< Back Harvard/Stanford David Cowles Apr 22, 2025 “There’s a reason why lawyers often tell their clients not to testify in court; frequently, such witnesses end up hanging themselves.” You don’t have to be a MAGA Republican to realize that something is terribly wrong with the academic establishment in the United States. In ‘my day’ almost everyone aspired to be a college graduate. Not everyone succeeded but most at least paid homage to the goal. Not so today! When a 14 year old grandchild recently announced, “And I am not going to college,” barely an eyebrow was raised. Today, everyone knows that there are multiple paths to a fulfilling life and not all of those paths run through ivy. It was a bit eye-catching, however, when a major international defense contractor, Palantir Tech, announced that it was offering prospective employees a $100,000 signing bonus if they promised not to go to college. Stunning! Clearly, our universities have long since abandoned their mission of educating Americans to live meaningful, examined, and productive lives. Today, major universities have become gigantic money mills, insatiably fueled by confiscatory tuition, crippling student debt, misguided donations, and government grants. Case in point: over a decade ago we learned that now Senator Elizabeth Warren had been paid a $300,000 annual salary by Harvard University…to teach a single class. Who says teachers are underpaid? In lieu of fulfilling their educational mission, our institutions of higher learning are now focused on so-called ‘research’. Some of that research is no doubt meaningful and promises to deliver benefits in the medium-to-long term. Universities should be free to pursue their research without government interference. (Exception: when national security is involved.) The problem comes when they expect us to pay for that research without our having any control or any ownership interest in the results! The reaction of academia to the Trump administration’s efforts to rebalance this equation tells us everything we need to know. There’s a reason why lawyers often tell their clients not to testify in court; frequently, such witnesses end up hanging themselves. And so… Lawrence Summers , the former Treasury secretary and former president of Harvard, and ironically, ‘one of the good guys’: “Removal of Harvard’s 501(c)(3) status, which won’t happen because we are a nation of laws, would, if it did happen, devastate progress in medical and scientific research, the maintenance of American and Western values, opportunity for the next generation of Americans and an important magnet for the United States in the world.” Universities value their ‘academic freedom’ and rightly so but that does not mean that they are entitled to tax payer financing. Currently, the federal government subsidizes unregulated university activity in three ways: Direct grants Lost tax revenue on tax deductible donations The cost of publicly financed tuitions, aka Student Loans, that enable universities to squeeze more money out of their customers (students) than would be possible in a free market. This state-of-affairs is nothing short of a human rights violation…on two scores: The diversion of public funds for private purposes over which the government has no control is a form of taxation without representation. Didn’t we fight a war over that? Perhaps as much as 40% of income tax revenue comes from households with annual incomes less than $250,000. Using those receipts to bail out cash rich universities amounts to a massive income redistribution scheme that further benefits the already more fortunate. In terms Robin Hood would relate to, we are robbing the lower middle class and giving the proceeds to the upper middle class. Is it time to fire up The Hague? As troubling as all this is, the self-important arrogance and sense of entitlement displayed by spokespersons for university interests is even more dazzling. According to Larry Summers (above), the withdrawal of public financing from private institutions would… “ Devastate progress in medical and scientific research (Undermine) American and Western values (Compromise) opportunity for the next generation of Americans (Sacrifice) an important magnet for the United States in the world.” Really, Larry? That’s all? And BTW, re #4 , whatever happened to ‘Truth, Justice, and the American Way’? Guess that went out of vogue after the ‘50s. The icing on this cake came in a letter of support for Harvard University from the President and the Provost of its west coast academic rival, Stanford. “America’s universities are a source of great national strength, creating knowledge and driving innovation and economic growth… This strength has been built on government investment but not government control. The Supreme Court recognized this years ago when it articulated the essential freedoms of universities under the First Amendment as the ability to determine who gets to teach, what is taught, how it is taught, and who is admitted to study.” Wow! Would you send your child to be taught by these geniuses? Yes, universities are entitled to First Amendment protections. But did the Supreme Court also state that they are entitled to tax payer funding? I think not! I attended college in the turbulent ‘60s. Among my professors were men (sic) of genius and integrity like John Rawls, Willard van Orman Quine, Hilary Putnam, and H. Stuart Hughes. Today apparently, anyone can say anything, no matter how foolish, and be taken seriously, so long as they have the proper initials after their name. One more time: “America’s universities are a source of great national strength, creating knowledge and driving innovation and economic growth… This strength has been built on government investment but not government control.” Let’s unpack: First, if America’s universities really are a source of ‘great national strength, creating knowledge and driving innovation and economic growth’, then they should do just fine…without public financing. Second, “government investment but not government control” is a politically attractive way of saying, “free money, taken from the less fortunate and given to the more fortunate, with no strings attached”. Civics 101 : There is no such thing as ‘government investment’; there is only ‘taxpayer investment’ but that investment takes two forms: (1) actual taxes paid, (2) inflated prices driven up by government borrowing to fund deficit spending. The taxpayer pays twice and gets nothing back except a promissory note: “We’ll educate your children, provided they are in the most gifted 5% and can come up with at least $250,000 in non-deductible tuition.” How generous! Criticizing the American economic system is a favorite pastime of “writers and critics who prophesize with your pen” (Bob Dylan). But there is no injustice in that system greater than forced taxpayer funding of elite private institutions. Image: René Magritte’s 1929 oil painting The Treachery of Images is housed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Los Angeles. 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.

Rev. Dr. Anne-Louise Critchlow has been a teacher of English Literature, a church pastoral worker, and a chaplain in France, North Africa, Manchester, and Bristol (UK). She is married with four children and thirteen grandchildren. She now works southwest of England as a chaplain. < Back Rev. Dr. Anne-Louise Critchlow Contributor Rev. Dr. Anne-Louise Critchlow has been a teacher of English Literature, a church pastoral worker, and a chaplain in France, North Africa, Manchester, and Bristol (UK). She is married with four children and thirteen grandchildren. She now works southwest of England as a chaplain. Being a Faith Chaplain in a Secular World

< Back Causes of the Civil War “Chaos is not an absence of causality, as is generally supposed, but an excess.” David Cowles When I was a bit younger, it was almost guaranteed that any major high school exam covering American History would include the question, “What were the causes of the American Civil War?” In those days, if you wrote “Slavery” across your exam paper, handed it in and headed for the beach, you probably weren’t going to get college credit for your efforts. Today…? But the question is a good one for several reasons: It concerns something we still care about. It allows for weighted consideration of economy, technology, ideology and culture. It encourages the precocious student to reflect on the nature of causality per se , especially in the context of historical process. The American Civil War did not spring unheralded from the head of Medusa but neither did it evolve with billiard-like efficiency. Two hours into exam time, you think, “Everything caused the Civil War…and nothing caused it,” and now you’re on to something! Now you’ve earned that college credit. Marxists call this ‘over-determination’ – events are the intersections of multiple causal chains. Like peaks and troughs on the screen of an oscillator, some waves reinforce, others dampen, and some cancel. You are face to face with the ‘3 Body Problem’, dumbed down for us social science majors. On one hand, history is not magic. It does not rely on spells and incantations; nor does wishing make things so, not even “when you wish upon a star,” Pinocchio. On the other hand, spells and incantations need to be studied as phenomena in their own right and the wishes of various population groups can be a powerful historical force. Yup, it’s the 3 Body Problem, for sure. Everything interacts with everything else. We understand each interaction on its own, but we are flummoxed by the search for an overarching algorithm. For all our erudition, we are ultimately forced to conclude that anything could have happened…and been explained in terms of everything else. This leads to an odd cognitive state in which we can predict nothing…but explain everything. The eyes in back of my head see 20/20; my other eyes…not so much. The 2024 US Presidential election is a case in point. Long expected to be the ‘closest race ever’, it wasn’t close at all. But no one knew that 5 days before. Sure, some may have guessed right, but guessing is not knowing…even if you think it is. It’s impossible to know the future; that’s what makes it future . So no one knew ! No one, that is, except a certain woman in Iowa. She had been polling Iowans for decades and had a reputation for uncanny accuracy. Iowa was not even one of the so-called Battleground States . It was Trump +8% in 2016 and in 2020 and in most 2024 polls. Suddenly, on the weekend before the election, pollster Ann Selzer announced in the Des Moines Register that she had detected a major groundswell of support for Harris: Iowa was now Harris +3%. If that had happened in Iowa, TV networks would have been able to call the nationwide race for Harris by 10PM EST. Suffice to say, they didn’t! The Harris-Walz Wave turned out to be a trough. Iowa ended up Trump +13%. Selzer was off by a whopping 16%. How’s that for a margin of error? The first polls close in some states at 7PM EST. We were on the edge of our seats. If the Selzer Effect were real, it would be evident in the first returns from Indiana and Kentucky. Could one person be so right and everyone else so wrong? 