< Back On Sukkot, the Jewish ‘Festival of Booths' Samira Mehta "Like at Passover, most Jews who celebrate Sukkot encounter it in spaces where people can honor their values, cultures or histories." Sukkot is a Jewish festival that follows right on the heels of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, Judaism’s High Holy Days. The harvest holiday, which begins on Sept. 29, 2023, lasts for seven days when celebrated in Israel and eight days when celebrated elsewhere.Like many Jewish rituals and traditions, from lighting Friday night candles to hosting Passover seders, Sukkot is primarily celebrated in the home – or rather, in the yard. Translated as the “Festival of Booths,” Sukkot is celebrated in an outdoor structure called a sukkah, which is carefully built and rebuilt each year.As a Jewish Studies scholar , much of my work looks at how diverse Jewish American identities are today. From intermarried families , to Jews of color , to Jewish communities from all over the world, there have always been a myriad of ways to be Jewish – and home-based holidays like Sukkot help people honor all these parts of their identities. Harvest Holiday Held during the autumn harvest , Sukkot likely has origins in huts that ancient farmers erected so they could sleep in the fields. Yet tradition also says that these booths represent the tents that the Israelites lived in while they wandered the desert for 40 years following the Exodus, their escape from slavery in Egypt. Some aspects of Sukkot happen in the synagogue, including special prayers and readings from the Bible. Yet the main action takes place at home, in the backyard sukkah – the singular form of the word “sukkot” in Hebrew. For Jews who observe the holiday, tradition says to start building the sukkah as soon as possible after Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement; some people even start building the structure are soon as they have broken their 25-hour fast . The makeshift walls, of which there must be at least three, can be made out of anything one wants, from pre-made walls printed with blessings said during the holiday to tablecloths or rugs. People often decorate to say something about who they are: photos of Jerusalem, quilts made by relatives. I have always imagined that, if I had a sukkah, I would use Indian tablecloths for walls, merging that piece of my heritage with my religion. The roof, however, is supposed to be made out of natural materials like palms or branches; one friend of mine likes to use cornstalks. The roof should provide shade but must allow gaps to see the stars. Those of us who do not have yards can get creative with our balconies or, like me, drop hints that they would welcome invitations to other people’s sukkot. One New Yorker friend turns her living room into a faux sukkah – you cannot see the stars, but it is filled with nature and decorations. In the United States, many families decorate their sukkot with classic elements of the American harvest season: corn husks, colorful dried ears of corn, harvest gourds and even the occasional bale of hay. In New Mexico, you sometimes see “ristras,” the decorative red strings of chiles that hang from porches. The traditional plants of Sukkot, however, are four distinct species: a citrus fruit called an etrog, and fronds of palm, myrtle and willow, which are bound together and referred to as the “lulav.” The lulav and etrog are blessed and shaken together on a daily basis throughout the festival. Our Yard, Our Holiday Beyond this, Jews are supposed to live in the sukkah for the festival, which technically means eating and sleeping there. But as with all religious holidays, individuals celebrate Sukkot in a wide variety of ways. Many Jews do not construct sukkot at all, let alone sleep in them for a week. Of those who do, some sleep every night in the sukkah; some have one night of family “camping”; others do not sleep in it at all. Many people entertain guests there: I have been to many a meal – and one graduate seminar – in sukkot all over the country. It is the fact that so much of Sukkot is held at home that accounts for the holiday’s immense flexibility. Like at Passover, most Jews who celebrate Sukkot encounter it in spaces where people can honor their values, cultures or histories. What this looks like is as diverse as the world of American Jews. For instance, for the years that I taught outside of Philadelphia, I attended a multinight open house, called “Whiskey in the Sukkot,” hosted by an interfaith couple. The Jewish wife explains that when she and her husband – a whiskey aficionado from Appalachia – got married, his thought process went: “harvest festival, grain, whiskey.” Each year, he curates a selection to share with his guests, with new offerings for each night. Accompanied by pungent cheeses and other nibbles, this festival of whiskey offered him a way to make the holiday his own. In the process, the couple created an event that welcomes their Jewish – and non-Jewish – communities. On his Afroculinaria blog , the chef, culinary historian and author Michael Twitty created a Southern harvest soup for Sukkot, which he notes uses “traditional Southern ingredients and flavors.” His soup is vegetarian, but he also offers a “trayf alternative,” meaning a version that is not kosher – a recipe that swaps out olive oil for bacon grease. Even in the most liberal Jewish settings, one cannot usually serve pork in a synagogue setting, but this is your Sukkot table. If you, like most American Jews, do not keep kosher , why not go full-on Southern in your flavors? Not everyone sees their full identity reflected on Sukkot. Emily Bowen Cowen , a cartoonist who is Jewish and Muscogee (Creek), has written a comic called “ My Sioux-kot ,” imagining what Sukkot could look like if, like many contemporary Passover celebrations, it emphasized social justice. Cohen muses on the parallels she saw between Sukkot celebrations and 2016 protests to block an oil pipeline at the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota. At the time, both were events where people talked about valuing nature as sacred. Yet no one mentioned the protests in the sukkot she visited that week. Indeed, some Jews are finding ways to realize the social justice potential in the holiday. Fiber artist Heather Stoltz used a sukkah as the basis for an art exhibition called “ Temporary Shelter ,” decorating its walls with stories of unhoused New Yorkers and with art made by children staying in the city’s shelters. Perhaps the time will come when Sukkot, too, becomes infused with possibilities for a more just future. This piece has been republished in its entirety with permission from The Conversation . Samira K. Mehta's work explores the intersections of religion, culture, and gender, with a focus on family life and reproduction politics in the United States. She authored "Beyond Chrismukkah," a finalist for the National Jewish book award, and has a forthcoming book of essays titled "The Racism of People Who Love You." Her current project, "God Bless the Pill? Sexuality, Contraception, and American Religion," examines the role of Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant perspectives in moral debates about contraception, population control, and eugenics from the mid-20th century onward. Mehta is actively involved in the field, serving as co-chair of the Religions and Families in North America Seminar at the American Academy of Religion and on the steering committee of the North American Religions Program Unit. She has received fellowships from prestigious institutions and recently secured a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation for her project, "Jews of Color: Histories and Futures." Mehta holds degrees from Emory University, Harvard University, and Swarthmore College. Return to our Harvest Issue 2023 Previous Next

< Back “…And the Pursuit of Happiness.” (The Declaration of Independence, 1776) David Cowles Mar 25, 2022 We honor ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ as inalienable human rights, but not all of us can say with assurance that we are always on the side of ‘life’ and ‘liberty’. Sometimes we can’t even agree on what these words mean, and we certainly don’t agree on how these rights should be applied in specific situations. (For example, many of the men who wrote the Declaration themselves owned slaves. We don’t always see ourselves through the eyes of civilization or the lens of history.) We honor ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ as inalienable human rights, but not all of us can say with assurance that we are always on the side of ‘life’ and ‘liberty’. Sometimes we can’t even agree on what these words mean, and we certainly don’t agree on how these rights should be applied in specific situations. (For example, many of the men who wrote the Declaration themselves owned slaves. We don’t always see ourselves through the eyes of civilization or the lens of history.) But the ‘pursuit of happiness’? Now that–that–we’ve got down! That’s something we know something about, something we know only too well in fact. Some might say that Americans invented the pursuit of happiness. No matter that we all have different notions of what constitutes happiness! Whatever it is, we’re pursuing it vigorously and nonstop. But do we ever get there? Are we any closer today than we were years ago? Or, are we hamsters, mindlessly running on a wheel-to-nowhere, locked in a cage? In Jewish tradition (Kabbala), two virtues can be mirror images of one another: Netzach, for example, refers to restlessness, while Hod refers to gratitude. It is the restlessness of Netzach that makes us want to leave the world better than we found it, while it is the gratitude of Hod that allows us to find perfection in the here and now! I am reminded of Molly Bloom’s famous soliloquy at the end of James Joyce’s Ulysses . It begins with “Yes…”, and 1600 lines later, it ends with the very same “…yes.” It has been called literature’s Great Amen. Joyce balances a keen eye for folly and a sharp ear for suffering, with an overwhelming sense of the ‘rightness’ of it all. Christians sometimes refer to this dichotomy as ‘the Kingdom already’ verses ‘the kingdom not yet’. Spirituality calls us to get comfortable with this apparent contradiction. In the famous Serenity Prayer, we ask our higher power for “the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Successful living needs this balance. If we cannot recognize the immediate presence of ‘the kingdom already,’ then we cannot dream of the future presence of ‘the kingdom not yet’. 