< Back What Is Time? An astronomer explains the search to find its origins... Sten Odenwald St. Augustine said of time, “If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain to him who asks, I don’t know.” Time is an elusive concept: We all experience it, and yet, the challenge of defining it has tested philosophers and scientists for millennia. This article was originally published in the May 2022 issue of Astronomy . Read the rest of the article here . Click the cover image to return to Spring 2024. Share Previous Next

< Back The Paradox of Childhood David Cowles “…We treat children…as pets, slaves, snuggle bunnies and proto-adults”. Children are chronic ‘not-yets’. Not yet walking, not yet talking, not yet reading. Not yet matriculated, not yet graduated. Not yet a crime boss, a hit woman, an investment banker, a butcher, a baker, or a candlestick maker. Not yet! Children are exactly like us, only smaller…they are us, only ‘not yet’. They are proto-parents, proto-doctors, proto-miners (those who spend their working lives in mines, extracting ore – in case you don’t remember what a ‘miner’ is), proto-cubes (those who spend their lives working in cubicles, extracting data). Children are entirely unlike us. They are curious; we are either bored or overwhelmed or both. They have boundless energy; we’re already looking forward to our next nap. They cry at the drop of a hat; we don’t show our emotions. Children cannot be controlled, and it takes an elaborate complex of rewards and punishments, emotional and physical, just to ‘manage’ their behavior; and yet… “Girls are sugar and spice and everything nice; boys are snakes and snails and puppy dog tails.” Maybe, but we treat children of all genders as pets, slaves, snuggle bunnies… and proto-adults. Of course, children are none of these things! How hard must it be then for them to play all these roles at once…and without a single acting class? Up for a ‘thought experiment’? Who’s your favorite 8 year old? Ok, now replay the hackneyed movie plot: switch bodies (ridiculous, of course). Imagine that now you’re living your life as an 8 year old…for a year. What fun! Who wouldn’t want to be a kid again? No responsibilities, no bills to pay, spending half your waking hours ‘just playing’. Not quite so much fun when the giants you live with hurt you, demean you, berate or belittle you. You’d like to make them happy, but it’s not as easy as they would like us to believe. “Just be Good,” but HOW when the constellation of expectations shifts inexplicably from circumstance to circumstance? My father was an Eagle Scout. When I was 12, I followed in his footsteps and joined the Boy Scouts. One night I came home excited. I had just passed my first test. I was a tenderfoot now, and I couldn’t wait to tell my Dad all about it. He was furious. Something about my story, something I’d said, something I’d done, I still don’t know what, rubbed him the wrong way. Needless to say, that ended my brief flirtation with BS. Not quite so much fun when you’re forced to idle in school for 6 hours a day. Sadly, we have found a way to make the process of learning boring and its contents nonsensical – not easy to do in a world as wonderous as ours! We’ve figured out how to transform boundless curiosity into unrelenting boredom. We have become death, the destroyer of worlds. (Oppenheimer) Did you imagine your year would be all fun and games? You’re in a world where everything is either threatening or meaningless, terrifying or boring. Your year will be one of physical fear, social anxiety, and, did I mention it, crushing boredom. Parents, teachers, cops, bullies, pit bulls, bees and bed…and you 4’ 6” and 85 pounds soaking wet. Did your tween/teen ever yell at you, “This house is a prison?” That’s because it is! “But my children love me!” Ok, but have they also learned to ‘go along to get along’? And be honest – isn’t that exactly how you’ve raised them? “My boy is just like me; he’s grown up just like me.” (Harry Chapin) Nothing is worse than being a child…unless it’s being an adult. You want nothing more than to be a kid again while you kids want nothing more than to be… you . I mean, just exactly how crazy is that? Do things have to be this way? Clearly not. In ‘less civilized’ societies, for example, things are often different. Take an Amazonian tribe, the Piraha as an example. They impose no expectations on their children and make almost no effort to regulate their behavior. Punishment of any sort is virtually unknown. Of course, there’s a trade-off. Pirahanese children are quite literally ‘out-of-control’ all the time…but they are never malicious. Why would they be? They have nothing to rebel against ! As a 50 year old, you might not choose to live the Pirahanese lifestyle; but as a 5 year old, you’d love it. We take our children to Disney World. Pirahanese children live in Disney World. By current Euro-American standards, Pirhanese children are neglected; but by the standards of the Pirhana, they are simply respected. Euro-American adults cannot wait to have children. They’ll spend tens of thousands of dollars to treat infertility issues in hope of a single live birth. But once our angelic children are born, we can’t wait for them to grow up and ‘act like adults’. We have goals for our children: sleeping through the night, weaned, toilet trained, etc. To Pirahanese parents, the idea that these eventualities should be viewed as ‘goals’ seems non-sensical. All these things will happen organically, in their own time, without any adult intervention. Much worse, we plan our children’s lives for them before they know there’s anything to plan. “Sally’s going to be a teacher, I’m sure, and she’ll be good at it; she loves to explain things to other kids, and Skip? Well, he’s our budding little MD. I mean, ‘gag me with a spoon’!" Everything is upside down. The kids are trying to fashion a personality and a character; they are deciding, how, where, if at all, they want to be part of the social fabric. And us? Well, we are constantly getting in their way. Tell me, do you see a happy outcome here? Keep the conversation going! 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Previous Next