7:05, 7:20, 7:35 – nothing unexpected in the data! No sign of any last minute migration from Trump to Harris…because there wasn’t one. But if there had been such a shift, would that have meant that Selzer was ‘right’? Not necessarily. A broken clock displays the exact time…twice a day; but referring to those moments, we don’t say ‘the clock was right’. A football co-captain calls, “Tails” and it is tails! But we don’t say that the captain ‘got it right’. Being right is more than just being correct. Right is anchored in reason. Why did you think what you thought and was that reasoning valid and/or supported by the relevant evidence? Back to Iowa. Had it gone Harris’ way, folks would have said that Selzer was right. But note, it’s the same Selzer. The outcome , unrelated to her work, just happened to be different. Now libraries are filling up with articles explaining Trump’s triumph; but no one was prepared to publish such a column on the Monday before. The fact is, we are always flying blind into an unknown and undetermined future; looking back, ‘it was always obvious all along’. But to whom? God? Or not even? Science has a name for this state of affairs; it’s called Kaos (chaos)! Chaos is not an absence of causality, as is generally supposed, but an excess . Our Civil War exam taker figured it out: if everything causes everything else then nothing causes anything! Anything overdetermined is everything undetermined, and by the exact same amount. Yet events do not seem entirely random either. They relate to one another but not in mutually reinforcing causal waves. But what’s the alternative? Short of pure mysticism, how else can we account for the regularities of experience? Every event is an expression of the entire Universe. It is a synthesis of what has been and what is coming to be. The event itself samples and weights everything that is and projects it forward into what is to become. Every event is a dissipative membrane, templating settled matters of fact with pure possibility. Events live in the space between what has passed away and what may yet come to pass. The event itself includes no past or future but the event swims in a sea of time. ‘Event’ then is what we mean by ‘Present’. As such every event must begin by executing judgment on the world it inherits (the past). To act as judge, our event must include elements of a different ontological order. We can only judge the contingent from the perspective of the necessary, the actual from the perspective of the ideal. This realization was Plato’s greatest gift to Western philosophy, and it is what connects Plato to Nietzsche , strange bedfellows indeed. A box of Cracker Jacks cannot execute judgment on a Beethoven symphony. Judgment must be from the transcendent perspective of eternal and universal values (e.g. Beauty, Truth, Justice). Only ‘what is not of this world’ can judge ‘what is of this world’. Jesus nailed it during his brief interview with Pontius Pilate: “My kingdom is not of this world…the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the Truth.” (John 18: 36 – 37) Scripture doesn’t give Pilate his due. He was no slouch. He answered Jesus in his best Oxbridge accent: “What is truth?” thereby earning himself posthumous degrees emeritus from 3 Ivy League colleges. The creative advance is always fueled by the desire for Good. “I set before you life and death; therefore choose life.” (Deut. 30: 19) However, we live in an alienated, entropic, post-utopian world. Our goals are pure, but our pursuit of those goals may not be. We do not always follow through on our good intentions. Because of this, there’s often “a slip ‘twixt cup and lip.” In other words, we can’t get out of our own way. Accordingly, as we pursue our initial objective, we entertain new objectives along the way. We get distracted. “What I wish to do, I do not do; what I hate, I do.” (Romans 7: 19) Our beautiful sweater ends up more like a bundle of yarn. And so the academic discipline known as History is born. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at dtc@gc3incorporated.com . Return to Yuletide 2024 Previous Next

< Back Jesus Meets Mister Spock Fr. Timothy Joyce, OSB, STL Science and Religion should assist each other in pursuing the truth. Science can be too closed to the life of the spirit, the mind, imagination, thought, and creativity. Religion can be closed to anything new that threatens its perception of reality. I am still surprised when I hear people express their belief that the Catholic Church is opposed to science. The story of Galileo Galilei (1564- 1642) is a shocking one to many people, who deduct that the church has always been and continues to be against science. There are, indeed, some Christians who oppose science but not the Catholic Church. Pope John Paul II apologized for the church’s treatment of Galileo in 2000. Earlier than that, he spoke often of the importance of science. Did you know that it was a Catholic priest who uncovered the theory of the hot Big Bang story? The Church sponsors conferences on science and religion. The Vatican has its own observatory in the hills outside Rome. In our country, there has been a growing anti-intellectualism and an increasing suspicion or even rejection of science. We live in an age when people think they can make up their own facts. Truth is not important. Some people, including politicians, reject truths they do not like and make up their own facts. Subjective belief in making my own truth is openly expressed. This is sad for the fabric of our society. Maybe the Church has, in the past, demanded we accept too many doubtful truths, but today it upholds the truth and upholds science. Of course, you wouldn’t always know this if you listen to some local homilies and talks. The teaching of the Vatican is not gotten down to all our parishes. Science and Religion should assist each other in pursuing the truth. Science can be too closed to the life of the spirit, the mind, imagination, thought, and creativity. Religion can be closed to anything new that threatens its perception of reality. Science can document the what and the how of our universe, but Religion struggles to define the why of it all. Both may be tentative in some areas at times as new discoveries and insights develop. So, we need to keep studying, listening, learning. Saint Thomas Aquinas said that if we wish to know God, we should study the world. The Psalms already preached this, “The heavens proclaim the glory of God, and the firmament shows forth the work of God’s hands.” (Ps. 19:2) And Saint Paul wrote to the Romans, “What can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world God’s eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made.” (Romans, 1:19-20) Monastic Scribe XXVI: April 29, 2022 Thanks to science, we now know so much more about this world than we have ever known before. The vastness and intricacies of the cosmos just blows our mind. And all adds to the majesty and beauty of God. Our God is a great Mystery and calls us into a life beyond what we can imagine. But we have to adjust some of our old images. The universe was not created in six days, but has been evolving for almost fourteen billion years. The three tier universe which is the base of the world view in the Bible now cedes to vast, uncountable galaxies. All of this challenges us to reimagine, much more meaningfully, the beginning of humankind, Adam and Eve, original sin, the Creator God, the incarnational God of Jesus Christ, the life giving Holy Spirit, as well as pain, suffering and the problem of evil. There is nothing to fear here. Our faith, seeking understanding, is deeper and more ennobled than we could have imagined. A deeper faith leads to a deeper hope and a deeper love, as we are overcome with awe and beauty at God’s creation. Evolution is not a theory but the way that God, since the beginning, has been creating and continues to create. We are called to take part in that evolutionary creation. Evolution means God is a God of the future, a God of promises. We believe in this God, and therein is our hope, no matter how bad things seem in our world. Not just the earth, but the entire cosmos, is God’s creation and our concern. The “new cosmology” or simply “the new story” is the tale of an expanding universe, always in motion, growing, incalculably vast. A century ago, we thought our Milky Way was the only galaxy, but now we know there are billions of galaxies. Black holes and black energy are the latest mysteries of this story. And we are part of this story. Our bodies are made of the very stardust that is found in all creation. Quantum mechanics shows us how everything and everyone is connected. It shows us how we can touch each other from a distance. I am not a scientist and certainly not a mathematician. I don’t comprehend all the details, nor can I differentiate all the categories of subatomic matter. But I don’t have to understand the details. I rely on scientists to explain things. But my view (my philosophy) of the cosmos, which comes from religion, adds meaning to all of this. I have enjoyed reading Teilhard de Chardin, Thomas Berry, John Haught, Ilia Delio, Elizabeth Johnson, Laurie Brink and others to get a better picture of what Monastic Scribe XXVI: April 29, 2022, this beautiful cosmos is all about. I recommend these authors to you. I urge all my readers not to be afraid of science, but to embrace it and open your mind to a fuller comprehension of what God does for us. It will also give deeper incentive to work on climate change and care of the environment. We are creating with God, but often have been destroying creation. Is this new for you? Is it exciting for you? You can let me know at: joycet@glastonburyabbey.org. Republished with minimal edits and permission rom glastonburyabbey.org. Fr. Timothy Joyce, OSB, STL continues his regular blog, “ Monastic Scribe ”, where he reflects on "what I may have learned from all these years and what I am still trying to learn." Fr. Timothy notes, “I do not speak on behalf of Glastonbury Abbey, the Archdiocese of Boston or the Catholic Church, though I hope my faith is in harmony with all these. Any error in judgment should be credited to me and not anyone else.” Image: Leonard Nimoy as Spock, holding a model of the USS Enterprise , in a publicity photograph for Star Trek: The Original Series. Full caption and source here . Previous Next

