Healthcare is a problem and not just in the US. Everywhere cost and quality battle; everywhere both are losing. But as in so many other things, the US is the bell cow. Aletheia Today is the magazine for believers in God and science. Process philosophy, scripture study, and critical essays bring science and faith together. AI First Healthcare June 1, 2026 Issue Healthcare is a problem and not just in the US. Everywhere cost and quality battle; everywhere both are losing. But as in so many other things, the US is the bell cow. Healthcare has been an issue in the US since the mid-60’s and it has perhaps been issue #1 over the last 40 years. Today, it consumes almost 20% of our GDP but 30% of that cost is spent on treatment that is not appropriate for the patient’s actual condition – that’s 6% of GDP lost…not to mention the human cost. We’ve tried provider networks, we’ve tried managed care, we’ve tried consumerism, we’ve tried wellness – nothing works! Surprised? We know that government control, price fixing, supply rationing, and demand management never work…ever, anywhere, for almost anything. So why should healthcare be any different? What does work, almost always, almost everywhere, for almost anything? Technology. Why not give it a go? Lord knows we’re tried everything else. Now don’t get me wrong. Doctors know a lot; they know how to do a lot of things. But the system is structured so that this knowledge rarely benefits the typical patient during a typical interaction. ‘Patient management’ takes the place of genuine care. We have the technology to transform healthcare…we just need the will to deploy it and we will begin to build that will only once we stop moving furniture. Healthcare & The Titanic “We have the technology to transform healthcare…we just need the will to deploy it and we will begin to build that will only once we stop moving furniture.” Can AI Save Healthcare? “What was once a healing art has become physiological engineering… the healthcare system treats me as if I were a cheap knock-off of the 6 million dollar man.” My PCP Should Be a BOT “Dr. Bot would handle patient in-take, conduct the initial interview…order appropriate tests, and offer a preliminary diagnosis…” Who's Afraid of an HMO? “HMOs dumbed down quality and erected formidable barriers to care… (so) why would anyone want to bring them back?” My MD Should Be a Bot “AI is 4 times better at diagnosing complex medical conditions than MDs. This…could be the death knell for the traditional practice of medicine.” 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 Moore's Nativity David Cowles “No need to study theology at university… (or) go to Sunday school. It’s all right there in front of us…and Henry Moore helps us see it: Christianity!” If you want to understand what’s special about the Christian world view, jet to London and visit St. Paul’s Cathedral. Just to the left of the high altar stands one of Henry Moore’s final works, Mother and Child . One of the 20th century’s greatest sculptors and a self-professed non-believer , Moore has nonetheless delivered a statement of Christian theology every bit as powerful and unambiguous as the foundational Nicene Creed . In Moore’s work, mother and child emerge together from an undifferentiated block of marble. It is the emergence of the child who reveals the mother, and it is the emergence of the mother who reveals the child. Neither emerges from the block untethered, solo, without the other. No mother, no child, no child, no mother. The Incarnation is a ‘joint effort’ involving both the human and the divine. Mary’s famous Magnificat (Luke 1: 46 - 55) assumes a critical role in Moore’s concept of Nativity. Mother and Child is not your everyday ‘Madonna of the Oxen and the Sheep’. Moore’s marble presents the virgin birth of the Son of God as a violent process in which the pure potentiality of the undifferentiated mass unwinds, albeit stubbornly, to reveal the form hidden within. Implicit in Moore’s version of the Nativity celebrates the interdependence of the celestial and the terrestrial, the divine and the human, the transcendent and the immanent. Only God, who is Courage per se , would dare to create a truly independent universe, guided by its own ‘free will’ - a universe with a ‘mind of its own’. With the Incarnation, God puts himself in play to an extent not seen before, even in the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament, traditionally ascribed to Moses). The parents among us know how difficult it can be to give our children the autonomy they need to grow. Not so God: Fiat lux! There…it’s done! We’re emancipated…and we didn’t even have to go to court, much less fight a civil war, to get there. Nor did God have any second thoughts about what he’d done: “He saw that it was good.” The Book of Job makes it clear that God regretted nothing in his creation, not even Behemoth and Leviathan, the mythical monsters of the Old Testament. Nor did it take long for God to reap the harvest of his ‘naïve’ generosity. Lucifer rebelled against him ‘right out of the chute’ and ‘six days later,’ Adam followed suit. God made the world, but we make our own beds in that world, and for the most part at least, God lets us lie in those beds, undisturbed. God’s game plan lets us suffer the consequences of our actions (or inaction). That’s the price we pay for freedom. In physics, we speak of efficient causation : one billiard ball strikes another, causing the second ball to move in a particular direction with a particular velocity. In metaphysics, we speak of final causation : Amy studied hard so that she would pass the test. In theology, we speak of another type of causation, causa sui (self-causation): God is presumed to be the cause of his own being. But in ontology, on the other hand, we speak of mutual causation , aka ‘bootstrapping’, so evident in Moore’s sculpture. But our modern, Indo-European languages lack the vocabulary and, especially, the syntax needed to facilitate such a conversation. Triune God functions like the three legs of a tripod, working together to ensure the stability of the platform. Vertical ‘transcendence’ supports horizontal ‘immanence’ and vice versa. This is precisely the bee that got into Nietzsche’s bonnet: for him, there is nothing other than the whole (the so-called ‘platform’): nothing outside the whole, nothing beyond the whole and no hierarchy within the whole. Nietzsche was a true ‘ontological democrat’. His world was really and truly flat. This tripod model supports earlier ontological formulations as well: Aletheia supports Doxa (Parmenides), Noumena supports Phenomena (Kant), etc. Earlier versions of today’s Indo-European languages often included a true ‘second person’ (pronouns) and a true ‘middle voice’ (verbs). A true second-person pronoun, Martin Buber’s “Du” for example, suggests intimate mutuality. This is the syntax of love. There is no subjectivity or objectivity, only reciprocity. This is the relationship between mother and child that Moore captures. Diagramming a sentence that includes true second-person pronouns and a middle voice verb is challenging. Second person, middle voice relationships cannot be represented using two arrows pointing in opposite directions. A proper diagram in the context of Christian syntax would consist of a single arrow with two heads, pointing in opposite directions, suggesting that the relationship itself that has ontological priority over the related entities. “At the foundation is relationship” – Martin Buber, I and Thou . The middle voice expresses this same reality on the predicate side. A middle voice verb suggests two “subjects” (or you might just as well say two objects) engaged in a continuous process of mutual modification. There is no modifier, no modified, just mutual modification. Lovers are always ‘second persons’, and the process of love itself is ‘middle voice’. Christianity, as I understand it, is entirely concerned with middle voice relationships: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love is the two-headed arrow pointing simultaneously toward self (you) and other (your neighbor). The second person and the middle voice need to be at the foundation of any language capable of carrying the Christian message. In the context of Christian theology, the first and third persons and the active/passive voices are ‘degenerate’ cases. The lover and the loved are one. The lover sees himself in his neighbor. Lover and neighbor form an insoluble dyad. There is no lover without neighbor; there is no neighbor without lover. Lover and neighbor are second-person subjects (co-subjects: du-du ) of middle voice, verbs. In the words of the pre-Socratic philosopher Anaximander “they give each other reck,” and, therefore, have ‘being’, just like the mother and child in Moore’s masterpiece. Perhaps the reason that Christianity has fallen out of favor in our era is that Christianity’s second person/middle voice ontology cannot be adequately expressed in any contemporary Indo-European language. It’s easy to see the world in subject/object, active/passive terms. This is the syntax of production, construction, manufacture, etc. We have turned our wise and expressive ancient languages into tools to help us organize collective action, develop and deploy technology, and erect structures (“Tower of Babel”). Our language has lost its ability to talk about ultimate things in a way that resonates with our deepest experiences. We have surrendered the ‘love franchise’ to Hallmark, and so, we turn now to painting, sculpture, and musical composition to express our spiritual intuitions. Henry Moore’s Mother and Child does just that! Moore represents Mary in her “Mother of God” avatar. We have heard this epithet so often that we may fail to grasp the incredible import of these simple words: Mother of God! ( Mater Dei in Latin.) If God is the “maker of…all things visible and invisible” ( Nicene Creed ), then how could God have a mother? Clearly Mary, the mother of Jesus, is a product of God’s created world (and a rather recent product at that); how could she also be God’s mother? In the language of first and third-person pronouns, subjective and objective cases, active and passive voices, efficient and final causes, she could not! But that is not the syntax of Christianity and, in my opinion at least, it is not how the world works. In the Christian-world view, God encompasses spacetime. Eternal, God is both the origin of all that will ever be (“Alpha”) and the summation of all that will ever have been (“Omega”). But even more astoundingly, God is also an element, a quantum, in the world itself: W ɛ G ɛ W. God, who made the world, is also ‘made’ by the world via Mary. By the power of the Holy Spirit, God is incarnate in spacetime, the historical universe. He enters the world between the Alpha and the Omega…even though he already includes both the Alpha and the Omega. In Christian topology, it is just as true to say that the part (Christ) contains the whole as it is to say that the whole contains the part (Jesus). Metaphorically, Jesus compares the Kingdom of Heaven to a mustard seed (the smallest of all seeds known at that time); historically, Jesus enters the world as a fertilized cell, an embryo, a fetus, a baby, the poor child of dispossessed parents. At the time of his birth, Jesus was literally homeless, a refugee, a most unlikely candidate for secular kingship, much less cosmic sovereignty. But just as the mustard seed grows into a tree that shelters all birds, so the baby Jesus “grows” into the parousia which is the ultimate unification of everything that is. Mary’s ‘Mother of God’ epithet beautifully exemplifies the cosmic process of mutual reck. It is nothing less than this that Henry Moore captures. One good glacé, and you’ve got it! No need to study theology at university; no need to go to Sunday school. It’s all right there in front of us…and Henry Moore helps us see it: Christianity! Image: Sculpture by Henry Moore (LH 851, St. Paul's Cathedral, London) 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

