< Back Ulysses – a Guide to Reading Scripture David Cowles May 8, 2024 “Most of us study events and notice patterns, Joyce studied patterns and noticed events.” When I was but a tike, it was commonplace to study the Bible’s two testaments as mirror images of one another. Happily, like much of ‘50s culture, this practice has fallen by the wayside. But resuscitate it, if only for a moment, not for its theology but for its physics. As Roman Catholics, we were taught that the Old Testament (OT) reflected the New Testament (NT). Events in NT matter – a lot; events in OT exist primarily as signs, prophesies, forerunners, ‘types’ of events to come (NT). We were not encouraged to consider the equally attractive (or unattractive) possibility that the New Testament might be a reflection of the Old. And yet that most certainly is the case! The Gospel of Matthew in particular takes great pains to demonstrate exactly how NT events fulfilled OT prophecies. The key, of course, is who’s had a bit too much to drink and who’s driving the car. Critics of Christianity have suggested that the synoptic gospels are a mostly fabricated attempt to show that Jesus of Nazareth possessed the characteristics of the Messiah as spelled out in the Old Testament. There is no doubt that OT Jews were concerned with the coming of a Messiah. Less certain are the characteristics of this Messiah and whether Jesus of Nazareth ticked all the boxes. It is likely that at least some of the events reported in the synoptic gospels are historical, but it is certain that the NT reporting of those events (e.g. in Matthew) is selective and explicitly intended to draw a connection with the so-called ‘prophecies’ (OT). The question is, how much is history and how much is spin? And then, of course, there are the brave few who deny any significant cross fertilization between the two anthologies . They attribute alleged correspondences to a combination of coincidence (dubious) and the overactive imaginations of commentators (undoubted). So, I’ve offered three theories of how the two testaments might relate: →, ø, ←. Could there be others? For example, what if patterns in OT and NT resonate just because certain patterns are found more or less everywhere, more or less all the time? In such a world, everything is prophesy and everything fulfills prophecy. The World is massively self-referential. There is a semantic web that ties all events together. Everything signifies; everything is signified. Everything is a sign “we are here to read” (Joyce), fulfilling past prophecies and prophesying things to come. In Ulysses , James Joyce set out to show how the archetypal patterns of Western Civilization can resonate with the events of a single day in Dublin. Specifically, he highlighted the parallels between the events of June 16, 1904 and Odysseus’ pan-Aegean cruise recounted by Homer. There is no suggestion that events in 1904 CE were ‘caused’ by events in 994 BCE, or vice versa. They are reflections of one another, and reflection is not vectored – it’s reciprocal…by definition. Time’s iron clad tyranny is overthrown. It is as true to say that B → A as it is to say that A → B, which is to say it’s not very true at all. A neither causes B nor is caused by it. A is a pattern, B is a pattern, and perhaps not surprisingly, the two patterns exhibit far greater congruence than mere ‘coincidence’ could possibly explain. More surprisingly, the two patterns exhibit greater congruence than even ‘causation’ can predict. Causality is not conformity. An effect only occasionally resembles its cause. Correlation is an entirely unique mode of connection among events. But the World is not bi-polar. It’s more than just 20th century Dublin and 10th century (BCE) Ithaca. In Dublin life, Joyce detects incipient harmonies with various cultures, enshrined in different media. While events in Ireland reprise events in the Aegean, they also reflect other patterns, e.g. Roman Catholic Liturgy (the ‘Mass’) and Shakespeare’s Hamlet . History, liturgy, poetry, fact and fiction, co-exist for Joyce in a cosmic ouroboros ∞. Pattern is substructure. Tangible events, performances, etc. are ‘accidents’; they are epiphenomenal. Joyce is agnostic when it comes to time, place, or medium. Pattern is everything. Most of us study events and notice patterns, Joyce studied patterns and noticed events. Read Ulysses . For about 2 weeks after, your world will be enchanted. Every bird’s song, every street’s sign will have been curated specifically for you. A name in a newspaper headline connects to a 4th century theologian. Everything is everywhere all at once, until it isn’t. A mystical experience induced by literature! We only know what we can see. The final editors of the Old Testament (500 – 200 BCE) reflected on the world as they lived it. Likewise, the New Testament authors (50 – 100 CE). What is remarkable is the congruence between events in 1st century CE and events that occurred 500 to 2000 years earlier. Consider the scope. Our story begins in Mesopotamia c. 2000 BCE, moves to Canaan, then on to sunny Egypt, back to Canaan, off to Babylon…and home again. At every stop, OT Jews had to defend their faith against the polytheistic and pagan tribes of the Middle East; NT Jews (including proto-Christians) were locked in a struggle with Greco-Roman culture. And yet, patterns endure, linking a dimly remembered past to a vaguely imagined future and giving laser-like clarity to both. Pattern is the annihilation of time. It brings everything into focus, it’s what’s left over. It’s what endures after history has done its worst; it’s where the past, the present, and the future sit around a barrel fire singing Kumbaya. Folks asked Jesus for a sign. Pattern is ‘the sign’, the triumph of order over entropy. Signs point to patterns, but pattern is the sign pointing to the Kingdom of God. Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back The Last Atheist David Cowles Mar 4, 2025 “The hypnotic effect of science, reinforced by technology and economic growth, is starting to wear off. The patient is waking up!” Once upon a time not so very long ago, almost everyone believed in God. I mean how could you not? Look at the stars, look at the earth, look at the abundance and variety of life around you; it all can’t just happen to be this way, it can’t just happen to be at all. There has to be a God; it wouldn’t be ‘sane’ to think otherwise. Unfortunately, conviction is such matters often translates into intolerance. Prior to 1500, all serious metaphysical exploration was required to acknowledge God’s (or gods’) role. Then we became Enlightened . Over the last 500 years we have pushed out, way out, the frontiers of knowledge. Now we can account for most phenomena by linking one phenomenon to another. Over these same 500 years, we have built a new cosmic map based on these ‘explanatory’ connections. We’ve sketched out a new mappa mundi ; we’ve stitched together a new logos . With each new ‘phenomenon explained’, our felt need for divine agency diminished. While we’re not home yet, we feel we can, Moses like, see ahead to the Promised Land: in this case a TOE – a Theory of Everything, a theory of everything that does not include God. We are, after all, ourselves already on the edge of omniscience. Unlike Nietzsche, we have not killed God; more like Sartre, we have rendered God superfluous. But per Occam’s Razor, superfluity = nullity; so we are ‘Nietzscheans’ after all, albeit a kinder, gentler version. If we are not ‘there yet’, we are close to the moment when we will be able to say, “Almost no one believes in God anymore and ‘only a crazy person’ could believe in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic version of things. As for me and my tribe (Joshua) we’ll put our faith in science; it’s the only map we need.” Natural processes have replaced Divine intentions in our cosmic etiology. The phenomenal patterns that had beguiled our ‘unenlightened’ minds into a belief in God are now having precisely the opposite effect: they have convinced us that we no longer need even to entertain the God Hypothesis . The number of people identifying their religious preference as ‘atheist, agnostic or none’ has increased exponentially over the past 50 years. Even among those identifying with a particular religion, the ranks of those actively participating in faith based activities (e.g. liturgy) is thinning out, rapidly. Not too long ago, a book titled The Last Catholic in America was on the best seller list. It seemed reasonable to assume that ‘the superstition of religion’ might finally be a thing of the past for homo sapiens . In the next century, Karl, when people want opiates, they’ll get them at a pharmacy or a ‘head shop’ rather than a church. From this vantage, the Intellectual History of the West writes itself: Prior to 1500, folks ‘proved’ the necessary existence of God by appealing to the evidence of design in the World. After 1500, folks began to ‘prove’ that God was non-existent, or at least superfluous, by appealing to the exact same evidence, i.e. design. It’s all very neat and tidy, isn’t it? If only it made sense! In fact, our so-called TOE is the paradigmatic Rube Goldberg contraption. Like Ptolemy’s cosmology prior to Galileo, our logos depends on a menagerie of outlandish improbabilities. By some estimates, we have identified as many as 90 totally unexplained and apparently independent (unrelated) physical properties and mathematical constants where a deviation of less than 1% from inferred or measured values would preclude the existence of a cosmos . Now ‘only a crazy person’ could think that the current model holds. The hypnotic effect of science, reinforced by technology and economic growth, is starting to wear off. The patient is waking up! Our heartfelt conviction that an explanation of ‘the World’ can be found in that World alone is wearing thin – we are experiencing yet another crisis of faith, 500 years on! This is not a revitalized attempt to prove the existence of God by appealing to the Argument from Design; it is an effort to suggest that evidence that design is immanent in the world does not preclude a transcendent explanation. The twin mysteries of Being and Consciousness, which seemed on the verge of solution a half century ago, now seem intractable. We need