< Back God-Proofing the World David Cowles Apr 11, 2023 “Just as World War I made the world safe for democracy (not!), so the Enlightenment made the world safe from theology.” The historical period known as The Enlightenment (c. 1700 – 1900 CE) gave us many things, some quite fortunate, others less so: the Industrial Revolution, Capitalism, Socialism, Communism, Nationalism, Militarism, Electoral Democracy, Civil Rights and Modern Science, to name a few. But the Enlightenment’s proudest achievement is God-proofing the world. According to the illuminati of our age, the Enlightenment made it impossible for any rational person ever again to believe in God, at least in the Judeo-Christian sense. Just as World War I made the world ‘safe for democracy’ (not!), so the Enlightenment made the world ‘safe from theology’. How do we know that something is true? We deduce it, or we demonstrate it. When we say we’ve ‘proved’ something, we mean that we have deduced something from other somethings that we believe to be true with an extraordinarily high degree of certainty. A proof’s chain of reasoning goes back to a very small set of ‘self-evident’ principles (axioms) and ‘undefined’ terms. When we say that we have ‘proved’ that something is true, we mean that it is true in any world where our axioms are true and our undefined terms operative. On the other hand, when we say that we’ve ‘demonstrated’ something, we are referring to certain patterns exhibited by empirical events. Beginning with hypothesis, we proceed through experiment, measurement, repetition, confirmation, peer review, and publication in Nature (or another universally respected academic journal). The existence of God cannot be proved by logic or demonstrated by science. Too bad, because the concept of God would have been very convenient. It could have helped us answer some of life’s most difficult questions: ➢ Why is there something rather than nothing? ➢ Why is there order rather than chaos? ➢ What does it mean to be ‘me’? But convenience is not the same thing as truth. Just ask Al Gore (An Inconvenient Truth). So, let’s come at this problem from the other end. What must we believe if we assume that the world is real, but that God is not? First, we must believe that a cosmic epoch, characterized by spacetime and energy, spontaneously came into existence with more than 90 ‘mission critical’ physical constants (e.g., the relative masses of the subatomic particles) in tow. A variation of less than 1% in any one of these quantities or ratios would preclude the existence of the universe as we know it. So far as we can tell, the values of these essential constants are not dependent on one another. A is not correlated with B, A is not caused by B, but without both A and B, no universe! Remember Bayes’ Theorem: if the probability of A is 0.01 and the probability of B is 0.01, then the probability of A and B is 0.0001. Now imagine carrying out this same calculation but with 90 such variables, each with a probability of less than 1%, each absolutely mission critical to project universe. How many zeros can you write before your hand cramps? Second, we must believe that our universe came to be without the existence of any transcendent values. Either the universe operates without objective values or objective values emerge in the ordinary course of events. Novel events (e.g. Big Bang) occur, apparently spontaneously, for no reason, and without any goal, purpose, or meaning. Without objective values, we have no criteria with which to judge those events. We can choose to call A ‘good’ and B ‘not so good’, but the distinction is subjective, if not arbitrary. And on what authority can we say that A is normative? Rebuttal #1 : “Values don’t need to be transcendent to be objective or normative.” Sez who? Which values? Were values operative at the moment of Big Bang? If so, they are transcendent by definition. If not, if values emerged out of the course of events, how can those values be normative for all events, including Big Bang, and even including the emergence of those values per se? A deadly circularity? Rebuttal #2 : “Values can be objective, normative and transcendent without God.” First, we define God in terms of Values; in fact, we define God as Value. God is the Summum Bonum. According to Jean-Paul Sartre, God is the one being whose essence (values) precedes existence. Second, even if values could be both transcendent and free floating, how would they enter into the universe and become relevant to the events that constitute universe? On what authority can we say, ‘values are relevant’ and move on? No doubt, this debate could go indefinitely, but to what end? Nietzsche ended the argument once and for all in 1882: “There exists nothing which could judge, measure, compare, condemn our being for that would be to judge, measure, compare, condemn the whole...but nothing exists apart from the whole.” Nietzsche stands out from other intellectuals of the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment eras for having the unflinching courage of his convictions: No God, No Values, end of! No event can be objectively any better, i.e. any more beautiful, true, or just, than any other. Without transcendent values, there is no objective way to distinguish Mother Theresa from Adolf Hitler. It’s all just a matter of ‘personal values’, aka taste. Oh, how convenient it would be if only there was a God! But we can’t prove that there is. We can only say that those who preclude the existence of God a priori have “a lot of ‘splainin’ to do”. ( I Love Lucy) 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 Do People Change? David Cowles Jun 1, 2026 “You are exactly the same today as you were at birth and as you will be at death…(but) you must change in order to remain the same.” A favorite topic among barroom philosophers begins with the question, “Does anyone ever really change?” Obviously, the question has ramifications: forgiveness vs. revenge, rehabilitation vs. incarceration, free will vs. fate. The beautiful thing about propositions put forward at the outset of barroom debates is that all sides of the argument are always right. There is a sense in which no one ever changes, a sense in which everyone is changing all the time, and a sense in which people (most but not necessarily all) change stochastically according to some sort of internal biological clock. My goal is to unravel these threads and, BTW, if I do so to your satisfaction, the next round’s on you, ok? No one ever changes : You are aware of the World, and you are aware of yourself being aware of the World. As a result, you experience the World stereoscopically, and the differance (Derrida) is consciousness. You are that consciousness . No matter how violently and relentlessly the world (including your body) changes around you, you do not change. You observe and qua observer, you are exactly the same today as you were at birth (or before) and as you will be at death (or after). You are Menelaus ( Odyssey ), unwavering and unchanging, holding on tight to the shape shifting Proteus. You are Stephen Dedalus ( Ulysses ) on Sandymount Strand, rationalizing the shifting forms assumed by primal matter, Aristotle’s pure potentia . Like the center point of a rotating sphere, you are at rest while everything literally spins around you. The World consists of qualia and it is in a state of constant flux. This is Parmenides’ Doxa (appearances), the realm of change. Here is where color, form, and affect reside. This is the World, Sartre’s en soi , but this is not you. Relative to en soi you are neant (nothingness, negation); you are pour soi . You are an avatar of Parmenides’ Aletheia (truth), the realm of permanence: “…what-is is ungenerated and imperishable…whole, single-limbed, steadfast, and complete; nor was it once, nor will it be, since it is, now, all together, one, continuous…Thus coming-to-be is extinguished and perishing not to be heard of.” Being in the realm of Aletheia , you are simple, you have no parts, you have no qualities, and, of course, you undergo no change. Everyone changes continuously : You template the World, you reflect the World, and the World is constantly in a state of flux ( Doxa , above). Therefore, you must constantly change to adapt to the ceaseless change around you. In homage to the great Johnnie Cochrane, “If it is not new, it is not you!” This change is neither arbitrary nor voluntary; it is homeostatic, it is necessary for survival. You seek stability and so you must continually adjust to changes around you. You must change if you are to remain the same. Most people change stochastically : This is where our model represents an advance over Parmenides and Sartre and pretty much anyone in between. To understand this third option, we need to visit our cousin, the butterfly . A butterfly begins life as a caterpillar. Once the caterpillar has grown sufficiently, it forms a protective casing around itself called a chrysalis where the caterpillar's body proceeds to dissolve into a biological soup. The interior of the chrysalis becomes a cellular slurry, the raw material for an entirely fresh organism with new structures such as wings, antennae, compound eyes, etc. Imagine a piece of unassembled DIY furniture from IKEA (it’s easy if you try) with two schematics directing its assembly – two, because the pieces in this kit can be assembled in 2 totally different ways resulting in two entirely different pieces of furniture. It’s the ultimate application of Transformers technology. At an appropriate time, our personalities dissolve into a soup, just like a caterpillar’s DNA, and then reassemble according to an entirely different schematic, just like a butterfly. Like butterflies, you retain pre-metamorphic memories but otherwise, you are an entirely new entity. Most people experience metamorphosis 3 times in life, once at the onset of puberty (11 – 13), again upon the full realization of adulthood (21 – 30), and one last time at the beginning of ‘seniority’ (55 – 80). Parents often reflect that living with their teenaged offspring is like living with strangers in their house; been there…on both sides of that see-saw! The adults think they are speaking metaphorically but in fact, their observation is true, literally. On the other hand, many retirees succeed in so reinventing themselves that they wonder how they ever found the time, energy, or frankly the ‘stomach’ to work for 40+ years. It is said that there are no second acts in America; on the contrary, every life has a second act, or at least the opportunity for one, as well as a prologue. Our lives seem to follow Homer’s trajectory ( Odyssey ). Our ‘minority’ follows the structure of the Telemachia and serves as the Prologue in our life’s drama. At first, Telemachus is powerless against his mother’s suitors; later, with the help of a mentor, he begins to resist and develops a strategy to overthrow the interlopers. At the end (Act II), Odysseus is reunited with his home, Ithaca, but on entirely new terms. This is not so surprising! Both Homer ( Odyssey ) and Joyce ( Ulysses ) intended to tell ‘the story of everyone’ through their respective epics. And they did! We are all Dedalus, we are all Bloom, we are all Telemachus, we are all Odysseus. Our lives unfold in three acts: a Prologue, then Act I Proper (our adult life), followed by a usually much shorter Act II (our seniority). So no matter what side you took in this barroom brawl, you have the satisfaction of knowing you were right…and I have the satisfaction of a quaffing a cold one on you. Slainte! Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back The Riddle of the Sphinx David Cowles Jul 18, 2023 “What to do? Obviously, you buy a flame red Italian sports car…or not.” What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening? The answer, of course, is a human being (baby, adult, senior), but the riddle conceals a much deeper truth. The course of human life, at least in our civilization, does indeed break into three relatively isolated blocks of time: childhood, adulthood, and seniority, but these distinctions are only incidentally related to locomotion . The labels themselves are imprecise and controversial. My 13-year-old considers herself an adult, and she is quick to remind me whenever I forget. On the other hand, I’ve met superannuated children as old as 30. Lest you think I’m exercising literary license to amuse, think again. Like the prophet Ezra, I am merely reading out the law of the land: My 13-year-old’s medical records are sealed (I can’t see them because she is ‘already an adult’); my 29-year-old is covered under my health insurance policy (I can cover him because he is ‘still a child’). And don’t even think of referring to my 50 hour/week working dad (75 years old now) as a ‘seasoned citizen’…unless you undervalue the current arrangement of your facial features. Most of us get to spend the first 15 to 30 years of our lives engaged in an activity best described as Exploration . This includes formal instruction, peer-to-peer information exchange, and that hair-raising teenage practice known as ‘lifestyle experimentation’. After the Age of Exploration , the focus shifts: now we ‘get to use’ everything we’re supposed to have learned. Remember school – where you complained incessantly about almost every subject: “When will I ever use this?” Well, the answer is, “Now!” After the Age of Exploration comes the Age of Production . For most, the transition from Exploration to Production is gradual; we hardly know it’s happening while it’s happening, but we certainly know it’s happened once it has. When we’re in exploration mode, we’re impatient for the day we become productive; but once we’re ‘productive’, we find ourselves nostalgic for the days of pencils, books, and dirty looks. Overnight, the puddles we used to run through splashing have become sticky pits of steaming tar, compliments of the local DPW. One day, we ‘wake up’ to find we have a ‘forever partner’, ‘forever children’, and a ‘forever career’. In place of a generous parental allowance supplemented by earnings from part-time and seasonal employment, we have student loans to repay, a mortgage to amortize, taxes to withhold, and a 401(k) to fund. Thanks, Sphinx! Plus, those bundles of love you brought home from the hospital have become disobedient, disrespectful, and rebellious. Don’t they know what you gave up for them? And your ‘forever partner’ now seems more ‘forever’ and less ‘partner’. The career you trained for has you doing busy work in a cube; and from here, the road to advancement seems long and tortuous. Oh, and that salary that looked so awesome just a few years back? Well, it’s no longer nearly enough to meet your needs. Unfortunately, you were poorly prepared for the exigencies of real life! You were raised on a diet of force-fed propaganda. First, “ What do you want to be when you grow up?” Then, “ Do something with your life. Be someone. Make something of yourself.” Good Lord! Had you been captured at birth and raised by a cruel enemy, you could not have been more ill-treated. You were confined in a hermetically sealed box known as childhood ; there you were bombarded by parents, teachers, and media with a single message: Be something you’re not! So you find yourself in a bit of a pickle, don’t you? Your kids are grown (no grandkids yet) and your job’s a dead end. Worst of all, you sense that you are now, on average, 5/8ths of the way through your ‘productive period’…with nothing to show for it. What to do? Obviously, you buy a flame red Italian sports car (or at least a Harley), you open that restaurant you’ve always dreamed of, and you dump your ‘forever partner’ in favor of a ‘trophy’ for your final lap. Or not! Either way, now you have a rasher of grown kids and a slew of grands; you have been successful…after all; in fact, some would say you’re ‘rich’. You belong to the most exclusive clubs, eat in the trendiest restaurants, and take your family on the most luxurious holidays. You’re on your local parish council, and last year you were elected to the Board of Selectmen (sic) in your town. But are you happy? Of course not! How could you be? You’ve accomplished everything you ever dreamed of (rather, everything others dreamed of for you). You’ve spent your whole adult life trying to ‘be someone’ or ‘something’ – a loving spouse, a caring parent, a loyal employee, a generous employer, a pillar of your community - and you’ve come as close as anyone ever has to achieving these objectives. And yet… The problem is that you can never actually be any of these ‘things’ and even if you could, it would not make you happy. ‘Being something’ is not the sort of hairpin you are. In fact, you’re the sort of thing that can never be anyone or anything. Correction : You will be something…at death; you will be ashes! Your life has been an incessant effort to be what you can never be, and so you live in a state of perpetual longing…and loss. So now what? Well, if you’re very, very lucky, your play may have a 3 rd act – call it the Age of Reflection . “What’s it all about, Alfie?” Now at last you’re in a position to ask that question…and maybe even answer it. Don’t let me down! Keep the conversation going! 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. 4. Aletheia Today Magazine (ATM) will be devoting its entire fall issue (released 9/1/23) to artificial intelligence (AI). What are the philosophical, theological, cultural and even spiritual implications of AI powered world? If you’d like to contribute to the AI Issue, click here . Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Dark Universe David Cowles Oct 20, 2025 “We can put a good figure on how much we know about the universe: 5%.” It’s straight out of MIT: We’re all in the dark ; well, 95% dark anyway. Now, thanks to the blunt edge philosophers at the world’s leading school of technology, the universe just got a tiny bit darker. Consider the following excerpt from the 5/19/2025 issue of the MIT Technology Review : “We can put a good figure on how much we know about the universe: 5% . That’s how much of what’s floating about in the cosmos is ordinary matter—planets and stars and galaxies and the dust and gas between them. The other 95% is dark matter and dark energy, two mysterious entities aptly named for our inability to shed light on their true nature... Cosmologists have cast dark matter as the hidden glue binding galaxies together. Dark energy plays an opposite role, ripping the fabric of space apart.” A brilliant piece of scientific discovery? Must be! It even earned a Nobel Prize (2011 in Physics): We stuck in a thumb and pulled out a plum and said, ‘Oh what a good boy (sic) am I’. Dark matter is the name given to a mysterious force that seems to be holding galaxies together. Dark energy, on the other hand, is the name given to the mysterious force that seems to be accelerating the expansion of the Universe, based on data showing that the Universe is expanding at an ever-accelerating rate. These gravity/anti-gravity forces have been accepted as canonical by the astronomical community for about three decades. But now a new team of astronomers say their measurements show that the expansion of the Universe is actually slowing down, not speeding up. Oh my! So we have a ‘dark force’ (gravity) working to contract the universe and a ‘dark force’ (energy) working to expand it. By adjusting the values of these two competing forces I can build (or model) virtually any universe I wish to imagine. There is an old saw in Logic that states: “If I let A = -A, I can prove any proposition whatsoever!” By adjusting the values of dark matter and dark energy I can account for every possible empirical reading. It’s comforting to know that our work here is done: we no longer need to think about cosmology…to the everlasting relief of my readers. So how did we end up in this mess? Consider the original Dark Universe hypothesis (above). Now imagine this same paragraph written by a theist talking about ‘God’. It might go something like this: “We can put a good figure on how much we know about the universe: 5%. That’s how much of reality is knowable via our senses and reasoning faculties. The other 95% is what we call Mystery . Observation and reason alone are unable to shed light here. Only Revelation can enlighten us re what must otherwise remain dark . Theologians have cast God as the hidden glue binding all things together ( logos ) and as the force ( physis ) ripping things apart to make way for what is to come.” Public reaction would constitute a Tsunami. The Capitol itself would shake. Who knows, SCOTUS might even get involved. Does the 1st Amendment protect nonsense speech? Should it not be a felony to pollute the minds of our youth with such a superstitious clap trap? Is this not a crime against humanity? Perhaps we should skip SCOTUS and bring the matter directly to The Hague. After all, Socrates was sentenced to death on these very same grounds: corrupting the youth (of Athens). But as long as we cloak this god-of-the-gaps theology in the language of science, we can escape censure. ‘Dark matter/dark energy’ sounds a lot better to our anti-clerical ears than ‘God’. Whatever we don’t know, whatever we don’t understand, we can call science – as if that settles anything. Like preschoolers everywhere, we imagine that giving something a name (dark this/dark that) makes it real. This is the hypocrisy of secularism: Science has now replaced Catholicism as the self-proclaimed ‘one true religion’. Contrary to the US Constitution as amended, Science is ‘established’ to the sometimes brutal exclusion (or marginalization) of all other faiths. There is no gnosis , and therefore no salvation, outside of the Academy. Even to question one of its doctrines is tantamount to heresy. We are all now self-appointed Grand Inquisitors, reporting superannuated hippies, tie-dye wearing science skeptics, to the proper authorities. By the age of 8, we are already rooting out apostasy as pigs do truffles. Like Russian children in the days of Stalin, we are encouraged by our teachers to turn in non-conforming adults to the local ‘science police’; doing so can earn us a Fauci Medal (called the Hawking Medal in the UK), the highest honor a pre-teen can receive. As parents, we want our children to have every advantage. So…we