< Back The Road Taken David Cowles Mar 12, 2024 “We don’t have many worlds; we have one world with incredibly many facets and one such facet is our ‘road taken’.” Robert Frost’s most famous poem ( The Road Not Taken ) owes its popularity, in part, to its universality: I mean, who has not stood at a crossroads, literally or figuratively, and wondered, “Which path should I take?” 100 times a day every day! Arguably, choice is the paradigmatic human experience. Bewilderment is the essence of who we are. Frost knows where he is and where he’s going; but he has reached a fork in the road. Two paths lie before him, both going to the same destination. He can’t change where he is, and his destination is predetermined; but everything along the way is up for grabs. ‘Along the way’ – that’s what we call ‘life’, isn’t it? We are en transit . Yes…but not so fast. It’s what most of us call ‘life’; but that’s by no means set in stone. Today, we are all about the journey; we read the Odyssey . In times past, folks were more into origins and destinies. They read the Iliad . IRL? Your status at birth used to be the principal determinant of your identity and value. First born son or third born daughter? Under the sheets…or atop them? Noble or peasant? Bourgeoise or proletarian? College Course or Industrial Arts? Fortunately, less so today. Or your status at death! Fame, legacy, progeny. “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings. Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair.” (Shelley) “He who has the most toys wins.” (My parents’ generation) Plus, the fate of your immortal soul was not settled until your final breath. “…At the hour of our death, Amen.” ( Ave Maria ) Only then could St. Peter label you sheep or goat, grain or chaff. Everything was about the finale. All of this seems rather strange to us today. Now, we regard birth ( Alpha ) as a lottery and death ( Omega ) as the inevitable outcome of playing Russian Roulette. An aficionado of the Ancien Regime might chime in, “Yes, but in those days the path from Alpha to Omega was less eventful, more of a straight line, varying little from trip to trip or from traveler to traveler. The journey didn’t matter so much; it was more noise than information, more obstacle than path; it was just a means to an end”: A ↓ Ω A friend once captured this spirit in me: “For you, a car is just a means of transportation.” Exactly! Call me old school. My trips derive their meaning and value from their launch (purpose) and their landing (result). Everything on the way, the way itself, is wandering. Robert Frost offers a different, but still simple, alternative: A ↙ ↘ x x’ ↘ ↙ Ω “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood…and I – I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” Origin and destiny are hardwired. It’s the chosen path that is undetermined, that generates information. We cannot change our A or our Ω, but we can control, or at least influence, everything in between. That’s called agency , or free will . You bristle! “What do you mean, my origin and destiny are hardwired? And how can you say my freedom consists of nothing more than the choice between two pre-set paths? What kind of freedom is that?” Fair points! But it’s the ‘free’ kind of freedom…by which I mean, it’s all there is, it’s all there ever could be. How so? First, every choice, no matter how broad, can ultimately be reduced to a finite number of binary choices. Frost’s poem models just one such choice; other decisions could involve hundreds of binary choices. In any event, each binary choice is one quantum of freedom. Second, “There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done!” (Beatles) Here we need an assist from Sartre: I am always totally free! I can order any flavor of ice cream I want at Baskin-Robbins; or I can decide to forgo ice cream altogether. But I cannot order a muffaletta sandwich, “Sir, we’d like to accommodate you, but we don’t have the ingredients.” I can only do things that are physically possible. In the context of Frost’s poem I cannot hack my way through the underbrush with my pocket knife. Freedom ultimately comes down to a finite number of choices between possibles. Finally, my origin is hardwired; I have to start from somewhere. So is my destination but this is trickier. Those of you born before 1990 might remember a contraption called a ‘pinball machine’. The origin is a compressed spring, the destination is a hole at the bottom of the ‘field’, but the route from origin to destination is infinitely variable. It is the ‘topology’ or ‘tilt’ that makes the outcome inevitable but how you