< Back Dante and the Yellow Submarine David Cowles “Yellow Submarine did for the Divine Comedy what West Side Story did for Romeo & Juliet…but I very much doubt the Beatles had any idea what they’d done!” “In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straightway was lost. Ah, how hard a thing it is to tell of that wood, savage and harsh and dense…So bitter is it that death is hardly more.” (Dante, Inferno , Canto I) “Liverpool can be a lonely place on a Saturday night… and this is only Thursday morning.” (Ringo Starr, Yellow Submarine ) 650 years after Dante Alighieri completed his Divine Comedy , a rock and roll band from Liverpool retraced his steps. In 1968, they released a modern, ostensibly secular version of Dante’s epic. Yellow Submarine ( YS ) did for the Divine Comedy ( DC ) what West Side Story did for Romeo & Juliet …but I very much doubt the Beatles had any idea what they’d done! Still, the resonance between these two works is inescapable. Dante lived in the theocratic Middle Ages while the Beatles rose to prominence in the hyper-secular ‘60’s. Apparently, “the fundamental things (do continue to) apply as time goes by” ( Casablanca ). Fittingly, YS opens with a Beatles’ favorite, Eleanor Rigby . It is hard to imagine a song better suited to accompany Dante’s evening in the woods…or Ringo’s morning in Liverpool: “Father McKenzie, writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear… No one was saved…Eleanor Rigby died in the church and was buried along with her name. Nobody came….” Not exactly Christmas music! But it certainly prepares Dante, Ringo, and us for what’s ahead. As we shall see, Eleanor Rigby describes the World, not only as it is but as it must be…provided it lacks any transcendent dimension (i.e. provided it is wholly self-contained). Dante meets the Roman poet Virgil who offers to be his guide through Hell: “Thou must take another road if thou wouldst escape from this savage place.” ( Inferno , Canto I) Back in Liverpool, Ringo meets his own ‘spirit guide’, Admiral Fred. Virgil takes Dante, not through Tuscany but on a path perpendicular to spacetime itself – a path normally traveled only by the dearly departed. ‘Young’ Fred does the same for Ringo and his pals. We are familiar with the Egyptian and Tibetan Books of the Dead , the Jewish Kadish and the Christian Last Rites . These are prayers recited or texts read aloud at the time of a person’s death. The purpose is to facilitate the transition from mortality to eternity. While neither recited nor screened bed side, DC and YS should both be considered part of our multicultural funerary tradition. Both offer detailed images of the stages connecting the angst of Liverpool/Florence with the joy of Pepperland/Paradise. “Abandon all hope, ye that enter here,” reads the sign posted above Hell’s gate. The souls in Hell no longer have the capacity for change. They cannot repent and they cannot influence events in the spatiotemporal world. They are defined now by their sins, and they are compelled to live out those sins eternally. They are expressions of determinism. Dante’s Hell is a spiral; all roads, all rungs, lead to Satan. It is a perverse version of Frost’s Two Roads . As Dante and Virgil descend lower and lower in the narrowing gyre, Hell starts to ‘freeze over’, quite literally. At bottom, they encounter Satan, encased in ice; here is the nadir of all being, a metaphor for Absolute Zero, a foretaste of the cosmic ‘heat death’ that awaits us all. Note : Satan and God share an unusual ontological feature. God is Good per se …but also the Agent of Good in the World. Likewise, Satan is the Agent of Entropy (disorder)…as well as being Disorder itself. This is not to suggest any sort of ontological parity between God and Satan, but that is a topic for another day! This is not the end! Immediately, Dante and Virgil discover that their direction has changed. They are no longer descending; they are starting to ascend Mount Purgatory on the way to Paradise. The first and last verses of Paradiso sum it up: “The glory of him who moves all things penetrates the universe…the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.” Back in England (1968), the Beatles are preparing to embark on their own mystical journey. Pepperland has succumbed to an invasion of giants known as “Blue Meanies”. Young Fred, the Beatles’ Virgil, recently appointed Lord Admiral of the Pepperland Fleet , has just escaped in, of course, a yellow sub (what else?). Its idyllic tranquility shattered, its population “bonked” into a zombie-like state of suspended animation, Pepperland land itself is laid waste (as in the Grail legends). The once rainbow-colored countryside is now a monochrome gray. Just as Paradise was lost but later regained (Milton), so Pepperland has been captured and must now be liberated. Ringo, led by the Admiral and accompanied by his three musical pals, proceeds through a gate of his own. The sign atop this gate simply reads “The Pier”…apt, for this is the launch site for the Beatles’ triumphant Free Pepperland campaign. The Pepper Path runs through a series of “seas” (or branes) that challenge every preconception our travelers have regarding the nature of reality. The first three seas deconstruct the phenomenal world into its basic elements: Time, Space, and Stuff (energy manifested as matter and force). Each of these Seas in turn undergoes its own particular deconstruction. First, the Sea of Time. Our time appears to flow one way (from past to future) at a steady rate – so steady that we hardly notice it. Real time flows at a variable rate and it flows backwards as well as forwards. In New England they constantly talk about ‘the weather’; in Olde England, apparently, they constantly talk about ‘the time’. The plodding phenomenal time that we take for granted turns out to be a very particular expression of multifarious noumenal time. Of course, if time is reversible, then whatever exists can be erased, retroactively…all of which leads to what I call, the Nihilist Conjecture : “Anything that can happen does happen; what can be will be and what cannot be won’t be; everything can be erased and all erasure is retroactive; therefore, everything that ever will be erased has already been erased; and nothing that has been erased ever was; therefore, nothing is, and since nothing is, nothing was and nothing can be, since nothing can come from nothing (Parmenides et al.).” This Nihilist Doxology challenges the competing Christian version: “As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.” “To be or not to be” was never the question; the question has always been, paraphrasing the jazz favorite, “Is there is or is there ain’t a world?” Because if there is a world, then the Nihilist Conjecture (‘no world is possible’) has been falsified. So is there a world? The second sea, the Sea of Science, does for space what its predecessor did for time . As with time (clocks), human representations of space (Cartesian grids, Platonic solids) determine what space is. Dimensionality is flexible and not an essential aspect of ‘extension’. The third sea, the Sea of Monsters, deconstructs the material world including the phenomenon of life . It shows that what we consider ‘variety’ in our world is, in fact, a very limited and highly selective subset of all the structures and qualities that spacetime could support…and, according to the Beatles, does support. YS anticipates Stephen Gould’s Wonderful Life . In the Sea of Monsters, all possible ‘life’ forms flourish: “Let 1,000 flowers bloom” (Mao). Shape is continuously and indefinitely mutable. All boundaries separating the organic from the mechanical have been dissolved. Platonic forms have replaced by a Chinese menu of customizable combos : “My partner and I would like to order Combo #3, Combo #7, and Combo #12…and we’ll be sharing everything.” What we accept as ‘our prix fixe world’ is the artifact of a limited imagination. This third sea is aptly named. All the creatures are indeed ‘monsters’, not because of how they look or how they are made but because of how they behave (like some children I’ve known – not mine, or yours, of course). Without exception, they are involved in activities that are destructive to themselves and to others. One might question the adaptive advantage of such behavior, but Darwin is not on trial…at least not today. The Beatles’ monsters act exactly like the souls in Dante’s Inferno . Their natures are hard-wired, and they don’t have the capacity to overcome their ‘programming’. They are well outside the ‘state of grace’. Among the various monsters in this sea, one stands out: the Vacuum Monster (VM). As its name suggests, it is the nature of this creature to suck up whatever it encounters. In the “monstrous sea”, creatures threaten other creatures, but the VM threatens everything, first its fellow monsters, then spacetime, and finally, itself alone . The Vacuum Monster is the personification of entropy. In YS , the inexorable process of dematerialization is accelerated. Dante’s Satan, like Evil ( deliver us from… ) in the Lord’s Prayer, is the personification of ‘negation’; and nothing negates like entropy. Sure enough, VM sucks up all the other monsters. Then, seeing that there are no other monsters to suck, it sucks up spacetime, then itself, tail first, like an ouroboros, “into oblivion…or even further”. Like the souls in Hell, the monsters in Yellow Submarine are compelled to act out their destructive personae, even though that activity per se is the source of their desolation. Been there! If any proto-World must self-annihilate, then that World does not exist, never did exist, and never will exist, cannot exist. According to this model, unless anchored to some objective reference point beyond itself, it is inevitable that any possible world would self-annihilate; and if all possible worlds are doomed to annihilation, then no World can possibly exist…ever. Yellow Submarine begins ostensibly as a secular ontology, but it ultimately proves that no consistent secular ontology is possible, other than hardcore Nihilism, which is really an anti-ontology. We are faced with a modern version of Pascal’s Wager . Granted we cannot know for sure whether or not there is a world, we have to put our chips somewhere. At this craps table, the Don’t Come pays Zero; so a Pass Line bet is the only rational option, however distasteful that might be. “I set before you Life and Death, therefore choose (even crappy) Life.” (Deuteronomy 30: 19) Of course, VM does its worst, and predictably we are left with no time, no space, and no stuff. Like Dante before them, our lads have reached the nadir of being, an empty state which the Beatles appropriately call, “Nowhere Land”. This would seem to be the end of our voyage…the end of all voyages in fact…the end of us. But no! It turns out to be just the beginning. As Mary Tudor said, “My end is my beginning.” Nowhere Land may be located at the nadir of Being but, as Dante discovered, your very next step takes you in a different, more positive direction, in his case up Mount Purgatory toward Paradise. But first, it turns out that Nowhere Land isn’t exactly empty after all. It’s not a void. It’s more like the world, as the Book of Genesis describes it, just before creation: "…The earth was without form or shape, with darkness over the abyss and a mighty wind sweeping over the