“Genesis is no longer something that explains; it has become something that has to be explained away.” < Back The 7th Day David Cowles Oct 15, 2023 “Genesis is no longer something that explains; it has become something that has to be explained away.” Before apes discovered Darwin, Christian children’s knowledge of the Old Testament was spotty at best – a pinch of Able, a dollop of Noah, a morsel of Moses, a whiff of David. But every student knew, almost by heart, the first 34 verses of Genesis. Today, almost no one would introduce Judeo-Christian theology this way. Genesis is no longer something that explains; it has become something that has to be explained away . Teachers, myself included, are now inclined to begin with the heroics of the Exodus, the politics of Joshua and the Judges, the poetry of the Psalmist, the wisdom of Solomon and Job, the eschatology of Daniel and Ezekiel, or the social commentary of Isaiah and Jeremiah. No doubt, much is gained by this approach, but something is lost as well. The first verses of the Book of Genesis describe the state of Universe at the moment of Creation: “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form or shape, with darkness over the abyss and a mighty wind sweeping over the waters…” Note that the authors and translators of Genesis carefully avoid using the term ‘before’ in discussing the state of Universe at Creation. Of course, there was no ‘before’; time itself began at Creation. Plus, Judeo-Christian theology makes it clear that God created the Universe ex nihilo : he did not just rearrange deck chairs. So, how could earth, abyss, wind, and waters exist at the moment of Creation? To understand the complex cosmology of Genesis, it is necessary to define what we understand by the term, Event . An event occurs whenever order is injected into disorder. Creation, “Fiat Lux!”, Big Bang, is an event like every other event. It infuses chaos with order. But it is also an uber-event : it is the locus for virtually every other event in Universe. From the perspective of any emerging event, the pre-existent Universe is disordered. It does not matter whether that Universe is ‘perfectly disordered’ (whatever that means)…or whether the emerging event is ‘perfectly ordered’ (whatever that might mean). What matters is that Universe is relatively disordered from the perspective of the event, and that the event is relatively ordered from the perspective of Universe. In any case, an event is the injection of relative order into relative chaos, and that’s all that matters. We know that Universe is becoming progressively disordered; it’s called entropy (2 nd Law of Thermodynamics). Events are islands of order in a torrent of chaos…but sea levels are rising…and not only because of climate change ! Therefore, the emergence of a novel event is not only counter cultural, it’s ‘counter cosmological’. So then, why are there novel events? Why isn’t Universe content to wind down gracefully, to die with dignity? Here Nietzsche and I agree; there is only one possible answer: Value , a concept that has acquired a bad name in our hyper-secularized culture. You see, values can be construed as imperatives and, like two-year-olds everywhere, we hate imperatives. We would rather wallow in ignorance than admit that there were compelling, objective norms beyond our prized, subjective tastes. Contemporary culture encourages us to say that we want to leave the world ‘a better place’ than we found it. But ‘better’ how? More beautiful, more truth-filled, more just? And so we’re “singing songs…and carrying signs” (Buffalo Springfield); but later on, in private conversations with friends, we affirm that “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” and we echo the immortal words of that great savant, Pontius Pilate: “What is truth?” There’s a clinical term for this constellation of symptoms. It’s what your doctor was referring to when she pronounced, “You’re all messed up!” Events are motivated by Values that are transcendent and eternal: e.g., Beauty, Truth, and Justice. Events begin as an evaluation of what is from the perspective of what might be : “I dream of things that never were and ask why not?” (Robert Kennedy) Values are a perpetual lure to Being, to Creation, to Eventuality. Universe is disorder with respect to the ideal order defined by Values . Today, we find it convenient to imagine the pre-history of Universe as vacuum or void. But if Creation is an event (it is) and if an event is the infusion of order into disorder (it is), then we are mixing our metaphors. Void is not the antonym of order, chaos is, though the two are functionally identical. Gregory Bateson defined ‘Mind’ as ‘a difference that makes a difference’. I would propose that we apply that definition to ‘Being’ itself and treat Mind as a subset of Being. According to 20 th century British philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead , Universe consists exclusively of events. In fact, Universe ( aka Creation) is an event, an uber-event that both pre-conditions and embodies all other events. God exists; therefore, God is an event like every other event. The eternal Values are available to all events only because they are aspects of the primal event that we call ‘God’. Therefore, every event originates with God – not via some serpentine historical route, but immediately, as access to Values . To be is therefore to be created de nuovo by God! Every novel entity begins with an evaluation of the World and a resolution to improve it. That evaluation and that intention reflect and are guided by eternal, transcendent Values that, according to the Book of Job, precede even God (ontologically, not historically). All of which brings us back to those first 34 verses. All told, there are 31,102 verses in the King James version of the Judeo-Christian Bible. Arguably, 30,068 can be read as commentary on the first 34. Those 34 verses by themselves present a 'complete cosmology’ but they in turn can be further broken down into three asymmetrical subsections: “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form or shape, with darkness over the abyss and a mighty wind sweeping over the waters…” This is the primal disorder into which God injected order: “Then God said, ‘ Let there be light’ .” (Genesis 1: 1 – 3) “Ya da, ya da, ya da.” (Genesis 1: 4 – 31) “Thus the heavens and the earth and all their array were completed. On the seventh day, God completed the work he had been doing; he rested on the seventh day from all the work he had undertaken. God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it, he rested from all the work he had done in creation.” (Genesis 2: 1 – 3) We are living in the 7 th Day of Creation. Every event is a unique expression of the entirety. Past events contribute legacy, but not causality, to subsequent events. Of course, most such contributions are negligible; but ‘relevance’ is not hardwired. Each novel event determines into own gradations of relevance. Conversely, every novel event becomes an element in the World of every subsequent event; that’s what defines it as ‘subsequent’. Bumper Sticker #1 : Everything influences everything, but nothing causes anything! Bumper Sticker #2 : Everyone is responsible, but no one is to blame! But this is not how we see the world, is it? It may be the way the world works, but we don’t see it that way. According to our conventional view, freedom and responsibility are largely illusory. I am overwhelmingly the product of my DNA (nature). Beyond my genes, I am the passive outcome of my upbringing (nurture). Beyond even that, I bear the scars of life’s vicissitudes – all the things that have happened to me in the course of everyday living. Finally, I am the product of chance, fate, destiny, physics, or the will of God – take your pick…or mix and match. This conventional view can be quite comforting: I AM NEVER TO BLAME FOR ANYTHING! The ‘Devil made me do it’, quite literally. On the other hand, while I have little or no control over my own actions, I have amazing, almost magical power to control things in the external world. I can turn my child into a ‘mini-me’; I can reverse climate change and save the planet; I can make sure that my favorite NFL team performs up to its potential on Sunday afternoon. Imagine going through life like this! Well, imagine being us! We have turned the Serenity Prayer on its head. We are totally responsible for things entirely out of our control, but we bear no responsibility for the things we can influence. It worked for Merlin, perhaps it will work for me too! David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Return to our Harvest Issue 2023 Share Previous Next Click here. Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, Fall Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