get from A to Ω, how long it takes to get there, and how many points you rack up along the way are totally undetermined. You are 100% free…within the physical limits imposed by the underlying structure. Ditto real life! Because a World exists (Descartes), we know that that World must be infinitesimally biased toward certain outcomes, i.e. faintly conditioned by Values known collectively as ‘the Good’. (Aquinas et al.) In infinite time, the outcome is inevitable; in finite time we are free to keep playing, and adding points, for as long as we are ready, willing, and able. Christian theology provides a similar model. The Parousia , the 2 nd Coming of Christ, is inevitable…but the date and form of that Coming is entirely contingent on the freely determined course of events. All trajectories originate at a common point (Creation, Big Bang) and ultimately converge at a singularity (The Kingdom of Heaven), but the trajectories themselves are otherwise unconditioned and entirely self-determined. Absolute freedom does exist, as an essential quality or value, but it exists physically only in the context of a given concrete structure. Physically, freedom can be absolute but only with some given mise-en-scene . IRL, there are usually a great many intermediate steps between A and Ω and it may well be that there are more than 2 alternative paths converging on each node. Choice along the way is what gives life spice, variety and intensity. Perhaps, however, we can treat Frost’s ‘diamond’ as a web of quantum processes . It may be that the incredibly complex web of options and choices that form the infrastructure of life can be broken down into Frost Quanta . So, it might be useful to see how Frost’s model evolves in slightly more complex situations. This is nowhere near robust enough to mimic real life, but it may help us conceptualize what such a model might look like. Consider the following: A ↙ ↘ x x ↙ ↘ ↙ ↘ x x x ↙ ↘ ↙ ↘ ↙ ↘ x x x x ↘ ↙ ↘ ↙ ↘ ↙ x x x ↘ ↙ ↘ ↙ x x ↘ ↙ Ω Every node (actual entity, event) is an inflection point. In fact, a node is defined as any point at which two or more paths converge and/or diverge. This is not a Many Worlds Theory! Sue and Sam may begin their journeys with flights from Boston to two different connecting cities, but they will meet again in Seattle and there is nothing to preclude their meeting up for a cocktail at a common hub along the way. In this model, as IRL, chains of events converge as well as diverge. For that reason, we don’t have many worlds (Hugh Everett); we have one world with incredibly many facets and one such facet is our ‘road taken’. 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 Everybody's Autobiography David Cowles Is it possible to write an autobiography of everyone, to somehow incorporate the wildly varying events of different people’s lives into a single story? Absurd, right? But not so fast! Gertrude Stein once wrote, “Anyway, autobiography is easy. Like it or not, autobiography is easy for any one, and so this is to be everybody’s autobiography.” ( Everybody’s Autobiography ) Is it possible to write an autobiography of everyone, to somehow incorporate the wildly varying events of different people’s lives into a single story? Absurd, right? But not so fast! When we talk about ‘wildly varying events’ we implicitly admit that there must be a common substructure upon which these ‘variations’ occur. Ok, if not absurd, then at least impossible. You will grant me that much, right? Sorry, no again! Compared to what Joyce and Pound were attempting, Stein’s project is child’s play. When Stein wrote Everybody’s Autobiography , Joyce had already written and published his Ulysses and Pound was well into his Cantos . (In fact, some of the early Cantos had already been published.) These works are very different from each other and both are very different from Everybody’s Autobiography . Joyce and Pound did not share a common style or even a common medium ( Ulysses is prose, Cantos poetry) but both wanted to write a ‘universal history’ – a history of tout le monde , the whole world. But they approached their project very differently. Joyce chose to telescope the world’s history into a single place (Dublin) and a single time (June 16, 1904, now called Bloomsday after the book’s hero, Leopold Bloom). Like all of us, Stephen Hawking included, Joyce stood on the shoulders of giants. He recognized two previous attempts to write a universal history: Homer’s Odyssey and the liturgy of the Roman Catholic church ( Mass ), and he incorporated both into Ulysses . Joyce meticulously mapped the world’s events (historical, mythological, and liturgical) onto the imagined events of Dublin on Bloomsday. Joyce discovered what today we would call ‘the fractal nature of reality’…long before Benoit Mandelbrot. Pound took a radically different course. He attempted to catalog all the world’s events, but he used a different device to avoid writing a 'million volume novel’. He picked only those events that he judged to be richly emblematic of other events. All the events described in Cantos are paradigms. Stein takes a third direction. She records the minute details of her life with Alice B. Toklas, but she chooses to include only those life events that Gertrude and Alice had in common with everybody else. They got up; they went places; they saw things; they engaged in conversations; they ate food; and they drank wine, etc. In this, their lives were no different from my life or your life or anyone’s life. Stein discovered the common substructure of all human life. Previous Next