waters.” Not much of a vacation destination to be sure (I’ve been to worse), but not quite empty either. In ‘nearly empty’ Nowhere Land, there remains an irreducible proto-being by the name of Jeremy Hillary Boob, Ph.D. The Beatles aptly call him “Nowhere Man”. Dr. Boob (‘JHB’) is quite literally what’s left of a world after its total annihilation. JHB, you see, is pure information – but that information is so disorganized that it cannot know that it knows what it knows …and it cannot be harnessed to do any sort of ‘work’. So it does not pass the ‘Bateson/Whitehead Ontological Test’: it is not a difference that makes a difference. So JHB does not exist in any accepted sense of the word; he’s Being’s ghost. Stephen Hawking showed that black holes have the power to annihilate everything that falls through their event horizons; but he also showed that these same holes radiate that information back into the cosmos. The Boob is that information. He’s all hair, no head . According to the oldest-known Western philosopher, Anaximander, ‘actual being’ comes about only when two or more ‘potential beings’ grant each other “reck”. Unlike the souls in Dante’s Inferno and the creatures in the Monstrous Sea, Anaximander’s proto-beings avoid the allure of mutual self-destruction and decide, independently of one another (that’s essential) to let each other be ( Let it Be – Beatles). They do not do this out of any hope of personal gain or out of any expectation of reciprocity; they do it out of agape , non-thetic, unconditional Love . Here's how Disney would portray the moment of creation: Our hero is a disembodied voice on the edge of the abyss, crying out, “I grant you reck. I know not who you are or even if you are. Would you mean me well or ill? ‘Here’s no great matter’ (Eliot). I grant you reck, unconditionally…come what may, just because it’s the right thing to do.” Being is Value. This is a decision that all of us in the living world make every day. Every time we treat another as we would want to be treated, with no consideration of ‘results’, and no expectation of ‘reciprocity’, we co-create the universe with God. The souls in Hell do not have this opportunity; by their unrepented sins they have forfeited it. Neither do the creatures in Sea of Monsters; they are destined to destroy themselves and everything around them. There is no native Love in Hell, nor in the Seas of Time, Science and Monsters. So, where does totally selfless Love come from? What is its origin? In a universe powered by mutually assured destruction, the decision to let a potential adversary exist, placing your own existence at risk in the process, is utterly unnatural . Therefore, it has to originate outside the ‘natural’, spatiotemporal, material world. The Love that drives the universe cannot originate inside that universe. (It might have done, but that option is ruled out by the Nihilist Conjecture .) Love is a precondition of World; World cannot be a precondition of Love. The source of Love must be transcendent. For Dante, that means Paradise; for the Beatles, Pepperland. Take your pick! JHB does not (actually) exist, but he does have the potential to exist. He is in a coherent quantum state. He needs someone (or something) to grant him reck. Enter the Beatles! They choose to befriend the Nowhere Man: “Mr. Boob, you can come with us if you like…we’ll take you somewhere.” As a member of the crew, JHB finds purpose and, with that purpose, he begins to organize his information so that he can use it to ‘make a difference’…which, ultimately, he does. He exists! He becomes a full-fledged ‘person’ after all…Pinocchio, a ‘real boy’. But note: he does not organize himself; he is dependent on something outside of him: Value manifested as Purpose. The Beatles and the Boob grant each other reck and, as Anaximander predicted, ontogenesis ensues (2500 years later)! But to be born out of mutual reck, out of Love, is not to exist merely in the spatiotemporal, material realm; it is to exist in an eternal realm as well. Being is transcendental. To be is to transcend space, time, and matter/energy. It is our thesis that a cosmos limited to space, time and materiality, i.e., a secular universe, is impossible; it cannot exist. Sidebar : It may not be possible to prove directly that there is and must be a transcendent dimension to the World. But it may be possible, using a reductio ad absurdum , to prove that a Universe without a transcendent dimension cannot exist. In that case, the debate must shift to Descartes’ question: Is there something rather than nothing? Is there anything that can justify my saying with complete confidence, “ Sum ” or better yet, “ Est ”? (According to Descartes, there is: it’s “ Cogito ”.) The Beatles have dealt with Time and Space and Life itself; so what’s next? You guessed it, Mind: the Foothills of the Headlands , the land of disembodied thoughts. Its inhabitants want to help the Beatles on their journey, but they can’t. Like Dante’s souls in Purgatory, these creatures are immaterial and powerless to bring aims to fruition. Sleeping yet. Put on some coffee because here’s where things really get interesting! Our next stop is the legendary Sea of Holes, the realm of ‘negative space’. The usual relation of figure/ground is reversed. The sea itself is now the ground, and the holes in that ground now constitute the figure. Nothing has become concrete, so concrete that Ringo is actually able to put a ‘hole’ in his pocket. The topology of this sea is non-orientable. There is no consistent sense of direction, no spatial ordering. It’s like an Escher drawing on steroids. But if the Sea of Holes is non-orientable, then the entire universe in which it is embedded, including Liverpool and Pepperland, must also be non-orientable, albeit less obviously so. We may say that the universe is locally orientable but globally non-orientable because it has the Sea of Holes embedded in it. Think of the world we live in: Earth appears flat (locally) but I’m told it’s round (globally). Dante had his experience of non-orientability on the threshold of Purgatory. “I raised my eyes and thought to see Lucifer as I had left him; and I saw his legs held upward.” ( Inferno , Canto XXXIV) Just as Dante and Virgil turn to leave Hell, Dante looks back and is surprised to see Satan upside down, a reversal of orientation that is the trademark of non-orientable spaces. The Sea of Holes leads to Pepperland…but not so fast! You may only enter through an infinitely thin membrane (an event horizon?) called the “Sea of Green”… and only one of the holes in the Sea of Holes connects to the Sea of Green…and there are innumerable holes to choose from. One could easily spend ‘a lifetime’ searching for the one hole that connects to the Sea of Green and on to Pepperland…and never find it. Neither Dante nor the Beatles can reach their goal without the intervention of grace . Fortunately, our Argonauts do find the Sea of Green, and when they do, they immediately find themselves in Pepperland. Remarkably, Pepperland looks a lot like Liverpool, i.e., it’s drab…and lonely. But the Beatles quickly “unbonk” the Lord Mayor with “a snatch of a tune” and “ready the land to rebellion”. It is only now that they discover that they bear an “uncanny” resemblance to four of Pepperland’s permanent residents, the members of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. In fact, the Beatles are the Sergeant Pepper Band! ‘The Beatles’ under the aspect of spacetime, they are ‘Sergeant Pepper’ under the aspect of eternity. Together, the historical Beatles and the eternal Pepper Band use music to restore Pepperland to its former glory. The Battle Hymn of their Republic: All you need is Love! The Blue Meanies are routed. But in the spirit of Love, the Beatles offer reconciliation: “Hello there, blue people. Won’t you join us?” And of course, they do: “Yes, let’s mix, Max!” Pepperland is restored. Welcome to Paradise! And a special thanks to Dante and Ringo for being our ‘spirit guides’ along the way. 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 . Click the cover image to return to Holy Days 2024. Share Previous Next

< Back A Very Brief History of Monotheism David Cowles Oct 14, 2025 “Once again, civilization has descended into a version of polytheism, and we are all poorer as a result.” Monotheism is an intellectually attractive representation of the ‘God’ concept. It stands behind such great works as the Torah and the New Testament ; it is the soul of Israel’s Judges and Prophets, and it was inspiration for Augustine, Aquinas, Maimonides and Avicenna. But politically, it’s a tough sell. The enigmatic pharaoh, Akhenaten (d. 1370 BCE), was one of the first recorded advocates for the one-God (‘Aten’) hypothesis in the Western world. He is loosely, perhaps mythologically, associated with the Hebrew Exodus and the growth of the ancient Greek settlement at Thebes. It is certainly attractive to imagine Moses (c. 1250 BCE) as heir to Akhenaten’s monotheism, but intellectual history is rarely quite so neat. In any event, Akhenaten’s attempts to reform the Egyptian belief system did not end well. Upon his death, his social reforms were quickly unwound…and the monotheism he was selling? No one was buying it! (Except perhaps the Hebrew slaves.) The details of Akhenaten’s demise remain unknown – suspicious in itself for a society that kept such good records and typically treated its dearly departed pharaohs to a ‘divine’ send-off. Akhenaten’s body was never placed in the tomb he had built for himself. (Is an empty tomb to be the common fate of all great monotheists?) To this day, his remains have never been reliably identified. Plus, in a manner reminiscent of a Stalinist purge, all public reference to the reformer ceased upon his death. Of course, the fact that he was succeeded by his much more famous son, Tutankhamun (‘King Tut’ to you), a staunch polytheist, could not have helped. One thing for sure, Tut’s flair for pomp more than made up for his father’s more austere style of statecraft. So, what did happen to Akhenaten? The most probable hypothesis is that he was deposed, assassinated, and buried in an unmarked grave (or, possibly left unburied, like Polyneices in Sophocles’ Antigone ). Following Akhenaten’s fall, the Egyptians were only too eager to restore the many gods of the Pantheon to their rightful status. Which leads us to Moses. Irrespective of his origin, there is little doubt that the Hebrew Exodus brought monotheism to the Near East, but again, not without a terrible struggle. Not long after their historic Exodus from Egypt under the leadership of Moses and his brother Aaron, the rank and file were caught smelting a Golden Calf to replace the existential YHWH ( I am who am ). And once secure in the Promised Land Israel’s leaders constantly, and often in vain, struggled to keep the people from worshiping the local Canaanite deities (the Baal). Fast forward 1500 years. Judeo-Christian monotheism is finally gaining the upper hand in its struggle with Greco-Roman paganism. What a film! YHWH vs. the Olympians ! Polytheism sure dies hard. How come? What’s the attraction? The concept of God shared by the People of the Book (Jews, Christians and Muslims) is relatively abstract. We even apply terms such as ‘transcendent’ and ‘ineffable’ to describe God’s relationship with the world. The Pagan gods of Europe, in