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 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 Think Like a Bot “We developed AI to simplify the process, and expand the potential of thinking. We did not set out to dictate the content of thought itself…” David Cowles On Friday, September 1, Aletheia Today Magazine will be releasing our Fall Issue dedicated exclusively to AI – its philosophical, theological, cultural, and spiritual implications. In researching material for this issue, I came across something terrifying online ( quelle surprise! ): “Prompt engineering involves more than just typing in a query. It's about understanding the AI's underlying logic…and sometimes even 'thinking like the AI'… (For example) Generate five innovative product ideas for the eco-friendly industry focusing on renewable energy." Why frightening? First, as human beings, we like to think that we create technology to serve our purposes; we bristle at the idea that it is technology that creates us. But over the past 10,000 years or so, it has become increasingly obvious that we are products of our own technique . According to Genesis, God created the world in 6 or 7 ‘days’ (or epochs); technology is creating us in a similar succession of stages. The first transformation occurred with the rise of spoken language. Originally invented to help us accomplish our projects, language has increasingly worked to determine the nature and scope of those projects. Imagine a Stone Age father lecturing his teenage son: “If you can’t say it, you can’t think it, and if you can’t think it, you can’t do it.” Perhaps surprisingly, our Stone Agers were not entirely unaware of their dilemma. The Biblical story of the Tower of Babel is an early, if somewhat confused, attempt to showcase the relationship between speech and act. Minimally, the story makes it clear that ‘saying and doing’ (language and production) are intimately related. Next came the invention of writing. It only happened once in human history, but like Pokémon, Kid Rock, and Pet Rock, it caught on. Written communication greatly expanded the scope of enterprise…but at the same time it further limited the scope of that enterprise. Imagine a Bronze Age mother lecturing her teenage daughter: “ If you can’t write it , you can’t say it, and if you can’t say it, you can’t think it, and if you can’t think it, you can’t do it.” Now technology is about what we can’t do rather than what we can. Our modern Indo-European (IE) languages are semantic minefields seeded over-generously with nouns (subjects & objects) and active voice verbs. If your project doesn’t fit comfortably within this syntactical framework, you’re S.O.L. That’s not a problem for you? Perhaps that is the problem! Have you lost the ability (or inclination) to conceive of a project outside the limits imposed by IE syntax? Writing kept us busy for several millennia. I mean come on, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Goethe! What more could anyone want? Then came the next great tectonic shift – the Industrial Revolution (IR). The technique involved in large-scale manufacture, and its impact on human life, has been identified by countless individuals and celebrated (or castigated) in various media. To cite just a few examples: Prudhomme, Marx, Legere, Chaplin, Brazil , McLuhan and Ellul. To paraphrase T.S. Eliot, “Today, we measure out our lives with coffee spoons.” Following IR…DR, the Digital Revolution. Consider the massive change in communication that has occurred since ‘I’ invented the internet. E-mail, Text, Excel, PowerPoint have all changed the way we express our thoughts…and therefore how and what we think. Begin with the obliteration of orthography (spelling) and grammar, the atrophy of sentence structure, the disappearance of complex verb forms, and, of course, the rise of internet slang and emojis. We’ve witnessed the reduction of mathematics to spread sheeting and rhetoric to bullet points. When PowerPoint first came out, I was resistant. I didn’t like the oversimplification and non-sequiturs I noticed in others’ work products. I wouldn’t use it…until I couldn’t not use it. Now, of course, I use it every day. “I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be.” Now we appear to be riding on the first swell of another technological tidal wave: first language, writing, manufacture, computerization, and now…(drum roll please) Artificial Intelligence. All of which brings us back to what I found so terrifying : “…thinking like the AI.” We developed AI to simplify the process, and expand the potential, of thinking. We did not set out to dictate the content of thought itself…but that may be exactly what we’re doing…which leads me to my second concern: “Generate five innovative product ideas.” Talk about begging the question. Can AI truly innovate? That may be the dominant intellectual question of our time; but according to the quote at the beginning of this article, it’s already a settled matter of fact: AI can innovate! If so, we need to consider our Bots conscious …and therefore entitled to certain civil rights; if not, we need to consider how far we’ve dumbed-down our understanding of innovation . Implicit in ‘in/nova/tion’ is ‘novum’, new. Rearranging deck chairs is not new, but I don’t doubt that AI can do it brilliantly. That’s not the same thing as inventing a new, iceberg-proof hull. On the other hand, where do we draw the line? When does mere novelty become true innovation? Is there any fundamental difference? What a time to be alive! We are at the ‘question forming’ stage of a new anthropological era. Should aquatic organisms colonize dry land? The Iron Age is history; welcome to the Age of Bots. I can’t wait to see where we go from here! Keep the conversation going! 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. 4. Aletheia Today Magazine (ATM) will be devoting its entire fall issue (released 9/1/23) to artificial intelligence (AI). What are the philosophical, theological, cultural and even spiritual implications of AI powered world? If you’d like to contribute to the AI Issue, click here . Share Previous Next

< Back Do Bots Know Beauty? “I…propose…that we make this the test, not Turing’s, of whether a bot is conscious." David Cowles Alan Turing proposed that we judge the sentience of AI programs based solely on their ability to mimic convincingly human responses to a battery of questions posed by a trained examiner. Recent advances in AI technology suggest that we will soon have, if we don’t already, machines that can pass Turing’s Test. (On the other hand, I have doubts about some of my carbon-based neighbors…but that is another subject for a different day .) Are we willing to accept the results of Turing’s Test as definitive? Or will we ‘move the goal posts’? Now that you’ve learned your ABC’s, Sally, please recite them again, but this time in reverse order and, oh yeah, in ancient Greek…if you don’t mind. (We’re not going to let some snot-nosed rugrat show off in front of us! After all, we can all recite the Greek alphabet backwards, can’t we?) So come on, Sally; get crackin’: Omega, Psi…” Turing devised his ‘test’ in the context of the materialism, pragmatism, and behaviorism of his time. It is understandable that we might now want to review Turning’s proposal in the context of a more contemporary, more expansive, ideology. It is interesting how an issue that forms the cornerstone of one school of philosophy can be discounted as a mere distraction by a different school. At Aletheia Today we are admittedly ‘hung-up’ on the question of values – objective, transcendent values. If such values exist, then an ontologically flat, wholly immanent universe ( a la Nietzsche ) is simply not possible. On the other hand, if such values do not exist, then ethics and aesthetics are just matters of taste…if that. Without objective, transcendent values, free will becomes caprice. In fact, it is hard to see how any events can ever occur in a universe bereft of motivation, incentives, objectives, and purpose. But not everyone agrees with this analysis. So, let’s get granular! I recently encountered a work of ‘art’ (above) that is almost certainly computer generated. I know nothing about the provenance of this piece, but judging by the style and content, I can only assume that an AI Bot was given specific input re themes, images, etc. and then allowed to ‘create’. Nothing is ‘wrong’ with the result…except that it is not beautiful . The Bot followed instructions, and produced this ‘Rube Goldberg’, all according to spec. The piece contains some interesting local details and flourishes – geometric shapes, meditations on gravity, modulation of colors - but none of it hangs together. The piece has competent parts, but there’s no sense of a ‘whole’, perhaps because that would require the Bot to step back and consider its work as a whole…which may be something that this Bot cannot do. The Golden Mean notwithstanding, do we think it is possible to reduce Beauty and Truth, “all ye know of earth and all ye need to know” (Keats) to an algorithm? Actually, we discovered part of that answer while Alan Turing was still in school. In 1931, Kurt Godel proved that mathematics could not be reduced to a system of algorithms: ‘There are more (true) things in heaven and earth…’ than can be proven in any logical system. According to John Keats (above), “Beauty is truth and truth beauty.” I agree with Keats, but I would modify his dictum with a nod to Alfred North Whitehead . Beauty is the broader, more inclusive category; Truth and Justice are specific (albeit peculiar) manifestations of ‘Beauty’ (harmony, consistency, etc.). Do Bots know beauty? Can they create something unique that is also ‘beautiful’? Of course, they can! They’re doing it today…and have been for a couple of decades now. Contemporary artists use the microprocessor as we would a paint brush…and they get similar results. But the ‘beauty part’ comes entirely from the artist. The artist creates, the Bot executes the artist’s instructions. The relevant question remains, “Can a Bot create Beauty on its own?” An artist can step back from a canvass and say, “Eureka, it’s finished!” or “Nope, not yet.” Can a Bot, on its own, make a similar judgment? They say the soul of every artistic creation, in any medium, is editing. Can Bots edit? Can they look at a perfectly coherent finished product and say, “Something’s not right here” or “something’s missing” or “it’s too busy” or “it doesn’t read well ”? One of the hardest parts of being an artist is knowing when something is done, finished, complete. There is always a temptation to change a word, add a brush stroke, alter a chord; how do you know when to stop? How does a Bot? Yet knowing when to stop is a critical component of the creative process. I don’t propose to give a definitive answer here. I’m guessing Stanley Kubrick ( 2001: A Space Odyssey ) would answer these questions differently from Roger Penrose ( The Emperor’s New Clothes ). I do propose, however, that we make this the test, not Turing’s, that determines whether a Bot is conscious . Have you ever stood on uneven pavement where one foot was slightly higher than the other? It’s unsettling to say the least. That, in my view, is the origin of consciousness. Our mental apparatus compares immanent ‘reality’ with the transcendent values (Beauty, Truth, and Justice) that govern the Universe; the perceived imbalance gives