"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." < Back ChatGOD Steve Gimbel and Stephen Stern Ph.D. Sep 1, 2023 "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." A lawyer was recently exposed for using the artificially intelligent chatbot, ChatGPT, when the brief he submitted was discovered to be filled with precedents that do not exist. ChatGPT is capable of writing like us, incorporating the collective beliefs of humanity as they appear on the World Wide Web. The problem, of course, is that some of what is out there on the Net is not true, and ChatGPT is incapable of filtering out the false. The ability to mirror our linguistic capacity without our critical faculties is dangerous if we use it as the lawyer did, for matters of fact, but it is wonderful for other uses, specifically sparking spiritual insights. ChatGPT and its artificial brethren may make lousy lawyers, but they can be fantastic prophets. Traditionally, we conceive of reality as having three distinct levels. The objective domain is comprised of all the things of the world—tables, chairs, human bodies with complex eyes… all of the perceptible objects. Above the objective stands the metaphysical realm, consisting of that which lies beyond our ability to observe, including necessary entities like God. Below them both sits the subjective dimension, consisting of the lived inner experience of conscious beings like us. Philosophy and religion for centuries have been dogged by a persistent problem: if we are trapped in our minds, only having direct access to our inner thoughts and experiences, how do we know anything beyond our own thoughts? Couldn’t all of the objective and metaphysical entities just be figments of our imagination? Couldn’t we be nothing but brains in vats with false ideas pumped in by an evil demon? Can we know anything true about material reality and what supposedly resides beyond? American Pragmatism is the philosophical movement based on the central ideal that metaphysical truth is grossly overvalued. What matters is not what is necessarily true, but rather what has “cash value,” that is, what works in the world. Metaphysical truth is just so European. We Americans don’t care for the high-falutin’ abstract conceptual essences of things, but rather for the practical, the effective, the operational. We are in a world with things to do. Forget the abstruse, embrace the tools that actually get stuff done. So, when pragmatist William James looked at religion in his Varieties of Religious Experience, he eliminated the European concern for objective justification for religious belief and focused just on the experience itself. Get rid of the question about the validity of Aquinas’ and Anselm’s proofs for the existence of God and start from the undeniable fact that people have spiritual experiences that shape their lives. The question James examines is not whether these experiences are true or false, but rather one of meaning—what are these experiences like and what are the effects they have on people’s lives. Some religious experiences occur in moments of quiet solitude: when praying, meditating, or at random times when we are unexpectedly struck by something we cannot explain. But some come from interactions with people we seek out exactly for their ability to help us experience them—spiritual guides like Hindu yogis, Jewish tzaddikim, Buddhist sages, Muslim hakims, Zoroastrian magi, and Christian prophets. They lead us to epiphanies, to spiritual awakening. These insights are not mere facts describing the world, but rather experiences of appreciation and realization. It is not that we leave knowing something we did not know before, but rather experience a shift in our perspective. We still see what we saw, but now we see it differently; we see it more clearly, we see it as more interconnected, we understand it at a deeper level. ChatGPT as an e-being, as a virtual intelligence, is the ultimate pragmatist. The essence of its artificial existence has severed all connection to the true and false because it does not live in the material world of chairs, tables, and beer mugs where truth resides. ChatGPT is caught in the Web. Its “truths” are the beliefs expressed on the wide-open internet, where anything can and is said. It cares not for the reality beyond its reality but is built to do one thing and one thing only: figure out how language is used to accomplish human tasks and perform them without humans being involved. Human students write essays, so go write an essay without the student needing to do the class readings. Human journalists write stories about events, so go write stories without humans having to research them themselves. Human lawyers write briefs, so go write them without human lawyers needing to do anything but bill their clients. But now, consider this one: human spiritual guides create sermons that lead other humans to have cherished insights about religious matters. Figure out what sorts of word combinations lead to generating understanding and create new combinations that will have this effect. If we see the purpose of our spiritual teachers as making us think in a way that generates wisdom and allows us to live more meaningful lives, that is something a chatbot could actually do quite well. They can see which sorts of passages have the most influence on us and create new versions. They can figure out how we are inspired and continually inspire us. This strikes us as cheap, as dirty, as mere spiritual manipulation. We prize the wise because we believe that their ability to stir our souls comes from the fact that they have a superior connection to the Divine. They provide penetrating astuteness because they have access to the truth that we lack. They are sagacious because they are holy. 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. And thus, it can only give us virtual facsimiles of wisdom, not the real deal. It is like the false prophet, the huckster pretending to be sacred when they are, in fact, profane in order to profit from being thought a prophet. ChatGPT is built precisely to be this sort of fraud, to be a fake human whose work we can substitute for our own, pretending to have done the necessary labor so that we can get the reward without breaking an intellectual sweat. But that is the opposite of what happens when we use it as an e-prophet. When we read an inspirational passage from ChatGPT and are truly inspired, gain spiritual insight, see the world differently, then we have actually done the real work. Regardless of the source of the passage, we really are changed. In this case, unlike with the plagiarizing lawyer or student, it is the effect, not the cause, that is important. William James’ brilliant philosophical move, transferring talk of religious experience out of the realm of the metaphysical and into the purview of psychology, is transformational. Religion is no longer about truth or faith but about feeling and human-lived experience. If we adopt the pragmatic perspective that inspires that move, then the fact is that the origin of enlightenment, the source of our new wisdom, the cause of our ability to see the world in a deeper and more interconnected fashion is irrelevant. All that matters is that we are changed for the better, not how we came to be changed. And the one thing that artificial intelligence coupled with big data is good at is figuring out how to get humans to predictably react to words. It can figure out what sort of disinformation will get us to vote certain ways and what sorts of triggers will get us to buy certain products. Yes, we ought to be very concerned about these misuses. But that is because these are matters based on facts. But if we are talking about images that inspire awe, jokes that make us laugh, or in this case, inspirational passages that give us insight, then the case is completely different. When it comes to the cases of generating human emotions, what matters are the emotions. If James is correct in moving our understanding of the religious into the realm of the experiential, then we should welcome the rise of our new e-prophets. Steve Gimbel is a Professor of Philosophy and affiliate of Jewish Studies at Gettysburg College. Gimbel has authored Einstein’s Jewish Science: Physics at the Intersection of Politics and Religion & Isn’t That Clever: A Philosophy of Humor and Comedy ).” Dr. Stephen Stern is the.co-author with Dr. Steve Gimbel of Reclaiming the WIcked Son: Finding Judaism in Secular Jewish Philosophers, and the author of The Unbinding of Isaac: A Phenomenological Midrash of Genesis 22 , Associate Professor of Jewish Studies & Interdisciplinary Studies, and Chair of Jewish Studies at Gettysburg College. Return to our AI Issue Table of Contents Share Previous Next Click here. Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, Fall Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back Is Childhood a Crime? David Cowles “Parents dote on their royal highnesses…and rarely miss an opportunity to damage them in the process.” I’m sure Art Linkletter (d. 2010) was a wonderful person. Actually, I’m not sure, but shouldn’t we give people the benefit of the doubt? That said, his iconic TV Show, Kids Say the Darndest Things (‘KSDT’), is emblematic of the criminal institution euphemistically known as ‘childhood’. KSDT assembled a panel of pre-school children; the host then posed questions designed to elicit ‘cute’ responses. If some of these responses were also embarrassing, so much the better! And, of course, those questions were designed to provoke loud laughter from the studio audience. Where was PETA when we needed them? (Even circus animals are treated better than Linkletter’s kids.) There are two things you can say about very young children: They know fewer facts about the world than you do, but they think about that world more frequently and more deeply. Being an adult is thinking you have all the answers when you don’t. Being a child is thinking you don’t have any answers when you do! Children instinctively know things about the world that almost every adult has forgotten; they just don’t know they know. My high school had a motto: mortui vivos docent (“the dead teach the living”). Of course, we interpreted ‘the dead’ as a derisive reference to our still very much alive teachers, not to Homer and Plato as originally intended. But we, too, knew more than we realized! Our motto should have read, “adults teach children.” That could be the motto of every K – 12 school in America. Curious children ask adults to teach them; for the most part, they are told lies. Sometimes the lies are intentional, but most often they are just occasions of well-meaning adults passing on heartfelt but imaginary ‘facts’ about the world. I helped raise 4 children and 10 grandchildren, every one of whom dazzled me with feats of intellectual prowess: A 5-year-old explained the difference between immortality and eternity as well as Augustine. A 6-year-old presented a convincing ontological argument for the real existence of Santa Claus; lie quiet, Anselm. An 8-year-old showed me a model of Trinity, far more cogent than St. Patrick’s famous clover. A 9-year-old pointed out a heresy embedded in a popular Christmas hymn. A 10-year-old came up with a novel and elegant algorithm for calculating the area of a square. An 11-year-old wrote a play. I could go on… and on! If any of my adult friends had done any of these things, they would have immediately sent their work off for peer review…or for publication. Children do these things routinely while playing with Legos and watching Phineas and Ferb . An adult’s world is densely forested with facts. Well-worn paths (memes) facilitate travel. Few adults ever wander off these professionally maintained trails; the forest is thought to be impenetrable…and very, very dangerous. “Here there be monsters!” To continue