contrast, intervene much more obviously in the mundane events of everyday life…and they are apt to do so capriciously. They are quick to anger, slow to forgive. Their concept of Justice is Draconian, more so even than ancient Talionic Law (‘an eye for an eye’). The Greco-Roman gods are motivated by pride, lust, and jealousy…like us. They can be manipulated, even tricked, like us. We like to think of ourselves as ‘made in the image of God’; but the Olympians are clearly made in our likeness. They behave like we do. They are more akin to the Marvel Superheroes of modern mythology than they are to St. Paul’s abstract, “unknown” God. ( Acts 17: 23 – 31) Now skip ahead another 1,000 years to Florence, Italy toward the end of the 15 th century CE. The first shoots of the Renaissance are visible everywhere. And what is it that is being reborn? Athenian democracy? Spartan heroism? Roman jurisprudence? Of course not! What is being reborn is, you guessed it…polytheism (passed off as a revival of Classical culture)! But not without a fight. In the tradition of Akhenaten, Moses, and the Fab Four (John, Paul, Mark and Jesus), one man makes one last attempt to overcome ‘modernism’ by putting Christendom on a more secure anthropological footing. The man’s name: Savonarola. The death of Lorenzo de' Medici (1492), the French invasion of Italy and the subsequent expulsion of the Medici from Florence (1494) created a power vacuum into which Florence’s ‘spiritual leader’ was prepared to step. Preaching that Florence could become a “New Jerusalem”, he established a theocratic republic in the city. Perhaps anticipating the Protestant Reformation, the friar advocated for broad reform in the Church, condemning papal corruption and the practice of simony. “The People’s Government” did not last long. By 1497, the reactionary forces of status quo ante were gathering strength. Arrested in April 1498, he was tried for heresy and schism, convicted and sentenced to death. On May 23, 1498, he was hanged in Florence's Piazza della Signoria, his body then burned, and his ashes scattered in the Arno River, presumably to prevent his followers from collecting relics and visiting his tomb. The republican form of government continued in Florence until 1512 when the Medici family returned to prominence. However, following Savonarola’s execution, a new constitution, eliminating the theocratic elements of the 1494 republic, was adopted. The ‘Reign of God’ had ended once and for all in Europe. The tumultuous events of 1498 created a second vacuum which was quickly filled by the younger, more secular and more pragmatic Machiavelli. The author of The Prince did not advocate polytheism, but he did advocate divorcing ethics from politics. Just imagine how popular he would have been in today’s world! Machiavelli’s rise to power, politically and intellectually, kicked off a 500 year period of ‘rational pragmatism’. The material quality of life improved markedly. Now that God was ‘out of the way’, folks could pursue economic advantage unencumbered by eschatological angst. “There’s an app for that!” The magical, mystical world of the Middle Ages was suddenly transformed into a tangled web of levers and pulleys. “Press here and receive a reward.” Our new gods reside, not on the top of Mount Olympus but in La Technique – the tools and processes of the material world. Once again, civilization has descended into a version of polytheism, and we are all poorer as a result. *** Julie Mehretu’s Stadia II (2004) transforms the architecture of stadiums into a vast, abstract swirl of color, line, and form that evokes both celebration and chaos. Layers of transparent marks and vector-like arcs suggest flags, maps, and digital interfaces—symbols of modern life’s speed and multiplicity. The painting captures the tension between collective energy and information overload, turning the visual language of globalization into a meditation on the complexity of contemporary experience. 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.

“God is dead, and we have killed him…who will wipe this blood from us?” (Nietzsche) < Back World Without God Amen David Cowles Oct 15, 2024 “God is dead, and we have killed him…who will wipe this blood from us?” (Nietzsche) Since the 16th century, the West’s overarching intellectual project has been its effort to rid the World of God! “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him (Voltaire); (but) if God did exist it would be necessary to abolish him (Bakunin); (so) if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him. (Zen Koan). God is dead, and we have killed him…who will wipe this blood from us?” (Nietzsche) Science hopes one day to explain all phenomena in purely physical terms, supposedly eliminating any need to hypothesize a ‘transcendent agency’ ( aka God). Big Bang has already proven we don’t need a Creator; the universe is sui generis . Apparently Negative Vacuum Pressure does the trick. Cosmogenesis is still ex nihilo …because ‘nothing’ is not exactly nothing ! Do you have a ‘singularity phobia’? Relax. Roger Penrose tells us that Universe is an endless cycle of Big Bangs and Heat Deaths. (CCC) Hugh Everett tells us that everything that can happen does happen…in its own universe. (MWI of QM) And if a single universe makes you uncomfortable, try the Multiverse! Bottom line : the phenomenal Universe is infinite and eternal; there’s no need for God. But what about life? For that we have Chemistry. Evolution? Biology. Consciousness? Neurology. Now, all that we’ve discovered in this Age of Reason is not necessarily wrong. What’s wrong is letting a pre-determined conclusion set the agenda and fix the guard rails for our inquiry… and thinking that any of these ‘discoveries’ has any bearing on the God Hypothesis . For centuries, intellectual inquiry has been driven by a felt need to liberate humanity from its ‘primitive’ belief in a Supreme Being that transcends the phenomenal world. “Religion is the opiate of the people.” (Marx) But why? The God Hypothesis has led to the rise of various religions, some of which have given birth to institutions (e.g. Churches) that have been complicit in horrendous physical and intellectual atrocities, from child sacrifice to the Inquisition. But these same religions have motivated countless acts of charity, stimulated much legitimate intellectual inquiry, inspired magnificent works of art, architecture and music, and brokered peace between individuals, groups, and even nations. The God Hypothesis has been used to motivate, justify and even bless brutal, bloody conflicts (wars) between various ethnic groups and nation states; but religious institutions and religiously motivated individuals have also played a major role in resolving such conflicts. The God Hypothesis has been associated with various moral codes, some of which promote practices abhorrent to our modern sensibilities. But religions have also contributed to civilizing human society by condemning the unjust depravation of life or property and by contributing cultural memes like the Great Commandment and the Golden Rule. Religious institutions have sought to influence and even control folks’ thought and actions, but often in conjunction with providing essential public services, like healthcare and education, that secular society was unable or unwilling to deliver. Religious organizations have provided opportunity and ‘cover’ for individuals, often in positions of authority, to exploit the vulnerable in their orbits. Of course, no major faith condones pedophilia or any form of sexual abuse. In cultures where it is still widely practiced, it is practiced despite explicit, if ineffective, condemnation by local faiths. Any temptation to try to smooth over the atrocities visited on society by religious institutions would be misguided. Evil needs to be named and rooted out wherever it occurs. But institutions are human artifacts that, unfortunately, incorporate all the flaws (and virtues) of the people who form them. That said, religious institutions have been complicit in such evil practices no more, but sadly no less, than other human institutions. Bottom line : Individual cases notwithstanding, belief in God is ‘weakly correlated’ with either benevolent or malevolent behavior. People are who they’ve chosen to be, no matter what they say they believe. So then, why the insatiable need to rid the world of ‘divinity’? Hubris (pride): we are the tip of evolution’s arrow. The universe is ours to manage. Of course, our precious science tells us otherwise: evolution has no arrow, we are what we are by sheer accident (mutation and natural selection), and there is no way of knowing what will become of homo sapiens down the road. Apparently, we ‘follow the science’…but only when it suits us. Hmm, sounds just like some ‘religious’ people I know. In any event, we confidently affirm, “There is no higher power! We make the rules (in conjunction with the laws of physics). No one, no thing tells us what to do. Nobody puts Baby in a corner! ( Dirty Dancing ) We are the captains of our ship, the masters of our fate. In short, we are the Champions!” (Queen) How ridiculous all this sounds! Yet I fear this is how we will be remembered by Intellectual Historians in the future. “How could those people have been this naïve, this clueless?” Truth to tell, we have absolutely no control over the long term consequences of our actions. Philosophy has created a paradigm to celebrate our alienation: ‘thesis → antithesis → synthesis’. (Dialectics) Every action entails an equal and opposite reaction. (Newton) Whatever we do is almost certain to provoke a consequence that runs counter to our intent; at best, we can hope that our original motivation is reflected, however dimly, somewhere down the road. “Long I stood and looked down one (road) as far as I could to where it bent in the undergrowth. Then took the other just as fair...” (Frost) In truth, we act blindly and hope for the best. We know these things; so why do we believe otherwise? Where does our collective megalomania come from? From religion, of course! ‘Bad religion’. We accept that we are made in the image and likeness of the Omnipotent, but we deny that our behavior is subject to any higher authority. The logic is enough to baffle any Aristotelean: Religion tells us that we are the King’s X. We reject such religion as ‘mere superstition - fairy tales for children’. But we cling to the sense of importance that religion confers on us. We scaled the mountain; now we can afford to cut the ropes that got us here! Less poetically, we accept the conclusions of religion but not the process of theology. We are like the 5th grader who writes down what she thinks is the correct answer but refuses to ‘show her work’. We call ourselves ‘empiricists’: Really? Look around! The universe is a horror show - not fit even for today’s big screen. Based solely on the evidence of our senses, we have no choice but to say, “Better dead than alive, but better still…never to be born at all!” ( Ecclesiastes ) Yet we continue to have children. Why? Because we hate them? After all, we know that they will one day die and that they will suffer horribly along the way. No! We have children because we cling to eschatological hope for “a peace that the world cannot give”. ( Gospel of John ) We cling to a hope that can only come from some sort of religious faith…which of course we reject. We have recreated Plato’s Cave ( The Republic ): we mistake religion’s disembodied shadows for ‘reality’. Like Peter Pan, we have separated our shadow (hope) from its source (God). We are adrift, believing one way, acting another. Fortunately, we seem to be entering a new age. The Age of Aquarius? In the 20th century, all hopes for a mechanistic solution to the puzzle of Being were systematically dashed. We are coming once again to recognize the potential need for ‘transcendent agency’. I will not live to see whether this new bud blooms, but you, dear reader, may! Send a message back in time to let me know, ok? David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at dtc@gc3incorporated.com ress, Literary Journal Spring 2023. Return to Harvest 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. 