a new approach, a new intellectual paradigm, a new Galileo. It’s time to take our all-terrain vehicle off-road . There is some evidence that the birth pangs of this new paradigm may be underway. A belief in God no longer automatically spells the immediate end of an academic career. Plus, a recently released study by the highly respected Pew Research suggests that the decline in religious affiliation may have leveled off: In 2000, 28% of respondents identified as ‘none’; that number rose to 31% in 2020. Now it has reverted to 28%. Over the same period, 64% identified as ‘Christian’, declining to 60%, reverting to 63%. This is not a recommendation to buy Vatican City municipal bonds. A renewed tolerance for the Transcendent does not necessarily translate into a resurgence of previously popular faiths. In fact, that will only happen, in my view, if those faiths find a way to connect their pre-Renaissance creeds with post-Enlightenment paradigms. Just as likely, new forms of spirituality will rise up and infiltrate, co-opt, or replace existing institutional religions. There are early signs that this may be happening as well. Since 2007, the number of respondents professing a non-Christian religious affiliation has almost doubled; on the other hand, less than 1% now identify as Episcopalian, the traditional religious affiliation of America’s ruling class. I make no predictions. Right now, it’s a ‘jump ball’. However, I do believe that we’ve entered an era characterized by an increasing tolerance for metaphysical speculation…and that alone is a good thing! Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Ayala Emmett Contributor Ayala Emmett Ph.D. is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Rochester. You can read more about her accomplishments and writing credits by following this link . Harriet Tubman Joins Six Women of Courage in the Exodus Story--Passover Part Two

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 Philosophy Albert Camus “Either death is ultimately subjected to something greater and more general than itself (Being) or death ultimately subjects everything to itself and then nothing else has any meaning or value.” Thrown by Heidegger “Of course, I have no name, no face, no identity; I belong nowhere.” The Meaning of Life “In the absence of God, or any transcendent reality, the meaning of life can only be death, oblivion, the total absence of meaning, the Absurd.” The Comedy of Job “Failure to appreciate the comic elements in Job has resulted in an almost universal misreading of the text.” Theology Apocalypse Now! “We are not midway through the second act of a mystery play called Salvation… Brunhilda has sung; we just need to applaud!” Revelation “This is possibly the shortest ‘play’ in all of literature…and yet it is arguably more important than anything Shakespeare (or even Andrew Lloyd Weber) ever wrote!" God's Will “We can say that God wills the events that constitute the world, even though God does not in any way cause those events to occur.” Ephesians 2:10 “In this one verse…St. Paul proposes a radically new model of what it means to be a human being.” Converge This! Kabbalah and Thomas the Train “Children and tank engines are not so different from the rest of us. They crave meaning! They only settle for pleasure when…they lose hope.” Whitehead and Zohar “Zohar and Whitehead, separated by more than 500 years, both deliver us a map of the world where X marks the spot of the eschatological treasure.” Culture & The Arts Mentoring for His Kingdom "I believe the role of a Christian mentor is ongoing, and it’s important to consider our role in the salvation of others." How to Summer All Year "I wonder how different the rest of the year, heck, the rest of my life would be if I did bottle summer’s secrets." Spirituality The Structure of Prayer Formal Christian Prayer is a cornucopia of spirituality. Yet in the Roman Catholic tradition at least, two prayers stand out: Jesus' prayer, the Our Father, and the Hail Mary (Ave Maria). Prayer for Restoration "I long to see the nearing restoration..." The Our Father “This tiny prayer…is a cyber-wonks dream. The density of the information content is out of this world, quite literally!” A Prayer for Comfort "Dear Lord, thank you that you are Jehovah Shammah–"the Lord is there". (Ezekiel 48:35) 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 Kabbalah and The Lord’s Prayer David Cowles Aug 17, 2023 “…Kabbalah offers a systematic philosophy that includes cosmology and ethics as well as metaphysics.” Kabbalah is an ancient mystical practice, closely associated with, but distinct from, Hasidic Judaism. On its own, Kabbalah offers a systematic philosophy that includes cosmology and ethics as well as metaphysics. Intriguingly, tradition has distilled this complex structure down to a single graphic (above). According to Kabbalah, the Cosmos can be mapped onto 10 Sefirot arranged in the form of a ‘tree’, aka the Tree of Life. Atop this tree sits Keter (Crown), the first expression of Godhead (Ayn Sof) itself. Keter forms a ‘divine triangle’ with Wisdom (Chokmah) and Understanding (Binah). In the Christian tradition, Keter would be represented by the Father (theos), Chokmah by the Son (logos), and Binah by the Spirit (pneuma). At the other end of this tree sits Malkhut (Kingdom), the world you and I sometimes know too well and often love too much. Labeling the material world ‘Kingdom’ is doubly apt. It may be understood as a reference to the ‘kingdoms of this world’, ‘Satan’s Playground’, and the secular world order. Harmonically, it can also be understood as the Kingdom of Heaven, prefigured by Moses, Joshua, and the Judges. (I think they opened for Dylan at the Budokan.) There are 6 Sefirot between Binah and Malkhut…which we will ignore. After all, they only concern things like Love and Beauty – so we can afford to skip over them, right? For our purposes, they can be thought of as forming the trunk of the tree. Your job, my young Kabbalist, is to raise Malkhut to the level of Binah, using the 6 intermediate Sefirot as your tool kit. Like a Freudian psychoanalyst, you will bring the unconscious humus into the conscious light. Good luck, and may the Force be with you! Surprisingly, this may be an easier assignment for Christians than Jews. Trinitarianism (Keter, Chokmah, Binah) is central to Christian theology. Better yet, the structure of the quintessential Christian prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, anticipates Kabbalah: Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name… Of course, we are talking Keter here, the transcendent (heaven), the ineffable (hallowed). Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven… This verse relates to Chokmah and Binah. To do the will of God is Wisdom and it is the explicit role of Binah to ensure that events on earth (Malkhut) mirror events in heaven (Chokmah)…and vice versa. (Understanding, Binah, is mirroring.) Give us this day our daily bread, And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. Amen. Now we are squarely in the realm of Malkhut. This is the world where we struggle to survive (daily bread), where we make mistakes (trespasses) that adversely impact ourselves and others, and where we are adversely impacted when others trespass against us. This is where we begin the process of rectification, the reunion of Malkhut with Binah. The things of this world are naturally disposed to rise through the 6 Sefirot (God’s transcendent values, Whitehead’s ‘eternal objects’) to rejoin Binah. Our job, quite literally, is to get out of the way. But we don’t! We exist for one and only one reason: to build the city of Dioce (Ezra Pound) to Ecbatan, i.e. to know, love and serve God (the Baltimore Catechism), to facilitate the repatriation of Malkhut. Instead, like 1980’s Soviet commandants in East Germany, we do pretty much everything we can to thwart reunification. Not a good look! In Malkhut, the ‘treasures of the orient’ (sic) are laid at our feet. When we use these treasures ‘correctly’ (i.e., according to their natures), we liberate the divine spark, Shekinah, that lies trapped within each, allowing it to return to Binah. In the words of the Diamond Sutra (Sanskrit, early CE): “However many beings there are in whatever realms of being…I shall liberate them all.” But we don’t! We don’t use our ‘treasures’ correctly. Rather than liberate them, we empower them to enslave us. We become attached to them, dependent on them; we cannot let go! Worse, we use them improperly: to deface beauty, to confuse truth, to impede justice. Worst of all, we turn these treasures into Golden Calves, idols we worship as gods…or God! The Lord’s Prayer addresses all this…and in just three lines. We must not ‘bind on earth’ what we would not have ‘bound in heaven’. Rather, ‘on earth as it is in heaven’ (and conversely in heaven as it is on earth). We must forgive. When we forgive, we loosen (instead of bind), and when we loosen, we liberate, and when we liberate, we diffuse what must be diffused and we conserve what may be conserved. We must not worship the transient treasures of Malkhut; like Solomon, we must focus on the eternal treasure, Chokmah, and let God do his thing: Deliver us from Evil! Amen! Keep the conversation going! 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. 4. Aletheia Today Magazine (ATM) will be devoting its entire fall issue (released 9/1/23) to artificial intelligence (AI). What are the philosophical, theological, cultural and even spiritual implications of AI powered world? If you’d like to contribute to the AI Issue, click here . Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Tomorrow’s Jobs Today David Cowles Jul 27, 2026 “Why not develop a questionnaire to measure an applicant’s aptitude and inclination for the various problem solving roles? Psst: it’s monetizable!” 