rise to conscious experience. No values, no consciousness! Therefore, demonstrating that a Bot, on its own, can identify what’s beautiful, true, or just, absent specific operator instructions, would satisfy me that the Bot is conscious , i.e., that it can recognize and apply Value without operator prompts. My test is easy to devise but much harder to conduct. Bots are master mimics. When we think of mimicry, we think of monkeys and parrots. (However, we now suspect that their behavior is less mime and more consciously chosen behavior.) Bots, on the other hand, are built to mimic. They can ingest and regurgitate a 12-year curriculum in seconds. Then they can adjust that knowledge base as new facts are added and even as teaching methods modernize. Take, for example, the picture shown above. I could tell my Bot in my most avuncular tone, “This is a good start, but it’s not quite what I had in mind. Try blending the colors a little more, add some more interesting background detail, work the foreground figure into the tableau.” My Bot and I could repeat this process ad nauseam , eventually getting to a point where I might say, “Ok, we’re done here. Good job!” Is this ‘creation’? Can it be ‘beautiful’? Yes and yes! But is the Bot the creator…or am I? Beauty, Truth, and Justice are transcendent values. They are manifestations of eternity in spacetime. Stepping outside of Nietzsche’s ‘ontologically flat world’ to view that world as a whole, accessing transcendent values and applying those values to the situation at hand – that’s consciousness . I believe that I have the capacity to do just that, and I take it as a working hypothesis that I share that capacity with most other human beings and with at least some other terrestrial life forms. But how about AI Bots? Do they share this capacity? Can they? David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Return to our AI Issue Table of Contents Share Previous Next

< Back Divine Connection or Digital Dalliance? Gwendolyn Bishop "Prayer, for many, is more than just a laundry list of requests. It's a profound act of opening oneself to the divine, a dialogue between the mortal and the eternal." In a world where artificial intelligence (AI) reigns supreme, human interaction with machines is no longer limited to pressing buttons or swiping screens. AI's relentless march into new realms of human experience has now taken an intriguing turn – the realm of spirituality. As the lines between the sacred and the synthetic blur, a new phenomenon emerges: AI-created prayers. But is this a profound evolution of divine communication or an audacious attempt to algorithmically outsource our spiritual connection? Imagine sitting down, bowing your head, and letting an AI-powered algorithm spin its digital wheels to craft a prayer tailored just for you. It's like summoning a celestial butler to deliver your thoughts to the divine doorstep. As AI technology evolves, these automated invocations promise to provide spiritual solace on demand, like a divine drive-thru open 24/7. Proponents of AI-generated prayers tout convenience as the driving force behind this innovation. They argue that in today's fast-paced world, carving out time for prayer can be challenging. AI's ability to create personalized prayers in an instant seems like a godsend for the time-strapped faithful. With the tap of a button, you can send a prayer heavenward while multitasking through your daily to-dos. But let's hit pause and consider the theological implications. Prayer, for many, is more than just a laundry list of requests. It's a profound act of opening oneself to the divine, a dialogue between the mortal and the eternal. It's the place where believers pour out their hearts, seeking guidance, comfort, and connection. The question then arises – can AI truly understand the intricacies of human emotions and experiences well enough to craft authentic prayers? AI-generated prayers might resemble a beautiful mosaic of words, woven together with grammatical precision. However, can they capture the raw essence of human vulnerability, doubt, and gratitude? Can they encapsulate the unique stories and struggles that shape our faith? Or will they be polished facsimiles, lacking the depth that comes from lived experiences? Skeptics worry that AI-generated prayers might trivialize the sacred act. It's like having an AI buddy compose your heartfelt apology or draft your anniversary love letter. Sure, the words might be eloquent, but do they carry the weight of genuine sentiment? While AI can sift through vast databases of religious texts and inspirational content, it lacks the innate connection to the human experience that is essential to authentic prayer. Furthermore, AI-generated prayers open the door to ethical considerations. What happens when AI offers spiritual counsel or comfort? If an AI algorithm crafts a prayer that touches your soul, does that make it a divine intermediary, or just an impressive piece of code? And what about the people who design these algorithms – do they become the modern-day scribes of faith, curating and mediating our spiritual expressions? Amid the debate, there's a paradoxical allure to AI-created prayers. It's the allure of a shortcut to the divine, like a spiritual vending machine dispensing personalized blessings. But isn't the very essence of spirituality rooted in the journey, the struggle, and the growth that come from seeking the divine? Could AI-created prayers become spiritual crutches that hinder our quest for deeper connection? As AI becomes more integrated into our lives, the question of authenticity looms larger. While AI-generated prayers might offer convenience, they raise a fundamental query: Can technology genuinely replace the human touch in matters of the soul? Are we venturing into uncharted territory, where convenience clashes with the profound? Is the act of prayer, with all its messiness and beauty, something that can be algorithmically distilled? In the end, the debate about AI-created prayers isn't merely about the fusion of technology and spirituality. It's about the essence of our humanity – our capacity to connect, reflect, and engage with the divine. AI may serve as a tool, a guide, or even an inspiration, but the quintessential act of prayer, it seems, will remain a uniquely human endeavor, ineffable and profound in its authenticity. Gwendolyn Bishop is a passionate writer and explorer of ideas, navigating the intricate landscapes of words to craft thought-provoking content. With a heart full of curiosity and a mind teeming with creativity, Gwendolyn seeks to illuminate the hidden corners of human experience through the power of storytelling. When not lost in the world of words, Gwendolyn can be found sipping on endless cups of coffee. Return to our AI Issue Table of Contents Previous Next

< Back AI, Justice, and Job “Can a Bot go beyond its programming and our inputs to devise unique solutions to novel problems - solutions that exhibit Justice as their determinative Value?” David Cowles Our Fall Issue of Aletheia Today Magazine , our ‘AI Issue’ released 9/1/23, included an article titled, “ Do Bots Know Beauty? ” In that essay, we proposed that there are (at least) three transcendent values: Beauty, Truth, and Justice. We dealt, hopefully to your satisfaction, with Beauty and Truth, but we deliberately left Justice for another day (and that day is today ). Can a Bot be Just? This question has two parts: Can what we mean by ‘justice’ be reduced to an algorithm? Or if not, can a Bot go beyond its programming and our inputs to devise unique solutions to novel problems - solutions that manifest Justice as their determinative Value? More so than Beauty, less so than Truth, Justice can be reduced to an algorithm. We call that algorithm ‘the law’; but then we criticize anyone who blindly follows it. We say they’re being overly legalistic . Like Solomon, we instinctively know that Justice is more than a legal code, no matter how well-intentioned or expertly drawn it may be. Justice is rooted in the ineffable. Aquinas, for example, says that secular law is normative… but only to the extent that it is consistent with God’s law. Dial 611. Call up the specific mitzvah of Torah; they represent an early effort to codify – or program – Justice. Now add the 2-general mitzvah, aka the Great Commandment, a recognition that the law must always be interpreted and applied in the broader context of Justice per se . Even so, it would be a huge mistake to treat Torah as an algorithm. In all cases, it requires interpretation and application by a competent Rabbi (Midrashim, Talmud). Even more importantly, during the period of the Judges , when God ruled Israel directly (through Torah), “everyone did what was right in their own eyes”. (Judges XX: SS) The justice of law is always mitigated by Justice as Value - justice as it is experienced and expressed in collective tradition and in personal conscience. More broadly, the history of Judeo-Christianity itself can be viewed as a dialectic of law and value. As Jewish theology evolved during the first millennium BCE, the migration of Torah from tablets of stone to hearts of flesh was a recurrent theme. When Christianity burst onto the scene (c. 30 CE) the dichotomy of law and value sharpened even further. Jesus said, “…Not an iota, not a jot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.” (Matthew 5: 18), but Paul wrote, “Now that faith (value) has some, we are no longer under the law.” (Galatians 3: 25) Of course, both are correct. The Christian project is the merger of Justice as Law with Justice as Value. But the dichotomy of Justice as Value vs. Justice as Law goes back much further than Jesus and Paul; it’s older than the Judges, and it’s even older than Moses himself. In fact, it goes all the way back to the story of Job , one of Western civilization’s oldest narratives. The version memorialized in the Biblical Book of Job could be aptly subtitled, Justice: Algorithm or Value? Refresher : Job, a just and prosperous man, suddenly hits a streak of ‘bad luck’ (to say the least): his family is wiped out, his wealth lost, his health destroyed. It is assumed, not without reason, that God is responsible for Job’s misfortunes. Unfortunately, Job is joined on his ‘dung hill’ by three so-called comforters, men of high standing who have traveled a great distance to commiserate with their colleague. These self-appointed divine surrogates defend the notion of Justice as Algorithm: they try to persuade Job that it is his ‘sins’ that have triggered this dreadful series of events. Job will have none of it. He insists that he has committed no sin remotely proportionate to his sufferings. Beyond that, Job contends that Justice is more than tit-for-tat, that it is a Value, not an Algorithm: judgement should be based on the totality, including subjective intent, not just on naked acts taken out-of-context. Our hero is so confident of his concept of Justice that he uses it to ‘call God out’ and what ensues is one of the fiercest battles in the history of playgrounds. Remember Ali-Forman, the Rumble in the Jungle ? A Forman win was considered so certain that some of Ali’s handlers wanted the fight called off. Instead, Ali sat on the ropes for 7 rounds and then in the 8th stepped out from the shadows and knocked Forman out with a single 5 punch volley. Remember God-Job, the Rumble in the Desert ? Same idea! Bystanders are offering 100-to-1 odds, and still the ‘Job line’ has no takers. Predictably, God shows up in a whirlwind calculated to terrify his accuser. For several chapters, God rants while Job whispers. God taunts Job for his comparative lack of accomplishments. He threatens Job with monsters, Behemoth and Leviathan. He puts Job on a par with ‘uninhabited grassland’. Job is cowed but not crushed; he stands his ground. In the end, seeing that he can’t intimidate Job, like all bullies, God gives up . He admits that he has been badly represented by his surrogates, and he concedes that Job has Justice on his side: Justice is a Value, not an Algorithm! So back to Bots. As with Beauty, if a Bot can reach this same conclusion (God’s) on its own, not relying solely on its programming or on our inputs, then that Bot may claim to be conscious...and I’ll support that claim. And if not…then it is just a very expensive, albeit very useful, hunk of inanimate, unconscious silicon. Stay tuned! Keep the conversation going! 