< Back May Day David Cowles Apr 26, 2022 A survey of Western traditions suggests that May Day might once have been the most important day of the year. That’s right, May Day! This day links pagan fertility rites, mythology, cosmology, Christian theology, and Marxist ideology. Quite a feat! Or is it? May Day is coming! (Did I hear you say, “So what?") A survey of Western traditions suggests that May Day might once have been the most important day of the year. That’s right, May Day! This day links pagan fertility rites, mythology, cosmology, Christian theology, and Marxist ideology. Quite a feat! Or is it? It is a common concern with economic justice that ties these May Day traditions together. May Day is a celebration of natural law, a fundamental ordering principle in the universe that underlies astronomical phenomena, natural processes, cultural expression, and ethical behavior. Pagan May Day celebrations included many of the traditions we now associate with Christmas and Halloween. In pagan lore, the evenings of April 30 and October 31 are special times because that is when the spirit world comes closest to our physical world. On those two eves, it is as though a ‘portal’ opens that allows direct communication between the two realms. Many of the activities that we now associate with October 31 were once also associated with April 30: bonfires, wild merry-making, and trick-or-treating, for example. Robert Graves ( The White Goddess ) wrote: “Christmas was merry in the Middle Ages, but May Day was still merrier.” The symbol of May Day, pagan and Christian, is the maypole. Very roughly, maypoles are to May Day what Christmas trees are to Christmas. Trees are powerful symbols and important examples of the fertility of the earth and the maypole’s phallic shape connects human sexuality and reproduction with the more general fertility theme that trees represent. In Norse mythology, a single tree, Yggdrasil, structures the entire cosmos. The maypole symbolizes Yggdrasil, the mythological backbone of the world. In Tudor England, it was customary for people to spend May Day eve making love in the fields to promote the fertility of the land. Children conceived on such occasions were known as ‘merry-be-gots’. Beyond mythology, the Maypole also expresses an important astronomical concept. Early on, humans discovered that the periods of the earth’s rotation and revolution were trivial compared to a cycle known as the Precession of the Equinox. The maypole symbolizes axis mundi , the earth’s axis, whose ‘wobble’ defines this 26,000 year cycle. Along with fertility, mythology, and cosmology, ancient May Day traditions share themes related to social and economic justice. It is here, of course, that ancient May Day rites intersect with later-day Christian and Marxist celebrations. In 1891, the Second Congress of the Second International designated May 1st as the day dedicated to the celebration of work and the worker. In the Roman Catholic Church, the month of May is dedicated to Mary, the mother of Jesus. In 1955, Pope Pius XII also designated May 1st as the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker, underscoring, yet again, May Day’s economic import. Thoughts While Shaving is published on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Subscribe to the newsletter in the form below nd never miss another Thought! 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 Parlement of Paris and You David Cowles Apr 10, 2025 “(The Parlements) functioned as a prototype for what became the independent judiciary and the federal court system in America.” A lot of ink has been spilled on matters relating to the executive and legislative functions of government. In fact, however, it is often the judicial function that drives the bus. Am I speaking of 20th/21st century America? How about medieval France? (Where else? When else?) During France’s ‘Golden Age’ (1226 – 1338) a series of three major and three minor monarchs undertook a series of initiatives that could only be described in hindsight as ‘proto-democratic’. It all began with Louis IX, ‘St. Louis’ to you. He laid the groundwork for two institutions, each with the prospect of curbing, or at least channeling, the power of the monarchy. What politician today would admit their need for outside ‘civilian counsel’ or advocate for independent ‘judicial oversight’ of executive actions? French kings in the Golden Age did just that! Louis’ son and immediate successor, Philip III, oversaw the first formal convocation (1278) of the Parlement (Paris), an institution spun off from the much older Curia Regis (King’s Council, 1st millennium CE). A Parlement , not to be confused with a ‘parliament’, was a sovereign court with sweeping constitutional prerogatives: Registration of royal edicts, required before a law could take effect within the region of the court’s jurisdiction, The final court-of-appeals for all matters under its purview, A guardian of and advocate for… the ‘fundamental laws of the kingdom’ (i.e. the foundational constitutional principles), regional prerogatives and interests, the interests of ‘the nation’ as opposed to those of any one class, caste, region, or ‘estate’. These prerogatives effectively extend to the French people many of the rights and protections constitutionally guaranteed to the American people. I have in mind especially, but not exclusively, the 4th, 5th, 9th, 10th and 14th amendments. Over time, the power of the parlements evolved to the point where they could indefinitely delay, and so effectively kill, any royal edict. The flood of lawsuits and injunctions restraining sitting Presidents of both political parties in 21st century America is a reprise of the Parlement s' role. 25 years further on, Philip the Fair convened the first session of the Estates General, a deliberative body designed to represent and protect the interests of the Clergy, the Nobility, and ‘enfranchised’ Citizens. The Estates was a consultative body, not a legislature; it advised the monarch on aspects of public policy. Its authority rested solely on the benevolence of the ruler and the sagacity of the guidance offered. The Estates General met 60 times during the 14th century, but only spasmodically thereafter until its eventual dissolution in 1790. Ultimately, the pseudo-democratic Revolution of 1789 abolished the functionally democratic institutions of the Ancient Regime, including the powerful parlements and the much weaker Estates General. Presumably, the will and interests of the French people were better represented under the National Convention, the Reign of Terror, the Directory, the Consulate and the Empire. How did that work out for the half million French killed by political violence from 1789 – 1803 or the one million French who lost their lives in ultimately fruitless foreign military adventures between 1803 and 1815. It was quite a quarter century! Compare that with the fewer than 500 executions that took place during France’s ‘Golden Age’. According to Prof. Claude (Anthropic): “The nature of medieval governance, while certainly capable of brutality, generally didn't facilitate mass political repression on the scale seen in later centuries.” So if you measure the effectiveness of a political regime by its annualized death toll, French Democracy out performs the Ancient Regime by four orders of magnitude. I love the smell of gunpowder and dried blood in the morning! Progress, ain’t it grand? Comparing the Parlement s with the Estates General: The Parlement s were permanent judicial bodies, while the Estates General was an irregular assembly called at the discretion of the king and usually in times of crisis (e.g. the Hundred Years War). The Parlement s of Paris played a pivotal role in forcing the monarchy to convene the Estates General, the first stage in the unfolding of the Revolution, when it ruled (1788) that only the Estates General could approve new taxes. Both shared a common fate at the hands of the Revolutionaries. But this article is entitled The Parlement of Paris and You . So far, we’ve heard a lot about the parlements but precious little about the ‘you’. Do you live in the United States? Then you live in a country whose constitutional development reflects contributions from England’s constitutional monarchy, from France’s Ancient Regime, and from the first green shoots of revolutionary ideology prior to the Storming of the Bastille (1789). The structure of America's bicameral legislature is often seen as a reflection of the French Estates. I’ve made the comparison myself . The connection is not altogether invalid but it is certainly weak. For example, the U.S. Congress was intended to be the apex of political power, sharply contrasting with the much weaker Estates General. Under the U.S. Constitution of 1789, the Congress does have a similar advisory role vis-a-vis the Executive. For example, the Senate gives ‘Advice and Consent’ on certain Presidential appointments. But the key word here is Consent . The Senate can withhold its consent, thereby annulling the President’s appointment. The Estates General did not have that kind of power, at least not before 1788…or after 1790. The U.S. Senate can even remove the President from office for high crimes and misdemeanors. Imagine if Philip’s nascent Estates had attempted to remove him, or any of his successors, from office; it would likely not have ended well. Even the Estates General of 1788 did not claim the power to depose. Nor did any of the parlement s (to the best of my knowledge) but they did have the power to do what is effectively the same thing: nullify royal decrees. In that sense they functioned as a prototype for what became the independent judiciary and the federal courts (SCOTUS) in America. *** The Crucifixion of the Parlement of Paris is a religious painting on wood by an unknown French master active between 1428 and 1450 in Tournai and Amiens. Created circa 1452, the work is part of the collection of the Louvre Museum and is currently housed in its Department of Paintings. 