‘morality’ as the foundation of Western civilization. To young people in particular, morality was associated with rules laid down by parents, teachers, politicians, and priests – rules that were enforced selectively…and often brutally. By 1889, the liberte of 1789 had become license. Freedom is not just ‘freedom from’ constraint; true freedom is also ‘freedom to’ create. Nor is free behavior to be confused with random behavior. Consider the Brownian motion of molecules: it is totally ‘unconstrained’…but it is certainly not ‘free’. In fact, randomness is the antithesis of freedom; it undermines free will just as surely as does determinism. In fact, it has been shown that it is impossible to distinguish, phenomenologically, between a thoroughly random world and a rigidly determined one. Both are infinitely susceptible to infinitesimal perturbations. Freedom is a function of ‘will’ and will is always a will to create (or to destroy only in order to create). That’s what will is. It is will that empowers human beings (and perhaps other entities) to formulate projects and carry them out. Will requires the freedom to execute a project once conceived; but it also requires the capacity and inclination to formulate the project itself. The essential element of ‘will’ that allows us to formulate projects is a set of ideal values, freely chosen, that we use (1) to evaluate the current state of our world and (2) to conceive projects to bring that current state into closer harmony with those values. To whatever extent our ‘ideal values’ are imposed on us or our ‘choice of projects’ is dictated to us, our subsequent actions are not a function of will. Nor are they if either our values or our projects pop-up randomly. ‘Whack-a-Mole’ is not chess. Will reWill requires freedom; in fact, freedom is the substance of will. The famous phrase ‘free will’ is redundant. Freedom is only operative in the context of will and will only exists in the context of freedom. When will, motivated by our ideal values, commits to some project, we implicitly designate that project as ‘good’. (‘Good’ is synonymous with ‘our set of ideal values’.) In doing so, we identify something outside ourselves and our world as ‘good’ and when we designate something outside ourselves as ‘good’, we affirm the reality of an objective, transcendent Good that qualifies our project as ‘good’. Example: every work of art aims to be beautiful. Beauty is a core value involved in the creation and appreciation of art. However, different artists and different cultures understand beauty in radically different ways. Furthermore, what is beautiful in one context might be much less so in another. But the value itself, beauty, never varies and never waivers! Without the value known as ‘beauty’ there is no art. When utility replaces beauty as the standard of measurement, art vanishes. “The Bali have no art; they do everything well.” Likewise, if a value is transcendent , it is not derived from anything in this world…or in any possible world. A value has its status a priori . In that sense, values exist before (logically, not temporally) the world exists. Even if there were no world(s), justice would still be justice, even if not yet interpreted or applied. Stated differently, it is impossible to imagine a world where ‘justice’ is not a value. It may be ignored, perverted, or even rejected, but the value itself never goes away. A society that ignores or rejects justice is simply…’wrong’. Let’s let Leo get a word in edgewise on this subject: “Liberty is a power perfecting man, and hence should have truth and goodness for its object.” Immortale Dei (ID) For Leo, ‘truth and goodness’ (in the person of God) is the summum bonum : “… The supreme end to which human liberty must aspire is God.” Human Liberty (HL) Freedom “…is to be regarded as legitimate in so far only as it affords greater facility for doing good…” (HL) This controversial and counter-intuitive proposition should be understood as a tautology. The fact that it is not read that way is grand testimony to the crisis of intellectual life in contemporary Western society. Freedom is the opposite of slavery. When we choose a project that is ‘suboptimal’, we are giving-in to some compulsion (biological, psychological, or social). “… To exchange the unchangeable good for evil…is not liberty, but its degradation, and the abject submission of the soul to sin.” (HL) “… Whosoever commits sin is the slave of sin. (John 8:34)” (HL) So here we are, like little boys, imagining that when we are our naughtiest, we are our most free. In fact, the reverse is true. How incredibly distorted our view of reality has become! As Immanuel Kant wrote before Leo or Sartre, “… A free will and a will subject to moral laws are one and the same.” If I were truly free, I would want to do good. Earlier still, the Psalmist began: “Happy is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in company with scoffers. Rather, the law of the Lord is his joy; and on his law he meditates day and night.” Jean-Paul Sartre approaches the question of ‘freedom’ from a diametrically opposite point on the ideological spectrum. He denies the existence of God and, perhaps ‘worse’, states (like Lucretius) that even if God did exist, he wouldn’t be relevant. Like Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Ayer and Wittgenstein, Sartre rejects outright even the possibility of objective, transcendent values. Without God, “there could no longer be any a priori good, since there would be no infinite and perfect consciousness to conceive it… (If) God does not exist, we will encounter no values…that can legitimize our conduct.” Existentialism is a Humanism (EH) Even so, Sartre recognizes that life without values is impossible. In so doing, he accepts a major part of the Leonine thesis (summarized above). But according to Sartre, if there is no God to source our values, then it is incumbent on us to invent them. This view offers us an important glimpse into Sartre’s ontology. We will see later that for Sartre, human beings take on many of the functions reserved for God in other philosophies. But for now, let’s return to the subject of values: “… If I have eliminated God the Father, there has to be someone to invent values… To say that we invent values means neither more nor less than this: life has no meaning a priori . Life is nothing until it is lived, it is we who give