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. 4. Aletheia Today Magazine (ATM) will be devoting its entire fall issue (released 9/1/23) to artificial intelligence (AI). What are the philosophical, theological, cultural and even spiritual implications of AI powered world? If you’d like to contribute to the AI Issue, click here . Share Previous Next

< Back How to Coach an Undefeated Football Team David Cowles “Team is not a collective noun; it’s a verb: to team.” (Dedicated to my grandfather, J. Leo Foley) My grandfather, J. Leo Foley, was Athletic Director and Head Football Coach at The Roxbury Latin School for over 40 years. He led his football team to 4 consecutive undefeated seasons. He was nicknamed “the Fox”, allegedly because of his stealth play designs and unexpected play calls. He was recruited for a college coaching job by none other than Hall of Fame Head Coach, Robert Zuppke (University of Illinois, 1913 – 1941). Whatever I know about football, I learned from my grandfather. What I don’t know, he didn’t teach me; or rather, he taught me, but it went in one ear and out the other. Imagine if I had known at age 10 that I would be writing this article at, well, let’s just say ‘a considerably more advanced age’; perhaps I wouldn’t have thought that running after the ice cream truck was more important than learning the intricacies of the single wing. The ethos my grandfather taught produced winning football teams. But it occurred to me much later that this same ethos is a prescription for winning in all facets of life. Here are few of his guiding principles. If you’re a head football coach, you may find them helpful ; if not, you may find them indispensable ! Every play should score a Touchdown. If properly designed and flawlessly executed, every offensive play should result in 6 points. Every team should be Undefeated. It takes just as much energy to lose as to win…so why not win? To paraphrase the Old Testament Book of Deuteronomy, “I set before you winning and losing. Therefore, choose winning.” “Do your Job!” (before Bill Belichick) A successful football play is not about 11 players performing at the peak of their abilities: it’s about 11 players doing their assigned jobs flawlessly. Don’t just do your Job! A player who repeatedly fails to do his job is not a good player; but neither is a player who only does his job. On every snap from center, each player has a primary responsibility; but once that responsibility has been met (or not), a good player immediately begins to look for other ways to be productive. Good players can complete at least two ‘football moves’ every play, one scripted, one improvised. Great players often complete three. The two biggest causes of failure on a football field are (1) players who don’t do their jobs and (2) players who only do their jobs. “Everything Flows.” (Heraclitus c. 450 B.C.) Of course, Heraclitus was referring to the cosmos, not the football field. And yet, there is no better illustration of his principle than what happens between snap and whistle. A football play is more like an organism than a mechanism. Sure, football begins with designed plays and set formations; that’s a play’s DNA. But like snowflakes, no two plays ever turn out the same. Even if you ran the same play on every snap, no two plays would ever be identical. Because every play unfolds in a unique way, every player not only needs to do his job, and not just his job, but he also needs to react to the play itself as it evolves. Like most important things in life, football is recursive! Don’t be Square! Most of the time we think in straight lines…and that’s a good thing when we’re working on a blueprint. That’s when we need straight lines. But there are no straight lines in football (except the yard lines)…or in real life. A football play is just like any other ‘event’ (or ‘actual entity’). Each play starts from a unique Actual World: the position of the ball, the score, the time remaining, the X’s and O’s. The Actual World of a football play is strictly linear: line-ups, formations, diagrams, etc. It includes everything that happens before the ball is snapped, but not the play itself. Once the ball is snapped, linearity goes out the window. Now everything, literally everything, impacts everything else. So don’t be square, be non-linear ! “Stayin’ Alive”. (The Bee Gees) What is the goal of a football play? For the offense, it is to score a touchdown. But as with all living things, achieving its goal is not its primary motivation. Its primary motivation is survival - keeping the play alive. You can’t achieve your goal (touchdown) once your play has been whistled dead. The longer the ball is in play, the better your chances of scoring. So ideally, keep the play going for as long as it takes to reach your goal…without taking foolish risks, of course. Ultimately, you are not playing against your opponent’s defense; you’re playing against the referee’s whistle. The longer the ball is in play, the more likely it is to result in 6 points. So keep truckin’! “Be all that you can be.” (U.S. Army) ‘Synergy’ is a buzzword these days. It describes a whole being greater than the sum of its parts. But that’s not what we’re talking about here! True, teamwork can amplify the skills of each player leading to a positive result that could not have been predicted simply by looking at stat sheets. But we’re not only talking about a ‘team’ playing better; we’re talking about each player on that team playing better than his norm. The secret? Other players. As a player, I know that other players can make me look good…or bad. They can help me perform at a higher (or lower) level than I’m used to. As a coach, I not only want my players to do their best; I want them to help my other players do their best as well. This is easier said than done. It is much more than just ‘gang tackling’. It means coordinating two separate skill sets in a way that optimizes both. This is hard to teach; it cannot be diagrammed. It requires instinct…and ethics: Humility . I am just one of 11 players on the field at any one time. “If it’s to be, it’s not just up to me. It’s also up to you…but maybe I can help.” Generosity . It’s not all about how I look; it’s about how you look. In these days of high school recruiters and multi-million dollar pro contracts, generosity is a difficult virtue to cultivate…but it is essential to producing an ‘undefeated team’. A collection of superstars will win games; but they won’t win every game. When you think of history’s greatest pro franchises, Ruth’s Yankees, Russell’s Celtics, Jordan’s Bulls, Brady’s Pats, etc., first and foremost you think ‘team’. Who has not player for, or at least rooted for, a basketball team where the MVP is 5’11” and rarely breaks double digits in scoring or in rebounds? Team is not a collective noun; it’s a verb: to team . With my team behind me, I should be able to play better than I could play on my own; and when I play better, I should enable the players around me to play better too. It’s a Virtuous Circle ! When in doubt, help out! They say two heads are better than one. If so, then 4 arms should be better than 2. If it is not immediately obvious what you need to do next, help a teammate. Assume that the players around you need your help: blocking, tackling, covering a receiver, etc. They do ! Penalties = Turnovers. Penalties are not nuisances; they are serious business. They are not ‘just’ about field position; in fact, they are not primarily about field position. Penalties are about possession…and possession is about scoring! A penalty can make the difference between a very makeable 3 rd and 2 and a much less makeable 3 rd and 7 or 3 rd and 12 or even 3 rd and 17. A ‘nuisance penalty’ may well lead to a change of possession on the very next snap. Myth : superior talent is sufficient to overcome penalties. Reality : no team is talented enough to win all its games if it is frequently penalized. Penalties ‘randomize’ the game: they give weaker teams a chance to out-perform…and win! The underdog’s prayer : “May the opposing team be penalized as much as they deserve!” Tackle! Whenever possible, all tackling should be gang tackling. A player should never say, “Oh, he’s going down”. Every player should help make sure he is down (without drawing a penalty, of course). Gang tackling prevents “second efforts”. It also increases the chances of a fumble… and the chances that your team will recover any such a fumble. Block! You did your job. You threw a great block. Good work. Job done? Not a chance! There’s always another player, and yet another, who need to be blocked as the play unfolds. Run! You’re not down until you’re down. This is not touch football. The play is not over when a defensive player touches you. As Yogi Berra might have reminded us, “The ball carrier is not down until he’s down.” The proximity of an opposing player is not an invitation to take a ‘turf nap’; it’s an opportunity to step up your game, literally. Run harder, bring your knees up higher. The goal is to run through the tackle. (If your opponent is good, this may not always work; but hint, most football players are not very good tacklers.) If the opposing player does not bring you down right away, firing the after burners upon contact can extend a gain by as much as 10 yards. Less frequently, you may even break free, adding further yards to your gain – and who knows, you might even score a touchdown. Be the Ball! When you’re lucky enough to have the football in your hands, you need to think of it as part of your body. Would you let a tackler remove your right arm? Then