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< Back Is it ‘Schrödinger’s Cat’...or Homer’s? David Cowles Oct 14, 2025 “Schrödinger is certainly a worthy recipient of the Nobel Prize. But when Sweden called, there was no mention of his debt to Homer...” Erwin Schrödinger (ES) is famous for many things but none more than his ‘existential cat’, perpetually suspended, like a certain Danish prince, between life and death. “To be or not to be” takes on a whole new meaning in Quantum Mechanics (QM): "To be and not to be." According to the canons of QM, the biological status of ES’ puss is unknown, and therefore , undetermined…until it is somehow ‘measured’. Being ‘observed’ in this way forces the quantum to declare itself. Like many millennials, quanta abhor commitment. They prefer to keep their options open right up to the end. Measurement does not determine the cat’s fate, nor does it simply reveal what is already a fait accompli . Rather, it forces the quantum ‘to decide’, to determine its own fate and declare it publicly. Riddle : How is a science lab like a casino? Try your luck at roulette. You can bet that the ball will land on a black space (vs. red) or on an even number (vs. odd) or you can bet that it will land on some specific number. Unless your casino is crooked, your wager will not affect the outcome of the spin, but it does determine that there is an outcome. (The croupier will not spin the wheel until at least one player has placed a bet.) Prior to the spin, all possible outcomes, weighted on a probability curve, exist in superposition. After the spin, only one outcome remains, and its probability is 100%. The outcome is not just unknown prior to the spin, it is undetermined. Your bet and the croupier’s spin simply ensure that there will be an outcome. Dasein (that it is), not Wassein (what it is) – Heidegger. In the same way, the croupier at CERN fires up the particle accelerator and collapses Schrödinger’s wave function by measuring it. The spin of a wheel at Bellagio is functionally equivalent to the read-out on a dial at CERN. You’re 10 years old (too young to be betting in casinos) and your coach offers to take you and your teammates to Baskin-Robbins after the ‘big game’; you immediately and instantaneously sample all 31 flavors in your head. Based on past history at BR, you are more likely to choose Pralines’n Cream than Wild’n Reckless Sherbet , but at this point, all options are still on the table. When you arrive at the shop, you let your teammates order first. You want to keep those options open as long as possible. You’re in a dilemma: you cannot taste any ice cream until you commit, but once you do, 30 ‘virtual’ tastes disappear. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, even with a spoonful of Rocky Road to make the medicine go down. Finally your coach intervenes, “Order now or get nothing!” And so you do; you blurt out your decision, “ Strawberry Cheesecake please.” (Desperate as you are, you remember your manners.) But you surprise yourself, you’ve never had this flavor before, and heck, you’re only 10, you’ve never even tasted a cheesecake before. Immediately, you regret your decision, “Why did I order this?” But you dare not reverse that decision and risk getting nothing. The loss of 30 potential tastes is devastating…until your first actual lick. OMG, it’s delicious! All other flavors vanish from your mind. You made the right choice after all, and now you have a new ‘favorite flavor’. Of course, had you ordered Nutty Coconut instead, nothing would have been any different. ‘Schrodinger’s Cat’ is a brilliant thought experiment. Like ‘Zeno’s Tortoise’, it makes a good pet for the long run. Erwin Schroedinger is certainly a worthy recipient of the Nobel Prize. But when Sweden called, there was no mention of his debt to Homer, the blind poet of the Eastern Mediterranean, c. 8th century BCE. Turns out, Homer had already conducted the exact same thought experiment in his Odyssey . Schrödinger merely showed that Homer’s model was applicable to Quantum Mechanical phenomena. For all his brilliance, ES was upstaged by a poet of all things! Whispers of ‘plagiarism’ filled the air in the Faculty Lounge that day, along with more than the usual click-clacking of slide rules. Let’s set the stage: Penelope is the wife of the King of Ithaca, Odysseus, hero of the Trojan War. Odysseus failed to return from Troy with the rest of the Greek armada and Penelope is under tremendous pressure to declare her husband dead so that she can marry one of her many parasitic suitors. But Penelope is not just the wife of some warrior; she has a mythological identity all her own. Truth to tell, she is higher up the ontological food chain than her husband. Part of the multi-cultural tradition of Indo-Persian Norns , she is ‘one who weaves the fate of the world on her loom’. We encounter Norns in the Norse Edda , in the ‘Scottish Play’ (three witches), in Wagner’s Ring , and elsewhere in Indo-European culture. As Penelope weaves, history unfolds. When she finishes, the fate of Odysseus will be a settled matter of fact, and she will have no choice but to declare him dead. She will be ‘free at last’ (i.e. she will have ‘nothing left to lose’ – Janice Joplin) - free to marry one of her suitors, doesn’t matter which one, and she dreads it. Penelope’s weaving converts potentiality, hope, into actuality, despair. But as long as she continues weaving, she ‘keeps hope alive’ (Jesse Jackson). Odysseus may yet return to Ithaca. History remains in suspense. So she hatches a brilliant scheme. Every day she weaves but every night she unravels her prior day’s work. She obstructs the course of history; she suspends the flow of time. Odysseus’ fate remains undetermined. He may still be alive; he may yet return. He’s not dead until Penelope says he’s dead. Does Odysseus, adventuring around the Mediterranean, taking advantage of an archipelago of ‘all-inclusives’, have any idea how much he owes his wife? Each day, she recreates the wrinkle in time that allows Odysseus the additional space he needs to ‘find himself’, i.e. to find his way back home. Penelope gives Odysseus the luxury of a ‘gap decade’. Penelope is the real hero of Homer’s Odyssey just as Molly Bloom is in James Joyce’s retelling. They are the Norns whose weaving holds together the fabric of their worlds. They are the homing beacons that tether Odysseus and Leopold to the real world. But even Homer was upstaged…but by none other than God himself. The opening verses of Genesis describe cosmic superposition metaphorically: “…The earth was without form or shape, with darkness over the abyss and a mighty wind sweeping over the waters.” The primordial interaction with God, a transcendent consciousness, forces the Cosmic Wave Packet to collapse, revealing a specific value, i.e. a photon, light , triggering cosmogenesis and kindling the chain reaction that has so far resulted in the Universe we have today. So perhaps the cat is neither Schrödinger’s nor Homer’s. Perhaps it is God’s. In any case, it makes a great pet. *** Franz Marc’s Two Cats, Blue and Yellow (1912) depicts two vividly colored cats reclining together, rendered in Marc’s signature bold hues and simplified geometric shapes. The complementary colors—cool blue and warm yellow—create a visual and emotional tension that expresses harmony and duality between calm introspection and alert vitality. Through color symbolism and abstraction, Marc elevates the domestic animals into spiritual beings that embody his belief in the purity and instinctive innocence of nature. 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 Owl and the Pussycat David Cowles “The entire story makes no sense…unless there’s something special about that ring, something you can’t get at Harrod’s at any price.” No, our title does not refer to a pub in London. If it did, I would certainly be having a pint there right now. Rather it is the title of a poem by nineteenth century poet Edmund Lear, a man more famous in kindergartens than in universities. Edmund Lear is identified as an author of “nonsense” poems and stories, a charge he readily accepts. How not? His collected works include such titles as Nonsense Songs & Stories and The Book of Nonsense . Most critics have been content to accept Lear’s self-identification at face value. But what if there is something more going on here? Consider the words of St. Paul. In his First Letter to Corinthians , he writes: “The message of the cross is foolishness…we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” But he also writes, “Yet we do speak a wisdom to those who are mature…we speak God’s wisdom, mysterious, hidden.” Is it possible that something similar could be going on with Lear? Could there be wisdom ‘hidden’ in his apparent nonsense. And if so, what deeper meaning might lie beneath the surface of his work? Let’s take a close look at Lear’s most famous work, The Owl and the Pussy-cat : The Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat, they took some honey, and plenty of money wrapped up in a five-pound note. The Owl looked up to the stars above and sang to a small guitar, “O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love, what a beautiful Pussy you are, you are, you are! What a beautiful Pussy you are! Pussy said to the Owl, “You elegant fowl! How charmingly sweet you sing! Oh let us be married, too long we have tarried: But what shall we do for a ring?” They sailed away for a year and a day to the land where the Bong-tree grows, and there in the wood, a Piggy-wig stood, with a ring at the end of his nose, his nose, his nose, with a ring at the end of his nose. “Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling your ring?” Said the Piggy, “I will.” So they took it away and were married next day by the Turkey who lives on the hill. They dined on mince and slices of quince, which they ate with a runcible spoon; and hand in hand on the edge of the sand, they danced in the light of the moon, the moon, the moon, they danced by the light of the moon. No prosecutor worth his salt would have a moment’s difficulty making a prime facie case for nonsense here. The defense on the other hand, contending that there is method in this madness, certainly has its work cut out for it. But let’s give it a go! Our argument starts with the very first line…and with the title itself. An owl and a pussycat, indeed! Tales of animosity between birds and cats permeate all of literature right down to Sylvester and Tweety . The notion that an owl and a pussycat could peacefully