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 Happy New Year! David Cowles Jan 3, 2023 “You share 99.9% of my DNA! How scary is that?” 2022! I mean ‘23’. I’ve just started to get used to writing ‘2022’ on everything, and now I have to start all over again. Will this ever end? Actually, yes, it will and sooner than we let ourselves think; but in spite of that, all of us at ATM/TWS wish you and your loved ones a joyful and meaningful new year. New Year is also a time to look back… six months… or 1.5 billion years. On 6/1/2022, Issue #1 of Aletheia Today Magazine (ATM) ‘hit the streets’ (metaphorically speaking), supplemented of course by twice weekly issues of Thoughts While Shaving (TWS). In June 2022, we welcomed 450 people to our new site. Thank you for getting us off to a good start. Now fast forward to December 2022, six months later: 2,000 of you did us the honor of spending time on our site. That’s a month-over-month (MoM) growth rate of 30% per month. Better than Apple, Amazon, and Alphabet combined! That makes Aletheia the 4th ‘A’. You exceeded our expectations. (We were only looking for 20% MoM, but you came through for us.) Now we’re already halfway to our first anniversary goal of 4,000 engagements per month. Again, thank you, and thanks as well to the 20 or so independent authors who contributed material in 2022. We couldn’t have done this without you! Now let’s look longer term, 1.5 billion years ago to be exact. Meet our common ancestor, Cell Zero , the greatest grandparent ever. So what! 1.5 billion years is a long time and Cell Zero doesn’t even send me a card for my birthday anymore; I’m done with Cell Zero thank you very much. Done, not done. I might be done with Cell Zero per se , but Cell Zero isn’t done with me – not by a long shot! Are you alive and living on Planet Earth? Then you too are descended from Cell Zero ; Howdy, cousin! Yup, that’s right, we’re cousins ‘several times removed’. Scripture suggests that we are all neighbors, and it isn’t much of a leap to focus the concept of ‘neighbor’ down to ‘cousin’. Are you reading this from a hut in the Amazon Rainforest, or are you our one subscriber from Tibet who lives alone on a mountainside but faithfully reads every issue? No matter, we’re cousins. We are all ‘cousins’; we all share a common ancestor and I’m not just talking about Uncle Adam and Aunt Eve. I’m talking about one solitary single celled organism that ‘sprang to life’ about 1.5 billion years ago? “That’s what I’m talkin’ about, Willis.” But that raises an issue. All life on earth is descended from this one cell. All life! Crocodiles, cockroaches, coral and crackheads (I don’t mean drug users, I mean methane breathing organisms that hang out ominously at the mouths of hot water cracks in the ocean floor, plotting the overthrow of our oxygen-based ecosystem.) So if all terrestrial life forms are descended from this one cell, then I must be cousins with every member of every species on the planet. Biogenesis: it’s a great thing but as far as we can tell, it happened once and only once on Earth. Every living thing is a product of this one event. Of course, something similar may have occurred elsewhere in the universe, but as far as Planet Earth is concerned, it’s one and done. So let’s meet our cousins; we don’t need to go far. What you call ‘your body’ is made up of about three billion ‘cousins’ – i.e., cells - nature’s version of ‘cousins by the dozens’. Once you’ve properly greeted all three billion of them, we’ll take this body for a walk, across the grass , under the shade trees lining the roadway. We’ll enjoy the fragrance wafting from Mrs. Bellamy’s wildflowers and listen to the parliament of birds : owls, crows, songsters. But steer clear of the black cat crossing the road in front of you and give the neighbors’ barking dog a wide berth. They are all your cousins; cherish them. We are all cousins because we’re all descended from a single organism. As a result, like cousins everywhere, we share DNA. No surprise there…but we share more DNA than you might think. Take a look at the chart below. It tells how much DNA we have in common with various other lifeforms, excuse me, I mean with our various cousins: For years people have told you that you were going bananas . You sloughed it off, but it turns out they were half right. In fact, you’re a lot like a lot of things you don’t seem to be like at all. A virus, a blade of grass, a dandelion, come on…and a pig! What, me bacon? You have 98.5% of your DNA in common with other ‘higher’ primates. Heck, you share 99.9% of your DNA with me, or to put it less comfortably, you share 99.9% of my DNA! How scary is that ? This discussion puts a whole new spin on the lawyer’s question to Jesus: “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus gave what he thought was a scandalous answer: A lousy, filthy, stinking Samaritan. He could have said, “A fruit fly,” but that might have led to ‘premature crucifixion’. Like all of us, Jesus had to pick his spots. Thanks for reading, thanks for writing; I look forward to spending 2023 with all of you and, once again, Happy New Year! 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 Fifth Grade Slump, Eighth Grade Cliff “We must surrender the notion that adolescence is a dress rehearsal for adulthood. It’s not; it’s real life! David Cowles If you are a regular reader of Aletheia Today , you know that I am not a fan of childhood. Children, Si! Childhood, Non! Recent studies of tweens/teens have reinforced my thinking. For me, 1960 was a watershed year. I entered as a 12 year old (7th grade) trolling near the bottom of my class. and left at age 13 (8th grade) newly engaged in the enterprise of life. What happened in the middle of that fateful year, I would describe as my ‘discovery of agency’. Like most children, I chafed at the impotence of childhood and literally dreamed of making an impact in the adult world. In 1960, I found my first ‘real’, if minimal, outlets. Politics was my game. At age 9, I rang neighbors’ doorbells and asked them to vote for Ike; then I stood at a local polling station, unauthorized by any campaign, handing out election day fliers for candidates I’d barely heard of. In answer to your question, yes, I had some sense of how ridiculous I was…but that was not enough for me to curtail my activities. Better ridiculous than impotent! My thirst to play an adult role, to impact however slightly the course of history, was just too strong. 1960 was the year things changed. I got appointed by the Johnson for President organization as an official ‘volunteer campaign worker’ for Boston. More impressively, I managed to get myself named co-chair of Youth for Saltonstall (a U.S. Senator) for my ward. Finally, I was making a mark, however trivial, on the ‘real’ (i.e. adult) world. Ok, I was an odd duck…and I knew it. But it didn’t matter. That fall, I bought time on a broadcast radio station to promote my (unsuccessful, wonder why?) campaign for Class President and I was in the audience of a controversial nighttime radio talk show. Finally! Only much later did I discover that I was not alone. Apparently, most 8th graders yearn for adult status, respect, and real world relevance. Our greatest fear? You guessed it – being patronized by adults. Over the past couple of decades neuroscience has dramatically changed our understanding of the structural and functional changes in the brain during adolescence. Studies emphasize adolescents' concern with status and respect, their evolving sense of self in relation to the wider world, and their need to contribute to society, i.e. to have a purpose. Being told that they are ‘in training for adulthood, still at least a decade away’, is uniquely unhelpful. You’ve lived 10 – 12 years and now, just as you’re discovering your need for independence and your hunger for purpose, you’re told that you must wait another 10 – 12 years. I don’t think so! Is it any wonder that teenagers engage in risky, almost nihilistic, behavior? Put yourself in their shoes! Wait, you have been in their shoes? Oh, yeah, I forgot! So you have… and how did you survive? Unscathed? Recall the story of Jacob in Genesis . He is forced to work 14 years for his father-in-law-to-be, Laban, before marrying the spouse of his choice and gaining full economic independence. If you were fortunate enough to be ‘churched’, I’ll bet you were outraged by this story. Well, consider this: You are Jacob! We are all Jacob. We all face an enforced, involuntary, 12+ year incubation period between childhood and adulthood. “We are Spartacus.” Scarry! How did we get ourselves into this pickle? Evolution has designed our bodies to mature in the 12 to 15 year old window. And for many millennia society recognized this fact. This is the window for Bas-Mitzvah and Bat-Mitzvah, it is the time of the sweat lodges. Malatesta (c. 1450 CE) entered the army as an officer at age 13, working his way up to commander-in-chief at 15. And don’t get me started on Joan of Arc. Today, when adolescents are untimely forced to play adult roles, the results are usually less heroic: trafficked slaves, exploited workers, child soldiers. In the later half of the 1960’s I lived in a community that had hit upon a unique, if imperfect, solution. The ‘children’ were infantilized through the age of 15 but on their 16th birthdays – exactly – everything changed. Yesterday, you were treated like an 8 year old; today you’re like a 24 year old. In this subculture, you were effectively emancipated at 16. You were instantly free to drop out of school, get a permanent, full time job, rent an apartment, drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes, drive a car, own a gun, engage in sex, and (soon) join the army. Not all these behaviors were strictly legal, but they were the cultural norm in that enclave. It wasn’t ideal but it wasn’t a total disaster either! For better or for worse though, this system was already crumbling when I left in the early ‘70s. For decades much of the research on adolescence focused on its dark side. Not surprisingly, it often brings alarming increases in rates of accident, suicide, homicide, depression, alcohol and substance abuse, violence, recklessness, eating disorders, obesity and sexually transmitted disease. But a different interpretation of adolescence is possible. Neuroscientists have shown that puberty ushers in a period of exuberant neuronal growth followed by a pruning of neural connections that is second only to the similar process that occurs in the first three years of life. Adult brains vary in their patterns of neural connections, whereas children's variations are much less