why allow him to remove the ball? You and the ball must become a single organism. Be bionic! Suggestion : carry a regulation football around with you during the day and sleep with it at night. Who knows, the football might even replace the stuffed animal you still sleep with. Eventually, with any luck, you’ll start to feel weird, incomplete, when you’re not carrying a football. Catch the Ball! Coach has designed a pass play and you have an assigned route. Run that route; it’s your job. But not all pass plays happen as designed. Receivers are covered, the QB is under pressure, the play must change on the fly. Your job now ? Get open! Alter your route to give your QB a better chance to see you. Or find an open space on the field and squat there; trust your QB. “But I’m not the target on this play, I’m just a decoy.” No, you’re not! You’re never merely a decoy. You’re the target receiver on every pass play. Every eligible receiver is the QB’s “target”. He’s looking for you , so get open! Once a ball is in the air, there are no receivers, there are no defenders. Every forward pass is a ‘jump ball’. The offensive player and the defensive player have an equal right to that ball, so in truth both are playing offense. But both players are also responsible for making sure that their opponent does not make the catch. Therefore, they are both playing defense too. Visualize It’s off season. Or you’re stuck in chemistry class. Or you’re in bed and can’t fall asleep. Or your parents bundled you off to overnight camp for the summer (and they don’t even have a football program there). Bummer! Wherever you are now, you’d rather be honing your football skills…but you can’t. Ugly circumstances have gotten in the way! Or have they? The fact is, you can work on your game at any time, 24/7/52 – heck, maybe even in your sleep! Right now, you can’t practice…or lift weights; but there is something you can do: you can visualize! Depending on the position you play (or want to play), imagine yourself: Blocking a defender to protect your QB Creating a hole for your RB Taking a hand-off from your QB and hitting a hole Making cuts in open field to avoid defenders Completing a forward pass Or catching that same pass. If defense is your thing, imagine yourself: Tackling a ball carrier in the open field Breaking a block to sack the QB Busting up a double team Covering a receiver; staying with him as he makes his cuts Knocking down a pass Intercepting a pass When you visualize, it’s important to do so in slow motion. Slow it down! Relish every detail, every nuance. Fully experience every move your avatar makes. Create muscle memory…even in your sleep! Final Thoughts But what if you don’t play football, have never played football, don’t want to play football? What if, God forbid, you don’t even like football? Did you just waste 15 minutes of your life reading this ‘how to’? Not necessarily! If football is nothing else, it is a metaphor for life. The values of determination, responsibility, teamwork, flexibility, and focus apply to every aspect of life, not just football. This is a formula for success on a football field, but it is also a formula for success in life. Heck, you can visualize yourself performing in a concert or acing a math quiz or accepting a Nobel Prize. No matter what we do in life, we are responsible for being ‘all that we can be’, and we are equally responsible for helping others ‘be all that they can be.’ Follow this game plan…on or off the field. Have an undefeated season…have an undefeated life. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com. Previous Next

< Back Beyond the Rainbow Bridge: The Loss of a Pet and the Afterlife Bethany Sullivan "In the silence of loss, I cling to the whispers of hope, believing that beyond the veil of goodbye, our beloved pets wait, their love an eternal beacon guiding us through the darkness." In June 2022, my family had to put down our cat. How much we loved Sassafras cannot be overstated. My sister aptly said that he had been the heart of our family. In many ways, he felt like the nucleus of our family. He pulled all of us closer together. He was the kind of cat—indeed, the kind of being—that is so special and beautiful that I won’t be surprised if I never meet another like him in the rest of my days. I had lost a couple of other loved ones before this, including two cats. But Sassy was a load-bearing part of our household, and my life, for fourteen years. It was the first time I lost someone central to my own life and routine, day in and day out. The others were more peripheral, more distant. The spaces they left behind didn’t leave a gaping hole I was painfully, horribly aware of every single day in the same way that Sassy did. He was missing from small moments in all 24 hours of the day, and the texture and rhythm of life were forever changed by losing him. We were ceaselessly blessed by his presence in a way that we can never recover. There is comfort in the fact that I was always aware of this, and I have always made a point to try to appreciate the blessings, great and small, in my life so that I never look back and say, “If only I had appreciated what I had.” I did, and we all did, with Sassy. We constantly commented on how much we loved him, how lucky we were to have him, and how uniquely he brightened our lives. Our favorite thing was how, any time the whole family came together at the house, he always had to be there with us, sitting silently but happily in our midst. Especially at Christmas, when he was so pleased to have a tree indoors. He would sit under it, exuding his trademark calm contentment, from the day it went up until the day it came down again. And Christmas day was perhaps his favorite day of the year, when he had the special joy of sitting under the tree while simultaneously being surrounded by his whole family. Christmas day never feels quite as bright or beautiful now that he has gone from among us. Yet we always remember him and send him our love. His loss hit me hard. It would dawn on me again out of nowhere, as I was trying to fall asleep, with full force: I would never hear his tiny meow again, never be greeted by his eager, friendly face at the top of the stairs when I came home. His presence had been so grounding, so quietly self-assured. And he had loved life every moment of every day, soaking in the things he loved even at the end, when cancer was wasting him away. He would sit on the back porch, sleeping curled in a corner, basking in Dad’s presence as he read in a chair, or go stalking energetically through the grass, hunting for something. Even when he could no longer eat or drink, and it was clear that he was in and out of mind-numbing pain, he occasionally found the familiar energy he’d had throughout his life, the appetite to love what he had. He had always been this way. He was a true master of living in the moment. I’ve never met anyone else who was so happy. But because he was so beloved, losing him filled me with a terror I’d never had before: what if death really is the end, and I really never see him again, not even when it’s all over for me? My belief in the afterlife had fluctuated over time, sometimes a deep conviction, at others a scientific impossibility. Sometimes the doubt bothered me, upset me, or simply made me uncomfortable. Other times, it didn’t seem to matter that much. So what if this is all we get? Would that really be so bad? Suddenly, yes, that would be more horrible than anything else. To never meet someone you love ever again, to be parted from them eternally and irrevocably. Could there be anything more terrible than that? More tragic? It was probably because of this dread that, when I was watching the Marvel show WandaVision, a line stood out to me so significantly: “What is grief, if not love persevering?” It seemed like a comically incongruent place to find wisdom at a time like this, but that line has been ringing in my head ever since. It has made me contemplate the love, and grief, that I feel when I think about Sassy in a very different way. When I remember him and miss him so bitterly, I certainly am grieving. But instead of framing it that way now, I am more focused on the good feelings I still have—will always have—that make the grief so deep and acute. I miss him and grieve him because he was so important to me, and because I love him so much. I loved him then, and I still love him now. I always will. Nothing can change that or take it away. And that is always something to celebrate. I was lucky enough to have that gorgeous, wise creature in my life so pivotally, for such a long time, and not only to love him, but to be loved by him in return. When I consider it in this way, it also feels different. It feels like that powerful, abiding love is a sort of tether or connection between us, and when I think about him, wherever he is now, receiving the love I’m still sending to him, it’s as if I can feel him on the other end of the line, active and present. It doesn’t feel like I’m broadcasting that love uselessly out into the spiritual stratosphere, into the void, to echo eternally across the emptiness; it feels like I’m speaking into a cup connected by taut string to another cup, out of sight but not so far away, where someone is listening, receiving, and transmitting back. And that feeling, more than anything I’ve ever felt before, convinces me that he is still out there, just around the corner, perhaps in the other room, ceaselessly loving us back. In loving memory of Sassy. Bethany Sullivan is a writer and traveler from Vermont. She has been writing since 5th grade and traveling all her life. Visit her beer and travel blog at www.maltedbarleywanderer.com . Click the cover image to return to Holy Days 2024. Previous Next