co-exist, much less fall in love, seems absurd. Yet it is the premise of this poem. Oddly though, this juxtaposition is reminiscent of another story told 2500 years earlier by the prophet Isaiah (11:6): “Then the wolf will be the guest of the lamb and the leopard will lie down with the young goat; the calf and the young lion shall browse together with a little child to lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, together their young shall lie down; the lion shall eat hay like the ox.” Isaiah’s imagery introduces the Messiah, and with the Messiah, the Eschaton, Isaiah’s vision of the Kingdom of Heaven. The resonance of the Lear and Isaiah texts alerts us to the notion that there may be eschatological issues at state in Lear’s poem. We learn early that our amorous pair is by no means skint. In fact, they have ‘plenty of money’, so much in fact that they can afford to use a ₤5 note like a rubber band. “Plenty of money” - I doubt even you would say that – affluent though you are. Besides money, they took honey – an interesting choice for a long voyage. (What are they, 5 years old?) Even more interesting because neither species ever eats honey. Owls and cats are both carnivorous predators; so why would they take honey? Again, we turn to Isaiah: “…The lion shall eat hay like the ox.” But there is yet another way to read this. Honey is the archetypical spiritual food (“the nectar of the gods”). Mead, the beverage of choice among the divine set, is made from honey. In this reading, the ‘honey’ is not a dietary item at all but the currency of gnosis . The image balances the spiritual (honey) and the secular (money). Our couple feels it needs a ring, but apparently not just any ring will do. If it would, they have access to many fine jewelers in London and, as we know, they have ‘plenty of money’. They are not bargain hunting. They need a ring that recognizes the inviolable equality and independence of the marriage partners, even as it celebrates their union. Our couple does not wish to consecrate their marriage with a symbol of division and exclusion. So of course they do exactly what you and I would have done in similar circumstances: they sail away for a year and a day to the land where the Bong-tree grows, because I mean you know you can’t find a suitable ring anywhere in London! They’ve landed. Now for that ring? “How much must a ring cost on Bong Island if even Harrod’s couldn’t meet their needs?” I wonder. Voicelessly, I warn my animal friends, “You’d better shop around, get multiple quotes, haggle with the merchants.” But they had barely disembarked when they spied a Piggy-wig, standing in a wood nearby with a ring at the end of its nose. Apparently, our intrepid adventurers are not shoppers. (I can’t imagine why you’d go to an exotic island if not to shop for knickknacks, machine made in China?) Nor are they in any mood to bargain; and we shan’t even discuss the wisdom of buying a piece of jewelry from a pig on a beach, especially after it has spent time in his porcine snout. Our pair makes a ridiculously low offer for the ring, ‘one shilling’, and it is accepted immediately. Now for our EU cousins, a shilling is 1/5th of a British Pound, equivalent to about a ‘Quarter’ US. But don’t forget inflation. Lear’s shilling would be worth about 3 pounds today. Still not a stretch for our lovers; after all, they use ₤5 notes as fasteners. So obviously the entire story makes no sense ( quelle surprise! )… unless there’s something very, very special about that ring, something you can’t get at Harrod’s. Well, how about a whole new ‘topology’ (i.e. ‘cosmic shape’)? When you buy a ring at Tiffany’s it will always have an inside and an out, no exceptions, not for any amount of money. Every ring divides the world in two (in/outside).The sacrament of marriage, on the other hand, is about eliminating such divisions: ‘and two shall be one flesh’. If a ring is to symbolize the sacramental power of matrimony, it can’t be any ring we’ve ever seen. So, it’s Bong Island…here we come! To properly symbolize marriage we would need a ring with just one side, with no inside or out. Imagine showing that off at your next high school reunion! Unfortunately though, it’s not available in New York or London…or even in Paris, or anywhere else in a cosmos plagued with an orientable (inside/out) topology. But what if were available on Bong Island? A one sided mathematical object exists but only in a cosmos with a ‘non-orientable topology’; it’s called a Mobius strip. Could it be that Piggy-wig’s ring is just such a one sided object? On a Mobius strip, there are no fixed beginnings or ends and no fixed orientation (e.g. ‘up or down’). It allows you to travel around it continuously, always coming back to an arbitrary starting point; however, each time you return to the starting point, your orientation has been reversed. Therefore, symmetry requires 720° rather than the 360° we’re used to. So, ring bought, now it’s off to be married by some ‘fool on a hill’, some Turkey. (I’ve heard members of the clergy referred to as ‘turkeys’ before but here I think Lear is taking about an actual bird…who knows?) First the wedding, then off to the reception for dancing, dancing, dancing…and a feast! One catch though: no knives or forks. The only utensil provided by this traditional Bong Island wedding venue is a ‘runcible spoon’ – whatever that is. And so we now have two mysteries to explain: the spoon…and of course the ring! ‘Runcible’ is a neologism unique to Lear. Its meaning, if indeed it has one, is entirely uncertain. If there’s a consensus, based mostly on context, I suppose it would be ‘slotted spoon’. If so, that would make it a very poor eating utensil indeed…and that might have been Lear’s point exactly. I would make a case, however, for a slightly different interpretation based on the possible etymology of the root word, ‘runc’. I must tell you, however, that I am indebted to Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 for much of this analysis: Old English ‘hruncian’ (to wrinkle) could have been Lear’s primary source for the root in ‘runcible’. It derives from a Proto-Germanic verb ‘hrunkon’ (to wrinkle, crease or fold). That root appears as well in Middle English as ‘ronke’ (wrinkle) and in Old Norse as ‘hrukka’ (also wrinkle). And this makes linguistic sense: phonological developments from ‘hr’ to ‘r’ and between ‘o’ and ‘u’ are common in Germanic languages. So, by this analysis, a ‘runcible spoon’ is a wrinkled, creased or folded spoon… Heck, we were better off with ‘slotted spoon’ even though there is exactly zero textual support for that choice. A wrinkled, creased or folded spoon would be almost as difficult to eat with as a slotted spoon… but at least it respects the language of Beowulf . Plus it ties back to the ring. Suppose the spoon is an extension of the same non-orientable topology as the ring. Three dimensional objects (spoons) that embed a Mobius strip are called ‘ Klein Bottles ’. In our world of 3 spatial dimensions, Klein Bottles are not physically realizable, but if they were, they could hold no liquid. Why? Because like all non-orientable objects, they are one sided and therefore have no inside or out. In this admittedly speculative interpretation, the ‘runcible spoon’ is the 3-d correlate (Klein) of the Piggy-wig’s nose ring (Mobius). It suggests that there is a consistently non-orientable topology in play on “the land where the Bong-tree grows”…as there was in Eden. What better way to end our tale than a dance: “Hand in hand…on the edge of the sand…by the light of the moon”. What a climax! A dance of Sufi dervishes! What better metaphor than dance to symbolize the resolution of all conflict into universal harmony (Isaiah) and what better place to dance than at the ‘edge’ of the world, the point where orientable spacetime disappears: Sandymount Strand (James Joyce), Finis Terra (Santiago di Compostela), the Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Douglass Adams), Bong Island (Edmund Lear). This transubstantiation of our humdrum orientable universe has a sacramental aspect. The topology of Eden was undoubtedly non-orientable. It was only by eating the apple that dualities were manifest: naked/clothed, good/evil, life/death. Fast forward, the scourge of orientability colors every aspect of life in our ‘fallen’ world: “I’m in with the in crowd; you are odd man out; Warsaw Pact vs. NATO, citizen vs. alien; 1% vs. 99; labor vs. management; red state vs. blue; Yankees vs. Red Sox.” As contrasts, these dualities are enriching; but as conflicts, they impoverish us. So in every way, this is the wedding of the ages. It restores primal non-orientability, both symbolically and physically. In Revelation , the final book of the New Testament, Christ is identified as the Alpha and the Omega and in the non-orientable topology of the Eschaton, Alpha and Omega are one! 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 . purpose and devotion. Return to our 2024 Beach Read Share Previous Next

< Back The Ease of Burden Erin Gruodis-Gimbel "Writing is not like Athena, springing fully formed from Zeus’ forehead. Writing is like all of Zeus’ other children, where he has to relate to someone for creation (and boy, does he relate). To create things, we need other people. It takes two to tango, two to make a child, and around 12 to make a sitcom." God lasted seven days without a writers’ room. Why would we subject the Writers Guild of America to the same thing? From Genesis 1:1 through 2:4, God is alone. Well, mostly alone; he has all the fish of the sea and the birds of the air. But on the eighth day, the world is barren, for “there was no one to till the ground.” So God does what any sensible deity would do — he gives himself some company. Of course, this company also has chores to do. Thus, God has created the first writers’ room. What a legacy. Many, many days later, the Writers Guild of America has gone on strike, essentially to prevent themselves from becoming chapter 1 of Genesis. Among the many issues the WGA is negotiating, two of the landmark ones are a minimum staffing requirement for writer’s rooms and thorough regulation of Artificial Intelligence for Guild projects. The Guild argues that minimum staff requirements are necessary for sustainable production and growth, and that AI in its present form represents an existential threat to the profession as it exists today. The AMPTP, the group of studios that produce the vast majority of the entertainment we see, has consistently responded with the legal equivalent of “neener neener,” which is very difficult to negotiate with. As a writer, I’m not particularly worried about AI. I’ve seen 2001: A Space Odyssey, so I have a healthy distrust of computers and outer space, but I’m not hysterical about it. So far, what we’ve seen has been a substandard aggregation of information, which is often incorrect, lacking nuance, skill, or voice. I’m not concerned. I also sometimes lack nuance, skill, and/or voice, but at least I can compensate by buying donuts for everyone. What I am worried about, in line with the Guild, is that the studios have become so enamored with the ease of AI that they get cartoon dollar signs in their eyes, and a cash register noise plays when they blink. What AI is — and it’s important to note that I’m talking about AI in its current, publicly accessible form — is