distinctive. Differentiated patterns of connection begin in adolescence. This is when you become thee and I become me . No wonder children have an easier time making new friends than adults do. All eight-year-olds are the same; they are virtually interchangeable. But no two 88-year-olds have have anything in common. From an evolutionary perspective, much of adolescents' behavior pushes them to leave the safety of family to explore the larger social world—a step on the way to becoming independent adults. Biblically speaking, we are all Abram, we are all Ruth, we are all Mary, we are all John. But we don’t live in Biblical times. Still, research shows that modern adolescents retain a need to contribute to society and that doing so makes them feel valued and can safeguard against anxiety and depression. Learning how to contribute to the social world is Job One for the adolescent. As I found, it is the time when young people first become capable of making consequential contributions. Unfortunately, we’re not buying what they’re selling. We cling to a vision of adolescence as a kind of unpleasant apprenticeship for adulthood. As guardians of our young people, we are concerned with their educational achievement, career preparation, etc. These are not, instinctively, the priority concerns of most teenagers. Are you familiar with ‘the fifth grade slump’ or ‘the eighth grade cliff’? Disengagement with education starts slowly c. age 10 with a dip in grades and participation. This often accelerates so that those same students are failing three years later. We’re not entirely insensitive to the problem. We’ve given our teens a few secondary outlets. For example, we allow them to participate in the school play, to play sports on the school’s teams, to hold down a part-job, to volunteer in the community. These outlets may be helpful, they may release some steam from the pressure cooker, but do not lose sight of the fact that these are merely an extension of the childhood concept of ‘play’. These ‘make-do’ activities cannot compete with stealing a car or selling dope on the corner. They also cannot compete with more constructive achievements: a published poem, a play performed off, off, off Broadway, a movement started, a business founded, etc. So, what to do? First, beginning by 5th grade, if not earlier, all education needs to be self-directed, managed by a tutor, assisted by a personal AI Bot. Our schools must become ‘centers of learning’-- Wonder Schools . Children have questions. It’s part of their existential condition. Let them ask. See where they lead. Provide resources for kids who decide they need to learn French, or Trig, along the way…but don’t require it. Remind me, what’s a ‘secant’ anyway? Second, we must search for ways that adolescents can make genuine marks on the world. Lord knows, as a society, we have a lot of needs and, if we’re honest, many of them can be met just fine by an empowered 15 year old. Call it building the City of Dioce ( Ecbatan ) or the Kingdom of God, tweens and teens have tons to contribute. We need to facilitate their contribution, empower them, and step aside. But first, we must surrender the notion that adolescence is a dress rehearsal for adulthood. It’s not; it’s real life! David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at dtc@gc3incorporated.com Return to Table of Contents Previous Next

< Back The Big Bang David Cowles Mar 28, 2023 “We imagine Big Bang as though someone switched on a torch in the middle of a dark room; but of course, there is no flashlight, there is no room.” “Daddy, when was the Big Bang?” “About 14 billion years ago.” That was surprisingly easy, wasn’t it? Thank goodness Junior didn’t ask, “Why is the sky blue?” or “Where do babies come from?” Surprisingly easy – or should we say, ‘deceptively easy’? Something just doesn’t feel quite right, does it? So let’s dig a little deeper. (“Sorry, Junior, Daddy can’t play right now; he has to think about the Big Bang.”) We live in time. We count forwards and backwards. We can keep counting back until we get to zero, et voilà , Big Bang. But all this is from the perspective of here and now. What if we look at the same problem from the perspective of the Big Bang itself? That’s going to be a problem. Time originates with Big Bang. Time is a function of Big Bang. Next time Junior asks his fateful question, just say, “Big Bang is not a function of time.” See how easy that was? (Hopefully, Junior has a degree in Mathematics.) It is tempting to think of a universe before Big Bang, a void, chaos, negative vacuum pressure, whatever. We imagine Big Bang as though ‘someone’ (sic) switched on a torch in the middle of a dark room; but of course, there is no flashlight, there is no room. The ‘moment of the Big Bang’ is not a ‘moment’ at all. Big Bang is the origin of moments. Ultimately, it is ‘the set of all moments’; but it is not itself a moment. Those who advocate for a divine role in creation frequently ask, “Why did the Big Bang happen when it did?” The answer’s easy: “It didn’t happen!” In the ‘60s we were fond of saying, “Whatever happens happens.” Like any stopped clock, we were right – this time! All ‘happening’ takes place in time. The set of all ‘happenings’ is time-bound; each ‘happening’ is time-dependent. The Big Bang is not a ‘happening’ so it didn’t ‘happen’! (The ‘60s were good for something, after all.) But that doesn’t make Big Bang any less real. Big Bang doesn’t happen, it just is . Apparently, there is more to being than spatiotemporal happening. Big Bang is real, it ‘exists’; but it exists outside of space and time. The implications of this simple realization are literally ‘astronomical’. The premise of ‘bootstrapping’, the notion that Universe is causa sui , is defeated. Cause is a temporal concept; the idea itself presupposes sequence ( aka time). Universe has no cause. It just is. A cause is necessarily distinct from its effect. But nothing is distinct from Universe; it is, by definition, every thing. This is not a tepid rehash of Aristotle’s failed notion of an infinite universe. Infinite time is still time. We are proposing a Universe that exists outside of time entirely. Note : Initially, I wrote, ‘a Universe whose origin lies outside of time’; that’s wrong! It’s not the origin of Universe that is outside of time; it’s the Universe itself! While the constituents of Universe are time-bound, Universe itself is not. Surprisingly perhaps, this meditation has nothing to do with God or Creation. Those are other matters for other days. All we can say about Universe right now is, “It is! It just is.” We imagine that the primary function of intelligence is to discover what’s true; alternatively, the primary function could be to identify what’s false. We’re talking The Iconoclasm of Everyday Life (lie quiet, Freud) here. Peel away the layers of the onion. Break the first six seals ( Book of Revelation ); only then can you discover what the 7 th seal conceals . A major, if unstated, goal of 20 th Century physics was to develop ontological/cosmological models that do not require the existence (or agency) of ‘God’. Without prejudicing in any way the final answer to the God Question , we can say without qualification that these efforts failed. Every theory of cosmogenesis , to the extent that it masquerades as ontogenesis , is ultimately doomed to fail. Genesis offers a theory of cosmogenesis; it also falls short! It posits a state before fiat lux : “the earth was without form or shape, with darkness over the abyss and a mighty wind sweeping over the waters.” But of course, there can’t be anything before fiat lux . We can allow Genesis some poetic license here, but Roman Catholic doctrine has explicitly glossed this text to emphasize the fact that absolutely nothing existed prior to Creation ( creatio ex nihilo ). “It is! It just is.” Who thought this…before us? Oh yeah, the father of Western philosophy thought it. Parmenides believed this about Being (which he called Aletheia or Truth): “…what-is is not-generated and imperishable…whole, single-limbed, steadfast, and complete, nor was it once, nor will it be, since it is, now, all together, one, continuous… Thus, coming-to-be is extinguished and perishing, not to be heard of… And what need could have impelled it to grow later or sooner, if it began from nothing?” In a way Parmenides could never possibly have imagined, the detection of CMB in 1964 finally validated his 2500 hundred-year-old hypothesis. Speaking colloquially, it ‘proved the reality of eternity’. Of course, in our era, the concept of ‘eternity’ is fraught. Best think of it as a-temporality, the absence of time. Then we can say without reservation that spacetime is a subset of eternity, a ‘special case’. Eternity is not the sum of all events; it is the precondition of events per se . “No eternity, No time!” Thanks for this, Big Bang! 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< Back Janis Joplin and Robert Frost David Cowles Jun 12, 2025 “The relationship between Freedom and Value is complex…and remains unresolved.” Robert Frost is a B-list poet. He’s an American icon who spoke at JFK’s inauguration, but he is not normally included in the Pantheon . There’s no shame in that. As a D-lister myself, I am in awe of Frost; but the A-List is hard to crack. Among Anglophone poets alone, you’re competing with Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Yeats, Hopkins, Eliot, Dylan and Dylan. That said, Frost’s The Road Not Taken is one of the most important poems ever written in any language. It touches on themes ranging from Quantum Mechanics to Human Psychology…and unifies them. It addresses issues like teleology vs. causality and free will vs. determinism. “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose,” is one of Janice Joplin’s most quoted lyrics. In context ( Me and Bobby McGee ), Janice may be referring to the fact that one is ‘free’ when one is no longer tethered to a significant other. But her meme suggests a much larger philosophical question: What is the relationship between Freedom and Value? Perhaps Janice is channeling Nietzsche : “…One belongs to the whole, one is in the whole – there exists nothing which could judge, measure, compare, condemn our being, for that would be to judge, measure, compare, condemn the whole… But nothing exists apart from the whole!” ( Twilight of the Idols ) Nietzsche recognized that the concept of Value requires a hierarchical model of Being – an idea he abhorred. So, intellectually honest to a fault, he rejected the concept of Value outright. Choice presupposes ‘evaluation’ and e valu ation implies Value . Merely random selection is not choice ! So per Nietzsche, Freedom and Value are mutually exclusive. According to Ole Nietzsch’, we are ‘free to choose’ precisely to the extent that we understand that Choice is a meaningless concept. (He prefers Fate .) Choices, to the extent they are motivated, are not ‘choices’ at all. Or rather, they are not our choices; they are choices the Universe makes for us . That’s what ‘motivation’ is – cosmic concerns impinging on one’s personal, amoral agenda. My parents tried to ‘motivate’ me to do better in school. I had other things in mind for my precious 10 th year of life. Doing well in school was their concern, not mine, but I was the one who experienced the motivation . All motivation is extrinsic; it’s one way I feel the presence of ‘(the) other(s)’ in my life. It is the underside of my Subjective Aim , i.e. what I wish to be - for me. The distinction is subtle, but real, and crucial. Motivation is passive (‘I am motivated’) vs. ‘I aim’. I become is passive. What I ‘become’ is logically prior to the ‘me’ who becomes it. I inherit what I become. One becomes an astronaut; one does not become an artist, an inventor, an entrepreneur. ‘I come to be’ is active; I am logically prior. I create what it is that I come to be. Janice offers a kinder, gentler version of Nietzsche. She does not deny the existence of real Value, far from it, but she sees pursuit of value as a voluntary sacrifice of freedom. It’s a trade-off. For Nietzsche, ‘Doing Good’ is simply an illusion; for Joplin on the other hand, Doing Good is good , but ultimately, it’s also suicidal. I become less so that others may become more; like Jesus, we sacrifice ourselves for others: “Greater love hath no man (sic) than this: that he lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15: 13) “Unless a seed falls to the ground and dies, it remains a kernel. But if it dies it bears much fruit.” (John 12: 24) At the other end of the spectrum, Nietzsche’s contemporary, Pope Leo XIII, came to the precisely opposite conclusion: Freedom and Value are inseparable. According to Leo, one is free only when, and to the extent that, one maximizes value. Leo argues, convincingly, that no ‘sane’ person would ever choose less value over more unless she were constrained to do so. I am in a bar with a tall pour of scotch in front of me. I know that my ‘best’ choice is to leave the scotch unsipped and walk home; but I drink it anyway. I am constrained or motivated by my alcoholism to choose the lesser value, immediate gratification, over the greater value, good health. Leo is normally thought of as the anti-Marx …and not without reason; but perhaps he should also be known as the anti-Nietzsch’ . Between Nietzsche and Leo, but perpendicular to the almost Christian Joplin, we find Existentialism (e.g. Sartre): by the act of choosing we assign value. We can map these disparate views as follows: Sartre ∕ ∖ Nietz Leo ∖ ∕ Joplin We do not choose in consideration of inherent value; we create value when we choose: “Ye are gods !” (Psalm 82: 6) Well, actually, ‘Ye are Frosts’! We make choices, often willingly, sometimes enthusiastically, even though there are no objective criteria guiding those choices, but once made, those choices become moral imperatives. They thereby acquire value. We make life changing decisions in the same way spectacle-rich New Yorkers decide which MLB, NFL, NBA and NHL teams to root for, subjectively, arbitrarily. We live in New England. Some of us have never been West of the Mississippi (heck, some of us haven’t been West of the Hudson – our insularity can be a source of pride). Yet we love the Cowboys and hate the Raiders… We can introduce conflict when none exists…and we can become passionate about it. Let’s drop in on Frost during his famous ‘walk in the woods’: “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood…long I stood and looked down one as far as I could…then took the other just as fair…Both that morning equally lay…I kept the first for another day…I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” The poem is deceptive. So much so that it is almost universally misunderstood. Like an all-pro NFL running back, it feints right before it cuts hard, to the left. Frost is confronted with a binary choice. Either choice will lead him equally well to his destination, so his choice has no extrinsic consequences. The only consequence is intrinsic: his experience of the journey itself. And about this he can only conjecture; he had no actual information. He is flying blind. I have to fly…to Seattle. I am weighing two alternatives. I can fly coach, change planes in Philly and reach my destination in 10 hours for $500. Or I can fly direct to Seattle, business class, in just 6 hours for $1,000; both get me to my destination in plenty of time for my meetings the next day. My decision has no extrinsic consequence; but the intrinsic consequences are significant. Objectively speaking, Frost’s ‘choice’ is not a choice at all. Either way, he will reach his destination, and his choice is not informed by any useful information about either of the two alternative paths: “both that morning equally lay.” Frost’s choice, no matter how he dresses it up, is effectively a coin toss; but there’s no ego reward in that. So, he creates his own rationale to justify his choice and reinforce his precious self-image. Frost imagines himself an explorer, an adventurer, a taker-of-risk and so he paints his groundless decision in just those colors. Doing so, he guarantees himself a smug and self-satisfied old age. According to the Dogma of 20 th century Existentialism, the greatest sin, the sin against the Holy Spirit, the sin that cannot be forgiven, is the sin of ‘bad faith’. We are guilty of bad faith whenever… (1) we act, but do not accept responsibility for our actions, or (2) we act, and pretend, to ourselves and others, that our actions are motivated by objective considerations rather than subjective preferences. But the case of Frost v Frost presents us with an unusual twist. Does Frost ‘pretend’ to himself and others that his actions are extrinsically motivated? The answer is: Yes! “I shall be telling this with a sigh…I took the one less traveled by.” But Frost is fully aware of what he’s doing; he calls himself out! So is he guilty of bad faith…or not? Frost’s complex psychological motivations seem incongruous with his homespun literary style. The dichotomy is what gives the poem its tension and makes its straightforward interpretation so challenging. It screams one thing while it actually says the opposite. Faced with a similar dilemma (paths, woods, a CNN film crew broadcasting it all live from the tree tops), some folks would be content just to flip a coin: they would willingly subcontract their existential freedom to the vicissitudes of pure chance. Not Frost! Being human, Frost is intent on giving his ‘choice’ meaning, whether or not such meaning exists in any objective sense. He cannot not choose, but neither can he tolerate the idea that his choice is random. He feels compelled to invent ‘significance’…even if there isn’t any. Like Einstein, Frost cannot accept the idea that God spends his evenings at the Craps table whenever he visits the Bellagio . (But unlike Einstein, Frost knows he does, because he often plays right alongside him at the high rollers’ table – apparently science and the arts pay better than we’ve been led to believe.) So Frost invents a value scale that reinforces his somewhat adolescent self-image – we are not far from armored knights hunting dragons in Celtic forests – and he uses that scale to give his random decisions a veneer of intentionality, and therefore meaning. It is his act of choosing that designates the road chosen as ‘the one less traveled’, even though there is no objective evidence that that is the case. He then defines himself as someone who follows less traveled pathways, and he concludes: “…that has made all the difference.” He has manufactured a value system out of whole cloth, and he uses the resulting gradations to label his randomly chosen path ‘less traveled’, which translates into ‘better’ in Frost’s private language. So Frost begins (or continues) his lifelong project: the construction of a narrative that will come to be known as his life : “I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence: two roads diverged in a wood and I, I took the one less traveled by...” The meaning of Frost’s choice comes entirely from the ‘subjective form’ (Whitehead) he gives to his actions. My Life is nothing but a series of stories I tell myself about myself to myself (and others) based on an essentially random sequence of events. The subjective aim that I attribute to my actions becomes the thread of the My Life narrative (Rob Lowe has contracted to play me in the movie version.) Barely 40, Frost had already outlined his autobiography, written his epitaph, and delivered his eulogy – not bad for someone who lived well into his ‘80s. So the relationship between Freedom and Value is complex…and remains unresolved: According to Nietzsche, Value and Freedom are incompatible, even anathematic. We are free; because there is no Value! Joplin agrees that Value and Freedom are incompatible, but she permits them to coexist on a continuum; we sacrifice Freedom when we pursue Value. According to Frost, neither Freedom nor Value are objectively real. We imagine we are free when we are in fact making random choices and arbitrarily conferring value on those choices. Finally, Pope Leo: Far from being incompatible, Value and Freedom are inextricable. We are free to the extent and only to the extent that we pursue Value. And you, dear reader, what say you now? *** Image: Hopper, Edward. Automat, 1927. Oil on canvas, 28 inches by 36 inches. Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa. Edward Hopper’s Automat captures the still, inward tension of individual isolation and the quiet gravity of decision-making. The lone woman seated in the café evokes a moment of introspection, possibly in the wake of a choice, or just before one is made. Like Robert Frost’s walker in the woods, she is poised between paths, caught in the suspension of meaning that emerges only after the fact. The painting offers no narrative resolution, only the weight of interiority, similar to our essay’s argument that the consequence of a choice lies not in its external impact, but in the subjective meaning we assign to it after the moment has passed. 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.