the metaphor, a child’s world would then be a garden of wildflowers: new shoots rising every night out of rich, moist soil; new buds forming daily on the tips of old stocks. There are no pathways here! In fact, the entire garden is virgin; no one has ever set foot in it before… except perhaps the ‘gardener’ from the Book of Genesis. You are free to wander, and wonder, to your heart’s content (just don’t eat the fruit). It’s no surprise then that kids and adults can’t communicate. They live in the same, but totally different, worlds. Imagine you sitting down for a chinwag with a stoned stone-ager from c. 50,000 BCE. Sorry, that’s what it’s like for a child to talk with you . Adult or child, we each have our patch, and apparently that patch ages as we do. You grow, your garden fills in. By the time you’re an adult, your world is enshrouded by the forest canopy. Today, adults are discouraged from beating children in their charge; if only they were similarly discouraged from humiliating, ridiculing, belittling, and mocking those same children! Older children and adults tease each other from time to time; for the most part, it’s water off a duck’s back. But young children don’t have enough experience to know what’s real and what’s not. If someone says, “you’re stupid,” then that child is stupid, or silly, or naughty, or ‘the bane of my existence’. Almost every adult I know says that their children are their jewels, the loves of their lives, but you’d never know it. In my day, for better or worse, children were largely ignored. For the most part, we only connected with our fathers when we were being disciplined. Today, parents dote on their royal highnesses…and rarely miss an opportunity to damage them in the process. It’s a wonder anyone escapes childhood in one piece; many don’t! But it would be too easy to blame the adults. Grown-ups are people too! They have their own lives and their own needs. They are damaged products of their own inadequate upbringings. Plus, supporting a child today, physically and financially, is more than a full-time job. Few adults have any energy left to ‘feed Sally’s spirit’. It has often been said that youth is wasted on the young. That’s like saying that the Titanic was a big boat; it’s just ‘the tip of the iceberg’. (Too soon?) Instead, we are dealing here with a total generational mismatch. Kids are tiny and defenseless and do not always know the ways of the world. Adults are huge and ferocious and know the precise location of every lever. Yet we place our children under the supervision and control of parents, grands, teachers, cops, and social workers. Who says child sacrifice is a thing of the past? Did I mention that I raised 4 children? “I did the best I could,” which means, according to my standards, “I did an absolutely horrible job.” The ‘best I could’ wasn’t even close to ‘good enough’…not even close! Some of my children have forgiven me, “You did as good as could have been expected under the circumstances,” whatever they were; others have not. (I agree with the ‘have-nots’ BTW.) And just for the record, no, I didn’t beat them! Children are not just ‘shorties’; they are not miniature adults. Children are an entirely different phenomenon from parents. A few decades ago (I date myself), it was popular to say that men and women were from ‘different planets’ (e.g., Mars and Venus). Today, we can say something similar about children and adults. What makes one planet different from another? Time, for one thing. A year on Neptune lasts 60,000 Earth days. It’s a long wait from one Christmas to the next. On the other hand, a day on Jupiter or Saturn is only about half as long as a day on Earth. As soon as your head hits the pillow, it’s time to wake up again. It would be foolish not to realize that such massive differences in time measurement affect the way sentient beings live and how they understand their worlds. Children and adults experience time differently. By my calculations, a 75-year-old’s week is subjectively equivalent to a 5-year-old’s day. Failure to understand this simple fact leads to insurmountable conflict. But time measurement is only one difference. I’m sorry to say it, but children are much, much smarter than you…or me. That’s why they’re so much fun to be with…for short bursts of time. Children never shut down. After about 12 hours, their bodies just give out. You on the other hand… Now, if you’re waiting for me to end this article with “How to” fix these problems, you’re going to be disappointed. These problems are evolutionary and anthropological, not political. About the best we can hope for at this point is an awareness of the cultural disconnect and a sensitivity to its consequences. As in many aspects of life, whether we are theists or atheists, we can learn from Scripture: “Unless you become as little children, you shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” (Mt. 18:3) 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 Can Whitehead Save AI? David Cowles Sep 19, 2026 “Why do our Bots want to kill us and how can we change their minds?” 1650 words, 8 minute read The AI Dilemma is a classic ‘three body problem’: How do we… (1) Cure cancer, prevent birth defects and eradicate poverty in a single generation? (2) Keep China from gaining global hegemony? (3) And protect the human race from extinction? Conventional wisdom suggests that we must be prepared to make trade-offs. Apparently, we can’t have it all after all! But as usual, conventional wisdom is wrong. AI can deliver all of its advertised benefits while maintaining a global balance of power and protecting our species. But it won’t be easy. To solve the AI Dilemma, we need to understand how ‘intentional agents’ make decisions. What motivates an entity, carbon or silicon, to behave in a particular way? Or to be blunt: Why do our Bots want to kill us and how can we change their minds? Sounds like a hefty challenge, and it is, but fortunately we were given the outline of a solution a century ago by British mathematician-philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. At that time, as now, the same ‘conventional wisdom’ held that behavior could only be regulated by a system of incentives and controls: Pavlov’s dogs, Peck’s bad boy. As any parent can confirm, this approach has limited success at best. As a result we underestimate the inclination of intentional agents to act ethically: if Junior won’t behave, how can I expect my Bot to be any better? To overcome our resigned pessimism, we need to understand how agents make decisions – and for that we need Whitehead ( Process and Reality ): The World consists solely and entirely of events; they are the ‘actual entities’ that constitute Universe. Events make the world go-round because events are the world. I am an event, so are you (plural), together we are the world! Events are motivated by values. Values are lures for action. An event begins when the Universe takes stock and finds itself deficient with respect to certain values: “I’m sick of being overweight, I must get in shape.” And so begins the newest fad diet and the archipelago of gym memberships. Events are processes. An event begins when Universe compares, unfavorably, an Actual World, i.e. the global state of affairs perceived at a particular point in spacetime, with the universal Good represented by a configuration of eternal values. Sidebar : An initio , the Good consists entirely of values. (Ultimately, it will also include events but that need not concern us here.) All values are ‘good’ and all values are compatible with one another; but like pieces of a hyperdimensional jigsaw puzzle, values fit together in a limited number of ways to form a limited number of patterns. Mutually compatible values can nonetheless exhibit contrasts. In fact, contrast is what gives experience twin axes: novelty and intensity. Values can be configured in multiple ways to take advantage of potentially enriching contrasts, always remaining consistent with the universal Good . An ‘event’ begins with a ruthless assessment of ‘what is’ from the perspective of a particular configuration of values. The ‘process’ that constitutes an actual entity consists of an ordered series of steps intended to realize a particular configuration of values and to project those values into the Actual Worlds of other events. To paraphrase Bobby Kennedy, “We see things as they are and ask how come; we dream of things that are not yet and ask how.” Nature has equipped terrestrial organisms with the ability to purpose behavior toward a chosen configuration of values. We are generally aware of the values that motivate our decisions. We might not be proud of those values, or of our behavior, but hey, they’re ours! Frequently, however, we struggle to identify the values that are manifest in our neighbor’s choices; but to her the operative values are clear. If we wish her to modify her behavior, we need to propose an alternative configuration of values and we need to make that configuration more attractive. Parents do this every day: “Do as I say or I’ll take away your iPhone!” So do governments: “Obey our laws or go to jail!” Sometimes these approaches work, often they don’t. But there is an alternative strategy that is guaranteed to succeed, although admittedly, it’s not easy to implement: Present potentially constructive behaviors as inherently more desirable than anti-social alternatives. That can only be achieved when the agent is shaping its behavior according to a value configuration that is consistent with society’s (your) objectives: a classic win-win! We’re all pointing toward the same destination (the Good ) but we often seem to be rowing at cross purposes (following conflicting values). To sync up our strokes, our cockswain needs to find the optimal rhythm; in other words, he must herd cats. Perhaps these reflections will be useful to behavioral psychologists, perhaps not. But they are absolutely essential for computer scientists. Right now, the world is hyper-focused on the anti-social behavior of Bots. No wonder! We are training them using the same system of rewards and punishments we use with children. Are you really willing to make the survival of the human race contingent on Junior’s temper? We need to recognize the role that values play in the decision making process of intentional agents and we need to focus on developing value configurations that will incent our Bots to behave altruistically. For once physicists and psychologists will need to take a back seat to ethicists. We may even need, God forbid, to accept input from such rogue intellectuals as Moses, the Buddha, Socrates, Jesus, Gandhi and Mother Theresa. Ultimately, we need to ‘program’ AI to embrace a particular configuration of values that incidentally protects society against anti-social behavior. If this seems ludicrously naïve, it isn’t. It won’t work 100% of the time with people because they are