an advanced aggregator. It scrapes every bit of data from the internet and constructs a relevant answer to the prompt. It amalgamates; it doesn’t create. As of now, most AI-generated content has been published in the digital media sphere and is notably riddled with factual errors. If media companies wanted to publish things that were incorrect, they might as well hire me to write about advances in particle physics. Another job I’ve lost to a computer. The worry is that the studios have such a low bar for the art they produce, lowering the bar even further by referring to it as “content,” so that an amalgamation, quickly, easily, and incorrectly produced by a computer, is preferable to the handpicked fruit of human labor. I guess if it comes down to it, using AI to write this article would actually be easier than doing it myself. In fact, in the course of getting this far, I have eaten a lot of very tiny tacos, spun around in my desk chair and gotten dizzy enough that I almost lost control of those very tiny tacos, read several theories on the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey, delivered an impromptu TED Talk in my living room about the flaws in the AMPTP’s negotiation strategy, done the dishes, and engaged in some shoe shopping that I can absolutely not afford. Then I looked at the draft that I had, decided I didn’t like it at all, and started over. I called my dad, bounced some ideas off of him, texted two friends, bounced some ideas off of them, and now we’re here, together. I’m full of mini tacos (and a little queasy), and I hope you are also full and not queasy. What the studios hope to eliminate with those dollar signs in their eyes is exactly what I just did. Writing is very hard. Most of the time spent writing is not actually spent writing the thing you read. A lot of it is eating and doing the dishes. A lot of it is writing and then deleting, and then going through the document history and putting back what you deleted. And a lot of it, very notably, is talking to other people. The Bible is not just about God. It has God; it has quite a lot of Him. But only 35 verses of the first book of the Bible feature just God. He lasted seven days before he needed someone else. The key to creation, at least after the first week, is relationships. Writing is not like Athena, springing fully formed from Zeus’ forehead. Writing is like all of Zeus’ other children, where he has to relate to someone for creation (and boy, does he relate). To create things, we need other people. It takes two to tango, two to make a child, and around 12 to make a sitcom. AI supposedly simplifies that. It makes the process far easier than the previous model of having writers work alone. It takes the burden of creation — the picture of the tortured writer sitting alone, banging their head against the writer’s block and falling into a bottle of gin — and makes that process simpler, faster, kinder. More humane, ironically enough. AI relieves the wrong burden, though. The burden of creation is not sitting alone, banging your head against the writer’s block and falling into a bottle of gin. That happens sometimes, sure, although I think those individuals would probably be alcoholics anyway. Writers, especially those that fall under WGA representation for TV and screenwriting, rarely write alone. Even if the work is done alone, there are phone calls, workshops, writer’s groups, and traded PDFs over email. There are editors and beta readers and reluctant partners who would rather be doing something else. Working alone isn’t the burden of creation; working together is. As Jean-Paul Sartre said, “hell is other people.” Clearly, he was observing my Intro to Playwriting class. Working collaboratively is hard. That’s the real burden. Sometimes, collaboration looks less like writing and more like a cattle auction. But there’s a reason that TV has writers’ rooms, screenwriters often have partners, playwrights like me have working groups and workshop cohorts. Other people may be hell, but they are also key to creation, whether it means working on one thing together or the constant revising that comes with feedback. The first play that I ever wrote was seven pages long. Over a year before I would even consider myself a writer, I was texting with a friend, and we created the character of an old man who refused to die. A hitman showed up at his home, and he simply said, “no thank you,” and went about his day. I told my friend to give me 20 minutes, and I came back with a 7-page play called Shel and Lenny. I wrote that play alone, but I didn’t create it alone. For other plays, I created them alone, but I had directors, actors, dramaturgs, sometimes just people passing by, who helped, who shaped them, who annoyed me so much with their feedback that I eventually made the play even better just to shut them up. Even when I am alone at my desk, I have partners. Even when I am alone in my room, I have a writers’ room, although it’s sometimes better known as cold-calling my friends and leaving very long voicemails. Multiple voices, multiple perspectives, multiple stories, make work better. When you have unchecked inspiration from one person, you get a poor man’s version of David Foster Wallace. No one wants that. Not even David Foster Wallace (RIP). For balance, for growth, for the sustainability of the profession, there have to be writers’ rooms. Some rare writers may work fully alone; I commend them and do not want to be like them. Writing is listening and disagreeing. Writing is compromise. Writing is translation of one idea into another voice. Writing is connection. After all, if we’re going to connect with our audiences, don’t we have to connect with each other? If we want that connection — something most of us desire, though perhaps not the studios — you need many writers. Multiple people are expensive, hard to wrangle, and nearly impossible to get a cohesive lunch order for. It’s a burden, an expense, and time lost. But without that burden, we don’t work. Without that burden of creation, the inspiration that comes when you’re arguing, the realizations that come when you’re critiquing feedback… without those, writing doesn’t happen. The studios think that’s a burden that needs to be lifted, and they believe AI will do it for us. All that pesky relating to each other and collaborating can be eliminated with a computer that spits out a substandard facsimile of what you and eleven other writers would have come up with. They want AI to take us to the Genesis 1:1 version of writing — a solitary writer drinking themselves to death in an attic in front of ChatGPT. This is preferable, they want to tell us. Look at how little work you have to do! You don’t need those noisy rooms; you don’t need those arguments; you don’t need to talk to anyone else. We’ve freed you from your burden of creation, see? By lifting this burden of creation, it brings us back to a model that is and has always been barren. No one truly works alone. Even when Henry David Thoreau claimed he was all by his lonesome on Walden Pond, his mother was dropping by every Thursday to do his laundry. Writing isn’t easy. I spent an hour and a half on the phone trying to figure this out, not to mention the time I spent avoiding both the phone call and the writing. But no one does this because it’s easy. We do it because we have stories to tell; because if we didn’t do it, we’d feel some sort of metaphysical constipation. There are no spiritual laxatives that can fix that. We do it because it’s hard; because the struggle is worth it; because the struggle is a perverse kind of fun. But just because writing isn’t easy doesn’t mean that's a problem to be fixed. Nowadays, there's a compulsion for everything to be convenient. Some things are difficult. Some things take time. Some things are worth the effort. We don’t need to automate the writing process to make it easier, taking the act of creation away from the individual. Not all burdens have to be eased; sometimes they just have to be shared. God needed someone to till the field, and I need someone to tell me that we can’t have half the stage on fire for the second act, no matter how much I want it. The studios should be grateful that the need for collaboration is what I’m taking from the Bible, and not what Jesus said about rich men seeing Heaven. Erin Gruodis-Gimbel is a playwright, author, and fact-checker based in New York. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Dramatic Writing at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. You can find her writing at Beyond Belief, JAKE the Mag, COPY, and on post-it notes and legal pads scattered around her like a semi-intellectual aura. You can find her at eringruodisgimbel.com and erinxgg on Twitter. Return to our AI Issue Table of Contents Previous Next

Philosophy, theology, and science merge in Aletheia Today, the magazine for people who believe in God and science. Process philosophy, scripture study, and critical essays bring science and faith together with western philosophers like Alfred North Whitehead and Jean-Paul Sartre. Deep dives into the meaning of the Old Testamant, the New Testament, and where the Bible fits into modern-day society. Is God real? Does Heaven exist? Find your answers to life's questions at Aletheia Today. Inside This Issue Converge This! JK Rowling and Pliny the Elder "What about werewolves, giants, trolls, and dragons? We don’t believe in them; they’re not real! Are they?" The Lego Movie and John Stewart Bell “This movie includes a huge twist with cosmological implications.” Theology Returning to Andromeda “What sort of God would throw candy wrappers on a pristine beach? I mean, burning someone at the stake, well maybe, but littering, no way!” Two-Faced God “All gods are two faced…and that’s not blasphemy!” Beyond Pascal's Wager “Once we get past skyscrapers and suspension bridges, we really have no idea what’s going on, do we?” Hell “Nobody believes in Hell anymore…and that’s a good thing.” Philosophy Middle Voice “Eat or be eaten, kill or be killed. It’s a terrible way to live! But we’re living it…(but) it wasn’t always this way, and it doesn’t…have to be this way.” Who R U? - The Caterpillar “It is the uniqueness of events that 'creates' spacetime; it is not spacetime that makes events unique.” Culture & The Arts Credit Where Credit Is Due "I would like to share how I create music, but more importantly, where my music comes from." The Lottery “The state lottery is just about the only financial vehicle that offers certain folks a realistic opportunity to materially impact their economic circumstances.” Spirituality Beatitudes “The eight beatitudes are a 'manifesto' for change, a change in the way we understand the world…behave in that world… (and) act toward one another. The Porta Potty Perspective "Job was, you might say, trapped in a Porta Potty right there in the desert, despairingly dejected and despondent." Psalm 151 “But deliver us from evil,” this last verse is the key to the entire prayer. The Fight for Our Children's Hearts Starts at Home "For a culture that values education, we seem to forget that our children need to be educated in the Word, not just the world." Readers React What's the buzz about? Our readers' reactions to Aletheia Today... Additional Reading Can't get enough of Aletheia Today's content? Check out the books that inspire our magazine.