1100 words, 5 minute read When I was fresh out of college with a catalogue of philosophy courses under my belt, a recruiter asked me to describe my dream job . My response caught both of us off guard: “I don’t want to be a CEO; I want to be a senior, ‘off the org chart’ advisor to a CEO.” Who did I have in mind? Henry’s Cromwell, Jabba’s Sy Snootles, Eliot’s “attendant lord…full of high sentence but a bit obtuse?” I didn’t get the job. Apparently, I didn’t have the skill set my prospective employers were seeking. But at least I had England’s greatest 20 th century poet for commiseration: “I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas.” Following Anthropic’s Boris Cherny, to whom I owe the original framework for these ideas, I may have been about 60 years ahead of my time. I was proposing to be a generalist in an age of ever increasing specialization. As usual, I was out of sync. Would that I were a half century younger, I might just now be coming into my own, hitting my stride so to speak. Quelle domage! According to Cherny, t he job market of the future will not segment according to learned skills. Today our economy is organized around hundreds of occupational titles: doctor, lawyer, plumber, clerk. We are all essentially day laborers, gathering pre-dawn in our own respective occupational pods, waiting for some unsuspecting customer to choose us for some task. Ok, maybe this model is a bit ‘depression era’ dated, but applied to today’s employment landscape, it retains an element of truth. For the most part, the job market categorizes us based on the skills we acquired in school or at some previous post. We wait for a particular employer to be looking for that specific set of skills. But the day of the ‘skill set professional’ is coming to a close! Who needs knowledge when we have LLMs? Who needs experience now that we have AI? Who needs competence when we have Bots? Soon, we will be classifying workers based on their relevance to the enterprise rather than on their job specific skills. According to Cherny’s model, I would be a potential hire for any employer for whose felt needs matched my problem solving style. The enterprise of the future will not be judged according to information or acumen but by creativity and problem solving prowess. I would as likely end up working for an aerospace company as for a supermarket chain and I probably would do both at different times in my career. Life would be a lot of fun…but stressful. Following Cherny’s basic idea, I have divided the personnel needs of the modern enterprise into five problem solving charisms: Dreamers are the creators, the inventors. Out of thin air, they conceptualize new products and novel processes. “They dream of things that never were…” (Bobby Kennedy) Implementers are engineers, the builders. They make the dreamers’ dreams come true, translating back of the napkin sketches into working prototypes. Optimizers make good things better. Got milk? They’ll QC it from udder to sippy cup. Adaptors modify or repurpose existing products and processes to solve new problems. Finally, Maintainers keep things going. They anticipate problems. They monitor, trouble shoot, and repair; and when that doesn’t work, they MacGyver it. Maintainers make the trains run on time…and cost effectively. Where do your problem solving skills lie? What gets your blood pumping? The classrooms of the future will have nothing to do with acquiring information. We have Bots for that! Instructors will become (or be replaced by) educators. Learning will be student directed and problem focused and facilitated by experienced ‘Solvers in Residence’ ( Sirs , formerly known as teachers ). Every class, day, week, or term will begin with a problem to be solved and a time frame in which to solve it. With the help of a facilitator, students will work individually, collectively, and in teams toward a common solution. In the course of a school career, each student will have multiple opportunities to try her hand at all five problem solving disciplines. What are you good at? What do you enjoy? Regardless, everyone needs a thorough understanding of all five phases of Process Enterprise . Like a modern medical student on steroids, you will do several ‘rotations’ in each problem solving specialty. At the end, instead of choosing a career as a gynecologist or neurologist, you will choose to spend your work life dreaming, implementing, optimizing, adapting or maintaining. The evolution of education from instruction to invention will be painfully gradual, but the landscape already sports a few green shoots. The proliferation of consultants, investment bankers, systems analysts, and venture capitalists attests to the new relevance of generalists (vs. specialists). The emergence of subject matter focused magnet schools and the appearance of problem solving classes in some university curricula are positive signs but “we’ve only just begun.” (Carpenters) And while we’re waiting for the problem solving curricula of the future to be developed and deployed, we may see a shift in the constellation of college majors. The STEM era may give way to a new appreciation of certain despised concentrations, especially those that have strong problem solving components. A few potential campus winners: philosophy, followed in no particular order by anthropology, economics, linguistics, logic, and graphic arts. Heck, we may even see a reemergence of the much maligned English major. But “why wait any longer for the world to begin? You can have your cake and eat it too.” (Bob Dylan) Why wait any longer for what you love when it’s standing in front of you? Prepare today for tomorrow’s job market . Ransack the attic for your dog eared copy of Ulysses , or if you’re brave, your unopened Finegan’s Wake . Practice reading non-linearly. Decode. Retrofit your analog trained mind for the coming quantum era. And… Challenge : If you are reading this article and have the necessary skill set , why not develop a questionnaire to measure an applicant’s aptitude and inclination for the various problem solving roles? It could be a useful service…and psst: it’s monetizable! 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 Finding Gold in the Scars Fernanda Nascimento "We will adorn our scars with gold and reminisce on our journey—guided by hope." Kintsugi, or the golden splice, is the name of the Japanese art that repairs broken ceramics and adds an aesthetic touch by filling its "scars" with gold. It seems to offer a metaphor applicable to our reality. Even if we embrace social isolation, at some point, we will experience hurt. As I write these words, my country remains under isolation due to a virus that is unfamiliar, leaving us vulnerable without antibodies to protect us. All of nature, including humans, possesses means of defense. Antibodies serve as a prime example. However, for our immune system to effectively defend against a specific threat, it must first encounter and learn from it. Such is the nature of real life. Bringing my own experiences to light, I endured the most challenging two years of my life. I confronted battles with depression, anxiety, defamation, fears, and numerous frustrations. When I endeavored to pursue my life's purpose, fear whispered lies, urging me to postpone my college aspirations for a year due to cost and presumed failure. I relented, only to face anxiety's grip once again a year later. It was a dark period, yet today, as I reflect, I recognize that without those trials, I would not be the person I am now. Amidst loss, I found resilience. Someone stood by me throughout it all, offering unwavering support and love without judgment—a true friend indeed. This year undoubtedly stands as one of the nation's worst in history. We collectively face a formidable battle, yet individually, we confront our own. The mere thought is exhausting, but every struggle has its resolution. Even if our stories lack happy endings, they are stories worth telling—experiences uniquely our own. Life unfolds in cycles, akin to seasons, where the body becomes a battleground for past conflicts, and the mind navigates an uncertain future. To live is to embrace vulnerability, to break, rebuild, and restore oneself. It entails acknowledging our losses and learning to defend ourselves better. Perhaps living is akin to traversing dense darkness while retaining faith in an unseen light reserved to shine upon us all. In such trying times, we must cling to hope, for it is the last ember to fade. Better days lie ahead, where we will adorn our scars with gold and reminisce on our journey—guided by hope. We will recall our tears and find solace in their passing, for everything shall be alright. Each day feels like a moment captured in a frame. "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." — John 1:5 **This piece has been republished with minor style edits with permission from the author.** Fernanda Nascimento is a Brazilian writer whose work has appeared in Koinesune Magazine. Return to our Holy Days Table of Contents Previous Next

“But deliver us from evil,” this last verse is the key to entire prayer. < Back St. Paul’s Lord’s Prayer David Cowles Oct 15, 2022 “But deliver us from evil,” this last verse is the key to entire prayer. “Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name, Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, And lead us not into temptation, But deliver us from evil.” In his First Letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul wrote, “So, three things remain: faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor. 13:13), (Read ATM's "Faith, Hope, Love" here. ) but what does that have to do with the Lord’s Prayer? Although the Lord’s Prayer is very short, it nonetheless has a lot of structure. It divides into 4 couplets. The opening is concerned with the first of Paul’s last things, faith: Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name… The first tenet of Christian faith is that God exists and that he is benevolent, as a father would be benevolent. The first line of the prayer states that clearly. However, God is not apparent n the phenomenal world, at least not immediately. The ‘phenomenal world’ is the world of time and space and qualities. It is what Parmenides called, Doxa , the realm of appearance. This is the world we inhabit and the only world we know, at least the only world we know or can know by direct experience. Stephen Hawking pointed out, experience can only occur in the context of time (and entropy, possibly just another name for time). Therefore, we can only have direct knowledge of the phenomenal world. God is in ‘heaven,’ i.e., the noumenal realm, corresponding to Parmenides’ Aletheia , the realm of truth. The noumenal world exists outside of space and time; it is eternal. The second tenet of Christian faith is that what you see is not all that you get. Finally, God’s name is ‘holy.’ It may have already struck you that Scripture is inordinately concerned with names (e.g., Exodus 3). This is because in ancient times, your name was not just your ‘handle’; your name defined your relationship with the rest of the world. It was the first derivative of who you were . Because God’s name is holy, it is unique, as his relationship with the world is unique. God is not just an entity among entities; God is special. This is the third tenet of Christian faith: “I believe in one God…” The first stanza is an affirmation of the existence and nature of God, and it is an exquisite expression of faith. The second stanza of the Lord’s Prayer concerns the second of Paul’s second so-called ‘theological virtues:’ hope. Hope is also rooted in the noumenal world. Only a child is satisfied with the hopes of a phenomenal nature (e.g., Santa Claus). As adults, we understand that the phenomenal world is bound to disappoint. True hope must be noumenal; we must hope for something lasting, something eternal in fact, and this is something that can only be found in the noumenal realm. And that is exactly what the Lord’s Prayer gives us next: Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven… Christian hope is hope that the noumenal world, God’s kingdom, will somehow merge with the phenomenal world so that God’s will may be preeminent in both. In that way, the noumenal world ‘redeems’ the phenomenal world. What is the fleeting in the temporal world is ‘saved’ in the noumenal realm. This second stanza is both an affirmation and a prayer. We pray that somehow the noumenal and phenomenal realms may merge so that “God may be all in all” (1 Cor. 15:28b). It bridges ‘the kingdom already’ with ‘the kingdom not yet.’ Of course, in our modern age, many intellectuals (e.g., empiricists, realists, materialists) and everyday citizens believe that the phenomenal world is all there is. They do not believe that there is a noumenal world underpinning it; and there is nothing anyone can do or say to prove them wrong because we can have no direct experience of the noumenal world. For that reason, we say that the reality of the noumenal realm is a matter of faith and hope. The first two stanzas of the Lord’s Prayer define that noumenal world. The third stanza is concerned with ‘love,’ the third of Paul’s virtues and the ‘greatest.’ Unlike faith and hope, love is rooted in the phenomenal world. Love concerns relationships between entities (phenomena). It has an emotional (‘conceptual’) component and a behavioral (‘physical’) component. Unlike faith and hope, all of us have directly experienced love to one extent or another; there is no serious doubt that it exists. Why does Paul say that love is the ‘greatest’ of the theological virtues? God created the world with the capacity for good. But if it were not for love, that creation would have been still born. Love is what sustains the world. Without love, new entities could not come into being. God loves the phenomenal world through the entities that make it up. God has created the phenomenal world to support love between those entities. God has placed the capacity for love into the fundamental structure of the phenomenal world. Love is all around you. But that is not enough. Entities must, of their own free accord, allow themselves to love and be loved. Love begins when entities see past their apparent self-interest and see the world through each other’s eyes. Love matures when two entities are willing to suppress their apparent self-interest in order to meet each other’s needs. Love is consummated when both entities realize that their own self-interest is ultimately best served when the self-interest of others is met. This is the foundation of relationship per se and of community. So, why is love the most important of the theological virtues? First, while we rightly trace the origin of the phenomenal world to the noumenal realm, without love between entities, the phenomenal world could not sustain itself. Love in the phenomenal world is the continuing expression of God’s creative act. Second, without love between entities in the phenomenal realm, the hope that the noumenal and phenomenal worlds might somehow merge (above) would be in vain. Love is the bridge between the phenomenal and the noumenal, the initial realization of the noumenal in the phenomenal. Consider the Great Commandment, found in several places in both the New and Old Testaments: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matt. 22: 34-40) Our love of God is directed toward the noumenal world. It is a fitting companion of faith and hope. We have faith in the existence and nature of God. We hope that the fleeting entities that constitute the phenomenal realm will somehow be saved in the noumenon. And we love God, who is the object of our faith and hope. In fact, it is our love of God that reveals seals our faith and hope. Only if they are sincerely held can faith and hope inspire love. That same love, initially directed toward the noumenal realm, also operates in the phenomenal realm. The love that we direct toward God in the noumenal realm is the same love that we exchange with other entities in the phenomenal realm. Further, love only occurs in the phenomenal realm when you love another entity ‘as yourself.’ You accept the other as your ontological equal in every way. You place the welfare of the other on the same level as your own. You even see yourself in the other. ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Even more surprising, the Great Commandment tells us that loving our neighbors as ourselves is the same thing as loving God with all our heart. Love of neighbor in the phenomenal realm is love of God in the noumenal realm. In fact, love between us is a foretaste of love in the ‘kingdom come,’ the merging of the noumenal and phenomenal realms. When we love our neighbors as ourselves, God’s will is done on earth…as it is in heaven. That is why the Great Commandment is one commandment, not two! One commandment, two expressions – a noumenal expression and a phenomenal expression; but to quote Bob Marley, it’s “one love." The Lord’s Prayer presents faith and hope in a clear and succinct manner; it says just exactly what we would expect it would say, only it says it much better than we could have said it. The exposition of love, on the other hand, is unexpected and rather arcane. Give us this day our daily bread, And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, “Give us this day our daily bread.” We are not expecting God to feed us directly (as with mana ). What we are affirming is that God created a world capable of meeting the physical needs of all its creatures. (That it systematically fails to do so is a function of sin: greed, cruelty, apathy, etc.) God created the universe to be free, but with a fundamental structural bias toward ‘The Good.’ That bias manifests God’s love for the world and for the ‘creatures’ that constitute it. We are accustomed to asking God for forgiveness; but the Lord’s Prayer tells a different story. Forgiveness takes place, at least initially, in the phenomenal realm. We are called upon to forgive those who trespass against us and when we do, that is when we experience forgiveness: It is in pardoning that we are pardoned. (Prayer of St. Francis) In essence, we forgive ourselves by forgiving others and when we forgive ourselves, God forgives us. Forgiveness in the phenomenal realm translates into forgiveness in the noumenal world: Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven . (Mt. 16: 19) Forgiveness is one of the many ‘middle voice’ concepts at Christianity’s core. With forgiveness, there is no subject or object. The one who forgives is the one who is forgiven. Forgiveness is reflexive and recursive. And lead us not into temptation, But deliver us from evil.” “And lead us not into temptation,” is probably the most difficult line in the entire prayer. It suggests that God could, if he chose, induce us to sin; but, of course, that is radically impossible because God is all good and incapable of evil. God created this world to be free; if we yield to temptation (sin), we yield of our own free will. The devil didn’t make you do it; the dog didn’t eat your homework. You did! Paradoxically, at the moment we give in to temptation, we surrender a piece of our freedom as well. We consent to be ‘enslaved.’ So, how are we to understand this verse? We need the context provided by the final line of the prayer: “But deliver us from evil.” In fact, this last verse is the key to the entire prayer. To understand it, we need to make a quick detour by way of St. Augustine. God is good. God is denotatively (not connotatively) synonymous with Good. God is also being. God is also denotatively (not connotatively) synonymous with Being. Therefore, Good is denotatively (not connotatively) synonymous with Being. This is a long-winded way of saying that everything in the world God created, everything that has being, to the extent that it has being, is good; and everything that is good, to the extent the extent that it is good, has being. So, why don’t we experience the world this way? Because given the freedom to make their own choices, the world and the entities in it don’t always choose ‘good.’ Temptation is the lure to choose something other than the good, and when entities choose something other than the good, they surrender a bit of their being (as well as their freedom). They make themselves a little less than they otherwise were. So, just as love is the foretaste of the Kingdom of Heaven, so sin is the foretaste of death; it is the gradual annihilation of phenomenal being. As Augustine taught, evil is simply a privation of Good, a privation of Being. Therefore, the idea of a totally evil being (‘Evil’) is apparently an oxymoron. Such a being, by definition, could not exist because only things that are at least to some extent ‘good’ can ‘be.’ Even the worst of us must have a spark of good somewhere, however well concealed it may be. Nevertheless, while there is no perfectly evil being, there is a perfectly evil process on the loose in the world. We know it on the personal level as ‘death’ and on the cosmic level as ‘entropy’. We all know that the one and only sure thing in our lives (besides taxes) is personal death. Likewise, the inexorably increasing entropy in our universe guarantees that that all order in that universe will eventually be wiped out, and when that happens the universe will cease to exist. We will revert to the way the world was before God said, “Let there be light”: “And the earth was without form or shape, with darkness over the abyss and a mighty wind sweeping over the waters.” (Genesis 1: 2) In other words, pure disorder, chaos, the equivalent of non-being. Absent a noumenal dimension to reality, nothing remains of us when we die. It is as if everything we experienced, everything we felt, everything we thought, everything we learned, everything we accomplished was erased in an instant. Life is like an Etch-a-Sketch . People are fond of saying, “Well, at least he had a good life.” No, he didn’t. He had no life at all. It is as if he had never existed. Likewise, at ‘the end of time,’ the universe itself will vanish and everything that ever happened in that universe will be erased. No trace will remain. Time and space themselves will disappear. Once again, it will be as though the universe had never existed. So, if death doesn’t get you, entropy certainly will; either way it will be as if you never were, as if nothing ever was. The phenomenal realm, then, is not just a temporal realm, it is a temporary realm! Once it did not exist, once again it will not exist. That is not what ‘being’ is. Being, by definition, is imperishable. You can’t both ‘be’ and ‘not be’; even Hamlet understood that! You either are or you are not, period. In the phenomenal realm, things become and things decay; that is the nature of phenomena. But that is not what being is. Being is unchanged, regardless of the various ‘accidents’ that express it from time to time. Being (per Parmenides) is what is unchangeable about entities that are otherwise in the process of continuous change (Heraclitus). Hint : Nothing is unchangeable, save that it is! So, what is the evil from which we pray for God to deliver us? It is death, it is entropy. Now, we know that even saints die, and we don’t imagine that God will somehow reverse the process of entropy in the world, so what does this mean? God delivers us from evil by virtue of his noumenal nature. Everything that exists, exists both in the phenomenal realm and in the noumenal realm. Our phenomenal selves will vanish, as indeed will the whole phenomenal realm. Our noumenal selves, on the other hand, are eternal and can never perish. We ‘hope’ (see above) that our experiences in the phenomenal realm will be eternally preserved in the noumenal world. We hope that ‘we’ will be so preserved. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com. Previous Next Share Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Click here. Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, September Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to the Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back The Things We Believe David Cowles Jul 3, 2025 “Many of the things we think of as ‘obvious’ are simply matters of habit, testimonies to…our lack of imagination.” We believe the most outrageous things. I don’t know if ‘believe’ even applies. According to many philosophers, belief begins with doubt and the things I’m talking about admit no doubt. These are things we just assume, things we simply take for granted, things that ‘ must be exactly as they are’. For example, did you hear the one about the Universe? It came to be without cause, and it will cease to be without effect. (I like to lead with this one; it’s a real knee slapper.) It is 14 billion years old (10^10), 100 billion light years across (10^11), with a ‘normal life expectancy’ of 100 billion years (10^11). It consists of a trillion galaxies (10^12), averaging 100 billion stars each (10^11). It is expanding everywhere, but not uniformly: Locally, a one meter length (10^0) expands by the width of one atom each year (10^-11 meters). But at the cosmic horizon, the Universe is racing out of view at the speed of light (10^15 meters/year) - a spread of 26 orders of magnitude. And beyond the cosmic horizon, the unseen Universe is expanding at a rate of speed even greater than light. Yet the rate of acceleration is incredibly gradual: 10^-11 meters per year per year. Everything in the Universe is ‘moving’ at a uniform rate of speed, ‘c’, the speed of light, which means that everything is also ‘at rest’. Massless particles, like photons, move through space only; they are everywhere all at once all the time. Massive particles at rest move only through time. Like me during football season, they remain in one place indefinitely…but age nonetheless. Massive particles in motion move through space and time according to a ratio established by Heisenberg. That is why bodies in motion (you) age slowly relative to bodies at rest (me). The three spatial dimensions are isomorphic, but one second of time = 300,000,000 meters. Plus time is ‘rotated’ by √-1 relative to space. One year = 10^16 meters, the equivalent of 500 trips to Pluto and back. Busy, busy...but just think of the ‘Miles’ you’re accumulating. How about Life? Earth is one unremarkable planet orbiting one unremarkable star in one unremarkable galaxy. Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago and conditions became compatible for life as we know it about 4.2 billion years ago. Living organisms first emerged about 4.0 billion years ago. Today, there is hardly a place on or near the surface of the planet that is not teeming with living organisms: from the top of Mt. Everest (5 miles > sea level) to the bottom of the Mariana Trench (7 miles < sea level), in glacial ice, on desert sand, and at the rims of active volcanoes. Or the one about Cause & Effect? The causal effects of an event diffuse through spacetime according to a smooth function (like the inverse square law). Everything is everywhere all at once, but the intensity of presence varies, often enormously, from region to region. Every event has a unique 4-d heat map. A butterfly may flap its wings in Borneo and a tornado may touch down in Chicago…or not. How about Mathematics? Every quantity (size, distance, count) can be represented by a point on a continuum known as the Real Number Line (the Set of Real Numbers). The order of events in some operations is irrelevant: x + y = y + x, so adding y units to x is the same as adding x units to y. Likewise, the order of certain operations is irrelevant: e.g. (x + y) + z = x + (y + z). Or Topology (Geometry)? The world may be modeled as a hierarchy of sets that can embed one another, overlap one another, touch one another…or not. Every set has subsets, and every set may be a subset of another set, but no set may be a subset of itself. If B is a subset of A, A cannot be a subset of B. If B and C are subsets of A, then B must be ≤ A and C must be ≤ A and B+C must be ≤ AI. Every flat surface (plane) is two sided (obverse/reverse) and splits the Universe (3d) into two non-contiguous regions. Since there are an infinite number of planes in a 3d Universe, no two regions can be contiguous. Every curved surface (spheroid) divides the Universe into two non-intersecting regions (inside/outside). Since there are an infinite number of spherical spaces in a 3d Universe, no two regions of space can be contiguous. Now before I spoil the fun and give you the punch lines, let’s take a moment to celebrate what we’ve accomplished . After all, it’s taken us more than 10,000 years to get where we are today. Polymath Roger Penrose has dubbed this period, “The Road to Reality.” What can we say about this cosmic quilt that we’ve managed to stitch together from various absurdly shaped patches of mismatched cloth? We can say that it provides an astoundingly functional model of reality, one that has enabled us to decode the human genome, to send satellites into space, and to glimpse even the oldest stars and galaxies as they first formed. We can also say that this highly functional model is almost entirely unrelated to reality. Almost. The world we know and sometimes love can be thought of as an n-1 dimensional slice of an n-dimensional block. Everything noted above is an abstraction from, or a special case of, the actual ‘real world’. As much as this ‘standard model’ of reality has enabled phenomenal practical achievements, it has also led to some conclusions that are plainly inconsistent with the world we know. For example, it fails to account properly either for ‘motion’ or for ‘recursion’. It cannot explain how an arrow released from a taut bow string can travel many meters to hit a distant target. It allows a lumbering tortoise to beat fleet footed Achilles in a road race. It cannot account for the fact that two events, separated in space and/or time, may nonetheless influence one another. Plus it fails to account for good ole Karma – when what goes around comes around - or for the equal and opposite ‘reaction’ that accompanies every ‘action’ (Newton). In other words, it accounts for almost nothing important…and yet it works beautifully for everything else. To bastardize a line from Wittgenstein, it surely is important nonsense . Of course, we have devised ‘work arounds’ ( aka hacks) to get us past these shortcomings. One such hack, for example, is calculus. It was ‘invented’ by Newton and Leibniz to put Zeno in his place : it failed, but the collateral by-products are amazing. When you join your fellow ‘space colonists’ on Europa, be sure to thank Sir Isaac and Herr Gottfried. Calculus supports the illusion of continuity where there is none and it allows us to navigate across spacetime as though it were continuous, but it tells us squat about how the universe is actually structured. But I promised you punch lines…so here we go! The phenomenal world appears to be continuous…but it’s not! The actual world is quantized into Planck size bubbles, known by Iron Chefs everywhere as ‘quantum foam’. The phenomenal world is an n-1 dimensional surface of n-dimensional reality. Spacetime is not substructural; it is an emergent property of the Cosmos. Spacetime is a lattice on which events are positioned according to how they relate to one another across