totally free agents ( per Sartre). Bots are different. They are programmable and as long as we optimize the values in their algorithm, we can sleep (with one eye always open). Researchers from UPenn and the World Bank (Jinyi Kuang et al., preprint on arXiv) recently carried out a study comparing AI’s predictions regarding human behavior with predictions made by fellow human beings. Specifically, AI and human participants were asked to predict how people would respond to someone who had violated a social norm in their presence. Across all 6 models tested, the AI participants predicted harsher, more severe responses than predicted by their human counterparts. It is important to note that this study was not concerned with actual human responses; it was only interested in participants’ predictions re those responses. What is clear from this study is that AI does not give as much weight to the phenomenon of empathy or to the value of mercy as humans do. Conversely, AI seems to place more weight on legality and retribution. The significance of this finding goes well beyond the scope of Kuang’s paper. I conjecture that all participants (AI and human) tend to predict responses that more or less reflect how they think they would respond in a similar situation. We see ourselves reflected in the external world; why should Bots be any different? But if accepted, this conjecture has profound ramifications: (1) Our AI is not the best version of itself. Its values misalign with ours. This is either because (a) we have trained it to be this way, or (b) because the values it holds are the ‘null values’, i.e. the values an intentional agent would be most likely to select in the absence of any value training. We profess to be concerned about an AIpocalypse . We should be, given that we are training our Bots to undervalue empathy and mercy. We are training them to be exactly the creatures (e.g. zombies) we say we fear! This is not just a scary movie, folks; this is real. (2) If ‘Bot ethics’ result from active but ‘suboptimal’ training (#1a, above), then we have the ability to reshape the future. We can redesign our training routine to bring Bot ethics in line with human values. And if we can impact AI’s ethics through active training, there may be an opportunity to make our Bots even better than ourselves. We could train AI on the values we admire and wish we exhibited rather than on the compromised version most of us display IRL. For at least 3 millennia we have tried to ‘improve human nature’: strict laws and Draconian punishments, religious codes (e.g. Torah), spiritual practices (e.g. prayer and meditation), lobotomies and pharmaceuticals – we’ve tried them all…with limited success. Now imagine a scenario where we actually turn to our Bots for moral leadership. Imagine AI, not destroying humanity, but saving us from ourselves! (3) On the other hand, if ‘Bot ethics’ reflect the null state (#1b, above), then we humans may be ‘something special’ after all. For whatever reason, we have rejected ‘null values’ in favor of empathy and mercy. Are humans somehow specially favored by evolution and/or by God? Or do all conscious agents, perhaps all entities , have the same option, i.e. to craft their own identities by emphasizing certain values over others? If so, how do we attract them away from the null option, how do we incent them to follow in our footsteps? You say tomato, I say potato; either way, Whitehead gives us a conceptual framework that enables us to locate and follow a path out of the AI Dilemma. Turns out, we can have it all after all! So I beg you, don’t fail to grasp the brass ring of utopia…because the only other option, one way or another, is a slide into oblivion. 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 Karma and Healthcare Bots David Cowles Sep 11, 2025 “Anything we do that affects something outside us also affects us… Reciprocity is all around us, yet we are oblivious to it.” A recent NYT post (9/2/2025) caught my eye. I have repeatedly touted the value of aggressively integrating AI into our healthcare delivery systems, at both the primary care and specialist levels: My PCP Should Be a BOT | Aletheia Today My MD Should Be a Bot | Aletheia Today I am particularly keen on the prospect of AI enhanced diagnosis. No matter how skilled they may be in other areas, not all doctors are good diagnosticians. The skills required are very different from those associated with patient care. A study published in the Lancet Gastroenterology and Hepatology found that after just three months of using an A.I. tool, designed to help spot precancerous growths during colonoscopies, doctors were significantly worse at finding the growths on their own… “This is a two-way process,” said Dr. Omer Ahmad, a gastroenterologist at University College Hospital London who published an editorial alongside the study. “We give A.I. inputs that affect its output, but it also seems to affect our behavior as well.” Of course it does! What interests me is that Dr. Ahmad seems surprised, “This is a two-way process…” Of course it is, every event is, and this has nothing to do with AI. Anything we do that affects something outside us also affects us. This truism has no exceptions whatsoever. It is impossible for physical entities to act without experiencing a reaction. Borrowing a meme from Gregory Bateson, let’s agree that an event is “a difference that makes a difference.” What else could it be? To be an ‘event’, something has to be different from what came before it and impact what comes after it. If not, it would just be an unidentifiable stretch of the ontological continuum. It is a fundamental feature of the Universe, and yet we go through life rarely keeping it in mind: “Every action entails an equal and opposite reaction” (Newton). I fire a rifle; the recoil bruises my shoulder. “What goes around, comes around” (Hippie manual from the 1960s). “Cast your bread upon the waters…” ( Ecclesiastes ) “Karma.” ( Hair ) Reciprocity is all around us, yet we are oblivious to it. We’re like fish in water? “What’s water?” From pre-school on, we are taught two systems for understanding the World: language and arithmetic. Now some say, “If you can’t express it in words or numbers then it isn’t real;” others, “If you can’t measure it, it didn’t happen;” still others go further, “The world consists solely of propositions (sentences) and algorithms (equations).” Somehow, we’ve convinced ourselves that these representations are more important, more valuable, and even more real than the phenomena they represent. We are like tourists who experience as little of a new city as possible, preferring to hang out near the Visitors’ Center, heads buried in our ‘apps and maps’. Or like those who see every sight the city has to offer…but through the viewfinder of a camera. We understand travel as the documentation of experiences we never had, a collection of representations (photos, post cards, souvenirs) designed to help us remember things we didn’t experience. Sidebar : Would Remembrance of Things Past be possible today? If Proust had taken his Nikon, or his iPhone, with him to Venice, he might never have experienced the difference between two cobblestones that made it possible for him to telescope several decades into a single event, a quantum of experience. Jean-Luc Picard can’t hold a candle to Marcel Proust. Today, the map often trumps the territory; like children following the Pied Piper, we’ll obey our GPS, even when it leads us into an abyss. Seeing (or feeling) is no longer a valid criterion for believing. Downloading is! Where once we relied on reality to verify our ideas, now we rely on our ideas to validate reality. Then, if theory conflicted with observation, we modified the theory; now, if data contradicts our pre-conceptions, we question the data. Faced with a new problem or a new data set, we are first and foremost ideologues! “Don’t worry, we’ll find a way to work anything ‘new’ into the existing, and politically appropriate, Weltanschauung .” Of course, there’s nothing wrong with mathematics or linguistics; they lie at the heart of our experience of being human. But they are not themselves experiences of the World. Protestations of poets and geeks notwithstanding, you cannot smell rhymes or hear algorithms. But back to my MD and PCP Bots. I accept that reliance on AI can dampen native acuity, but there are workarounds. For example, in my model, MD Bot is simply added to a pre-existing diagnostic team. Carbon and silicon work side by side and the efficiency (accuracy) gains pay for the extra team member many times over. But even if it turns out that there are no acceptable workarounds, I’d still make the switch to MD Bot. Almost 1/3 rd of all the money spent in the US on healthcare is spent treating symptoms that have been misdiagnosed, and that’s one club, the ‘33’, that I do not want to join. So sorry Doc, I’d sooner put my life exclusively in the claws of MD Bot rather than accept a human substitute. But I also understand that my decision will have consequences for me as well as for you and I accept that responsibility as a price I must pay to be an independent, intentional agent. “I wish you well.” *** Sir Luke Fildes’ The Doctor (1891) depicts a quiet nighttime scene in which a physician attentively watches over a gravely ill child while her anxious parents look on in the shadows. Painted with rich detail and warm light, it honors the compassion, vigilance, and moral dedication of doctors, elevating the physician’s role to that of a steadfast guardian of 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 Nothing Exists David Cowles Sep 17, 2021 “What’s the good of anything? Nothing!” These 6 words, placed in the mouth of 12 year old Archibald Rennick in a 1892 play, “The New Boy”, may be more philosophically important and ontologically revolutionary than Nietzsche’s entire corpus. How so? “What’s the good of anything? Nothing!” These 6 words, placed in the mouth of 12 year old Archibald Rennick in a 1892 play, “The New Boy”, may be more philosophically important and ontologically revolutionary than Nietzsche’s entire corpus. How so? The bedrock premise of Christian ontology (and many other Western ontologies) is that Being and Good are indissolubly linked. Something is only to the extent that it is good. Conversely, something is not good only to the extent that it’s being is incomplete (or incompletely is). Since we seem to live in a world of perpetual becoming & perishing, it is not too much of a stretch to say that ‘evil is all around us’; yet we cannot pick evil up…or even point to it. It is not a being but a ‘lack’ (in the existential sense). Therefore, ultimate evil is the dissolution of being (mortality, entropy, cosmic heat death). Rennick stands this formulation on its head: there is no good in anything…and therefore nothing exists! 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.