encourage them to join science clubs at school, and we send them to science camp every summer. Bully! As a young boy, I joined the Scouts (ages 8 up). Had I lived in Russia in those days, I might have been a Little Octobrist (ages 7 – 9) and worn a star-shaped badge sporting the image of a young Lenin. Later, if I showed promise and commitment, I might have been invited to join the Pioneers (Vladimir Lenin All-Union Pioneer Organization); my parents would have been so proud to see me wearing the distinctive red scarf. Now please don’t misunderstand me: there’s nothing wrong with children receiving an education in the sciences (or wearing red scarves for that matter). In fact, the former is absolutely essential, especially in our contemporary culture. But there was also nothing wrong with my friends and I learning survival skills at scout camp; nor was there anything wrong with Russian children learning to campaign for what they believed was social justice. The problem comes when we substitute dogma (“rite words in rote order” - Joyce) for discovery. Dogmatism breeds intellectual laziness. It was dogmatism that condemned Galileo, not religion; it was dogmatism that undermined Glasnost , not justice; and it is dogmatism, not science, that’s placing the intellectual promise of the 21 st century at risk. Dogmatism encourages us to accept easy answers, even when those answers make no sense. We are no strangers to such dogmatics in the US. For 60 years, we lived under the spell of a race based ‘separate but equal’ education system ( de facto and de jure ). Then in the 1950’s a doctrine known as ‘my country right or wrong’ became part of our national identity. Today it’s ‘follow the science’. What’s interesting is that these dogmas all have something in common: they are not just moronic, they’re oxymoronic. How can two things be equal once you’ve invested even a quantum of energy to separate them? How can any country be right if it’s wrong? Worst of all, how can I trust something that I cannot verify? I can verify certain propositions within the scientific canon, but I cannot verify the canon itself. The essential nature of good science is to question everything and accept nothing solely on another’s authority: experimentation is to replace revelation. The only exception to this is Science itself. I hear you, dear reader: “You seem very sure of yourself. How can you be certain that the Dark Universe hypothesis won’t turn out to be true?” Ok, I’ll see your cynicism and raise you: “It will turn out to be true!” But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong either. Huh? How so? Scientists invented the Dark Universe hypothesis to give a name to things they don’t understand and can’t explain. Based on what we know, the Universe shouldn’t work. There’s not nearly enough mass to hold galaxies together. In fact, however, galaxies do exist, 100’s of billions of them with more forming ‘every day’. So something’s wrong and the Dark Universe hypothesis seems to solve the problem. Of course, it is merely ‘solving’ one unknown in terms of another. But the headlines are already in the can: “Dark matter confirmed!” It will be confirmed because any advance in our understanding of the Universe will now be labeled dark . And why not? ‘Dark Universe’ has no denotative meaning, nothing that might subject it to the risk of falsification. It’s a universal place holder for whatever we don’t know now but may discover later. Like ‘mystery’ is Christian theology. Once we learn something about the universe that we don’t already know, that will be what ‘dark’ is. It will define ‘dark’. Of course it will. We don’t know what Dark Matter is so whatever turns out to solve the paradox will be quite correctly labeled Dark , and we will say, “Of course that’s what Dark Matter is, we knew it all along.” Except of course, we didn’t. Do you doubt me? Don’t! It’s already happening. A recent article by Evan Gough in the February 09, 2026 issue of Universe Today suggests replacing the Black Hole hypothesis with…you guessed it, ‘dark matter’. According to Gough, it may be dark matter, not a black hole, that resides at the center of the Milky Way and holds the galaxy together. Bully! The Dark Matter hypothesis is living up to its potential. It can explain virtually everything. Now if it can just explain why my toast comes out burnt every morning, we’ll really have something to celebrate. *** Image: Odilon Redon — L’œil, comme un ballon bizarre, se dirige vers l’infini (1882) This haunting image shows a giant eye transformed into a balloon that floats upward into an empty, infinite space, blending human perception with cosmic ascent. The eye suggests consciousness itself—detached from the body and rising beyond physical limits toward mystery, knowledge, or the unknown. Redon’s work expresses the Symbolist idea that inner vision, imagination, and the soul can transcend material reality and move toward infinity. 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 Handel’s Messiah David Cowles "There is only one full proof indication that Christmas is coming: the endless performances of George Frideric Handel’s Messiah. Yup, it’s that time of year! “Do they know it’s Christmastime at all?” ( We are the World, 1985) How do we know it's Christmastime (absent a pesky reminder from Google Calendar)? Holiday themed store windows? No, we have no more stores. We buy online now, and the cloud doesn’t know from seasons. Mall Santas? Seriously, does anyone over 16 even go to a mall anymore? Ok, last shot, Holiday decorations? No soap ! We leave ours up all year-round now. No, there is only one full proof indication that Christmas is coming: the endless performances of George Frideric Handel’s Messiah . Yup, it’s that time of year! From full orchestra productions to local church singalongs, even the occasional pop radio cut, it’s all Handel all the time. Until it isn’t! After December 25, ‘seldom is heard an encouraging word’…until the following November. George Frideric Handel wrote his most famous Oratorio in 1741, and it was first performed in Dublin in 1742 during the Easter season. Yup, although Handel ranks somewhere between Santa Claus and Frosty in the annals of Christmas lore, his Messiah was intended for Easter. The Messiah opens with words of encouragement ; it meets you where you stand, even if that’s on the brink of despair. It begins with a timeless message of hope: Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned. The libretto of the Messiah comes almost exclusively from the Old and New Testaments…but the Bible gives you a lot to work with! The selection and arrangement of texts rest squarely with the composer (Handel) and his librettist (Jennens), and it’s clear pretty much from the outset that Messiah will operate on at least three distinct but related levels: First, it is a major musical work with an important place in both the canon and the repertoire of classical music. Second, it is a quasi-liturgical celebration of Salvation History. Finally, it is a reflection on a theme that consistently runs just below the surface of Judeo-Christian culture: the relationship between God’s Kingdom and human institutions. Building on the message of hope (above), Messiah presents its ‘program’ (V.I. Lenin, What is to be done? ) The voice of him who crieth in the wilderness: prepare ye the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway to our God. Ev'ry valley shall be exalted, and ev'ry mountain and hill made low, the crooked straight and the rough places plain. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. If you build it, he will come! We are being prepared for climax, the faith and vision of Job in Part III. Thus, saith the Lord, the Lord of hosts: Yet once a little while and I will shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. And I will shake all nations; and the desire of all nations shall come. The Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His temple, even the messenger of the Covenant, whom you delight in; behold, He shall come, saith the Lord of hosts. Early on, Handel and Jennens spotlight the relationship between the Kingdom of God and the kingdoms of man (sic). The manifestation of the Lord on earth requires that he “shake all nations”. But good news, the Kingdom of God will satisfy all of our human desires. Secular institutions of government evolved to secure peace, justice, and prosperity for the people, but those values will only be fully realized when the Kingdom of God replaces the kingdoms of man. And the need for renewal does not stop on the steps of city hall. We all must undergo a process of purification, nobody more so than the clergy: But who may abide the day of his coming? And who will stand when he appeareth? And He shall purify the sons of Levi, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness. The prologue is complete; and now…”Action!” Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call His name Emmanuel, God with us. If we didn’t already know the story by heart, this line would be a real attention grabber: A virgin conceive? A human baby be God? God be ‘with us’ in this way? O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion, get thee up into the high mountain, lift up thy voice with strength; be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah: Behold your God! Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. Good tidings indeed! The best. But we’re just getting started. In one of many oblique references to the Book of Job , the text invites us to “behold’ our God. You can read our essay on Job here . (More to come on this parallel.) For behold, darkness shall cover the earth. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; and they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined. ‘Darkness’ refers to ignorance (the worst of all possible evils, according to Job). The ‘light’ then is the light of knowledge and understanding. It shines through the shadow of death (Psalm 23). And now on to the Messiah’s first climax: For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulders; and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. This is the first indication of the Messiah’s political message. Handel and Jennens make it clear that the legitimacy and sovereignty of all government is rooted in Christ. Its sovereignty is a reflection of his sovereignty. Note that our composers were careful to wait until they were certain the audience (royal audience?) was sucked into the theology. Then they introduce ‘politics’ in a very non-threatening way. Christ is the foundation of all political authority, but therefore also the foundation of the British Monarchy. One can imagine the royal party quite pleased with themselves…but for how long? We’re less than 40 years from the Bastille Day and the dreaded guillotine. As we shall soon see, to ground temporal authority on Christology is to lay a trap for secular rulers; but I don’t want to give away too much too soon. There were shepherds in the field keeping watch over their flocks by night. And lo, an angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, “Fear not, for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the City of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.” And suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying: Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth, good will towards men (sic). Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, thy King cometh unto thee; he is the righteous Savior, and he shall speak peace to the heathen. Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then shall the lame leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing. These are the traditional signs of divine favor, an indication that God is ‘well pleased’ with his temporal rulers. He shall feed His flock like a shepherd; and He shall gather the lambs with His arm, and carry them in His bosom, and gently lead those that are with young. His yoke is easy, and his burden is light. End Part One, commence Part Two. Handel and Jennens jump ahead now from Jesus’ nativity to his encounter with John the Baptist on the banks of Jordan, 30 years later. John declares: Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world. What an auspicious beginning! Angels attended his birth, and shepherds were the first to acknowledge his kingship. Magi notwithstanding, this was to be a revolution led by the proletariat (shepherds and fishermen). Jesus welcomed support from elements of the elite (e.g., Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea), but he never lost sight of who he really was: a red-headed stepchild of a displaced carpenter, born in an ox’s stable, laid in its feeding trough, its manger. Nor would the future be any bed of roses: He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. He gave his back to the smiters, and his cheeks to them that plucked off his hair: he hid not His face from shame and spitting. Surely, he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace. And with his stipes, we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way. Apparently, Handel and Jennens are no anarchists. In a vague reference to the Book of Judges, our duo makes it clear that they are not prepared to entrust social order to the consciences of individuals. Authority is necessary, but that authority must rest on the sovereignty of Christ. The exercise of that authority must reflect Jesus’ values and must be consonant with his will. Aye, there’s the rub. But we’re not there yet, not by a long shot: All they that see Him laugh Him to scorn; they shoot out their lips, and shake their heads, saying: “He trusted in God that he would deliver him; let him deliver him, if he delights in him.” Thy rebuke hath broken his heart: he is full of heaviness. He looked for some to have pity on him, but there was no man, neither found he any to comfort him. Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto his sorrow. He was cut off out of the land of the living. For the transgressions of thy people, he was stricken. But thou didst not leave his soul in hell; nor didst thou suffer thy holy one to see corruption. Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of Glory shall come in. Who is this King of Glory? The Lord strong and mighty, The Lord mighty in battle. The Lord of Hosts, he is the King of Glory. Unto which of the angels said He at any time: "Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee?" Let all the angels of God worship Him. Thou art gone up on high; thou hast led captivity captive, and received gifts for men; yea, even from thine enemies, that the Lord God might dwell among them. The final triumph of the Kingdom of God will not suddenly and spontaneously appear. We have a role to play as well, and that roll requires full-on effort on our part: The Lord gave the word; great was the company of the preachers. How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace and bring glad tidings of good things. Their sound is gone out into all lands, and their words unto the ends of the world. The mission is clear. We are the preachers; we are charged with bringing ‘glad tidings of good things…unto the ends of the world’. Now, appropriately, Handel and Jennens double back. We have our marching orders. Now we need to refocus on the immediate task at hand: Why do the nations so furiously rage together, and why do the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth rise-up, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed. Vanity is the root of all that is wrong with the world (Ecclesiastes) and vanity is synonymous with idolatry, the first thing forbidden in the Decalogue (the Ten Commandments) and the only thing forbidden (implicitly) by the Great Commandment. Idols are caricatures of the divine. To worship a lifeless idol is worship in vain. Alfred North Whitehead correctly understood that ‘idolatry’ lies at the root of most of our social problems, but he called it, “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.” Misplaced concreteness…what a great euphemism! It’s like defining an adulterer as someone who is matrimonially challenged. Whitehead’s fallacy explains “why the nations so furiously rage together”; they have taken ‘power and plunder’ as their idols. The text makes it clear that planning and waging war is not only in vain, but also a conspiracy “against the Lord and against his anointed” (Christ). Let us break their bonds asunder and cast away their yokes from us. He that dwelleth in Heav'n shall laugh them to scorn; The Lord shall have them in derision. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. Notice how the oratorio has built to this moment: the first overt call to revolution! One might assume that it was merely a natural outgrowth of basic Christian theology. Consider the language: Breaking bonds asunder, casting away yokes, and dashing them with a rod of iron like so many shards of pottery. By implication, certainly, it is the kings of the earth who are responsible for these bonds and yokes, and it is we, the people, who must dash them to pieces using a rod of iron. Should someone actually hear what is being sung, and take umbrage, Handel and Jennens could feign the innocence of ignorance. “What? Are not all of these words taken from divinely inspired scripture?” Yes, but it was Handel and Jennens who decided which verses to select and in what order to place them. It is as fair to say that Handel and Jennens had as much control over the content of the Messiah as James Joyce had over the content of Ulysses; but using orthodox theology as cloud cover, they were able to perform their works right under the eye of the censor , unnoticed. In any event, this is not the sort of rhetoric that allows a ‘ruler’ to enjoy a quiet night’s sleep. And of course, the message is made all the more incendiary by its suggestion that these same kings are to be laughed at, scorned, and held in derision. Powerful stuff! And potentially dangerous. Thought experiment: it’s March 1752, and you have a small printing press in your basement. You’ve printed these very same words (above) onto flyers which you are now distributing outside London’s Covent Garden Theater, scene of the Messiah’s London debut. Would you escape imprisonment…or worse? But lifted from scripture and embedded in the middle of a musical masterwork, the political import of the Messiah’s message can escape notice. Is this an early version of subminimal messaging? Were Handel and Jennens ‘dog whistle’ revolutionaries? This brings us the Messiah’s penultimate climax, the Hallelujah Chorus, perhaps the best-known chorus in all of Western music: Hallelujah: for the Lord God, Omnipotent reigneth. The kingdom of this world is become the kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever. King of kings, and Lord of lords. If Handel had been playing in the NFL, he would have been called for a personal foul: “taunting.” It is one thing to criticize the state, another thing to tease the rulers, and yet another thing to call for dashing things to pieces. Still, it is something of an entirely different order to celebrate prospectively the obliteration of the secular order. I am reminded of Hillary Clinton’s ‘victory party’ in Philly, the night before her electoral defeat in 2016. The arrogance was breathtaking, and not lost, I’m sure, on the voters of PA. But Handel is not Hillary Clinton. He has the assurance of scripture on this side. That the Kingdom of God will come is not in question (sorry, George, Rex ); it is only a matter of when...and how. Part III, the finale, begins with one of the most famous lines in all Scripture. It comes from the Book of Job, and it was one of the earliest expressions of faith in the Old Testament: I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter-day upon the earth. And though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God. Job’s faith is validated by Christ’s resurrection from the dead: For now, is Christ risen from the dead, the first fruits of them that sleep. Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. Behold, I tell you a great mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in a twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. Salvation history does not follow the linear trajectory of time. It loops. Christ is the new Adam, and we are the new Christ. Job beholds his Redeemer three times. The first time he beholds Christ in faith. He is sitting on a dung hill, his body covered with boils, his children slaughtered, his wealth plundered, his good name besmirched. Nevertheless, he knows. Job beholds Christ again at Christ’s resurrection. Between his entombment and his resurrection, Christ’s spirit is ‘harrowing hell’. Like the Vacuum Monster in the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine , Christ sucks up everything that came before him. Time begins anew, for everyone, at the Resurrection. It is Day One of the rest of all our lives. Finally, Job beholds Christ at his Second Coming, at the eschaton: The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on in corruption and this mortal must put on immortality. From here on, I think we can let Jennens libretto speak for itself. No more interruptions from the Peanut Gallery, until the end: Then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: "Death is swallowed up in victory." O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who giveth us the victory, the victory through God. If God be for us, who can be against us? Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth, who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is at the right hand of God, who makes intercession for us. Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, and hath redeemed us to God by His blood, to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing. Blessing and honour, glory and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb, for ever and ever. And now the actual climax of the oratorio, one simple word: Amen. Let it be, so be it! Musically and theologically, it is a fitting end to this choral masterpiece! Everybody loves the Messiah! But do we love it only because we perceive its politics to be irrelevant? After all, it was composed in England more than 250 years ago. Or do we love it in spite of its content because the theology no longer resonates with us? Do we understand the message to be true, literally, or do we understand it as a poetic invocation of the virtue of hope, just in time for the Holidays. Sidebar: Handel intended the Messiah to be included in the Easter repertoire, but fairly early it found its home in Advent, the season just before Christmas. If we’re focused on the theology of the Messiah, we would want to hear it during the Easter Season. But if we understand it as a pagan paean of Hope, then Christmas, the winter solstice, would be the most appropriate time. In America, we don’t like to mix our religion and our politics. We believe in ‘the separation of church and state’. In fact, we’ve turned the modern secular state into our own idol. If we understood the Messiah as politically relevant and theologically persuasive, it is unlikely that Messiah would sell out every performance. Earlier, I suggested that Handel and Jennens might best be understood as ‘dog whistle’ revolutionaries. If so, then the entire audience must be tone-deaf…except for me! Image Courtesy of British Museum. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Share Previous Next