various parameters. We model these relationships using manufactured concepts like ‘sequence’ and ‘proximity’. Because spacetime is epiphenomenal ‘scale’ is also a secondary category. The true deep structure of Cosmos is fractal . The Universe is self-similar - always, everywhere, and across all scales. According to Penrose, the structure of the cosmos is conformal , i.e. angles (relationships) are conserved; size, duration, distance, scale and mass (weight) are not: “At the foundation is relationship” (Martin Buber); ontogenesis occurs when potential entities co-actualize by “granting (each other) reck”. (Anaximander via Heidegger) “In the beginning was the Logos …” (John 1: 1) “All things came to be through him ( Logos ) and without him nothing that came to be came to be.” (John 1: 3a) You live in a glass house…no, not that kind of glass house! You live in a Hall of Mirrors – an array, hexagonal at a minimum, of mutually reflecting mirrors. One image repeats indefinitely in every direction. Pretty cool, huh? “What came to be through him ( Logos ) was life.” (John 1: 3b - 4) Therefore, “the hills are alive” ( Sound of Music ), as is the Earth (Gaia), as is the Cosmos. (Teilhard de Chardin, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ ) Biologists and science fiction writers notwithstanding, as far as we know , life has evolved only once and only here on Earth. It is possible that something recognizable as ‘life’ may have emerged elsewhere in the Universe, but we have no evidence to support such a conjecture . Every living organism we know of is descended from one, single, 4 billion year old primordial organism. “Thank you,” doesn’t seem to cover it. Re our butterfly, yes, it may (or may not) flap its wings and, yes, a tornado may (or may not) touch down. If the butterfly flaps and a tornado touches, we may say that the one caused the other. Likewise, if there is no flap and no tornado, we may say that the butterfly’s restraint saved Chicago’s Loop. But it is just as likely that a flap prevented a tornado or that a lack of flapping made the ‘Windy City’ windier. Post hoc ergo propter hoc : something happened (or not), then something else happened (or not). That’s all there is to the tyrannical principle of cause and effect . Everything is the cause of everything else and therefore nothing is the cause of anything. Causality itself is an imaginary category of explanation. Order is a function of correlation, not causation. The process of correlation is inertial; there is an innate tendency of patterns to repeat. Ergo, fractals. The Set of Real Numbers is infinitely large…yet it excludes far more than it includes. For example, it has no room for infinite, or infinitesimal, quantities. But we need those quantities to make math (e.g. calculus) work. We need to make room in our model for ‘unreal numbers’ (e.g. hyperreal and p-adic numbers). Fun fact, there are an infinite number of hyperreal infinitesimals between the smallest possible positive real number and zero. P-adic numbers represent quantities on a logarithmic scale but the larger the quantity represented, the closer the numeral is to zero: ¼ > ½. Re alleged ‘operational symmetry’, we know that reality is not agnostic when it comes to sequence. Everyone (over the age of 2) knows that adding more to less is different from, and usually better than, adding less to more. And as far as the order of operations is concerned, do you wish to be cremated before or after death? The ‘standard model’ of reality assumes that quantity is always conserved. Again, what we assume to be incontrovertible need not be so. Quantitative relationships (measurements) need not recapitulate topological relations (sets). In our A, B, C example (above), if B and C are both subsets of A, then as long as they do not intersect, B and/or C may be greater than A, and/or B+C may be greater than A. In fact, both B and C may have positive ‘real number’ volumes while the volume of A may be infinitesimal. We imagine (above) that we live in a 360° world; we imagine it even though we know it’s not true! Consider an electron, or a proton, or any other massive particle; they live in a world where symmetry requires at least 720° of space. Photons do live in a 360° world, but gravitons need only 180° to exhibit symmetry. We imagine we live in a world whose topology (geometry) is ‘orientable’. Process is vectored. Things have beginnings and ends; and so they do… sometimes. But, as above, our ‘orientable universe’ is an n-1 dimensional surface of a ‘non-orientable’ n-dimensional actual world. The Universe is an n-dimensional correlate of a Mobius Strip. Locally, the strip consists of segments that are straight, flat and two-sided; globally, the strip is circular, twisted, and one-sided. As with calculus, we can treat any smoothly curving surface as if it were a sequence of linear tangents; but that doesn’t make it so! So yes, we do take a lot of things for granted. And that’s just fine for getting us from point A to point B. ‘Reality’, as we know it, is essentially a hack. It works! But it tells us next to nothing about the world that underlies it. Our phenomenal world is like a well-defined crouton floating on top of a bowl of French Onion soup. When we look beneath the ‘solid surface’ we find a much more loosely ordered Cosmos (broth) capable of supporting many alternatively structured phenomenal worlds. Bottom line: many of the things we think of as ‘obvious’ are simply matters of habit, testimonies to intellectual sloth and/or to our lack of imagination. Determining the absolutely rock bottom conditions necessary to support a real Universe is the eternal task of metaphysicians. May the Force be with you ! *** Josef Albers, German, 1888–1976. Homage to the Square series, 1950–1976. Oil on Masonite. Various dimensions. Albers’ Homage to the Square mirrors the essay’s exploration of perception and reality by using precise, repetitive forms to reveal how context transforms experience and meaning. 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 Slime! David Cowles Feb 14, 2026 “We’ve come a long way, baby! From little less than angels we have been reduced to little more than bacteria.” It all began with the whales, humpback whales, during the Summers of Love (1967 – 1970). Somebody noticed the gorgeous melodies coming from this species of sea mammal… and recorded them. Whale-song quickly became a chart topper. I mean, what else are you going to listen to, midday in your darkened flat, smoking ‘weed’ with friends? It’s either Led Zeppelin or it’s the whales. (This was the ‘60s after all!) Next question : Why? Why do whales sing? Why do their melodies co-evolve over time? Are they communicating? Communication requires information and intent, a function of mind. Perhaps whales are not mindless automata after all. Perhaps they have their own language, their own topics of conversation, their own minds . Et viola , a few tokes and the entire fabric of the biosphere is unravelling like Laertes’ shroud. If whales are conscious, what about dolphins? And the race is on! Jane adds gorillas to the mix and therefore bonobos, chimpanzees, and other primates. Homophiles quickly move in to limit the damage: “Primates and sea mammals only!” But then along comes octopus, parrots and crows. Surely then, we can agree, “Animals only! I mean, they’ve got to have a brain, a central nervous system, right?” Apparently not. Soon symptoms of consciousness were noted in trees, forests, and the Wood Wide Web (fungi). And what about our single celled cousins? There is no containing this tidal wave. And how about me? (A question that is always appropriate!) Am I one conscious organism, made up of dozens of conscious organs, made up of 30 trillion conscious cells? We’ve come a long way, baby! From ‘little less than angels’ (Heb. 2: 7, Psalms 8: 5) we have been reduced to ‘little more than bacteria’. Now, thanks to Ancestary.com , you can add another member to your cognitive family tree. You should be so proud! Turns out you are 2nd cousin, once removed, to…wait for it…Slime Mold! “Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Cousin Slime.” – St. Francis (2025 update) A recent article in Knowable Magazine (2/11/2026) spells it out: “Some slime molds of the species Physarum Polycephalum consist of one giant, pulsating cell that keeps changing shape as it moves around and branches out to access food and avoid unpleasant things like salt or light. “But it took a 2010 experiment led by Japanese biologist Toshiyuki Nakagaki of Hokkaido University to reveal the depths of its sophistication. When Nakagaki placed the oat flakes that Physarum likes in a pattern mimicking the cities surrounding Tokyo, the slime mold’s branches almost exactly reproduced the efficient transport connections between them that humans had taken years to develop.” Wait up! You’re telling me that a unicellular, brainless mold solved the Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP)? And in hours, not decades? Apparently so…with caveats. Slime doesn’t care about precision. It cares about utility. Therefore, it shoots for the quickest possible solution within a functionally acceptable range of accuracy (91% - 96%). This range is a great example of natural selection at work. Accuracy contributes selective advantage; but so does efficiency. Evolution ensures that Slime Mold achieves an optimum balance between the two values. (Note: There may be more than one set of optimum values; the set of all optimum values is called a Pareto Frontier .) Survival is a function of task achievement (food) and energy conservation (rest). Did I get enough food? Ok, but did I expend too much energy getting it? Oops! Natural selection also ‘considers’ a third variable, flexibility, i.e. future adaptability. A perfect solution that is too precious can leave the organism defenseless in the event of a shift in the environment; and since such change is an eventual certainty, inflexible solutions are dead ends, emphasis on dead . Slime’s 4% - 9% ‘wiggle room’ allows it to arrive at a functional solution within a practical time frame (a few hours). Wiggle room also makes the slime’s solution more flexible and therefore more adaptable to changes in underlying conditions. Example : Suppose Tokyo decided to close a station, a supercomputer (like the Concorde TSP Solver) would have to start from scratch; Slime Mold might not need to make any adjustment at all (to remain within the 91% fault tolerance), but if it did, it would require minimal time and energy. Slime builds on past experience; computers cannot, they have no past. So all and all, how do our two heavy weight champions stack up? In one corner we have the Concorde supercomputer (or its equivalent); in the other, we have a unicellular organism known as Slime Mold. Should be a doozy! Haven’t seen a battle like this since a tortoise challenged the great Achilles to a road race. Nakagaki tested Slime Mold against a supercomputer based on the 25 nodes (stations) that constitute the Tokyo area railway system. Both were asked to optimize routes for several different variables simultaneously, understanding that there could be more than one ‘right answer’ along a Pareto Frontier. Note : There are 10^32 possible solutions. So, how’d our champs make out? The ‘Concorde’ solved the problem in several hours with 100% accuracy. Bully! The Slime Mold solved the problem in the same (or less) time but achieved only 91% – 96% accuracy. By design! Because it is more fault tolerant, mold came up with attractive solutions (i.e. points on or near the Pareto Frontier) that the computer had to rule out. So? A draw? Not even close. It’s a knockout! And the winner is… But first…back to Tokyo: Over the next, say, 100 years, how many times will there be changes, temporary or permanent, to the railway network: stations closed, stations opened, lines extended? Plus short term reroutes to accommodate construction and repairs. Ok, but we need our solution to work 24/7/365. Slime Mold will adjust to each of these changes in a matter of minutes; Concorde will need the full several hours, each time . Eventually, the wasted energy cost will swamp any gain in accuracy. Slime builds on the past; Concorde has intelligence…but Slime Mold has wisdom. The supercomputer is never a viable long term strategy, at least not in a world with finite energy resources. Stick with it only if you’re satisfied with an answer that is static and therefore correct ‘only for one time and for one place’ (Eliot). But if you want a solution that will perform long term under real world conditions, Go Slime! Does Slime Mold seem strange to you? Well, did you know, you were once slime? No, I’m not referring to our species’ evolutionary past. I’m talking about you ! When you were in school, there were always a few kids who lived to study and weren’t satisfied with anything less than 100% on every test, right? Slime-like, tell me if I’m wrong, you estimated that you could test in the 85% to 90% range, good enough to satisfy the ‘rents’, and study only half as long…leaving more time for important things…like play . Plus your strategy gave you the flexibility to modify your schedule in special circumstances (e.g. final exam week). “To Karen Alim, a theoretical physicist starting a postdoctoral project at Harvard University at the time… the flow of fluid can be a way of transmitting information…in Physarum , a creature that appears able to learn, remember and make decisions — all without a brain. “Though Physarum is a single cell, the large body it forms can often be easily seen by the naked eye, growing to more than a foot in diameter under favorable conditions. It looks like a central blob from which a network of vein-like tubes emanates — larger tubes, then smaller tubes that fan out from them. Inside those tubes, cytoplasmic fluid is rhythmically flowing back and forth… “Alim, who now works at the Technical University of Munich in Germany, figured out that encounters with food lead to an increase in local fluid flow within the tubes. This exerts greater shear force on the tube walls. The walls in that region grow thinner, allowing the tubes to expand. “The opposite happens when Physarum encounters something awful like salt or light that it wants to get away from. In response to a repellent, the tube walls stiffen and contract, which redirects fluid flow elsewhere. “More recently, Alim and colleagues discovered just what creates a tube network as efficient as Tokyo’s transport links. It ties into something crucial about the fluid flow in Physarum’s body: Tube walls respond to changes in flow with some delay. First the flow increases. Then, slightly later, the tube expands in response, causing the flow to decrease. This causes the tube to shrink, again with some delay. “The result, Alim found, is that the best-positioned tubes will grow larger and larger and receive more and more flow, while others will fade away — and hence, over time, a super-efficient network of links will form. “Put another way, Alim adds, you could say that the shape of the network (and its underlying fluid flow dynamics) helps Physarum to remember. Appropriately sizing its branches in accordance with food sources it has encountered recently makes for a simple but effective way to recall where food can be found…contraction patterns may persist and store information similar to the way waves of activity in our brain can store information. “Slime molds can learn about each other: They are sensitive to aspects of each other’s behavior. They will approach others that have access to food, and avoid (burdening) ones that are starving or stressed…they also prefer to approach young individuals… But intriguingly, when they go through dormancy, or fuse with a younger individual, it’s as if they’re young again.” Perhaps we have a thing or two to learn from our slimy cousins! *** Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s Vertumnus (1591) portrays the Roman god of seasonal change as a human portrait composed entirely of fruits, vegetables, flowers, and leaves, symbolizing the unity between human identity and plant life. By constructing a recognizable human face from botanical elements, Arcimboldo expresses the idea that humans are formed from and sustained by nature’s cycles of growth and transformation. The painting also served as an allegorical portrait of Emperor Rudolf II, suggesting his power was aligned with natural order, abundance, and the forces that govern life itself. 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 R U Happy? David Cowles Jun 22, 2026 “Being something is always a matter of make-believe…There is no difference between being and pretending to be.” 1350 words, 5 minute read “So, Mr. Smith, are you happy in your Job?” Happy enough, yes. “Are you happy in your marriage?” Absolutely! “Are you happy at home?” Hey, what is this? “I’m just trying to determine whether or not you’re happy.” Then why not just ask me? Of course I’m not happy! As Shakespeare knew only too well, life is a series of transparent roles. Roles follow one another sequentially and roles are embedded in one another hierarchically. Each role is a 2 dimensional representation of 4 dimensional reality. Stacking roles atop one another, like transparent slides on an ancient overhead projector, adds a 3 rd dimension…but we’re still one dimension short of a World. These roles are… roles . They are what we are pretending to be since being some thing (or some one ) is always a matter of make-believe. One Halloween a young grandson was wearing a Captain America costume. Innocently, I asked, “Are you going as Captain America this year?” He was justly insulted, “I am Captain America!” Bingo! He had reminded me that there is no difference between being and pretending . How do such genius children tolerate their dull adult caregivers? You are neither something nor (same thing) someone. You are who you are after all your roles are stripped away. You are who you are when you are no longer anyone . You are ‘the you’ that is not some thing, or some one, the you that is no thing and no one. Following a pattern found in several Native American languages, you might be called, He who Puts on Roles . Importantly, and with a grudging nod to Bertrand Russell , ‘putting on roles’ is not itself a role . You may or may not be happy in your roles. You are slightly more likely to be happy than not since you made choices that pointed you in these directions…but then again, things change, don’t they? You married for love. That launched your marriage in a positive direction. But not every ship reaches Troy! A doctoral dissertation could be written on who’s happy in what roles…and who’s not…and why. This does not concern us here. If we accept that someone may or may not be more or less happy in some particular role, then from there it’s just a matter of doing the math. How come? Because a role is not an organism; it’s en soi , not pour soi (Sartre). A role can be reduced to an algorithm; it can be measured, quantified, and represented (via code or map). Therefore questions of happiness are decidable . You are not a role, you are not an algorithm. You cannot be reduced to a sum of elements. You are always undecidable! Being happy in a role is a matter of fit, of being comfortable. But ‘being happy’ without reference to any role is another matter altogether. Are you happy just being ? Not being X, just being ? My gut reaction is, “You can’t be!” But we’ll explore that hypothesis, and possible exceptions, below. You can’t be, because your existence is in every important respect, and to every measurable degree, an accident . The world could easily close up around you and still be a world…as it was before you were born and as it will be after you die – different, maybe, but still the world . But where does that leave you? You are infinitesimal, you are de trop ! (w – є) = w and (w + є) = w but (w – є) ≠ (w + є). You can never fit! You are the miscut jigsaw piece. You are the ‘one too many’ at the end of a rough night. You can never be comfortable in life the way you may be in a relationship (e.g. a marriage) or an undertaking (e.g. a job). In fact ‘not fitting’ is who you are. All the same, we’d prefer to fit. It would be so much more comfortable ! But then we’d have no excuse for existential angst, would we? You are poised on the very razor’s edge of Being. You exist. But your being adds nothing to Being. Being is, whether you are or not. What could be worse? Too big for oblivion but not big enough to make a difference. In Gregory Bateson’s terminology, you are a difference that