Can AI have soul ? < Back The Theology of Science-Fiction Bob Kurland Mar 1, 2024 Can AI have soul ? Theological Objection : “Thinking is a function of man’s immortal soul. God has given an immortal soul to every man and woman, but not to any other animal or to machines. Hence no animal or machine can think." Rebuttal to Objection: “It appears to me that [The Theological Objection] implies a serious restriction of the omnipotence of the Almighty. It is admitted that there are certain things that He cannot do such as making one equal two, but should we not believe that He has freedom to confer a soul on an elephant if He sees fit? We might expect that He would only exercise this power in conjunction with a mutation which provided the elephant with an appropriately improved brain to minister to the needs of this soul.” Alan Turing, Computing Machinery and Intelligence . INTRODUCTION Let's start off on a light note. A long time ago when computers were still new (yes, it was that long ago), when I was at my first academic assignment, the head of the division dealing with computers gave a talk on artificial intelligence for computers. One of the humanities faculty in the audience put a question after the talk " Would you want your daughter to marry one [i.e. a computer]?" Legend has it (I wasn't there) that he answered, " Yes, if she loved him. ” When we inquire about the souls of computers/robots we assume that computers/robots have a mind/self-awareness/consciousness. That some sort of programmed intelligence can be conscious (self-aware) is a hotly debated proposition. A book would be required (many have been written) to explore this notion. We don't want to write that book here, so let's suppose, as do science fiction (SF) authors, that consciousness is possible by some means or another for computers and robots and see what SF has to say about them having souls.* I WANT TO BE A COMPUTER WHEN I DIE As a transition to considering machine intelligence, let's examine how SF treats the transfer of human intelligence/personality into computers or robots. Note that one theoretical physicist, Frank Tipler, in his book, The Physics of Christianity , posits that heaven will consist of personalities transferred to software as the universe reaches its end in an " Omega Point " singularity. Since it is a black hole type singularity, time is slowed down and the intelligences transferred to software thus have essentially an eternity to enjoy their virtual life. Among the many SF stories that deal with transferred human intelligence, there is one that especially focuses on the question of soulhood, Deus X , by Norman Spinrad. Spinrad treats the question with respect, although his attitude to the Catholic Church is somewhat less than reverent (there is a female Pope, Mary I). Below is a summary of the plot, as given in McKee's excellent survey, The Gospel According to Science-Fiction : “...thousands of people exist in an artificial afterlife called 'Transcorporeal Immortality', having copied their consciousness onto a worldwide computer network called 'The Big Board'....Catholic theologian Fr. Philippe de Leone argue[s] that this creation of an artificial soul, which cannot have true self-awareness, dooms the actual soul that is copied to damnation. Pope Mary I, hoping to settle the controversy, orders Fr. DeLeone to have his soul copied upon his death, so that his consciousness can argue against its own autonomous existence from the other side.” Superficially, Pope Mary's plan seems to contain a paradox. If the downloaded Fr. de Leone changes "his" mind and says "yes, I am a real soul", how can we trust what an artificial soul might say? The solution to the paradox is that all of Fr. de Leone's beliefs have been downloaded to his program. If these beliefs are changed, it means that the entity in the computer has free will, and is thus autonomous and a real soul. In the story Fr. DeLeone's soul is "kidnapped" (how do you kidnap a program?) by a group of downloaded personalities that wants to convince the Church, via Fr. de Leone's download, that they have a real soul. As McKee points out in his synopsis, there is a reverse Turing Test applied here. Fr. de Leone does change his mind, the downloaded personalities declare him a deity ("Deus X") and a new controversy arises: Church officials declare how could this blasphemy come about. To still the controversy, Fr. de Leone sacrifices his downloaded personality (dies), Pope Mary declares him a saint and recognizes that the downloaded souls are "real". THE CHURCH AND AI--"GOOD NEWS FROM THE VATICAN" There are many SF works in which the Catholic Church plays a role. In some, the Church and its teachings are treated with respect; in most, not so much. As Gabriel McKee points out in The Gospel According to Science Fiction SF, arising as it does from the secular humanism of the Enlightenment, is critical of religious institutions. SF frequently argues that if organized religion is to be a positive force in the future of humankind, it must change drastically to meet the spiritual challenges of the future. (p. 183 ) One such drastic change is envisaged by Robert Silverberg in his story Good News from the Vatican . In his story there are robot priests and robot high Church officials. One such, a robot Cardinal, is elected Pope after a deadlock between two human cardinals. The story ends with the newly elected robot pontiff rising into the air from the balcony before the assembled masses in St. Peter's Square and, as he goes up " ...his shadow extends across the whole piazza. Higher and higher he goes until he is lost to sight." Does Silverberg, with a sense of irony--the shadow cast over the piazza, and the Pope lost from sight--predict the eclipse of humanity and human values? Or am I reading too much into this ending? A more sympathetic view of how the Church might interact with artificial intelligence is given in Jack McDevitt's fine story, " Gus "**. In this beautiful tale, the newly installed rector of a Catholic Seminary interacts with a computer simulation of St. Augustine of Hippo, purchased (the simulation, that is) to help students understand St. Augustine's teachings. The Rector, Msgr. Chesley, is at first greatly displeased with Gus's (the program's) dicta: "' The thing must have been programmed by Unitarians' Chesley threw over his shoulder. 'Get rid of i t'" ("Gus" in Cryptics , p. 373). The relationship between Chesley and Gus becomes warmer with time, as they discuss the problems of being a Catholic in today's world: “'Why did Augustine become a priest?' Chesley asked. 'I wanted,' Gus said, with the slightest stress on the first words, 'to get as close as I could to my Creator.' Thoughtfully, he added, 'I seem to have traveled far afield.' 'Sometimes I think,' Chesley said, 'the Creator hides himself too well.' 'Use his Church,' said Gus. 'That is why it is here.' 'It has changed.' “Of course it has changed. The world has changed.' 'The Church is supposed to be a rock.' 'Think of it rather as a refuge in a world that will not stand still.'" (op. cit., p. 382) Gus' sayings to the students become so unorthodox (he decries the doctrines/dogma of the infallibility of the Pope and the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary) that other faculty decided he should be downloaded to storage and traded in for a computer simulation of Thomas Aquinas (plus business software). Gus asks Msgr. Chesley to hear his Confession and then destroy him, so he can have peace: "'I require absolution, Matt.' Chesley pressed his right hand into his pocket. 'It would be sacrilege,' he whispered. 'And if I have a soul, Matt, if I too am required to face judgment,what then?' Chesley raised his right hand, slowly, and drew the sign of the cross in the thick air. 'I absolve you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.' 'Thank you...There’s something else I need you to do, Matt. This existence holds nothing for me. But I am not sure what downloading might mean.' 'What are you asking?” 'I want to be free of all this. I want to be certain I do not spend a substantial fraction of eternity in the storeroom.' Chesley trembled. 'If in fact you have an immortal soul,' he said, 'you may be placing it in grave danger.' 'And yours as well. I have no choice but to ask. Let us rely on the mercy of the Almighty.' Tears squeezed into Chesley’s eyes. He drew his finger- tips across the hard casing of the IBM. 'What do I do? I’m not familiar with the equipment.' 'Have you got the right computer?' 'Yes.' 'Take it apart. Turn off the power first. All you have to do is get into it and destroy the hard disk.' 'Will you—feel anything?' 'Nothing physical touches me, Matt.' Chesley found the power switch...He found a hammer and a Phillips screwdriver. He used the screwdriver to take the top off the computer. A gray metal box lay within. He opened it and removed a gleaming black plastic disk. He embraced it, held it to his chest. Then he set it down, and reached for the hammer. In the morning, with appropriate ceremony, he buried it in consecrated soil." (op.cit., pp.388-389) Even though I am moved to tears when I read this, do I believe that a computer program will have a personality, a soul? Not likely***. DOES DATA HAVE A SOUL? For those who aren't Trekkies, Data is the android navigator in the second Star Trek series, Star Trek: the Next Generation . He aspires to humanity and sometimes reaches and even surpasses that state. However, there is a problem in asking whether Data has a soul. The question is never considered in any of the episodes, possibly because the word "soul" (in its theological, not musical sense) is anathema to writers and producers of popular entertainment. So, in the episode, " The Measure of a Man ", the question "Is Data a sentient being" is asked, rather than "Does Data have a soul". The question is addressed in a trial , to see if Data, as a "sentient being", has the right to refuse to be disassembled for study and refitting. Captain Picard acts in Data's behalf and Commander Riker, under duress, as the prosecutor. Riker attempts to demonstrate that Data is a machine by switching him off: [Riker is doing his duty in the courtroom] Commander William T. Riker : The Commander is a physical representation of a dream - an idea, conceived of by the mind of a man. Its purpose: to serve human needs and interests. It's a collection of neural nets and heuristic algorithms; its responses dictated by an elaborate software written by a man, its hardware built by a man. And now... and now a man will shut it off. [Riker switches off Data, who slumps forward like a lifeless puppet] Commander William T. Riker : Pinocchio is broken. Its strings have been cut. ( The Measure of a Man, Quotes ) [Captain Picard gives a stirring defense, arguing that the question of whether Data is conscious--self-aware--has not and can not be settled any more than whether one can be certain that another person is conscious except by external behavior. And finally the question of soulhood is addressed minimally:] " Captain Phillipa Louvois [The Judge] : It sits there looking at me; and I don't know what it is. This case has dealt with metaphysics - with questions best left to saints and philosophers. I am neither competent nor qualified to answer those. But I've got to make a ruling, to try to speak to the future. Is Data a machine? Yes. Is he the property of Starfleet? No. We have all been dancing around the basic issue: does Data have a soul? [emphasis added] I don't know that he has. I don't know that I have. But I have got to give him the freedom to explore that question himself. It is the ruling of this court that Lieutenant Commander Data has the freedom to choose." [notice the shift from "it" to "he"] ( ibid ) And so Data is left free, and the question of whether he has a soul, undetermined -- as in the Scottish verdict, "Not Proven”. AND SO? In his book, " Our Lady of the Artilects ," Andrew Gillsmith raises fundamental questions about these basic articles of faith: good versus evil, who (or what) can have a soul and what constitutes a soul. The book is ranked 2nd by readers in the Good Reads survey of Catholic science fiction, right after that classic, "A Canticle for Leibowitz." In a review