< Back Pan in Panti David Cowles Sep 24, 2024 “According to Anaxagoras and Emanuele Coccia everything is in everything.” Emanuele Coccia, a 21st century European Philosopher and Botanist, has contributed a new book to the rapidly growing library of works on the biosphere, the noosphere, and panpsychism. To be honest, The Life of Plants is a little too ‘new age’ for my taste, but it includes some paragraphs on metaphysics which, I believe, significantly advance the conversation. Almost all Western philosophers ground their ideas in Aristotle or Plato, but Coccia grounds his thinking in the ideas of Anaxagoras. Part of the cultural explosion that was Greece in the 5th century BCE, Anaxagoras is credited with our title meme: Pan in Panti , “everything (is) in everything”. Part of the genius of early Christianity (40 to 325 CE) is the doctrine of Incarnation – the idea that God, creator of Universe, is incarnate as a quantum of being (Jesus Christ) in that Universe. Turns out, Anaxagoras had his own model of incarnation 500 years before John and Paul (2500 years before George and Ringo). In fact, Anaxagoras went even further than Nicaea: everything is incarnate in everything . Unfortunately, the wisdom of the pre-Socratics was largely swept away by the more academic and systematic works of Plato and Aristotle. Happily though, the wisdom of the New Testament writers has endured and encouraged us to appreciate anew the contributions of Anaxagoras, et al. Let’s listen-in on some of Coccia’s ideas: “Everything needs to be in everything…to experience being in something that is in turn in us…According to Anaxagoras, this absolute, reciprocal mixture that seems to make everything the site of everything else…is the form of the world and of all being in the world. For there to be a world…the particular and the whole have to interpenetrate, mutually and completely …each thing contains and is contained by every other thing.” Coccia is wrestling with a common philosophical dilemma. How can we reconcile the solidarity and interactivity of the universe with its lumpiness, i.e. the particularity of events, objects, and qualities? 20th century philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead, suggested that the gap could be bridged by ‘actual entities’ (events), linked with one another by ‘prehensions’ (feelings) and cooperating to form ‘societies’ (objects and persons). In Whitehead’s model, every ‘trajectory’ connects God’s Primordial Nature (conceptual values) with God’s Consequent Nature (concrete entities). As with his contemporary, Robert Frost Hot Link , Whitehead’s ‘roads diverge’…but end up at the same destination. But Coccia seems to take us a step further down the cosmological rabbit hole, i.e. the one that leads is to Wonderland. Again, let’s eavesdrop: “Therefore, a new geometry must be thought out… Cosmos as nature is not a horizon that contains in itself all other beings, nor is it the totality of things, or a totality that transcends its elements… The cosmos – that is, nature – is not the foundation of things, it is their mixture…which nullifies any distinction between container and contained.” (Coccia finds it expedient to pay homage to God-free, post-Enlightenment secularity; but we’re not obliged to follow suit. We’re free to draw our own conclusions from his work.) So this is not John’s Logos (word, order) nor Solomon’s Sophia (wisdom). Cosmos itself seems to be an emergent phenomenon here. Coccia reaches back further even than Anaxagoras. A 6th century BCE philosopher, Anaximander, believed that Being itself was the result of two (or more) proto-entities freely granting each other ‘reck’. For Anaximander, like the 20th century existentialist, Martin Buber, ‘relation is foundation’. But back to Coccia: “A thing has to find itself in no-matter-what other thing – what is more, in the things it contains. The fact of being contained in something coexists with the fact of containing this same thing. The container is also the content of what it contains… (so) all action is interaction, or rather interpenetration and reciprocal influence.” Sts. John and Paul, and Alfred North Whitehead, shared the view that God encompasses all things and that all things include God as one of their elements. In this respect, Coccia does little more than nudge the ball over the goal line, but hey, 6 points is 6 points. This sets up a kind of universal reflexivity. Every event is ‘in God’ and God is in every event; therefore, every event is in every other event. X є X’ and X’ є X. Therefore, X є X and X’ є X’. In so far as all sets and their elements are ‘actual entities’, all sets are ‘extra-ordinary sets’. (I’m aware that this violates modern set theory’s Axiom of Foundation; I’m ok with that.) Potentially, Coccia’s idea has some remarkable philosophical implications. Consider the set of all sets whose members are events . Presumably, from the perspective of any (or almost any) single event, some sets would include past events and some sets would include future events (non-exclusively). Presumably, every event, past or future, would be a member of some set. Therefore, every event would be an element in every other event and so all past events and all future events would be elements of every present event. According to Anaxagoras and Emanuele Coccia everything is in everything. So who needs causality (or teleology) anyway? According to Coccia, “The effect is always capable of modifying its cause, which always resides in the effect.” Best to go with Hume here and discard the idea of causality entirely. According to Whitehead, all actual entities (events) are sui generis and causa sui ; every entity emerges out of its universe-spanning Actual World, as a reaction to that world. Every event, then, consists of the same members, uniquely configured. The cosmos is God’s Kaleidoscope . A limited number of elements generate innumerable unique patterns. In fact, the illusion of unidirectional (vectored) action is an artifact of our active/passive voiced languages. Originally (pre-Babel?), most languages at least included a ‘ middle voice ’ better suited to model Coccia’s interactive cosmos. 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.

"Faith is not belief without evidence; it's the content of a relationship with God and is based upon the private experience of God's love." < Back Faith Is Not Belief Without Evidence Joseph Hinman Jan 15, 2024 "Faith is not belief without evidence; it's the content of a relationship with God and is based upon the private experience of God's love." I am tired of hearing atheists say "faith is believing things without evidence." No definition of faith in Christianity says that. Let's Get this out of the way up front. Heb 11:1: faith is the substance of things to be hoped for, the argument (argumentum) of things that are not apparent. Most translations say "evidence of things not seen."This does not say faith is belief without evidence it says faith itself is a kind of evidence because it points to the reality that caused one to have faith. The most important dictionary in theology is the Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology. There are two kinds, one for theologians and one for ideas. Let's consult the latter. faith (Gr. pistis, Lat. fides, “trust,” “belief”) In Christianity, belief, trust, and obedience to God as revealed in Jesus Christ. It is the means of salvation (Eph. 2:8–9) or eternal life (John 6:40). Faith affects all dimensions of one’s existence: intellect, emotions, and will. See also salvation.[1] According to that definition there is nothing like a lack of evidence. There Is no hint that faith involves a lack of evidence. Consulting the same source for different uses of the term "faith:" Faith, explicit (Lat. fides explicita) Faith in that of which one has knowledge. Thus the term may be understood as referring to what one professes to believe because of what is known.[2] Here faith is equated with knowledge. Since evidence involves knowledge and builds on knowledge it would seem that faith is actually dependent upon evidence rather than being without it. Faith, implicit (Lat. fides implicita) The Roman Catholic view that one believes as true “what the church believes,” even without certain knowledge. It was rejected by the Protestant Reformers as a true faith because the element of knowledge was lacking.[3] The Catholic view seems closer to being without evidence, but not an exact fit. In any case that view was rejected by the reformers and is not really compatible with the Protestant view.The Protestant view rests upon knowledge, which again, would have to involve evidence at some point. Thus direct contradiction to the atheist bromide. Then we turn to the protestant notion of "saving faith." That is faith that saves. Remember Paul tells us salvation is by Grace through faith:“For by grace you have been saved through faith” (Ephesians 2:8).[4] Faith, saving. The gift of God through the Holy Spirit whereby one accepts and believes the promises of the Gospel as the reception of salvation through the life and the work of Jesus Christ. One is incorporated into Christ, participates in his benefits, and is an heir of eternal life. [4] No indication is given that there is no preliminary basis for belief which might involve evidence.Before one can trust God one must believe that God is. None of these definitions preclude basing that initial belief upon evidence. It is after one accepts the conviction that God is real that faith might supersede evidence in matters such as trusting God for salvation. Let's turn to some major figures in Christian theology to see if they define faith as belief without evidence: St. Augustine Faith, to Augustine, is a humble posture of seeking and confession, in which the individual confesses their sin and brokenness before God, and by his Grace, is cleansed. The individual surrenders to the God who is already present in the soul. This initial work begins the process of cleansing the soul so that it can see clearly. As the individual continues to seek God, the soul is continually cleansed as a gracious process, which slowly flakes away the filth of the Fall. Augustine believed that much could be known through Platonic meditation: eternal things and God’s presence could be apprehended, but God could be known only for a moment.