“In the absence of God, or any transcendent reality, the meaning of life can only be death, oblivion, and the total absence of meaning – aka the Absurd.” < Back The Meaning of Life David Cowles Apr 15, 2024 “In the absence of God, or any transcendent reality, the meaning of life can only be death, oblivion, and the total absence of meaning – aka the Absurd.” I am a sucker for any book written by an avowed ‘non-believer’ who claims to have found a meaning to life that does not require God…or any transcendent reality. Friedrich Nietzsche (c. 1880) ‘proved’ that no such meaning is possible; but that doesn’t stop me from following-up on every credible claim to the contrary. I’m like the Patent Office clerk assigned to evaluate Perpetual Motion Machines! For example, I followed breadcrumbs left by A. J. Ayer and Albert Camus …right into the witch’s oven. Recently, I was persuaded to try again. Michael Ruse is a philosopher, born in 1940; in 2019, he published A Meaning to Life . I just spent two enjoyable evenings exploring Ruse’s take on evolution in general, natural selection in particular, and on the boosters and critics of both. His book begins inauspiciously enough: “You are born. You live. Then you die.” But believe it or not, it’s all downhill from there! In fact, it isn’t until page 158 (out of 171 pages), that we even get to the subject of meaning ! No judgment! This is how we all write today. We experience a blast of insight – a meme that would be at home on a billboard or a bumper sticker or in a Chinese fortune cookie. Then we write an entire book leading up to and celebrating that insight. “Hooray for me! I own a Magee!” (1950’s advertising slogan) According to Ruse (spoiler alert), three things give life meaning: Family: “An eternity without Lizzie (spouse) is too awful to contemplate.” Friends: “…The only truly happy person is the person giving to others.” Mind: “I cannot imagine a life without Charles Dickens.” I’m disappointed, but not surprised. I should have listened to Nietzsche; I’m always sorry when I don’t listen to Nietzsche. Ruse was born in Birmingham , England. He earned his undergraduate degree and his doctorate at the University of Bristol . He has 4 honorary doctorates and published more than two dozen books and articles. He taught at the University of Guelph in Ontario , Canada for 35 years, and after that at Florida State University where he is currently a full professor. But back to the meaning of life. Ruse cites family, friends, and mind as his three logoi . I’m happy for Michael; but hasn’t he totally missed the point? An eternity without Lizzie, friends, or Dickens is just exactly what he does have to look forward to, as do all the rest of us. If these are the things that give life meaning, then Hello! Unlike most ‘secular seekers’, Ruse seems to allow the possibility that he might in some way be conscious of his loss. He talks of a residual consciousness which he likens to “dreamless sleep”, perhaps thinking of Eliot’s “patient etherized upon a table.” If this was intended to help, it didn’t work. I am with Hamlet on this: nothing is more terrifying than the thought that consciousness might somehow persist post mortem . Turns out, Ruse’s 2019 book has absolutely nothing to do with finding life’s meaning; it answers a very different question: In the light of certain oblivion, is there any way for rational human beings to salvage a modicum of ‘happiness’ in their lives? Ruse concludes that there is, and he lays out his not so very revolutionary recipe; of course, it’s ‘Family, Friends and the Life of the Mind’. Come to think of it, that’s exactly what Ayer and Camus did (above). It’s also what Wally Shawn’s character proposes in My Dinner with Andre . What’s this thing between philosophers and ‘happiness’ anyway? People are unhappy! Maybe, God forbid, even you. Deal with it! Not all people all the time, but most people some of the time and some people most of the time. And if someone is not unhappy at this particular moment, it doesn’t mean that they are deliriously happy either. Truth is, most of us are guided by other concerns (needs, duties, responsibilities, urges, etc.); happiness barely enters in. After 25, who has time to worry about being happy? Most of us would trade ‘happiness’ for ‘satisfaction’. Of course, satisfaction can make us happy, but that insight threatens to turn Ruse’s proposition into a tautology: ‘I am happy because whatever I choose to do I do because it makes me happy’. But what if happiness is my ‘ultimate concern’ (Paul Tillich meets J. S. Mill)? Am I entitled to make the purpose of my life be my own personal happiness - happiness that perfumes portions of an 85 year life span, and then evaporates, unremembered, at least according to the Standard Model of Ontology? Fleeting happiness is a poor substitute for eternal Value. Is Ruse channeling Gatsby: ‘Living well is the best revenge’? But what if I made the happiness of others the purpose of my life? Better? I suppose, but now haven’t I just kicked the can down the road? If my happiness is not a valid purpose, is someone else’s? Thought experiment : On my way home from work I swing by my favorite French bakery to pick up a warm baguette to enjoy with my dinner. As I leave the shop, I see someone obviously homeless and hungry on the sidewalk. What should I do? Proceed home and eat hearty (makes me happy); give my unfortunate friend passes to a local cinema (makes him happy…maybe); or give him my baguette (meets his needs…and perhaps secondarily makes one or both of us happy in the process)? In the absence of God, or any transcendent reality, the meaning of life can only be death, oblivion, and the total absence of meaning – aka the Absurd. Then the meaning of life is that it has no meaning and the meaning of ‘anything’ is literally ‘nothing’. That makes more sense than might seem. A can mean B only if A ≠ B and ∉ B; the only thing not equal to anything is nothing . Is there any way to ‘make peace’ with such a fate? Is there any way to extract value from a world that is apparently value free ? Nietzsche thought he had resolved this question once and for all. His argument is elegant and, I believe, irrefutable: There is only this world, B; there is no other. A can ‘mean’ B only if A ≠ B and ∉ B. But if B is the whole world and there is no other, then can Ǝ no such A; therefore, Ǝ only B and its elements and therefore B can have no meaning. Are you getting nervous? Are you afraid I’m going to ask you to say the ‘G word’? Relax, the G-word is optional. What’s not optional is the ‘T word’ – Transcendence. In Genesis, Jacob wrestles with God, mano a mano . But The Book of Job takes a different tack. Job recounts in painful detail a contest of minds between God and his ‘servant’. First, Job battles God’s self-selected proxies (so-called ‘comforters’); then God himself tags-in! For millennia, the Book of Job has stumped commentators. After 40-plus chapters, it seems like we should know who won the argument. But the text is ambiguous. After page upon page of soaring rhetoric and intricate argument, the author decides to get cute with the verdict. But maybe that was the point? Like some sort of avant-garde 20th century novel, the ending is left up to the reader. Most commentators, wrongly in my view, give God the victory on points; others, myself included, have Job winning by TKO. Job gets the trophy , but God gets a nice ‘participation ribbon’. In the story, God huffs and puffs about how great he is, but what really makes God great in this story is that he agrees to participate in the legal process and abide by the verdict…whatever that might be. Is this God acknowledging his own Higher Power, Value (e.g. Justice)? Is this recognition a precursor to Incarnation? The omnipotent God becoming a helpless infant, a suffering servant , a human sacrifice. So, the real winner here is Justice! In Job , Justice triumphs, even over God’s will. But Justice is a transcendent value (lie quiet, Nietzsche). You can’t buy a cup of Justice at Starbucks; nor can you use Justice to pay for your latte. Justice is not fungible. Like gravity, Justice shapes events, but it’s also a yardstick by which we measure and judge those events. It’s non-linear, i.e. recursive. Justice evaluates the world…and then it evaluates itself. It recapitulates God’s creative process in Genesis: “Let there be…saw that it was good.” It is Values (e.g. Justice, Truth, and Beauty - ‘JTB’) that give meaning to life. But these values are not a function of the spatiotemporal world (STW). Values are universal and eternal; they apply in all places, at all times, in this universe or in any possible universe. STW is made up of events, related to one another via shared qualia (values). Values are general , related to one another via shared events ( Proust ). Values have no home in STW…and so they are at home everywhere in STW. They are logically prior to any ‘when’; they form the logos , the glue between beings that ultimately constitutes Being itself. JTB are values that the noble Nietzsche foresaw but that accommodationists imagine they can tease out of STW. IMAHO, Ruse made mistakes in his effort to find meaning. First, he wrote a book about ‘meaning’ that had nothing whatsoever to do with meaning ; that’s a bit of a bother. But he also made a critical error regarding Sartre’s doctrine of human nature. According to Sartre, there is no human nature beyond the non-thetic, non-essential, existentialist exclamation: “I am (and therefore I am free); I am free (and therefore I am).” Being and Freedom are synonymous. Descartes on steroids! It stands to reason, doesn’t it: if you’re not free, what are you? Perhaps you’re inert; your actions have no consequences IRL. Or perhaps you are just mechanically executing the will of others. In either case, you can lay no claim to Being . To bastardize Gregory Bateson, ‘Being is a difference that makes a difference’. In these scenarios, either you are not different, or you make no difference. Either way, you fail…loser! BTW, this is the paradox of determinism. If everything is determined, then nothing is …or only one thing is (the initial state). Everything