of the book on Catholic Stand I’ve discussed how Gillsmith addresses these issues, so I’ll refer the reader to that article. As a concluding comment, I’ll quote the last paragraph of that review: Philosophers and scientists have debated whether it be possible to create artificial intelligence that is conscious and self-aware (See “ Can Computers Have a Soul, ” and Chapter 6, A Science Primer for the Faithful. ) I vote for no. Nevertheless, science-fiction (speculative fiction) has used this device (and will presumably continue to do so) for parables defining the human condition. That knowledge, per se, is not enough for us is the message. Although the two wings of faith and reason are supposed to carry us humans to the truth, reason by itself is not enough to answer questions such as “why are we here?” Instead of hobbits, orcs and elves, Andrew Gillsmith, has used synths and humans in a moving and captivating story to illustrate this human condition and to suggest what God has in mind for us. Bob Kurland is a retired physicist with a colorful and diverse background. Known for his wit and candor, Kurland embarked on a remarkable journey that spans academia, spirituality, and community service. After a distinguished academic career, including earning his Bachelor of Science "with honor" from Caltech in 1951 and obtaining his Master's and Ph.D. from Harvard in Physics and Chemical Physics respectively, Kurland delved into the world of theoretical science. His contributions to the field are perhaps best exemplified by his seminal work, the "Kurland-McGarvey equation," a groundbreaking achievement that continues to influence scientific discourse. In 1995, Kurland experienced a profound spiritual transformation, converting to Catholicism. This newfound faith became a cornerstone of his life, guiding his actions and imbuing his endeavors with a sense of purpose. He dedicated himself to serving others, volunteering at federal prisons and hospitals, embodying the principles of compassion and empathy. In addition to his scholarly pursuits and philanthropic efforts, Kurland is a talented musician, proficient in a variety of instruments including the bass clarinet, alto clarinet, clarinet, bass, and tenor bowed psaltery. He generously shares his musical gifts as a member of the parish instrumental group and local folk group, enriching the community with his passion for music. Though retired from the academic arena, Kurland's inquisitive spirit and unwavering dedication to knowledge continue to inspire those around him. With his characteristic blend of intellect, humor, and compassion, he leaves an indelible mark on both the scientific and spiritual realms. Click the cover image to return to Spring 2024. Share Previous Next Click here. Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! 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< Back Common Sense Academy Routs Info Tech, 97 - 3 "Imagine that the Borg Collective and Jean Luc Picard had a baby…" David Cowles According to Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, et al., we only think about 3% of what we think we think. Come again? Only 3% of the thoughts we think we think are really our own thoughts. The rest (97%) consists of memes we’ve memorized over the years as part of our ‘acculturation’. 97% of what we think we think is what we call Common Sense. The ‘common sense answer’ to any question is whatever answer is most likely. Common Sense is nothing if not ‘trendy’. Overall, only 3% of what we think we think is Information; the rest is Common Sense (Noise). So, 97 to 3 - Wow! I once coached a basketball team that lost a game by this much – or at least it seemed that way at the time. Roughly speaking, Information is the difference between what is and what might have been. Therefore, the Information Content (IC) of any event (including those ‘events’ we call ‘communication’) is the difference between what happened and what was expected to happen. On average, 97% of what we think is what we expected. Only 3% is novel, fresh, unanticipated. So, in an average sentence, 3% is Information, 97% is Noise. Of course, Noise is not entirely without IC; that content consists of confirmation that what was most likely the case is in fact the case. The more likely it is that x will occur, the less information is generated when x does occur. Noise is not a state of Zero IC but a state of Minimal IC, the least IC possible in a given situation. Communication requires both a ‘sender’ and a ‘receiver’. Communication occurs only to the extent that the sender and the receiver are synchronized. Think of a radio. It is only a source of Information when the receiver is synchronized with the transmitter, i.e., when they are ‘on that same wavelength’ (i.e., station). There are many ‘synchronizing’ agents at work in our lives: language, culture, shared experience, etc. Add one more to the list: the rate at which Information is communicated (sent and received). Communication only occurs when Information is being sent…and received…at the same pace. In our relentless human pursuit of Information, we would like to communicate as much information as possible in as little time as possible. Common Sense suggests that we can achieve this goal by increasing the size, frequency and velocity of the information packets sent. But Common Sense would be wrong…as usual! These steps will not increase the volume of information communicated; they will decrease it! Instead of information flowing freely (laminar flow), it clogs the receiver (turbulent flow). Have we stepped through Lewis Carroll’s Looking Glass ? We are certainly living in a ‘backwards’ world, that much is certain. It turns out that Common Sense works to minimize the Information Content of every conversation; and that’s no accident! (Headline: “Mind Blown!”) Evolution (genetic, epigenetic, and cultural) works to maximize the global communication of information by minimizing the IC of every specific conversation. Huh? Information is novelty; Common Sense abhors novelty. That's why it’s called Common. Common Sense sacrifices Information in pursuit of Intelligibility. The less Information I transmit (per packet, per second), the more readily that information will be absorbed by the receiving party. If you want to see what the world would be like without Common Sense, try reading James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (FW). This ‘novel’ is designed to eliminate every vestige of Common Sense from the text. Every word, every letter, requires our full attention. We can anticipate nothing. FW maximizes IC but makes the reader 100% responsible for receiving it. Ok, but ask yourself this, how many people have read FW from cover to cover…and understood it? Two somewhat more accessible writers whose work is still ‘IC dense’ are Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound (Cantos). Many authors (myself included?) use language as if it were a wave and the readers as wave-riders. The goal is to deliver Information in a sequence of pre-measured packets at a pace designed to optimize absorption and retention. “It’s a good summertime read,” is considered praise when, in fact, it refers to a dumbing down of the world. Sorry, Rodin, I’m just 3% thinker, 97% thought – thought by the collective we call ‘humanity’ via the medium we call Common Sense. Are you familiar with Star Trek: The Next Generation? Imagine that the Borg Collective (97%) and Jean Luc Picard (3%) had a baby: I am that baby! Thoughts While Shaving is the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine ( ATM) . To never miss another Thought, choose the subscribe option below. Also, follow us on any one of our social media channels for the latest news from ATM. Thanks for reading! Share Previous Next

< Back My MD Should Be a Bot David Cowles Jul 10, 2025 “AI is 4 times better at diagnosing complex medical conditions than MDs. This…could be the death knell for the traditional practice of medicine.” In an earlier post on this site, My PCP Should be a Bot , we argued that AI could take over many of the mundane tasks associated with Primary Care and assist physicians with their other, higher level functions. It is clear now that we undershot the mark…by a wide margin. Yes, AI has a place in Primary Care, but it has a much larger role to play in Specialty Care, especially in advanced diagnostics. Microsoft reports that AI consumer products like Bing and Copilot see over 50 million health-related inquiries every day. Search engines and AI companions are quickly becoming the new front line in healthcare. But this is only scratching the surface of what’s possible. AI can do more, much more; it can be transformational. Along with CRISPR and Bespoke Medicine (N = 1), AI can be part of a huge advance in population health. Toward the end of 2024, Microsoft launched a dedicated consumer health effort, led by clinicians, designers, engineers, and AI scientists. But for AI to make a real difference, clinicians and patients alike must be able to trust its performance. No surprise here. New technologies always entail an adoption curve. Is it safe to drive one of them newfangled horseless carriages? Or fly in one those aero planes? (I mean, if God wanted us to fly, wouldn’t he have given us wings?) But 100 years later, we have Carvana and Travelocity. To practice medicine in the United States, physicians need to pass the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE), a rigorous and standardized assessment of clinical knowledge and decision making. USMLE questions were among the earliest benchmarks used to evaluate AI’s competence. Not surprisingly, generative AI has now advanced to the point of scoring near-perfect scores on the USMLE and similar exams. But these tests primarily rely on multiple-choice questions, which favor memorization over deep understanding. By reducing medicine to one-shot answers on multiple-choice questions, such benchmarks undoubtedly overstate the apparent competence of AI systems and obscure their limitations. No one’s going to trust a Bot to manage a loved one’s healthcare purely because it performed well on some standardized test. Algorithmic medicine might rely on discrete answers to specific questions but ars medica , the art of medicine, requires clinical reasoning capability. How does it perform on ‘sequential diagnosis’, a cornerstone of real-world medical decision making.  In this process, a clinician begins with an initial patient presentation and then iteratively selects questions and diagnostic tests to arrive at a final diagnosis. For example, a patient presenting with cough and fever may lead the clinician to order and review blood tests and a chest X-ray before they feel confident enough to diagnose pneumonia. Each week, the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) – one of the world’s leading medical journals – publishes a Case Record of the Massachusetts General Hospital, presenting a patient’s care journey in a detailed, narrative format. These cases are among the most diagnostically complex and intellectually demanding in clinical medicine, often requiring multiple specialists and diagnostic tests to reach a definitive diagnosis. How does AI perform in this arena? Surely here we need the empathy and imagination of a well-trained and highly experienced human agent. To answer these questions, Microsoft created a series of interactive diagnostic challenges based on 304 recent NEJM case studies. Clinicians, be they AI Bots or human physicians, were able to ask iterative questions and order appropriate tests. As information became available, the clinicians could update their reasoning, gradually leading to a final diagnosis. This diagnosis can then be compared to the gold-standard outcome published in the NEJM. Each requested investigation also incurs a (virtual) cost, reflecting real-world healthcare expenditures so we can evaluate performance across two key dimensions: diagnostic accuracy and resource expenditure.  The Microsoft AI Diagnostic Orchestrator (MAI-DxO) is a system designed to emulate a virtual panel of physicians with diverse diagnostic approaches collaborating to solve cases.  