makes no difference. You are the point at which all differences vanish in pure subjectivity, i.e. absolute freedom (Sartre). You are the event horizon of your own personal black hole. You are, but you add nothing to what is. Is this not the worst of all possible worlds, to be neither something nor nothing. Every day you frantically engage in activities that seem to have important consequences, and they do…inside a bubble. Outside that bubble, however, they are of no consequence at all. You are like a child blowing the most intricate and beautiful bubbles, only to have them evaporate in thin air leaving no trace of identity, quality, or pattern…just generic soap film. What had been soap was always soap and still is soap today. Shapes and patterns are de trop . To be happy, a person needs to be content with who she is (or was or is becoming), i.e. comfortable in her own skin. It is my contention that no one who is aware of their true existential situation (above) can possibly be happy because no one can ever be comfortable. Those who say they are fall into one of the following categories: (1) They do not understand the question. (2) They are deceived. They genuinely mistake the roles they play for who they are. (3) They are lying… o to meet the expectations of their interlocutors. o to spare the feelings of loved ones. o to protect their image of themselves. o to avoid being objects of pity. But I did admit (above) that there might be some exceptions to this generalization. If so, those exceptions will not be found in the realm of roles or in an index of identities. Someone could only be happy if something/one relates to them as they relate to their roles. I am a salesman; I sell things. Or I am a barber, a pipe fitter, a lover, an acrobat, a friend, etc. These are my roles, historical, current, or potential. We have established that I can be happy in terms of one or more of my roles but not be happy per se . But what if an entity exists that can be happy in terms of me as I am happy in terms of the personae (roles) I assume. Just as I transcend my roles even as I am immanent in them, such an entity would transcend me while being intimate with me. What sort of entity might that be? Am I talking about God? Well, yes, God would certainly qualify. But so would any ‘higher power’ or anyone for that matter, even you dear reader, as long as they transcend me even as they are immanent. What our poets call ‘love’ is really a relationship of mutual transcendence between two immanent beings. I transcend you as you transcend me. We are each other’s higher power. In the context of love, my roles vanish and my self expands. I no longer live for me but for us. I am not happy unless we are happy but if we are, I am. I would like to take credit for this idea, but that honor goes to the grandfather of Western philosophy, Anaximander of Miletus, 6 th century BCE. As far as we know, he was the first to suggest that ontogenesis is a function of mutual recognition and respect, i.e. granting reck. I am because you are. I can love because I am loved. I am happy loving and being loved or I am not happy at all. 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 Greenland II David Cowles Apr 24, 2025 “Right now, Russia and China control 52% of the shipping lanes in the Arctic Ocean…the US just 6%...” Americans love success…or so we’re told. Actually, there’s plenty of evidence to the contrary. We hate the 1%ers, even as we idolize them. We excoriate ‘the old white men’ who expanded the continental US from Plymouth Rock to Alcatraz and from the Rio Grande to the Arctic Shoreline. Of course the culture of those times tolerated the worst forms of racism, exploitation, and ‘ethnic cleansing’. Don’t white wash that! But just as poorly as these expansionist administrations scored on human rights , they scored just that well on business acumen . Today, we have an opportunity to do something new. We can make strategic deals, and we can protect and even enhance human rights in the process. We no longer live in an age of ‘either/or’; this is the era of ‘both/and’ and for the sake of all parties concerned we need to take advantage of the opportunity this provides. In the meantime, let’s review some past transactions for guidance: Louisiana Purchase (1803) Purchased from France for $15 million (about $340 million in 2024 dollars) Covers all or part of 15 states Fiercely opposed by the Federalist Party (Washington, Adams, Hamilton): Unconstitutional (the President has no authority to acquire new territory) Too expensive ($15 million was 30% of the 1803 Federal budget) A threat to the party’s political power Incorporates more French and Spanish speakers into our population. Whatever you may think of the Federalists’ motives, their arguments were not factually wrong. But imagine how different world history might have been if their narrow mindedness had prevailed! Florida (1819) Acquired from Spain through the Adams-Onís Treaty Cost: $5 million (about $115 million in 2024 dollars) Today, Florida's real estate alone is valued at over $1.5 trillion Mexican Cession (1848) Result of the Mexican-American War Cost: $18 million (about $650 million in 2024 dollars) Spans California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming Today, California’s real estate alone is valued at approximately $7 trillion Gadsden Purchase (1853) Acquired from Mexico for $10 million (about $330 million in 2024 dollars) Includes southern Arizona and parts of New Mexico Opposed by politicians from Northern states: Too much to pay for “worthless desert land” Might strengthen the political power of the Southern (slave) states Gadsen’s opponents succeeded in scuttling a proposed $50 million deal for a much larger block of land. Alaska (1867) “Seward’s Folly”, purchased from Russia for $7.2 million ($140 million in 2024 dollars) Too much to pay for “frozen, worthless wilderness”. And now there’s Greenland (2025), a vast land mass rich in natural resources, strategically positioned to benefit from the New Northwest Passage across the Arctic Ocean, and vital to the defense of North America in the age of ICBMs. A European colony at least since 1721, Greenland is not likely to emerge from Danish custody anytime soon, despite a robust national independence movement. No surprise! It was the Europeans who first introduced the Western world to the phenomenon of colonization; and how did that work out? And what about the Greenlanders themselves? The 90% indigenous (Inuit) population ‘enjoys’ a median household income about half that of the Danes and Americans fighting over it. And what do these Greenlanders want? First, let me be clear: none of my best friends are Greenlanders. So far as I know, I’ve never even met a Greenlander! (I did have dinner once with the commander of NATO forces in Greenland but he, of course, was Danish.) But that won’t stop me from speculating, will it? (Hint: it never does.) I can do that because I’m willing to assume that Greenlanders want what almost everyone else on Planet Earth seems to want, the nationalist Trifecta: Cultural Identity Political Independence Economic Prosperity If I’m wrong, I apologize. But if I’m right, the way forward consists of three ‘simple’ steps: Political Independence from Denmark An economic and strategic ‘special relationship’ with the Unites States The option to choose Commonwealth Status or Statehood when and if desired Of course, it goes without saying that the Greenlanders themselves will be driving this bus every step of the way. For our part, the US would make a binding and verifiable commitment to preserving and strengthening the indigenous Inuit culture and its dominant language (West Greenlandic). We would extend our ‘iron dome’ strategic umbrella over the island, and we would take immediate steps to bring Greenlanders’ standard of living up to North American norms. This last step would be achieved primarily through massive investments in mining, manufacturing, and tourism (‘luxury’ as well as ‘eco’ - I hope I’ll be able to travel to Nuuk to see the ribbon cut at a new Four Seasons hotel and resort). However, realistically, there would probably need to be some initial investment of public funds toward ‘income support’ – not a big deal considering it includes fewer than 60,000 inhabitants, about the same size as Grand Forks, North Dakota. Unfortunately, the ‘forces of reaction’ in the US are at least as strong now as they were in 1803, 1853, and 1867. As a result, it is uncertain whether these steps will be undertaken any time soon. So what if they aren’t? Right now, Russia and China control 52% of the shipping lanes in the Arctic Ocean; Canada controls 23%, Denmark 17%, and the US just 6%...an intolerable situation. Given these strategic considerations, we must ask, “Who are those in the US who oppose closer ties with Greenland?” The answer’s easy: progressive politicians, university academics, members of media editorial boards, late night talk show hosts, and Hollywood A-Listers. Which begs the question, “Why?” Perhaps reason #1 is Donald Trump. He favors it so it must be bad. But this is a misreading of history. In 1940 FDR defended Greenland against Nazi Denmark and in 1943, in the midst of a war in Europe and the Pacific, he diverted resources to build the giant Thule Air Force Base there. Nor is the incorporation of Greenland a Trump idea. It was first proposed by Harry Truman (1946), a Democrat, who offered the Danes $100,000,000 in Gold for the island. (That’s 1.5 Billion 2025 dollars, 100% of Greenland’s current annual GDP.) Denmark should have taken the deal! Today, it is costing the Danish government more than half a billion dollars a year to prop-up Greenland’s political and economic regime. So if you take Trump-phobia off the table, anti-Greenlanders need to ask themselves which of the following reasons account for their opposition: We are willing to strengthen Russia and China at the expense of American interests We should direct all available resources to fund the progressive social agenda We already have too many non-English speaking people in the US Greenland could become the first US state with a majority non-white population We don’t like cold weather…and nobody else should either All of the above. **** Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.