< Back The Barrier-Breaking Power of Music Magesh "We were both smiling from ear to ear, unable to communicate with words, music our only form of communication." I have had a blessed career as a musician, performing with many renowned artists like Lionel Richie, Ricky Martin, and Nelly Fertado. I remember playing a sold-out concert to 10 thousand people. My band was opening for Justin Timberlake. As I was playing the drums, I noticed a sea of people jumping up and down to my funky beat. This gave me a tremendous feeling of pride. It was overwhelming seeing that many people having a good time in unison. How has this music given people from all different walks of life a sense of joy and freedom? I was eager to explore the profound influence music has on all of us, especially how it can break down barriers and bring people together. I was still elated a week after playing the concert, my mind trying to decipher what had happened that caused the people to escape their everyday lives and disappear into the music. Afterward, I received many compliments. A father told his children that I got to be an outstanding musician through years of practice, but that was only part of the equation. I never felt my musical talent was mine; rather, it is a talent that passed through me. It is probably summed up best in James 1:17: “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the father of heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” I especially like the second part of this verse about changing like shifting shadows. I interpret this as using my musical abilities to spread positivity and not getting caught up in negative vices. My 25-year career as a musician has given me the ability to witness how powerful music can be. How it can reach beyond race, creed, and even language. I remember going to a rehearsal studio with a local band. A drummer is always the first to the rehearsal studio, simply because of the amount of equipment they need to set up. As I prepared my hi-hat cymbals, I heard this phenomenal-sounding bass guitar coming from the next room. I immediately followed the sound, which led me to a young musician from Senegal. I immediately told him how funky he sounded, expecting him to replay thank you for the compliment; but, to my surprise, he said nothing at all. He just looked at me blankly and then sheepishly said, “Not much English.” I signaled for him to follow me into the next room with his bass guitar and launched into the drumbeat of James Brown's "Funky Drummer." He immediately played the bass line, and I felt the earth shake. We were both smiling from ear to ear, unable to communicate with words, music our only form of communication. This must have been divine intervention. As we were playing, the musical director walked in to hear us jamming. He was so impressed he hired that unknown, young musician on the spot to do a major tour. This never would have happened if we hadn’t played together. The energy we created was palpable. It didn't matter that we were from different backgrounds or even different countries. The music connected all the missing pieces, like in 1 Corinthians 12: “As a body is one, though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also Christ.” The young musician told me he had been praying for golden opportunities. He had just moved from Senegal and didn't know any other musicians. His incredible ability to play music led him to become an in-demand session musician. Although the odds were stacked against him of becoming a successful musician, his faith created a literal miracle. This wasn't the first time I had experienced music breaking down barriers. Once, I was traveling in Japan with a friend who was also a professional musician. We stopped by a famous jazz club to see some local musicians. I remember the club being sold out; everyone there to see a great jazz singer. As we didn't speak Japanese, my buddy and I used Google Translate to get by. Just as the show was about to start, the club owner took the stage with a disconcerting look on his face. He told the crowd that the piano player had suddenly fallen ill and was unable to perform. They tried to call another local piano player to see if he could fill in, but his phone was off. I used this opportunity to walk forward in faith, not in fear. I introduced myself to the club owner and told him that my friend was a famous piano player and could play with the band. At first, he was skeptical, until I showed him a YouTube clip of him performing. Suddenly, he announced the show will go on due to a miracle! The best thing about jazz music is it's open to interpretation. A piano player from Texas might play a C major 7 chord in a different inversion than a piano player from Tokyo, although they are the same chord that will make the song work. This isn't the case with classical music, where it must be played note for note. That's why, in my not-so-humble opinion, jazz is better than Bach! The drummer counted in the first song, the classic jazz standard “Autumn Leaves.” I immediately saw the faces in the audience light up. They knew the piano player didn’t speak Japanese and had limited knowledge of local customs, but this doesn't seem to bother them as the music fills their bodies and minds. In between songs, the singer spoke to the audience in Japanese. I could tell my friend playing the piano had no idea what he was saying; all he understood was that everyone in the room was smiling. Magesh has written for “Lessonface,” “Aeyons,” “The Modern Rogue,” “Euronews,” “The Roland corporation,” “Penlight,” and “Elite Music.” He writes several monthly publications on music education. In the past, Magesh has written for parenting, humor, mental health, and travel websites as well. Previous Next

“I am what the Universe sees when it looks in the mirror.” < Back I Seem To Be a Klein Bottle David Cowles Jan 15, 2024 “I am what the Universe sees when it looks in the mirror.” A Unicorn could exist in our world…but it doesn’t. A Klein Bottle (KB), on the other hand, cannot exist in our familiar 3-dimensional space, and yet… I seem to be a Klein Bottle . To exist in our 3-D world, KB would have to pass through itself, which is topologically impossible. A Klein Bottle is an example of a ‘non-orientable’ object. That’s a 3-D object with a 2-D Möbius strip embedded in it. And in English? It’s a bottle that won’t hold water. (Note to self: DO NOT USE when decanting wine, especially if the wine is red, and you’re standing on a priceless oriental.) KB can’t hold water, or wine, because it has no inside . That would be a problem for any ‘bottle’, wouldn’t it? A Möbius strip is a ‘strip’ that has no obverse/reverse sides. i.e., no front or back. If it were a coin, it would always come up ‘heads’ (because it doesn’t have a ‘tail’.) So, non-orientable objects, be they strips of paper or glass bottles, have no ‘sides’ - no inside, no outside, no upside, no downside. But what does that have to do with me? Clearly, I do have an inside and an outside. Clearly? Well, it’s hot outside; I’m anxious inside. While the ‘heat’ may be a product of global warming, I experience that heat internally via my subdural nervous system. My skin is a membrane that separates the internal from the external for me, right? Well, sort of. Skin is a membrane, but it is also part of a dissipative system: it does not so much wall off the inside from the outside as it regulates the traffic – the way Customs is supposed to operate on a national border. The defining characteristic of a Klein Bottle is that it cannot hold water…or wine. Certainly, that’s me! Pour a 1982 Lafitte down my gullet…please, and then watch: soon it will emerge from my other end…with no notes of tobacco or cassis. But this still leaves one apparently insurmountable problem: a Klein Bottle can’t exist in 3-D space. But do we really live in three dimensions? Didn’t Einstein show that we actually live in 4-D spacetime? And didn’t Aquinas (and Hawking?) argue that ‘time’ is another name for ‘motion’? And what is motion other than a measure of the discontinuity between some figure (e.g., me) and some ground (the world)? 100 years ago, a biologist by the name of D’Arcy Thompson ( On Growth and Form ) suggested that an organism could be regarded as a Klein Bottle if its perpetual motions were taken into consideration. For him, motion is a 3-D analog of time . Jean-Paul Sartre’s signature contribution to Western philosophy was his recognition that ‘everything ( etre ) is outside ( hors )’, always; literally, ‘nothing ( neant ) is inside ( dedans )’, ever! The sun is shining; I feel the sun’s heat on my skin, and I feel my internal body temperature rising. I am becoming feverish. I am beginning to hallucinate. Does it help to know that all this is external to ‘me’? My body, its temperature, my fever, even my hallucinations…all ‘outside’. Or is this a time when I’d trade the wisdom of the ages for a cup of water? (Sorry, Job!) So if the sun, its heat, my skin, nerves, and brain are all ‘outside’, what’s ‘inside’? If they’re not me, what is? Now, if you’ve been paying attention, you already know the answer: ‘Nothing’ ( neant )! Nothing’s inside. In the words of Odysseus, I am Nemo , ‘nothing’. In fact, I am the active negation of whatever is ( etre ). To paraphrase Robert Oppenheimer, “I am Death, the destroyer (and creator) of worlds.” My role as Neant is to destroy worlds, but only so that new worlds may emerge. I am (or I am a reflection or manifestation of) the primal unrest at the core of Being. I am aware of X, which means that I am aware of X not being me. Everything I am aware of, I am not…by definition, or I wouldn’t be aware of it. Awareness implies separation. So does self-awareness ( aka consciousness). I am self-conscious to the extent that I make myself an ‘other’, i.e., to the extent that I view myself from the outside-in. When I view myself from outside, I effectively turn the universe inside out. What was in is now out and what was out is now in. That’s the essence of the Christian doctrine of incarnation: incarnation turns the universe inside out. The whole becomes its own quantum element. To borrow an idea from Jacques Derrida, consciousness inserts differance between the knower and the known, even if the known is the self. So I can be both the knower and the known, separated by ‘differance’, which Derrida defines as a quantum of ‘difference’. Derrida bravely fights a war on two fronts: on one side, Zeno, arguing that all motion is impossible; on the other side, Newton and Leibniz, arguing that spacetime is continuous. Zeno throws ‘pussy’ (arithmetic) down a proverbial well, while Newton assumes the role of ‘Little Tommy Stout who pulled pussy out’ (with calculus ). For Zeno, spacetime is granular. He understood Planck long before Planck was born. For Newton, spacetime is continuous; for him, a quantum of difference is infinitesimal (infinitely small). Derrida marries the two: ‘Differance’ is minimally small but not infinitely small. Here, Derrida recalls Sartre. Being is existence without essence. ‘To be’ is pure; it is unadulterated by any qualifiers. Differance is what comes from abstracting existence from essence. Remember the Real Number Line? Take any two points on the line, call them A and B; between A and B there will always be an intermediate term, C, right? Not according to Zeno! And not according to Derrida. For Derrida, B > A (or A > B) but there is ‘nothing’ separating them: A ≠ B but A – B = 0. In the Odyssey , Polyphemus asks Odysseus his name. Our hero replies, “ Outis ” ( Nemo in Latin), meaning ‘nobody’. Cyclops is a