< Back Don’t Teach Your Kid to Count! David Cowles “Our own number system is based on a highly specialized, and not necessarily privileged, concept of quantity.” Most of us can’t wait until our toddlers are old enough to count. Even, “One, three, six, four,” sounds like progress. At least they’ve caught on to the notion of sequence, if not yet quantity or magnitude. But are we doing them a disservice? Are we uncritically condemning them to live out their lives as we have lived ours? Oh come on! For heaven’s sake, it’s just counting. Show me someone who doesn’t know how to count! Well, ok, how about a whole culture. As we have discussed before in Aletheia Today , there is a tribe in the Amazon that to this day does not have even a concept of number. Ok, granted, this is a bit of an outlier, but many, many contemporary cultures have radically different concepts of numeration from us. Consider these 6 representative options: One, two, three. (Larger quantities are not considered countable.) One, two, many. One, two or three, more than three. One, all. A grain, a pile, a heap. Real Numbers plus Arithmetic. What’s key here is the way these systems treat the phenomenon of quantity. We assume that quantity is a given; it just is. But as we will see, our number system is based on a highly specialized, and not necessarily privileged, concept of quantity. Each of the ‘number systems’ mentioned above corresponds to a particular way of viewing the world: In the first case (1, 2, 3), counting is only considered useful up to ‘3’. After that, numbers are irrelevant. “One, two, and three” tell you something very specific and meaningful about your subject. Not so much after that. Perhaps some sense of volume takes over. Even in our culture, there are times when we stop counting (but usually not at 3): we call that statistics . Nobody will count the number of 7’s thrown at Bellagio’s craps tables tonight, not even the all-seeing eye in the sky. Everyone, punters, dealers, owners alike, trusts probability. The second example (1, 2, >2) could come from the notebook of a STEM professor, or a systems analyst, or a marketing guru, or an existentialist philosopher – folks not always so easily interchangeable. We know how to write equations with one variable: most of us master that in elementary school. Two variables? A little trickier – maybe high school. But more than two variables? That’s The Three Body Problem . Three or more bodies behave chaotically. So, 1, 2, >2 makes perfect sense from a physicist’s perspective, more sense perhaps than our own number system. Sara Imari Walker underscores this in Life as No One Knows It , her 2024 book outlining ‘Assembly Theory’ as an explanation for the origin and development of life: “There are, in fact, only 4 important numbers to understand in assembly theory: 0, 1, 2, and many.” Essentially, all process comes in stages: 0 = ‘does not exist’; 1 = ‘exists’; 2 = ‘copied’; >2 = ‘ubiquity’. This same logic informs our Systems Analyst. Say you have 1 point on the surface of a sphere: call it your North Pole. Now add a 2nd point anywhere on the sphere; wherever you place it, it will be one unit closer to the opposite pole. Now you can draw a geodesic from #1 through #2 to the opposite pole and back again to #1 – a Great Circle. Or you can add a 3rd point: now the line segment from #2 to #3 can point in any direction (360°) whatsoever. And to our marketing guru, peddling a sophisticated product to an inelastic audience (e.g. software to hospitals in Massachusetts). Getting any one hospital to ‘go first’ is almost impossible and adding a 2nd is no easier. #3 may or may not be a bit smoother but after 3 it’s just a matter of knocking down bowling pins. Anyone will do anything as long as 3 people have done it before. Remember when you were a wimpy kid? Your friends all wanted to jump off a ledge and they wanted you, Mikey, to go first. “No way!” So Paul went and didn’t get hurt; now it’s your turn. Still no? After Sam then. Sometime between Sam and Pedro, you’ll probably jump. On the philosophical side of things, 20th century existentialists, Martin Buber (a theist) and Jean-Paul Sartre (an atheist) both developed ontologies that based on the primacy of duality (2) as opposed to sinn fein (1) or en masse (3+). Our third example showcases the concept of ‘fuzziness’. One is one, period – a useful concept. Two and three are roughly the same and can be lumped together with little loss of information. More than three is a jumble. This is a minimal expression of what could be, and has been, a very elaborate scheme; imagine, for example: 1, 2-3, 4-6, 7-10, etc. As quantity increases, specificity becomes less important. Does the pauper count his pennies more often than the prince? Maybe, maybe not, but according to this model, he does! Think this is crazy? Think again. We do things exactly like it all the time! We estimate. We talk about ‘orders of magnitude’. And if you’re precocious, you understand logarithms. Challenge : can you infer a preferred logarithmic base by studying cultures that play with fuzzy dice (number systems)? For our Fourth number system, we are indebted to pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, Anaxagoras (5th century BCE). He is best known for his formula, Pan in Panta , “Everything in Everything”. According to Anaxagoras, everything is an element of everything else. Everything contains and in contained by every other ‘thing’. A number system appropriate to this insight would include just two terms, “One” and “All”. One refers to each entity while All refers to all the entities that are contained by that One entity and that in turn also contain that One entity. Anaxagoras gives us the Christian doctrine of Incarnation on steroids. Crazy, right? Maybe not! 20th century British philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead, had a similar concept. His cosmos consisted solely of ‘actual entities’ (events) and each entity ‘prehends’ all other entities. Through prehension, every actual entity participates in each actual entity. Whitehead’s entire cosmology rests on three ‘undefined terms’: One, Many, Creativity. One is one and Many is many (or all), while Creativity represents the family of ‘operations’ that link the two. Even more recently, contemporary European philosopher, Emanuele Coccia, has revived Anaxagoras’ concept of everything in everything . Fifth , ‘grain, pile, heap’. Ok, I made this one up! But it fits, don’t you think? Here we preserve the notion of quantity but eschew entirely the concept of number. Intriguing. Could my 3 term system be expanded to include other measures like ‘horde’ or ‘stack’? Would the numberless ‘system’ of the Piraha (above) fit under this umbrella? You might not be buying any of this, but I don’t care. I’ll bet I can sell it at any local elementary school, and kids, being desperate, will gladly absorb my sky-high mark-ups. I’m kidding, of course; right? I don’t really want to repeal numeracy, do I? I suppose not. Even in our own hyper-numeric society, I have encountered people I’d describe as “quantitatively challenged” (I hope that’s politically correct) and, yes, they are challenged across a wide range of daily activities. I desperately wanted my own children and grandchildren to develop a strong ‘quantitative sense’…and they did! Now I ask, “What did I do to them?” In the early years, I helped them get comfortable with Real Numbers and learn the properties and operations of arithmetic. So what’s so bad about that? As it turns out, plenty! Which brings up to the sixth option listed above: Our system of numeration is built on the set of Real Numbers (R) plus the operations of Arithmetic (A), extended to include calculus. R + A gets you to Mars. But it’s a controversial model based on some controversial basic principles or axioms: Commutativity : a + b = b + a; a × b = b × a. Associativity : (a + b) + c = a + (b + c); (a × b) × c = a × (b × c). Identity : a – a = 0; a + (-a) = 0. Transitivity : If a > b and b > c, then a > c. Density : Between any two distinct real numbers, there is always another real number. There are no "gaps" in the real number line; any interval can be divided into arbitrarily small sub-intervals. What a wonderful world! If only we lived in it. Turns out, this world of R + A is a lot less like the Real World than Alice’s Wonderland or Dorothy’s Oz. An argument can be made that precisely none of the properties enumerated above is true IRL. For example, Order of operations is always critical: a then b is totally different from b then a. Dah! You are known by the company you keep. Ask any middle schooler: (a +b) + c feels very different from a + (b + c). Every t is a little bit ‘naught t’: -a є a and therefore a + (-a) ≠ 0. (Dialectics) Ever hear of a triangle? a > b > c > a. The real world is processional, not static. “I seem to be a verb.” (R. B. Fuller, c. 1970 CE) “What goes around comes around.” (Hesiod, c. 500 BCE) Although there are an infinite number of Real Numbers, the smallest positive Real Number > 0. This is why the great Achilles lost a road race to a Tortoise. It turns out, there are an infinite number of ‘hyperreal’ numbers between the lowest positive Real Number and 0. These hyperreal numbers are collectively known as ‘infinitesimals’, represented by the symbol, ε. Before our children have seen their first seashore, explored their first forest, stood atop their first mountain, we have made them learn a model of reality that is entirely bogus. How bogus is it? I would argue that it is the most bogus of the 5 systems we’ve been exploring. Still…what harm could possibly come from this? Let’s see. We say that something that is infinitely improbable is effectively impossible, but that’s manifestly untrue. If something is, it is, no matter how improbable. Being is not a function of probability. It is not continuous; it is indivisible; it’s binary: it either is or it is not. ‘One’ is the state of everything that is; ‘zero’ is the state of everything that is not. Only Schoedinger’s cat can be 1 and 0 at the same time. “One is the loneliest number.” (Three Dog Night) As every two year old knows, there is only one number, and that number is one. I have a cookie, or I don’t have a cookie. Two cookies are one cookie, twice (“one each hand”). There is as yet no concept of ‘multiplicity’, just ‘duplicity’ (as in “those duplicitous adults”). Good thing too, because multiplicity itself is an illusion. Everything that is is once and only once. To be real is to be unique. When we say, “Two cookies,” we are abstracting. We are positing that the cookie in the right hand is similar enough to the cookie in the left hand to be covered by a single noun (‘cookie’). What about two ball bearings? Don’t they have to be interchangeable? Yes, but ‘interchangeable’ is not ‘identical’. They look the same and, ideally at least, they perform the same. They are ‘the same’ – i.e. ‘close enough for government work’. But they are not the same, they are not identical. If they were, they would be the same ball bearing. They would be one . But they are not the same, they are not one. We hide that fact by calling them ‘two ball bearings’, thereby eliding over the infinite (yes, I said “infinite”) chasm of difference that lies between the two. Nevertheless, we will go on teaching our toddlers to count so that they can ‘live long and prosper’ in our galaxy; who can blame us? But somewhere along the way, it would be nice if let them in on the secret: it’s all just one big lie. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at dtc@gc3incorporated.com Return to Table of Contents Previous Next