else is just a mechanical unfurling of that one thing. In light of this, determinists who are revolted by the notion of a world created and influenced by an all-powerful deity might want to give their position a bit of a rethink. Ruse disputes all this. He believes that human beings do have a specific, identifiable nature. For example, he says that our desire to give to others is part of that nature. In this, he falls prey to what Alfred North Whitehead called , The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness . Of course, there is such a thing as ‘human nature’ and yes, it includes an eleemosynary component, and yes, it’s written in our genes. But our genes are not us ! Our genes are part of the objective, material world we inherit and inhabit. That world is mediated to us through our genes, our senses, our bodies, our brains, none of which is us. We are a product of our DNA; so is a tree. In fact, we share more than half of our DNA with trees. Of course, we experience the world differently than a tree does and ultimately that different experience is a function, at least in part, of our different DNA. That said, we are not DNA, nor is a tree. We permeate the experiences that genes, bodies and minds mediate, not as passive observers or mechanical operators, but as perpetually active negators . We selectively negate what is in order to bring about what might yet be. In Sartre’s terms we are the Neant (nothingness) that gives Etre (being) meaning. While Etre is many faceted (like Parmenides’ Doxa ), Neant is simple, featureless (like Aletheia ); it haunts you and me and Sherwood Forest. It’s neither one nor many: not ‘one’ in contrast to many nor ‘many’ in contract to one. It’s simple; it simply is. And so it is in you just as it is in me and just as it is in every sentient being. Neant is no respecter of species. Meaning defines a relationship between two distinct entities. The signifier cannot be coincident with the signified, nor can it be an element of the signified. What ‘means’ must transcend what is ‘meant’; otherwise the phenomenon of meaning is impossible. If Life is to have meaning, we must search for it, not ‘among the living’ but in eternity. 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 image to return to Holy Days 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. 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< Back AI - Our New Frenemy AI and the Human Quest for Love AI - The Next Big Test of the Human Soul Hadassah Treu "The longing is powerful. Perhaps because this is the longing for unconditional love and acceptance with which every human being is born." When I grew up and even as a mature adult, I was fascinated by Isaac Asimov's books about robots. Asimov is the one who invented in his books the so-called Three Laws of Robotics. These instructions are not scientific laws, but they are built into every robot in his stories to prevent dangerous malfunctions. According to the first law, robots must not cause harm to humans or allow humans to be harmed by not taking action. However, the laws underwent an interesting development because the robots themselves added a 4th law, the so-called Zero law. In "Robots and Empire," the robots Giscard and Daneel devised a law that put the needs of humanity first before the needs of the single individual. The Longing for a Perfect Companion These books thrilled my imagination, and they also sparked a powerful longing in me. I was longing to have somebody by my side, somebody like "Daneel." The robot had a human-like appearance, beautiful and perfectly resembling a human. He was available 24/7 and possessed superhuman strength, intelligence, and access to limitless information. The positronic robot Daneel Olivaw was something between a superhuman and a faithful servant. Who didn't want to have a perfect friend like this? Asimov wrote six novels about robots and a lot of short stories. In these novels, he explores different scenarios of the robot-human society, whereas the ratio and the role of the robots in society differ. It is noteworthy that all robot-human societies developed dysfunctions, eventually leading to humanity's extinction. This was, for example, the case on the planet Solaria, described in the novel "The Naked Sun." A tipping point in Asimov's robot stories was when one robot (Giscard) gained telepathic abilities. Namely, he gained the ability to read and influence minds. From this moment on, he gradually took on the role of a god, changing events and decisions throughout society. In fact, he took responsibility for the whole human race! AI Is Our New Reality Nowadays, surrounded by artificial intelligence (AI) in our daily life and sitting on the brink of a technological revolution, I can't help but think about Asimov and his robots. AI is not a sci-fi fantasy. It's reality. AI is everywhere, and it has become an integral part of our daily lives; it doesn't matter whether we recognize it or not. AI is on our smartphones, the chatbots, and the virtual assistants, on social media feeds, not to speak about Alexa or generative AI like ChatGPT. But we always need to remember that technology is a tool. And as a tool, it is our responsibility how to use it. We can't define it as good or bad because it doesn't have a moral value, but we can use it for good or for evil. We also need to remember that even as a tool, this technology is extremely valuable and powerful. So, we have to train ourselves not only to have a balanced and realistic attitude but also how best to interact with this technology. The output we will get from our interactions is largely based on the input we are feeding. Most probably we will need such jobs shortly like AI whisperers and prompt engineers, fact-checkers (yes, AI can give misguided and untruthful information – remember the input!), and creators who will co-create with AI. But most of all, we will need some kind of ethical guardians and voices of the societal conscience who will spur us to act with integrity and ensure the proper development of the human-machine relationship. Is AI Really Our New Best Friend? Is AI like us? Why do we have such a longing for a relationship with artificial intelligence? Artificial intelligence is a type of nonbiological intelligence. Machines are given instructions to complete tasks using a set of rules. Because it's nonbiological, AI can be copied and reprogrammed and can be very flexible. AI has no conscience like human beings, and it lacks emotions, beliefs, and desires. However, research shows that even though machines and computer programs don't have sentience, the people interacting with them, give the machines human characteristics—like feelings, beliefs, desires, and understanding. This is dangerous because we begin to trust them and treat them the way we treat other people. This is exactly what happened in the robot novels of Azimov – the robot Daneel (although lacking emotions) was treated by the main hero, detective Elijah Baley like a human, like a friend. When we talk, for example, with a generative AI like ChatGPT, we can get a good imitation of what a human might say. However, we need to remember that AI lacks real feelings, empathy, or awareness. So we need to approach every AI output with an open but critical eye. Another substantial difference is that as a machine, AI looks back to gather information. Unlike humans, AI can't have visions, imagine futures and outcomes, invent things, or even plan. These are high-level skills that still belong only to humans. People are forward-thinking, and machines are retrospective. And yet… The longing is powerful. Perhaps because this is the longing for unconditional love and acceptance with which every human being is born. Disappointed and disillusioned on the quest for love, struggling with intense loneliness in an overpopulated world, where does the human soul turn next? A new study explains that robots with artificial intelligence can help fight people's loneliness. These mechanical companions could help isolated people by reducing the potential health risks that come with chronic loneliness. Researchers claim that interacting with a robot can have the same impact on humans as interacting with a person. So, companion robots can alleviate stress and loneliness and provide a promising "quick fix" to the problem of making new friends in adulthood. However, despite how promising this sounds, the issue with the moral and trustworthiness of such mechanical companions remains. The Big Temptation Are we tempted to treat AI as more than a tool? Definitely, yes. This is dangerous ground because AI has the potential to influence our theology and become our new idol. We should be careful not to become too dependent on AI but use it wisely and with caution. Part of this process is to admit the fact that AI influences us and even changes us when we use it. It expands our possibilities as humans. It opens for us new opportunities to live, work and create. So, AI is a powerful change agent. The question is, will it sparkle good and positive changes or not? Ultimately, it is our responsibility to use AI for the glory of God and the good of society. Perhaps you guess the end of Asimov's robots saga… The robots Giscard and Daneel chose to be humanity's saviors and concluded that the only way to help humanity advance was to break free from the robots. What was meant to be humanity's aid has turned into an obstacle. The strength has turned into weakness. The friends have turned into enemies. What they meant for good, brought evil. Is this where we are heading to? Hadassah Treu is an international Christian author, blogger, and poet, and the Encouraging Blogger Award Winner of 2020. She is passionate about encouraging people in their journey to faith and a deeper walk with God. Hadassah is a contributing author to several faith-based platforms and devotional and poetry anthologies. She has been featured on (In)courage, Living by Design Ministries, Thoughts About God, Today’s Christian Living (Turning Point), and other popular sites. You can connect with Hadassah at www.onthewaybg.com. Return to our AI Issue Table of Contents Previous Next