[5] Thomas Aquinas Popular accounts of religion sometimes construe faith as a blind, uncritical acceptance of myopic doctrine. According to Richard Dawkins, “faith is a state of mind that leads people to believe something—it doesn’t matter what—in the total absence of supporting evidence...Such a view of faith might resonate with contemporary skeptics of religion. But as we shall see, this view is not remotely like the one Aquinas—or historic Christianity for that matter—endorses. To begin with, Aquinas takes faith to be an intellectual virtue or habit, the object of which is God (ST IIaIIae 1.1; 4.2). There are other things that fall under the purview of faith, such as the doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation. But we do not affirm these specific doctrines unless they have some relation to God. According to Aquinas, these doctrines serve to explicate God’s nature and provide us with a richer understanding of the one in whom our perfect happiness consists (Ibid.).[6] Here again knowledge, an intellectual thing, compatible with evidence. How could faith be based upon knowledge and be an intellectual act and yet without evidence? By intellectual he means one consciously assents to belief. Marin Luther ... faith is God's work in us, that changes us and gives new birth from God. (John 1:13). It kills the Old Adam and makes us completely different people. It changes our hearts, our spirits, our thoughts and all our powers. It brings the Holy Spirit with it. Yes, it is a living, creative, active and powerful thing, this faith. Faith cannot help doing good works constantly. It doesn't stop to ask if good works ought to be done, but before anyone asks, it already has done them and continues to do them without ceasing. Anyone who does not do good works in this manner is an unbeliever. He stumbles around and looks for faith and good works, even though he does not know what faith or good works are. Yet he gossips and chatters about faith and good works with many words. Faith is a living, bold trust in God's grace, so certain of God's favor that it would risk death a thousand times trusting in it. Such confidence and knowledge of God's grace makes you happy, joyful and bold in your relationship to God and all creatures. The Holy Spirit makes this happen through faith. Because of it, you freely, willingly and joyfully do good to everyone, serve everyone, suffer all kinds of things, love and praise the God who has shown you such grace.[7] John Wesley With a deep conviction, Wesley repeatedly stresses the necessity of faith. ‘Saving faith is a sure trust and confidence which a man has in God, that by the merits of Christ his sins are forgiven, and he is reconciled to the favour of God.’1 It is also clear that Wesley sees faith as a gift of God, although he does not emphasize that very much.[8] There is an initial coming to faith where one decides "I do believe in God." In that stage evidence is not a contradiction to belief. Most of the activity of faith involves personal trust in God's salvation and his providential care. In this regard evidece is irrelivant, unless we want to think of the content of personal experience of God as evidence.It is evidence of God's goodness. I think for the most part evidence is irrelevant to faith. Faith is not belief without evidence, it's the content of a relationship with God and is based upon the private experience of God's love. Source: This originally appeared in Metacrock's Blog and is seen here without any edits. Notes [1] "Faith," The Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms,SECOND EDITION, Revised and Expanded,Donald K. McKim ed.,Louiscille Kentucky:John Knox Press, 2014. https://www.mybibleteacher.net/uploads/1/2/4/6/124618875/the_westminster_dictionary_of_theological_terms_by_donald_k._mckim__z-lib.org_.epub.pdf [2] Ibid. [3] Ibid. [4] Ibid. [5] Mark Hansard, "Faith and Reason, Part 2 Augustine," Intervaristy: Emerging Scholars Network, (August 18,2018) https://blog.emergingscholars.org/2018/08/faith-and-reason-part-2-augustine-summer-2018-series/ [6]Shawn Floyd,"Aquinas Philosoph8ical Theology,"Internet Encyclopedia of Philosphy, https://iep.utm.edu/thomas-aquinas-political-theology/#SH3a [7]An excerpt from "An Introduction to St. Paul's Letter to the Romans," Luther's German Bible of 1522 by Martin Luther, 1483-1546. Translated by Rev. Robert E. Smith from DR. MARTIN LUTHER'S VERMISCHTE DEUTSCHE SCHRIFTEN. Johann K. Irmischer, ed. Vol. 63 Erlangen: Heyder and Zimmer, 1854), pp.124-125. [EA 63:124-125] https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/martin-luthers-definition-faith [8]J. W. Maris, "John Wesley's Concept of Faith," Christian Library taken from Lux Mundi 2010 https://www.christianstudylibrary.org/article/john-wesleys-concept-faith https://www.amazon.com/dp/0982408765 Joseph Hinman's new book is God, Science and Ideology. Hinman argues that atheists and skeptics who use science as a barrier to belief in God are not basing doubt on science itself but upon an ideology that adherer's to science in certain instances. This ideology, "scientism," assumes that science is the only valid form of knowledge and rules out religious belief. Hinman argues that science is neutral with respect to belief in God … In this book Hinman with atheist positions on topics such as consciousness and the nature of knowledge, puts to rest to arguments of Lawrence M. Krauss, Victor J. Stenger, and Richard Dawkins, and delimits the areas for potential God arguments. Click above to return to Winter 2024. Share Previous Next Click here. Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, Fall Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back The Zohar David Cowles Apr 25, 2023 ‘The Zohar’ is a TOE (a theory of everything) - everything from Big Bang to Big Freeze, from Creation to Eschaton. The Zohar was either written by a Rabbi who lived in a cave in northern Israel in the second century CE, or by a different Rabbi who lived in the bustling city of Leon, Spain, c. 1400 CE, or by person or persons unknown. The evidence one way or another is inconclusive. This is just the first ‘strange’ thing about one of the world’s strangest books. Strange, because we can pinpoint the authorship of many New Testament (NT) texts down to a single decade. Worst case ( Hebrews , Revelation ), we’re talking about a window of no more than 25 years, not 1,000+ years as in the case of the Zohar . (We use context clues to date NT material. The problem is, Zohar provides no context clues. It is a book about eternity, written in the language of eternity. Ugh!) Like any book worth its salt, The Zohar is a TOE (a theory of everything) - everything from Big Bang to Big Freeze, from Creation to Eschaton. Put it on your bookshelf next to Moses’ Torah , Homer’s Odyssey , Plato’s Timaeus , John’s Revelation , Joyce’s Ulysses, and Pound’s Cantos . The Zohar is yet another illustration of Heisenberg Uncertainty: the more comprehensive something is, the more incomprehensible it is! Corollaries : the better I understand something, the less useful it is to me; the more important something is to me, the less likely it is that I’ll understand it. Sounds just like my high school! Via Negativa : God is my ‘ultimate concern’ (Tillich); therefore, I can know nothing of God. The Zohar is ‘all ye know on Earth and all ye need to know’(Keats) – if only it were written in a language we could understand (and I don’t mean the Aramaic used in its composition). The Zohar , like Torah , is the story of our search for God and God’s search for us. Anything beyond that is just metaphor . According to Zohar , there are five ‘gates’, openings that connect Heaven and Earth; together these gates make up what Kabbalists call the Tree of Life : Keter , Crown ( Le Neant ) Hokhmah , Wisdom Bihah , Understanding ZA, God’s essence… Hesed, Love Gevurah or Din, Judgment (justice) Tif’eret, Beauty (harmony) Netsah, Eternity Hod, Splendor Yesod, Righteous One Malkhut or Shekinah , Kingdom (Israel, ‘Middle-Earth’) Well, it’s not everyday lingo , but it’s certainly not incomprehensible, not yet…but we’re far from finished. Each of these five gates consists of five ‘sub-gates’, and guess what? The five sub-gates are also called Keter, Hokhmah, Binah, ZA, and Malkhut . So we have five gates, each with five sub-gates: 25 ‘openings’ altogether, ranging from Keter-Keter to Malkhut-Malkhut . Are you still with me? Ok, how about now: each ‘sub-gate’ consists of five ‘sub-sub-gates’ also called… Get where we’re going with this? Now we have 125 ‘openings’ to describe, catalog, and account for, ranging from Keter-Keter-Keter to Malkhut-Malkhut-Malkhut . Will it ever end? Mercifully, The Zohar stops at three iterations, but in theory, at least, this pattern could go on forever. Next stop: 625 openings, and so on. I don’t care who you are; at some point you’re going to run out of bandwidth! What we are describing here is what mathematicians call a fractal – a pattern that repeats indefinitely regardless of scale. Another way of saying this: the universe is ‘self-similar’; it is continually mapping itself. Sidebar : Is that what we mean by consciousness? The structure that The Zohar identifies at the heart of Being is not imposed on Being or deduced from beings ; it is Being per se ! To be is to be a ‘piece of fruit’ on the Tree of Life but also to be the Tree of Life itself. Every part is the whole. What? Outrageous! Well, not so much. Consider the lowly acorn that you just ran over and crushed in your driveway. It is a piece of ‘fruit’ that once hung on an oak tree, but it is also a ‘seed’ consisting of a blueprint for a new oak (RIP). According to Kabbala, the fruit is the seed, and the seed is the fruit. Botany 101 = Cosmology 404. But there’s a problem here! The mathematical concept of a ‘fractal’ was not fully formed until the mid-20 th century! The ‘theologians’ who wrote The Zohar , whoever they may be, had a thorough working knowledge of the concept of ‘fractal’ many centuries before mathematicians formalized it. Now that we have our bearings, such as they are, it’s time for us to do a walk through of ‘the world according to Zohar ’: We begin our walk at Keter , nothingness (always a good place to start). Keter manifests as a point, Hokhmah , wisdom. Wisdom is the point where the transcendent ( Keter ) and the immanent ( Malkhut ) intersect. But like the ‘Planck point’ known as ‘Big Bang’, Hokhmah ‘inflates’, becoming Binah , Understanding. Binah is the womb of all things. Like Janus , Binah is two faced: one face turns toward Keter-Hokhmah , the other toward Malkhut . Keter (nothing) and Hokhmah (point) do not require or disclose any ontological structure that we might recognize as ‘spacetime’. Crown and Wisdom are eternal, period. So is Understanding; but within the eternity of Binah lies spacetime, Malkhut , the Kingdom, aka our World. Binah is where Crown-Wisdom meets Kingdom-World; but between the two lies ZA , God’s essence, which is God. ZA consists of the six virtues, qualities, behaviors of Emmanuel , ‘God with us’. God’s essence is God’s substance! ‘Simply’ stated, we ( Malkhut ) encounter Keter as ZA in Binah . ‘Crystal’, right? Don’t worry, we’ll be returning to The Zohar in future articles. (We couldn’t escape it if we tried.) Keep the conversation going! 