< Back Schoedinger’s Cat and Consciousness David Cowles Sep 12, 2024 “When Uncle Henry, drunk on Christmas eggnog, accidentally knocks the lid off the box and peers inside, puss’ status is settled, once and for all." You all know the story of Schoedinger’s much loved cat. It’s both dead and alive. The problem is that puss’ fate is dependent on a quantum mechanical event that remains in a suspended state known as ‘superposition’ until it is properly observed. In fact, the whole experimental apparatus remains in superposition until a qualified external observer is introduced. In the words of Jeremy Hillary Boob, PhD, “Be empirical; look!” ( Yellow Submarine ). And what better way to ‘look’ than by using light, i.e. injecting photons into the apparatus, allowing them to ‘read’ the state of things inside the box? But no joy! The photons simply become part of the experimental apparatus, the entirety of which remains in superposition. But when Uncle Henry, drunk on Christmas eggnog, accidentally knocks the lid off the box and peers inside, puss’ status is settled, once and for all. How is Uncle Henry different from a bunch of photons? His size? His blood alcohol level? Yes, but irrelevantly so. Henry is significantly different because he’s conscious, dimly conscious but conscious, nonetheless. A photon can enter the experimental apparatus in superposition. Uncle Henry cannot. Uncle Henry not only perceives the state-of-affairs inside the box, but he perceives himself perceiving it. Henry has volunteered, you see, to be part of a thought experiment originally devised by Hungarian physicist, Eugene Wigner back in 1961. Henry has sacrificed his usual temperance in the interests of science. Wigner incorrectly supposed that a qualified ‘external observer’ needed a certain minimum level of intelligence to affect a ‘collapse of the wave function’. Sober, Henry might meet Widget’s criterion, but drunk? Probably not. But Henry has not passed out…yet. When he stumbles into puss’ box, he is still conscious. It is his consciousness, not his intelligence, that collapses the wave function. How come? Consciousness is inherently recursive, self-aware. In fact, recursion is what consciousness is. Think of a polyhedron lined with reflective mirrors. Everything reflects everything else – that’s consciousness. Most likely, it will prove to be some sort of twist in the fabric of spacetime. What’s important is the non-linearity of awareness. Simple awareness won’t cause the system to decohere; awareness of that awareness is what does the trick. As Uncle Henry proved, consciousness and intelligence are largely unrelated. A few decades ago, consciousness was thought to be the exclusive province of homo sapiens . Now it is widely believed that at least some other animal species are conscious as well. How about plants? Fungi? Bacteria? On the other hand, IBM, Google, et al. have already built machines that are far more intelligent than Henry; but as far as we know they are not yet conscious. Taken to the extreme, a supercomputer could be absorbed into Schoedinger’s coherent apparatus while a single bacterium would collapse the wave function. That’s the power of consciousness. This suggests the possibility of a new sort of ‘Turing Test’. To see if a life form, or machine, is conscious, we ‘merely’ need to determine how a coherent system behaves in its presence. If the system remains coherent, then the subject is not conscious, no matter how intelligent it may be; but if the wave function collapses, voila! And it doesn’t even have to know how to read or write! Am I on to something cutting edge here? Not in the least! 2500 years ago, the Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, Anaxagoras, proposed a similar model of consciousness. He called it Nous , and he understood it to be a unique aspect of reality, uniform in itself but distinct from everything material: “ Nous is unlimited and self-ruling and has been mixed with nothing, but is alone, by itself…and indeed, it maintains all discernment about everything…all Nous is alike.” All this gives new meaning to the traditional English rhyme: Ding Dong Bell, Pussy’s in the Well. Who threw her in, little Tommy Thin. Who pulled her out, little Tommy Stout. Little Tommy Thin is the apple of his mother’s eye. He’s an all-A student, who loads up on fresh fruits and vegetables and never eats sweets; but he’s totally lacking in compassion. He goes through life unconsciously. He lacks any moral sense. Think sociopath…zombie…or robot. He’s only too willing to place Puss at risk in superposition. And Little Tommy Stout? Well, not so much! Nothing his parents or his teachers have tried makes any difference. He won’t touch healthy food; pies and cakes are his specialty. But Tommy Stout is conscious, and so he has an innate moral sense; he’s compassionate. Instinctively, he collapses the wave function and, thank God, he pulls Pussy out alive. Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to contact us on any matter. How did you like the post? How could we do better in the future? Suggestions welcome. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Who Are the Antichrist, the ‘Man of Lawlessness’, and the Beast? Ian Paul "Clever schemes and novel doctrines won't save us. Stay faithful to the truth of God in Jesus and live with confidence, even in these shaky times." For those engaged in end-times speculation, whether provoked by the Covid-19 pandemic, global warming, or war in Ukraine, there has been another rash of speculation about the identity of the Antichrist—that end times personal figure who is now somewhere secretly in the world but who will very soon be revealed. (It is worth noting, for the sake of perspective, that every perceived crisis since at least the 1960s has provoked such speculation. For earlier modern end-times expectation, see the example of the followers of William Miller , who predicted that Jesus would return in 1844.) I am not sure that anything I write here will persuade those committed to end-times schemes, in which the Book of Revelation predicts in detail our age alone (as if we are the most important generation that ever lived), but I think a lot of ordinary readers of the Bible are unsettled by such theories, and are not sure how to respond. Part of the reason for this is that such schemes look so coherent. Here is one, influential, example , part of Dispensational Premillennialism based on the teaching of J N Darby : The man of lawlessness in 2 Thessalonians 2:1–12 is the Antichrist who will come on the world scene at the beginning of the Day of the Lord. This Day, sometimes called the “end times,” starts after the rapture of the church in 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18 (cf. 1 Thessalonians 5:1–11 ). It is good to note that the Day of the Lord is not a twenty-four-hour period of time; rather, it is an extended period of time that includes the seven-year tribulation, the return of Christ to put down all rebellion against Him, the 1,000-year reign of Christ on earth, the final defeat of Satan, and the Great White Throne Judgment. This looks very convincing—until you realise that the coherence of this scheme belongs entirely to the writer, and bears little or no relation to what the Bible actually says! The New Testament nowhere identifies the ‘man of lawlessness’ with the ‘antichrist’; it does not describe a ‘rapture’ of the church ( this arises from a poor misreading of 1 Thessalonians 4 ); nowhere does the NT mention a ‘ seven-year tribulation ‘; the 1,000-year reign of Christ is a literal reading of a symbolic text in Rev 20; and the ‘Day of the Lord’ which is everywhere in the NT described as a specific moment at the end of history has now been extended, in this scheme, to a period of more than 1,007 years! One of the key proponents of this kind of scheme in a previous generation, Hal Lindsay (who wrote The Late, Great Planet Earth ) actually admits that this is a ‘hopscotch’ approach to reading the Bible, taking one bit from one place and another from another in order to put together a picture like assembling the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. But look at the wonderful picture that results, is his defence! So it is worth noting from the outset the basic assumptions of this kind of approach. First, the Bible doesn’t actually make sense as a narrative as it is written; it needs some mysterious key to open up its meaning. Secondly, the truth about the ‘end times’ and Jesus’ return is a great big puzzle, and the truth of what will happen has been missed by most people in history—indeed, it continues to be missed by most people who simply read the Bible. Thirdly, we therefore need an authority figure who will help us put together the different pieces of the otherwise unintelligible text of the Bible, and we then find what we need to know not in reading the Bible, but in reading the writings and teaching of this important person. All these features make this approach perfect for an age of conspiracy theories—and offer a potential publishing bonanza, since all faithful Christians will need to buy their book! The best answer to all this is to return to the text, and what it actually says. So let’s look at the text of the Bible, and the passages about each of these three figures, and see what we can learn. The ‘man of lawlessness’ is only mentioned in one short passage, 2 Thess 2.1–12 . Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers and sisters, not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by the teaching allegedly from us—whether by a prophecy or by word of mouth or by letter—asserting that the day of the Lord has already come. Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God. Don’t you remember that when I was with you I used to tell you these things? And now you know what is holding him back, so that he may be revealed at the proper time. For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendour of his coming. The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness. There are some things here worth noting. First, Paul clearly thinks that, whoever this mysterious ‘man of lawlessness’ (ὁ ἄνθρωπος τῆς ἀνομίας) is, he is ‘already at work’. This is clear from the fact that he ‘will set himself up in the temple’ which was still standing when Paul was writing (I am convinced by the arguments that 1 and 2 Thessalonians are early, are by Paul and not forgeries, and were written in quick succession to one another); there is no suggestion whatever in the text that ‘the temple’ here is used symbolically to refer to the people of God. Something is currently holding him back—and he is clearly a human figure, and not an angelic or demonic power. Secondly, Paul is referring rather obliquely and in summary form to something that he has explained in more detail to the Thessalonians, and we will never know the full explanation that he has already given. Like many issues in Paul, we wish that he has said more! But we need to face the reality that we do not know any more details, so have to decide whether it is worth speculating. But thirdly, and in answer to the dilemma of our ignorance, we can know the purpose of Paul’s teaching in this area—and it is not in order to encourage speculation or the drawing up of end-times calendars! On this, I think John Piper’s exposition is really helpful: But persecution and suffering are not the only issue at Thessalonica, and Paul, now in chapters 2 and 3, takes his instruction about the second coming to a new level of detail in dealing with this second issue. The issue is that some in the church have ceased to do their ordinary vocational jobs, and started to make a nuisance of themselves as busybodies, mooching off the other Christians, since they’re not earning any money. And evidently, though Paul doesn’t say so explicitly, this delinquency is owing to a kind of hysteria in the community that the day of the Lord is not just near, but is already present. In other words, Paul is saying to them: don’t panic; you have not been left behind; there is no need to speculate; get on with living your lives, working with your hands, instead of dropping everything for the sake of end-times speculation. You can trust God who will ultimately triumph, no matter how bad things appear to be getting. As Martin Luther is believed to have said, ‘If I knew Jesus was coming tomorrow, I would still collect the rent and plant an apple tree’. Or we might say ‘Jesus is coming; look busy!’ It is also worth noting that this is a very minor point in Paul’s teaching about ‘the end times’. In Romans 8, he talks about the longing of the created order to be redeemed; in 1 Cor 15, he offers a long and detailed discussion about the implications of the resurrection at the end; all through his writings there is a constant sense of expectation, and the hope that confidence in the ultimate victory of God in the return of Jesus. And yet, only in this one passage is the ‘man of lawlessness’ mentioned. So it can hardly be claimed to be central to Paul’s teaching. The ‘antichrist’ is only mentioned in four verses in the NT, all in the letters of John: Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. 1 John 2:18 Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Messiah. Such a person is the antichrist—denying the Father and the Son. 1 John 2:22 …but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world. 1 John 4:3 Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist. 2 John 7 Again, there are several things worth noticing simply by reading the text carefully. First, although the author does talk about ‘ the antichrist’ at several points, he is also clear that there have and continue to be many such people. Many ‘antichrists’ have already come; every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is of the antichrist, and ‘any such person’ who denies Jesus came in the flesh ‘is the antichrist’. Secondly, the eschatology of these passages is highly ‘realised’—that is, the writer talks as though he and his readers are already in the ‘end times’ when he says several times ‘it is the last hour’. This might look as though there was an expectation that Jesus would return in his lifetime, an expectation that was mistaken. But in fact it matches the language of the Fourth Gospel, which talks about ‘life of the age [to come]’ or ‘eternal life’ as though is starts now, rather than being something we have to wait for. This also agrees with Peter on the day of Pentecost, who quotes Joel 2’s description of the ‘last days’ and says that it is what is happening in the outpouring of the Spirit (‘This is that… Acts 2.16 ). And it agrees with Paul’s description of those who put their faith in Jesus: ‘If anyone is in Christian there is new creation’ ( 2 Cor 5.17 ). Thirdly, the concern here is (once more) nothing to do with ‘end times’ speculation and timetables, but to do with sound doctrine. The writer is encouraging his readers to stay true to the faith. Overall, the letters of John have two concerns: that his audience hold onto the truth about Jesus, and that they live out that truth in lives of love. We also need to note that the description of [the, many] antichrist[s] appears to have little or nothing in common with Paul’s description of the ‘man of lawlessness’ other than the theme of ‘deception’ and the concern that the believers should not be deceived by those who do not tell the truth. This is hardly a concern uniquely related to the ‘end times’…! With mentions in four verses, in two short circular letters, again this is hardly central to the theological concerns of the writers of the NT overall. Lastly, the beast is a central figure in the drama of the Book of Revelation. Although there are anticipations of the figure earlier in the text, the ‘beast from the sea’ is fully introduced in Rev 13 as one of an ‘evil trinity’ along with the dragon/Satan, and the ‘beast from the earth’ ( Rev 13.1 ) which later in the text is described as ‘the false prophet’. The dragon stood on the shore of the sea. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name. The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion. The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority. One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed. The whole world was filled with wonder and followed the beast. People worshiped the dragon because he had given authority to the beast, and they also worshiped the beast and asked, “Who is like the beast? Who can make war against it?” ( Rev 13.1–4 ) The beast from the sea look very much like the dragon which is described in chapter 12—and both together combine the features of the four beasts that emerge from the sea in Daniel 7, which many commentators believe symbolise the four great world empires of Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome. And far from making this beast future and mysterious, he appears to go to some lengths to help his readers understand who this beast is, by asking them to ‘calculate’ (the Greek term psephizo ) or work out, the number of the beast, which stands for a man’s name. For some time, there has been a strong scholarly consensus that 666 refers to Nero by means of a numerology known as gematria or isopsephism —adding the value of the letters in a word so that every word has a value, and equating two words with equal value. We know that Nero’s name was sometimes spelled with a final -n; ‘Neron Caesar’ when written in Greek, but transliterated into Hebrew letters adds up to 666 (see the image to the right for the sums). There are several significant pieces of supporting evidence for this. First, when you write the Greek for ‘beast’, therion, in Hebrew letters, you also arrive at 666, making it clear that 666 is the number of ‘the beast’. Secondly, when you do the same with ‘angel’ in Rev 21, you get the number 144. Third, an early manuscript from Oxyrhynchus in Egypt corrects 666 to 616, which you would do if you understood the gematria, but thought that ‘Nero’ should be spelled without the final n. (There isn’t really any other plausible explanation for why this variant should arise.) This ‘beast’ is identified with neither the ‘man of lawlessness’ in Paul nor the ‘antichrist’ in John, and in fact neither of these terms occur anywhere in Revelation. So where does this all get us? First, it is clear that the three terms belong to quite different traditions within the NT, and none of these three traditions attempts to make any specific connections with the others in terms of language—despite the fact that the later writers (of the Johannine letters and of the Book of Revelation) almost certainly knew Paul’s writings. But it is also clear that there is some kind of connection, particularly since the concern of all three writers appears to be to encourage his readers to stand firm in the truth of the apostolic teaching in the face of pressures from outside the Jesus community to renounce faith and pressures from within to distort the truth about Jesus. Here, Piper makes an interesting observation, but I think then reaches the wrong conclusion from it: Therefore, the man of lawlessness will be unparalleled in his ability to deceive, as 2 Thessalonians 2:10 says, “with all wicked deception for those who are perishing.” It really could be “in all deception of unrighteousness,” because we are going to see in just a moment that the way he deceives is by making unrighteousness seem pleasurable. (Notice how the word adikia is repeated in verses 10 and 12.) Again, I would argue, Paul is unpacking the prophecies made by Jesus. Jesus said, Then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be. . . . For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. . . . So, if they say to you, “Look, he [one person!] is in the wilderness,” do not go out. If they say, “Look, he is in the inner rooms,” do not believe it. For as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. ( Matthew 24:21 , 24 , 26–27 ) At the close of this climactic period of lawlessness and a great deception led by a person, Paul is saying, the coming of the Son of Man will be unmistakable. Like lightning flashing from horizon to horizon. Piper is noting the connections between Paul’s language in 2 Thess and Jesus’ teaching in the first half Matt 24. But what he does not notice is that Jesus’ teaching here is not about the distant (for him) future and a remote ‘end times’ that we might be living in, but what the disciples he is teaching will face in their lifetime . He makes this crystal clear by stating emphatically: Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. ( Matt 24.34 ). It is only in the second half of the chapter, from Matt 24.36 , that Jesus turns his attention to issues around ‘the end of the age’. There are connections too between Paul’s discussion of the man of lawlessness, who will ‘use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie’ ( 2 Thess 2.9 ) and the ‘signs and wonders’ performed by the second beast on behalf of the first in Rev 13.13–14 , but this is a description of magical tricks and propaganda performed by Roman rulers of which we have documentary evidence. In other words, both Paul and John are writing about things already happening in the world of their readers. The concern of all these texts is to encourage their readers: don’t be deceived by clever schemes and novel doctrines; don’t get caught up in ‘end-times’ speculation; stay faithful to the truth that God came to us in Jesus, and has made our salvation secure in him; and continue to live lives of industry, generosity and grace as you wait with confidence for his return in a world that is looking very shaky. We need the same encouragement! To find out more about what the NT says about eschatology, the end of the world, and living in hope, you might be interested in my Grove booklet on Kingdom, Hope and the End of the World . To find out more about how to read the Book of Revelation, see my Grove booklet or my commentary on Revelation in IVP’s Tyndale series . The image at the top is a detail of The Deeds of Antichrist by Luca Signorelli (1505). Published previously. This is a republished blog in full agreement with www.psephizo.com , the official website of autor Ian Paul. Ian Paul is a theologian, author, speaker, and academic consultant. He serves as Adjunct Professor for Fuller Theological Seminary ; Associate Minister for St Nic's, Nottingham , and Managing Editor for Grove Books . He is member of General Synod, a Mac user, and a chocoholic. He tweets at @psephizo . For a complete list of books he has either written or contributed to, go to https://www.psephizo.com/publications/ . Return to our Harvest Issue 2023 Previous Next