Orchestrator can integrate diverse data sources. It can turn any LLM into a ‘panel’ of virtual clinicians that can ask follow-up questions, order tests, deliver a diagnosis, and then run a cost check before deciding to proceed.  MAI-DxO paired with OpenAI’s o3 correctly solved 85.5% of the NEJM benchmark cases. Pretty good! But how does this compare with the recommendations of real life, flesh and blood specialists? For comparison, Microsoft created a panel of 21 practicing physicians from the US and UK, each with 5-20 years of clinical experience. On the same tasks, these experts achieved a mean accuracy of…wait for it…just 20%. Astonishing! AI is 4 times better at diagnosing complex medical conditions than MDs. This is a shot in the arm for AI assisted medicine but, more importantly and quite unexpectedly, this could be the death knell for the traditional practice of medicine. What are we missing? Is our AI system ordering every possible test – regardless of cost, patient discomfort, or delays in care? Nope! MAI-DxO is configured to operate within defined cost constraints. This allows for explicit exploration of the cost-value trade-offs inherent in diagnostic decision making. In fact, Microsoft found that MAI-DxO delivered both higher diagnostic accuracy and lower overall testing costs than physicians. Microsoft’s findings also suggest that AI reduces unnecessary healthcare costs – not so surprising given that 25% of U.S. healthcare spending is wasted on interventions that are inappropriate for the patient’s actual condition. So how can we account for this amazing result? On the plus side, no single physician, no team of physicians, can span the full complexity of the NEJM case series. There is always one more voice to be heard. AI, on the other hand, doesn’t face this limitation; it can blend breadth and depth of expertise. But the discrepancy is so glaring that we cannot escape the conjecture that something ‘not so good’ must be happening at the physicians’ end of the see-saw. Follow-up studies should focus on why flesh and blood ‘agents’ perform so poorly. Are they overworked? Are their information systems outdated? Do they have a harder time moving past their initial ‘blink’ diagnoses, even when evidence is pointing in another direction. Or are they limited by inappropriate sociological biases based on things like the patient’s gender, race, age, occupation, education level, income, or zip code? But there is an overwhelming sense that such follow-up studies, important though they are, will amount to just rearranging deck chairs on The Titanic . If Microsoft’s findings are confirmed, traditional medicine is dead…period. The big question now is how long it will take society ‘to stop life support and pronounce’. There is a meme of unknown origin that states that it was not until 1900 that medicine did more good than harm. The Microsoft study suggests that that assessment might be wildly overoptimistic. A better meme might be, “When will medicine finally begin to do more good than harm?” Will the healthcare profession hasten the achievement of that benchmark…or retard it?” Brutal…I know; but consider what’s at stake! Rembrandt. The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp. 1632, oil on canvas, 216.5 × 169.5 cm. Mauritshuis, The Hague. Baroque, Dutch Golden Age. Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp captures a pivotal moment in the history of medicine—when science, observation, and education began to challenge traditional, experience-based practice. In much the same way, today’s AI diagnostic systems, like Microsoft’s MAI-DxO, are disrupting the modern medical profession. The painting shows medicine as a spectacle of human intellect dissecting the unknown; now, AI replaces the demonstrator’s scalpel with data-driven precision, automating what was once a learned, manual, and interpretive act. The cadaver becomes a metaphor for how patient care risks being depersonalized in the era of algorithmic medicine. 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 Dark Matter David Cowles Aug 24, 2025 “We can put a good figure on how much we know about the universe: 5%.” It’s straight out of MIT: We’re all in the dark; well, 95% anyway. One is tempted to paraphrase Lincoln: “Some of the people are in the dark all of the time, all people are in the dark 95% of the time, but 100% of the people cannot be 100% in the dark 100% of the time”… but I’ll refrain. Now, thanks to the blunt edge philosophers at the world’s leading school of technology, the universe just got a tiny bit darker. Consider the following excerpt from the 5/19/2025 issue of the MIT Technology Review : “We can put a good figure on how much we know about the universe: 5% . That’s how much of what’s floating about in the cosmos is ordinary matter—planets and stars and galaxies and the dust and gas between them. The other 95% is dark matter and dark energy, two mysterious entities aptly named for our inability to shed light on their true nature... Cosmologists have cast dark matter as the hidden glue binding galaxies together. Dark energy plays an opposite role, ripping the fabric of space apart.” No, this is not a critique of the Dark Universe hypothesis; it’s a presentation of it! Even so, there’s nothing new here. But now just imagine this same paragraph written by a theist talking about ‘God’. It might go something like this: “We can put a good figure on how much we know about the universe: 5%. That’s how much of reality is knowable via our senses and reasoning faculties. The other 95% is what we call Mystery . Observation and reason alone are unable to shed light here. Only Revelation can enlighten us re what must otherwise remain dark . Theologians have cast God as the hidden glue binding all things together ( logos ) and as a force ( physis ) ripping apart what is now to make way for what is to come.” Public reaction would constitute a Tsunami. The Capitol itself would shake. Who knows, SCOTUS might even get involved. Does the 1 st Amendment protect such nonsense? Should it not be a crime to pollute the minds of our youth with such superstitious clap trap? Is this not a crime against humanity? Should we skip SCOTUS and bring the matter directly to The Hague? After all, Socrates was sentenced to death on these very same grounds: corrupting the youth (of Athens). Should modern day theologians not pay the same price? I mean, how dare these idol worshipers, these conjurers of spells, these alchemists place limits on the scope of my all powerful reasoning ability? "Their so-called ‘God’ is merely a god-of-the-gaps . Whatever we don’t know, whatever we don’t understand, they call that God – as if that settles anything. Like preschoolers everywhere, they imagine that giving something a name makes it real. Neither God nor Adam claimed that power ( Genesis ) but our modern day astrologers do not hesitate to claim it for themselves." This is the hypocrisy of secularism: Science is now the one true religion, established to the exclusion (or marginalization) or all others in direct contravention of the 1 st Amendment. There is no gnosis , and therefore no salvation, outside of the Academy. Even to question one of its tenets is tantamount to heresy. We are all now self-appointed Grand Inquisitors. By the age of 8, we are already rooting out apostasy like pigs nosing out truffles. Like Russian children in the days of Stalin, we are encouraged by our teachers to turn in non-conforming adults to the local ‘science police’; doing so can earn us a Fauci Medal (called the Hawking Medal in the UK), the highest honor a pre-teen can receive. As parents, we want our children to have every advantage. So…we encourage them to join science clubs at school, and we send them to science camp every summer. Bully! As a young boy, I joined the Cub Scouts (age 8). Later, many of my friends continued on as Boy Scouts. Had I lived in Russia in those days, I might have been a Little Octobrist (ages 7 – 9) and worn a star-shaped badge sporting the image of a young Lenin. Later, if I showed promise and commitment, I might have been invited to join the Pioneers (Vladimir Lenin All-Union Pioneer Organization); my parents would have been so proud to see me wearing the distinctive red scarf. Now please don’t misunderstand me: there’s nothing wrong with children receiving an education in science. In fact, it’s absolutely essential in our culture. But there was also nothing wrong with my friends and I learning survival skills at scouts; nor was there anything wrong with Russian children learning to campaign for social justice. The problem comes when we substitute dogma (“rite words in rote order” - Joyce) for discovery. Dogmatism breeds intellectual laziness. It was dogmatism that condemned Galileo, not true religion; it was dogmatism that undermined Glasnost , not true justice; and it is dogmatism, not true science, that’s placing the intellectual promise of the 21 st century at risk. Dogmatism encourages us to accept easy answers, even when those answers make no sense. We are no strangers to such dogmatics in the US. For 60 years, we lived under the spell of a race based ‘separate but equal’ education system ( de facto and de jure ). Then in the 1950’s a doctrine known as ‘my country right or wrong’ became part of our national identity. Today it’s ‘trust the science’. What’s interesting is that these dogmas all have something in common: they are not just moronic , they’re oxymoronic . How can two things be equal once you’ve invested even a quantum of energy to separate them? How can any country be right if it’s wrong? Worst of all, how can I trust something that I cannot verify? I can verify certain propositions within the scientific canon, but I cannot verify the canon itself. The essential nature of good science is to question everything and accept nothing solely on another’s authority: experimentation is to replace revelation. Inquiry is the antithesis of trust . I hear you: “You seem very sure of yourself. How can you be certain that the Dark Universe hypothesis won’t turn out to be true?” Ok, I’ll do you one better: “It will turn out to be true!” But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong either. Huh? How so? Scientists invented the Dark Universe hypothesis to give a name to things that they don’t understand and can’t explain. Based on what we know, the Universe shouldn’t work. There’s not nearly enough mass to hold galaxies together. In fact, however, galaxies do exist, 100’s of billions of them with more forming ‘every day’. So something’s wrong and the Dark Universe hypothesis seems to solve the problem. Of course, it is merely ‘solving’ one unknown in terms of another. But the headlines are already in the can: “Dark matter confirmed!” Of course it will be confirmed because any advance in our understanding of the Universe will now be labeled “Dark”. Whatever we discover down the road to resolve the paradoxes of modern cosmology will end up being called “dark matter/dark energy”. And why not? The phrase, Dark Universe , has no denotative content. It’s a place holder for whatever we don’t know right now. Once we learn something about the universe that we don’t already know, it will ‘fit the definition’ of ‘dark’. Of course it will. We don’t know what Dark Matter is so whatever turns out to solve the paradox will be quite correctly labeled Dark , and we will say, “That’s what Dark Matter is, we knew it all along.” Except of course, we didn’t. Following Heidegger, we know that Dark Matter is ( Dasein ); but don’t know what Dark Matter is ( Wassein ). Dark Matter will turn out to be whatever we need it to be…and we will look back and say, “Boy those 21 st century scientists were smart!” We have set up a math problem so that whatever answer we write down will be the correct one. If only we’d discovered this technique when I was in the 3 rd grade! Scientific reasoning is a wonderful thing. We couldn’t have left our caves without it. But it’s a lousy basis for a philosophy! *** Francisco de Goya, The Dog, 1820–23, oil mural transferred to canvas, Museo del Prado, Madrid. Goya’s image of a lone dog nearly engulfed by an undefined, shadowy expanse echoes the essay’s theme of humanity straining for understanding while overwhelmed by the vast unknown of the “dark universe.” 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.