nominalist; he mistakes the name ‘No One’ for the reality of ‘no one being there’. Like many of us today, he fails to draw a straight line: “if someone is saying ‘no one’ to me, then someone must be here, saying it.” Does this remind you of the physicists who clearly hear Fiat Lux but deny there is ‘anyone’ saying it? But this is not the end of our story. Outis has a secondary meaning: ‘everyone’. Being ‘no one’ means that I am also ‘everyone’. (Math analogy: the null set ø is a subset of every other set.) If I were ‘someone’, then I could not be ‘anyone’. I could not be ‘anyone’ because I’d already be ‘someone’, and I could not even be myself since I am ‘no one’. Confusing enough for you? Because I am ‘no one’, nothing, I can be ‘anyone’, anything (consistent with the physical limitations imposed by the universe): “I know who I am, and I know that I can be whoever I want to be.” (Mae Jemison, Astronaut) If I can be anyone, then I am everyone. Odysseus is everyone, as is Leopold Bloom in Joyce’s reprise. Because I am not actually any thing, I am potentially every thing. I am a bottle that is ‘no bottle’. I am in the form of a bottle, but I lack the functionality of a bottle. I am made in the image of ‘bottle’ but not in its likeness. I ‘look’ like a bottle, but I don’t ‘act’ like a bottle. Is this separation of form from function what’s called ‘crisis’ in psychology, spirituality, and philosophy? When you are a baby and trying to figure out the world around you, nothing is more baffling than a mirror. There are people in the mirror who look like Mommy and Daddy but aren’t; there’s a baby in the mirror who might be you but isn’t. If you’re on track for Oxbridge, you might notice that the mirror is like a ‘window on the world’ but a window that looks inward rather than outward. If you’re really clever, you might even think to call it an ‘indow’. So, next time your little niece points to the mirror and shouts, “indow, indow,” don’t correct her. She knows the difference between an indow and a window; she’s just smarter than you. Deal with it! While a mirror is not itself a non-orientable object, you and the mirror together form a system that functions like one. Right and left are ‘reversed’ in a mirror. In your ‘orientable’ world, objects display 360° symmetry: what goes around comes around. In my ‘non-orientable’ world, what goes around still comes around…only in reverse. But don’t give up! What comes around needs to go once more around to get us back to ‘the way we were’, i.e., how things were at the get-go. Non-orientable systems display 720° symmetry (vs. 360°symmetry). The image of my image is myself. So I am a Klein Bottle; like a mirror, I reflect everything but contain nothing. I am a topological twist...a knot in the fabric of being. Through me, the Universe gazes back upon itself; through me, Universe is conscious of itself. I am what the Universe sees when it looks in the mirror. 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 . Click above to return to Winter 2024. Share Previous Next Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Click here. 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< Back The Algorithm Challenge! David Cowles May 17, 2022 …We do not experience ‘objective time’, we only experience ‘subjective time’. In subjective time, a minute never ends but entire years go by in a flash. How does time fly? “…We do not experience ‘objective time’, we only experience ‘subjective time’. In subjective time, a minute never ends but entire years go by in a flash. Tempus fugit , time flies! Who among us has not made that observation (even without the Latin); and who has not gone on to note that time seems to be ‘flying’ ever faster (i.e., the ‘speed of time’ seems to be increasing, and it seems to be increasing at an increasing rate)? When I was in grade school, a year seemed like a lifetime; now the years race by and I barely notice them. As soon as one Thanksgiving’s leftovers have been eaten (or tossed), it’s time to begin thinking about the next year’s celebration. Now in my 70’s, it seems as though a week has about the same duration that a day did years ago; a month is like a week, and a year is like a month. Of course, we take it for granted that the units of time itself have not changed. Ignoring the marginal effects of relativity and quantum mechanics, ‘a kiss is just a kiss’ and a second is just a second. Objective time flies, but it flies at a steady pace. Then why don’t we experience it that way? Because we do not experience ‘objective time’, we only experience ‘subjective time’. In subjective time, a minute never ends but entire years go by in a flash. Like the Tardis in Doctor Who , the inside (minute) can seem bigger than the outside (year). We have generated many mathematical models to illustrate the properties of objective time. Could we develop a mathematical model to illustrate subjective time? Let’s oversimplify! Suppose I live from my birth to my 85th birthday. In my first year, the life I’m living is all the life there is: subjective time and objective time are nearly the same. But at the start of year 2, I have year 1 in the bank. I can compare my year two experience with my year one experience. Subjectively, my year 2 experience is only half as long as my year one experience. By my first birthday, I have lived 1 year, both objectively and subjectively, but by my second birthday, I have lived 2 years objectively only 1.5 years subjectively. Applying this algorithm 84 times will give us a smooth distribution of points; we should be able to write an equation that will include (approximately at least) each of those points. If we carry out this function through my 84th year of life, we get some surprising results. Here are just a few of the necessary conclusions: By the time I reach my 85 birthday I will have lived, subjectively, the equivalent of only 5 ‘objective years’. I lived 20% of my ‘subjective life’ in my first year. I lived 60% in my first 10 years. 70% in my first 20 years, 80% by age 30. So, at age 30, I only have 20% of my life left to live No, this is not an ad for ‘Universal Pre-K’, though it does make you think; but if our algorithm is correct, we all have a heck of a lot less time left to live (subjectively) than we had imagined. The years from 70 to 85 account for almost 20% of my objective life span but only 3% of my subjective life. Conclusion: Memento mori! “…Pray for us now - at the hour of our death - Amen.” But is our algorithm correct? The results seem too extreme. So, if my algorithm wrong, where is it wrong? And if it’s wrong, can we come up with a superior alternative, one that generates a more intuitively satisfying result? (If so, the nuts and bolts of that algorithm could tell us a whole lot about how human consciousness works.) Challenge #1 : See if you can develop a better algorithm! Then submit your solution to Aletheia Today ( editor@aletheiatoday.com ) . No need to get bogged down in the math; just tell us how you would approach the problem. The best submission (in the judgement of our editorial board) will win a $100 cash card and will be reprinted (with permission and attribution of course) as a future ‘Thought While Shaving”. The deadline for all submissions is midnight, 5/31/22. 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 Where'd You Get That Spark? David Cowles Mar 8, 2022 Is the spark of the Hasidim the same thing as Whitehead’s Primordial Nature of God? In my last “Thought”, I pointed out that our mental apparatus is attuned to finding differences more readily than similarities. But similarities abound! Every entity – any thing with a distinct and independent existence – is both similar to and different from every other entity. No two entities are exactly the same as each other, but also, no two entities are entirely different either. In the real world, there are no absolute synonyms…or antonyms. Every entity is both alike and unlike every other entity. British mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead called these complementary facts of life the Ontological Principle (no entity is exactly like me) and the Solidarity Principle (no entity is entirely different from me). All entities have a past, and all pasts overlap, but no two entities have exactly the same past. The actual world of an entity consists of the multiplicity of other actual entities that lie in its past plus the unique perspective from which that entity takes hold of its past. (According to Whitehead, the Primordial Nature of God – “the perfection of God’s subjective aim, derived from the completeness of his primordial nature” – lies in the inherited past of all actual entities.) In other words, at the core of everything is God’s perfect intent. Plus, each novel entity puts its own stamp on “the process of becoming” (something Whitehead called ‘creativity’), so every actual entity also makes a unique contribution to a common future. (According to Whitehead, the Consequent Nature of God lies in the shared future of all actual entities, but each entity makes a unique contribution to that Consequent Nature.) So we are all siblings – not just of one another, not just of all humans, not just of all animals, not just of everything living. Saint Francis of Assisi was on to something, and possibly aware of such a conception of thought, when he wrote, “Brother Sun, Sister Moon.” According to the teachings of Hasidic Judaism, a divine spark (the portion of God in exile within all things) is present in everything that is – in every actual entity, animate or otherwise. Is the spark of the Hasidim the same thing as Whitehead’s Primordial Nature of God? According to the Hasidim, the divine spark that lies at the core of each and every actual entity will ultimately be reunited with all sparks to form the Shekinah, our common future…the Consequent Nature of God. 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 Two New Articles Added to Aletheia Today Summer Issue David Cowles Jun 2, 2022 We were thrilled when the opportunity arose to add these additional articles to our first issue. As you know, Aletheia Today published Issue #1 of AT Magazine (ATM) yesterday (6/1). As a regular reader of TWS, we sent you a link to Issue #1 on Tuesday (5/31). We assumed that this Issue had been ‘put to bed,’ and we wanted to give you a chance to peek at the content ahead of the June 1 publication date. Unexpectedly, we were able to ‘green light’ two additional articles just in time for the June 1 Issue. I could not be more excited about these last minute additions! First, we’ve added Parshat Emor , a reflection by Rabbi Dr. Jon Kelsen on the 50 days between Pesach and Shavuot. The parallel in the Christian tradition is the 50-day period between Easter and Pentecost, but the scope of Dr. Kelsen’s analysis transcends any particular religious tradition. It is a life lesson for all of us. Plus, we added Mary Poppins: Sufi Master . One of our hopes for ATM is that it will help to uncover the deeply spiritual themes that are often encoded in artifacts of contemporary, popular culture. We do not separate the sacred from the profane, simply because nothing in itself is profane. Everything is sacred, but sometimes it takes some effort on our part to locate (and liberate) the divine spark within every ‘actual entity,” every event. If you haven’t read AT Magazine yet, let this be an invitation. If you have, let me suggest you return to check out our two new additions. Thanks for following TWS…and now, ATM as well! We’ll see you soon at www.aletheiatoday.com - David 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.