it meaning, and value is nothing more than the meaning we give it.” (EH) Brave talk! But this is little more than what children do when they play Cowboys and Indians (sorry, ‘Cowpersons and Native Americans’) or Pirates ( aka ‘non-traditional merchants’). They invent rules, establish values and act accordingly. At the time these values are held earnestly, but all is erased when mom calls, “Dinner!” These ad hoc rules have no objective validity, and the values they represent have no transcendent worth. They are ‘made up’ and they remain operative only so long as the ‘play’ continues. One is reminded of Shakespeare’s Tempest : “Our revels now are ended. These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air; and—like the baseless fabric of this vision— the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, yea, all which it inherit shall dissolve, and like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.” However, to his great credit Sartre avoids the trap of moral nihilism that doomed Nietzsche, Camus, Ayer, and others. He finds a very clever way out. Sartre locates ‘value’ in ‘freedom’ itself. Earlier we noticed that ‘freedom’ has a unique property: it is the antithesis both of determinism and of indeterminism, even though they are antitheses of each other. How is this possible? In Sartre’s ontology, freedom is closely related to le neant , negation. Freedom negates both determinism and randomness. Sartre demonstrates that the determined and the random are fundamentally identical. They both characterize a world devoid of purpose, choice, etc. Morally, it makes no difference whether events are determined or random; either way, they are meaningless. They make no appeal to transcendence. According to Sartre, unique among the categories of existence, the concept of freedom entails its own value. This is eerily reminiscent of the ontological argument for the existence of God, according to which the concept of God entails the existence of God. But Sartre’s view raises questions: If freedom is a value in itself, from whence does it derive that value? After all, freedom per se (and by definition) has no content; it is merely ‘freedom’, right? Not so, says Sartre: “Freedom, under any concrete circumstance, can have no other aim but itself…(man) can will but one thing: freedom as the foundation of all values… The ultimate significance of the actions of men of good faith is the quest for freedom itself.” (EH) Let’s unpack this: Is freedom “the foundation of all values”? Well, values would have no relevance in our world if we lacked the freedom to conceive and execute (to the best of our abilities) projects that embody those values. On the other hand, freedom cannot be “the foundation of all values” per se . Those values must have a reality beyond freedom itself. Freedom wouldn’t be freedom if values were hard-wired or random. Earlier we observed that freedom empowers ‘will’ and is its essence. Now it is time to turn the tables: without will, freedom is meaningless. The concept of ‘meaning’ presupposes a ‘signified’ beyond the ‘signifier’, so ‘Will’ must be directed at something outside itself, and it is that direction that constitutes freedom’s meaning. ‘Something outside itself’ must possess intrinsic worth if it is to stimulate the will to act. (Why else would ‘will’ undertake action?) That worth must be a function of values embodied in a freely chosen end, values that are objective and transcendent. Let’s restate: Will operates only in the context of purpose (end). To will some ‘end’ is to endow that end with value. It is the values embodied in that end that give it worth; and it is those values and that end that give worth to will itself and therefore to freedom, which is its essence. The sum of all projects freely chosen by the will because of their intrinsic value constitutes the worth of ‘will’ per se, and therefore, the value of the freedom that empowers will. “Man is free. Man is freedom…… Man is nothing other than his own projects.” (EH) Wow! Humanity is not only ‘free’, but ‘freedom’ itself; it is humanity that injects freedom into the world. Yet, that freedom is simply the sum of the freely chosen projects that ‘will’ empowers us to undertake, and as we saw earlier, ‘projects’ imply choice and choice implies value. Traditionally, God is understood to be supremely free and, in some formulations at least, freedom itself. Sartre preserves this ontological structure but puts humanity in the place of Godhead. But he doesn’t stop there: “There is no difference between free being – being as project, being as existence choosing its own essence – and absolute being.” (EH) Again, God is traditionally understood to be ‘absolute being’, sometimes referred to as ‘the ground of all being’. Sartre defines God as an entity whose essence (good) precedes existence; he defines humanity as an entity whose existence (freedom) precedes its essence. God’s perfection does not compromise God’s freedom. Sartre misses this. For him, God is hardwired. He is not a free being who chooses good unfailingly; he is a being whose essence defines him as good and robs him of the freedom to choose. If that were true, perhaps the concept of God would indeed be irrelevant…but it is not! What makes God good, supremely good, is that God freely and perpetually chooses to embody the objective and transcendent values from which all worth is derived. God’s ‘good’ is active, not passive. Second, “God said: Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” ( Genesis : 1:26). God and human beings do not form a template as Sartre imagined. Rather, human beings and God share a common ontological nature: freedom. We are co-creators. Remember Kant: “… A free will and a will subject to moral laws are one and the same,” and Leo: “… The supreme end to which human liberty must aspire is God.” (HL) Freedom is the ever new and ever active power to choose the eternal and unchangeable ‘good’. In popular consciousness, Leo is viewed as the archenemy of freedom (as it is popularly conceived, i.e., as license); Sartre, on the other hand, is viewed as its champion. Yet, Sartre’s ideology of ‘freedom’ leads away from the moral nihilism of Nietzsche, Ayer and Camus and back to objective, transcendent values a la Leo. So, two great men whose views are irreconcilably opposed? I think not! David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Previous Next