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. 4. Aletheia Today Magazine (ATM) will be devoting its entire fall issue (released 9/1/23) to artificial intelligence (AI). What are the philosophical, theological, cultural and even spiritual implications of AI powered world? If you’d like to contribute to the AI Issue, click here . Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Big Crunch, Big Freeze, Big Bang David Cowles Aug 31, 2025 “…The Universe is a perpetual process of autogenesis and auto-annihilation. We are the friction, the turbulence at the interface.” My car isn’t running as it should. She (sic) shakes at high speeds, stalls at traffic lights, and won’t start on wet mornings. I’ll take it to a mechanic I know. He’ll (sic) know what to do. Sure enough, Sid diagnoses the problem, implements a fix, et voila , I’m back in the pink…sort of. No more shaking but starting and stalling are still issues. So I’ll take my car to another shop. Hank fixes the stall, but ‘old Betsy’ still won’t turn over in the rain. So now I’m off to the new shop in town – just opened. I’m introduced to Marge! Who’da thunk it? (I must be living in 2025.) Marge works her magic and now my 1970 Chevy runs like new. No one mechanic had all the answers but by putting their heads together I was able to complete my cross country trip without a hitch. Say ‘Hello’ to the Quantum Mechanics…the best pit crew any driver ever had: Planck, Bohr, Schrödinger, Heisenberg, Everett, Bell, Feynman – it’s a star-studded roster – and that’s just to name a few. If I take something from each - making sure not to let Bell undo Bohr, etc. - I might be able to piece together a coherent and heuristic model of the real world. Let’s give it a go: According to Schrodinger, being is a wave function that describes the probability (P) that an entity (X) will exhibit a discrete value (M) in a specific region of spacetime (R). The wave function fills spacetime and therefore constitutes a field . Spacetime is discrete (Zeno) but it behaves as if it were a continuum down to the Planck metric; therefore, on any realistic scale any defined region will seem ( doxa ) to be continuous. The wave function predicts that X will have a specific value (M) at R with a probability of P. The Sum of the Probabilities of all values of M equals 1. Everyone is someone! Likewise, X is potentially found in any sub-region of spacetime but the probability that X is found within any one sub-region (R) is less than 1. However, the probability (P) that X will be found in R plus the probability that it will be found outside of R does equal 1. If P(R) = .25, P(-R) = .75. Now things get interesting! According to Schrödinger and Feynman, P of M at R evolves deterministically; but according to Everett, ‘probability’ is off the table entirely. All possible M’s occur at every R and each specific M at each specific R corresponds to its own unique Universe. (Hence, Everett’s model is known as the ‘Many Worlds Interpretation’, MWI, of Quantum Mechanics.) According to Everett, the world is continually branching, everywhere, every when, and each branch creates its own distinct universe. Everybody is somebody sometime! The math works…but the metaphysics is unsatisfying. The number (N) of Universes grows exponentially! After just 10 generations of events, N > 1,000. Unimpressed? Ok, 10 generations later (20 total), N > 1,000,000 distinct universes. Dizzying! MWI is best represented as a lattice of nodes (N) with each node assuming one of a finite number (e.g. 2) of possible values. Assume each node (N) has a value (M) of 1 or 0. According to MWI, every N takes on both an M of 1 and an M of 0 (both...and, not either...or) so the Universe itself bifurcates, with one daughter universe including M = 1 and the other including M = 0. So, everything is a wave, a field, a probability function. When the wave function collapses, M becomes 100% probable, i.e. certain, at one particular R. When P=1 at R, X manifests as a particle. Beyond the cosmic horizon, particles are receding from us faster than the speed of light. In that case, those particles should behave like tachyons which we would normally experience as particles traveling backwards in time. In this case, however, since it is space that is expanding faster than c rather than the photon receding faster than c, we experience the tachyonic effects a bit differently. Instead of particles travelling backwards in time, we see the cosmic horizon effectively collapsing on us as a singularity. I am my own black hole. The day will come when the Planck Scale will have been so inflated that the lifetime of the universe will be insufficient for light to span it. Contrary to the Yellow Submarine , reversing the flow of time does not make our watches run backwards. We experience ‘time reversal’ as the contraction of the observable universe. Yes, it is Big Bang run backwards… sort of. While the cosmos itself is expanding, our visible universe is contacting. Celestial objects potentially visible today will no longer be visible tomorrow. Eventually, the observable universe will devolve into a point-like state at or below Planck. We have come to call this state ‘Big Crunch’; but instead of a Hot High Density state, as assumed in previous models, the cosmic temperature approaches 0° K in our model. Phenomenally then, Big Crunch and Big Freeze turn out to be the same thing (ontological isolation @ 0° K) – not a fun state to be in - just viewed from different perspectives. What is experienced locally as Big Crunch is experienced globally as Big Freeze; both are manifestations of a single universal phenomenon, Heat Death. Either way we are talking about an approaching singularity and a temperature of Absolute Zero, the universe’s ‘omega point’. And now, for my final act, the one you’ve all been waiting for, I turn Heat Death into Big Bang! As in the Book of Revelation , Alpha is Omega and vice versa. To quote Queen Mary, “My end is my beginning.” ‘Time’ is an epiphenomenon characteristic of our expanding-contracting Universe. To the extent that time runs ‘forward’, Omega is the Alpha point, but to the extent that time runs ‘backwards’, Alpha is Omega. The state of the Universe at Big Bang, Big Crunch, and Big Freeze is exactly the same. Big Crunch = Big Freeze viewed on opposing spatial scales (spatial), while Big Bang = Heat Death viewed from opposing temporal perspectives. Caveat : The identity of parameters at Big Bang and Heat Death have led some to introduce a concept called, ‘Big Bounce’. There is no bounce , the universe is not perpetually regenerating. There is just one cosmic singularity which can be called Big Bang, Big Freeze, or Big Crunch at the discretion of the speaker. However, this neat model has one drawback: it predicts that everything should be nothing. Inconvenient! But perhaps after all “we are such things as dreams are made of.” ( The Tempest ) According to this model, the Universe is a perpetual process of autogenesis and auto-annihilation. We are the friction, the turbulence at the interface. We are Derrida’s differance , the infinitesimal displacement between coming to be and being. Our model telescopes Penelope’s 3 year process of weaving and unweaving Laertes’ shroud into each and every moment. Space collapses to a Planck ‘point’, time to a Planck ‘instant’. It’s not the cosmic extravaganza we’d imagined…but if the shoes fit, no matter how ugly, we might just have to wear them. *** Piero di Cosimo’s The Destruction of the World by Fire and Water (c. 1524–29) imagines a universe collapsing in elemental fury, much like our own cosmos where Big Bang and Big Crunch are not opposites but two perspectives on the same singularity. 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 I'm Bored! David Cowles Jun 23, 2022 “We are co-responsible for the world. We are all always our siblings’ keepers!” What parent has not heard this cry a million times? It’s annoying, but we usually just ignore it. We do so at our peril. Boredom is more than meets the eye. As we noted in the June 21st edition of Thoughts While Shaving (TWS ), information is the difference between what is and what might have been. Therefore, ‘information happens’ whenever an event occurs. The universe consists of events and only events. If it is, it is an event, or part of an event; and if not, not. Each event springs from a unique ‘actual world.’ An event has one and only one such world, but each actual world has the potential for innumerable, mutually exclusive , events. Every ‘real event’ occurs in lieu of many other, ‘potential events.’ The difference between a real event and its potential alternatives constitutes the information content of that event. Information is interesting! We are interested in ‘what is’…to the extent that it differs from ‘what might have been.’ What is and couldn’t have been other that it is is not interesting. Of course, the converse is true as well: anything interesting must have information content. Information and interest are two axes of the same phenomenon. ‘Information’ measures an event in terms of other (potential) events. In that sense, you might say that information is the ‘objective’ element of an event. Graph that quantity on the X-axis. Interest, on the other hand, is the ‘subjective’ element; it is a measure of the ‘intensity’ of the experience (every event is an ‘experience’). Graph intensity on the Y-axis. So, an event must be informative, and it must be interesting. A universe where so-called events are predetermined by other events (and, therefore, cannot be other than they are) is neither informative nor interesting; nor is it even event full . In fact, there are no actual events in such a world and without events, there is no world at all. Boredom is a symptom of ontological breakdown. To be bored is to deny the existence of anything interesting, and if nothing is interesting, nothing is. We refer to the end of the universe as Heat Death (or Big Freeze). A good definition of Heat Death is the absence of any communication, i.e., an information vacuum; and when there is no longer anything of interest to anyone, then there will no longer be anything…or anyone. In ancient mythology, there are many examples of individuals with outsized roles in the creation and/or maintenance of the world: Atlas supports Earth on his shoulders (Greek), three norns weave the threads that determine destiny (Norse), and God says, “I am who am.” (Hebrew) In contemporary mythology, we all have an outsized role. We are co-responsible for our world. We are all always our siblings’ keepers! We are called to imitate the Clerk in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales : “Gladly would he learn and gladly teach.” Chaucer’s dictum in a version of Kant’s categorical imperative. It is binding on all for the benefit of all. Imagine a world where no one wishes to teach, and no one wishes to learn. (Sounds like some schools I’ve encountered.) Such a world would not be a world at all: no interest = no information = no being. After completing work on the atomic bomb, Robert Oppenheimer, paraphrasing the Bhagavad-Gita , said, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” Next time a youngster complains of being bored, ask yourself, “Is this the beginning of the absence of Being?” Thoughts While Shaving is the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine ( ATM) . To never miss another Thought, choose the subscribe option below. Also, follow us on any one of our social media channels for the latest news from ATM. Thanks for reading! Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Thoughts While Sleeping -- Number One David Cowles Jan 10, 2023 "Not all thoughts come while shaving..." Some creep in at night just as consciousness hovers between wake and sleep. For example... Birthdays : Only five stand out in my mind: my 12 th , mostly because it coincided with a major change in my physical circumstances (new school, new friends, etc.); my 30 th and my 40 th because they were predictably traumatic; and my 50 th, only because it’s the last time I can tell you where I was on that date. And now my 75 th . Age : Speaking of birthdays, yes, it’s true, I recently turned 75. I was initially reluctant to share that info with you; I’m afraid you’ll think less of me (and my ideas) now that you know how old I am. Come to think of it, this has been a concern all my life. More than most kids, I tried desperately to grow up fast. Then I tried to recapture the adolescence I had squandered. In business, I needed age to confer gravitas ; now I need to shed those years again. Like Penelope ( Odyssey ), I progressively weave and unweave the fabric of time, hoping to dodge fate (i.e., the ‘suitors’). Awareness : Speaking of age, how old was I when I was first aware of the sun? That first, non-thetic sensation of Sun’s brilliance or warmth - was it in utero , or on the ride home from the maternity ward? By age three, certainly, I would have been aware that I was aware of the sun – first as a concept, later as a word. I believe I was 10 when I first experienced myself being aware that I was aware that I was aware of the sun, which means that right now I am aware that I was aware that I was aware that I was aware of the sun . Does this go on ad infinitum ? At what point does it (or did it) cease to be meaningful? Time : Speaking of awareness, is it a seemingly endless progression of Russian dolls, each embedded in another, each embedding another? Or is it more like a series of freight cars, headed-up by an engine (Creation and/or Big Bang), trailing a caboose (Apocalypse and/or Deep Freeze). Is time awareness, awareness time? Light : Speaking of time, at age 10, when I was first aware that I was aware that I was aware of the sun; it hung in the sky like a beach ball. Next time I checked (age 25), it was a basketball. Then progressively, a volleyball, a softball, a baseball, a ping pong ball, and now I regret to say, a pinball. When I first saw the sun, it was as if I stood on Earth; then Mars…now Pluto. Time is a rocket ship, headed into deep space, accelerating as the sun’s gravitational attraction weakens. Dark : Speaking of light, the first soft rays of sunset are beguilingly beautiful. The bright blue sky is tinged with various shades of orange and even green. Clouds reflect, earth inflames. I am grateful to have been alive, however briefly, and I cling to the last drop of light, poised on the horizon like a pinball, a drop on the rim of total darkness. And speaking of the dark… 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 Political Alienation “Marx’s hypothesis that a person’s voting habits would be determined by their relationship to the means of production was blown out of the water…” David Cowles “This is a book about…people who have come to believe that voting is meaningless and useless because politicians or those who influence politicians are corrupt, selfish, and beyond popular control.” – Murray Levin, The Alienated Voter . No, Professor Levin’s book is not about the current political landscape. It’s an analysis of an election that took place 65 years ago! Boston is famous for many things, baked beans, cod, and crème pie, for example. Not to mention Larry Bird and the GOAT (Tom Brady). But these icons fade when compared to a certain Massacre (1770), Tea Party (1773), Midnight Ride and Shot heard round the World (1775). Boston’s Mayoral election of 1959 is not quite so famous – more of a ‘canary in a coal mine’ than a shot. Nevertheless, the strange events of 1959 in the self-proclaimed ‘Hub of the Universe’ heralded the start of a multi-generational political epoch, not just in Boston but throughout the United States. This is what Professor Levin chronicled in his 1960 book. Let’s set the scene. Boston’s incumbent mayor (John B. Hynes) is not running for reelection. The runner-up in the previous mayoral race, State Senator John E. Powers, has been designated the ‘mayor presumptive’ by the Boston media. Nevertheless, 5 ‘major’ candidates have entered the non-partisan primary. Probably the least well known is the Registrar of Deeds, John Collins. As expected, Powers won the primary easily with 34% of all votes cast. Surprisingly, Collins finished second, but with only 22% of the total. The Boston media promptly declared the election over and promoted Powers from ‘mayor presumptive’ to ‘mayor-elect’…but someone forgot to tell Collins. Still, the outcome of the final election was never in doubt…until about 8:45 PM on the evening of November 3. In those days, the demographic map of Boston was simple: with a couple of exceptions, lower numbered wards = lower income residents, and vice versa. As expected, Boston’s low numbered wards give Powers an early lead – but not the lead he was hoping for. Then returns began coming in from the middle numbered neighborhoods. Something was wrong! Collins was winning where he shouldn’t be. And then…a tidal wave of ballots from the city’s higher numbered wards astonished us all. The media pundits had been right after all. The election was not close, not even close to close. Only one problem: the ‘wrong’ candidate had won! In the end, Collins won 56% to 44%. What’s that you say? “So an underdog won a race: big deal?” Well, it was a big deal. Powers carried only 4 of Boston’s 22 Wards (he’d been expected to win all 22); Collins carried the other 18 wards, 8 of them with 60% or more of the votes cast. Both candidates received more votes in the final election than they had in the preliminary. Powers doubled his primary vote total, but Collins quadrupled his (from 28,000 to 114,000). Less significant but even more shocking, 10% of those who voted for Collins in the final voted for Powers in the preliminary. The verdict of Boston’s voters was delivered loudly…and clearly: “We’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore; we won’t let the ‘power elite’ take us for granted. Nobody puts Baby in a corner.” A handful of pundits predicted Brexit’s victory and Trump’s win in 2016, but nobody predicted Collins victory in 1959, not even this precocious 12-year-old. Nobody! Sidebar : My father was away on business. He called me from the road. “Who won?” Collins…in a landslide. “No, seriously, tell me the truth.” Collins. “Boy, you are in big trouble when I get home.” It was true, but the truth was unthinkable. On the weekend after the election, Professor Levin and his team interviewed 500 Boston voters, drawn from all across the city. Before 1959, demographics had always played the key role in Boston politics. Have you read The Last Hurrah ? Do names like Honey Fitz, James Michael Curley, Leverett Saltonstall, and Henry Cabot Lodge ring a bell? After the Collins era (8 years), Boston politics reverted to type – but with a much harder edge. You may recall that in the early ‘70s Boston lead Northern states resistance to Forced Busing, but you will be shocked to learn that this navy-blue Citadel of Liberalism , the home of the Kennedys, was carried by Alabama Governor George Wallace in the 1976 Democratic Presidential Primary. But not in 1959! Levin’s study showed that religion, income, and ethnicity played no significant role in the election’s results. Collins won the votes of Catholics, Protestants, and Jews, high and low-income residents, Irish, Italian, Yankee and African American voters. Somehow, a consensus emerged without anyone (not even Collins) calling for it. It happened under the radar, at bus stops and in barrooms, and it cut across the city’s fiercely independent neighborhoods. Today, Boston is Yuppie Paradise and neighborhood identity has by and large vanished; but in 1959 things were very different. At that time, East Boston High (Italians) played South Boston High (Irish) in an annual Thanksgiving Day football game that always ended in a West Side Story style rumble. People walking through unfamiliar neighborhoods were routinely assaulted, only to be told that it was their own fault for ‘playing away from home’. These were just the facts of life in Boston. Do I exaggerate? Perhaps. Nonetheless, the idea that voters from low-income Charlestown and high income West Roxbury would support the same candidate for mayor was unthinkable…until it happened. (It didn’t happen again until Ray Flynn was elected mayor in 1984…and it was a big surprise then too.) Marx’s hypothesis that a person’s voting habits would be determined by their relationship to the means of production was blown out of the water in 1959. It turned out that Boston voters had something in common that was strong enough to overcome their once and future conflicts, rooted in religion, income and ethnicity. According to Murray Levin, that mysterious X factor was ‘political alienation’. May I ask you a question? The last time you voted in an election, did you think your preferred candidate would do a better job in office than their opponent? Not necessarily a ‘good’ job but at least a ‘better than the alternative’ job. Of course, you did…unless the last time you voted was in 1959. Professor Levin’s most astonishing finding was that the majority of voters in Boston’s Mayoral election that year did not think their candidate would be a better mayor than his opponent. This tendency was especially prominent among Collins voters. The conclusion is inescapable: people voted for Collins, not because they thought he would do a better job than Powers, but for some ‘unrelated’ other reason. And so, ‘message voting’ was born…in Boston, the Cradle of Liberty! Folks voted for Collins, not because they believed he’d be a better mayor, but because they refused to be taken for granted. “ This is our chance to poke the media-commercial complex in the eye.” And so they did! Image: Candidates John F. Collins and John E. Powers. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Return to our Harvest Issue 2023 Previous Next