< Back Extra! Extra! David Cowles Jun 16, 2022 “Do I really have to wait three months for more ATM?" No, you do not! We’ve decided to add a special issue (7/15) to our 2022 publication schedule. Here's what we have planned... As you know, Aletheia Today (AT) published Issue #1 of our quarterly periodical, AT Magazine (ATM), on June 1. We had high hopes for this first issue, and so far, the results have exceeded our expectations. Since announcing on 5/1 our plans to publish AT Magazine (ATM) Issue #1 on 6/1… Our site has had 1,000 visits, From 750 unique visitors, Who viewed an average of 6 pages per visit. Plus, we now have almost 400 subscribers! One of our new subscribers commented, “Do I really have to wait 3 months for more ATM?” No, you do not! We’ve decided to add a Special Issue (7/15) to our 2022 publication schedule. ATM Issue #2 will be released on 7/15. Our regular schedule will resume with Issue #3 to be released on 9/1 as planned. We’re calling Issue #2 our ‘Beach Issue.’ In the spirit of the season, we are adding some ‘lighter’ fare this time around; the focus is on fun! Articles already queued up for Issue #2 include: How to Coach an Undefeated Football Team The life lessons of a 4x winner! Teaching Physics in the 21st century Using the Yellow Submarine as the text. The Sultan and The Sea A Sufi tale retold for readers 8 to 80. Jesus is Badass A reexamination of Jesus’ life. For our summer theater aficionados, Nihilism in Shakespeare . Original poetry and Haiku. New Challenges for readers of all ages. Look for ATM Issue #2 in your inbox on July 15. Meanwhile, be sure to keep reading Thoughts While Shaving , published every Tuesday and Thursday throughout the year. P.S. We have already received more than a dozen inquiries from independent authors who are interested in writing freelance for ATM. We are still accepting inquiries and submissions for both upcoming issues: Issue #2 (7/15) and Issue #3 (9/1). Interested in advertising in AT Magazine ? Contact editor@aletheiatoday.com . We are also open to reciprocal links. Thanks for your loyalty! Let us know what else we can do to meet your needs. 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 Afraid of the Dark David Cowles Jul 16, 2021 Most young children are afraid of the dark. As adults, we tend to dismiss those fears. But as in so many other ways, it is the children who are right…and we who are wrong. They have not yet wrapped themselves in the cocoon of consumer goods. They still see life as it is. Most young children are afraid of the dark. As adults, we tend to dismiss those fears. But as in so many other ways, it is the children who are right…and we who are wrong. They have not yet wrapped themselves in the cocoon of consumer goods. They still see life as it is. So too the poet: “Do not go gentle into that good night…Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” – Dylan Thomas Have you ever noticed how common house flies prefer to hang out in well lit parts of the house, especially at night. They sometimes curl up in my home office, under a desk lamp, atop a white index card, and rock themselves to sleep, seemingly unaware of the threat I could pose to them if I chose. Do flies also dread the dark? At some level, do they have ‘intimations of mortality’? Much later in life, certainly sometime after age 70, you will rediscover your primal fear of the dark. You will remember what it was like to be a little child in a dark bedroom. We return to the words of Dylan Thomas, “Old age should burn and rave at close of day. 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 At the Beginning of the World: Dinosaurs, Genesis, and the Gift of Science Joe Terrell The Bible isn’t a science textbook. And we shouldn’t expect it to operate as one. When I was ten years old, our church library ordered a book called Dinosaurs and The Bible . I couldn’t have been more excited. Like most ten-year-olds, I was a huge dinosaur nerd. When I grew up, I wanted to be a paleontologist, and I could rattle off the Latin names for all my favorite dinosaurs. The week the book arrived at our church, the pastor told the congregation their children needed to read the book – especially if they were receiving “public school education.” I was, of course, the first in line to borrow it from the church library. The crux of Dinosaurs and the Bible hinged on the idea that since God created everything in six literal days (about 10,000 years ago), dinosaurs and humans definitely co-existed at the same time in history. I devoured the book. It was filled with wild artwork, colorful charts, and scientific explanations of key Biblical passages. However, the more I read Dinosaurs and the Bible , the more uneasy I became. The first red flag was the book’s chapter about Noah’s Ark, which claimed that in order to fit dinosaurs on the ark to save them from the Great Flood, God probably helped Noah by either shrinking the dinosaurs or giving him dinosaur eggs. Okay, weird , I thought. But I can go with it . But it was the book’s final chapter about my favorite dinosaur – the Tyrannosaurus Rex – that finally tipped me over the edge. Deemed the “King of the Dinosaurs,” the T-Rex was a ferocious predator the size of a school bus. But, the book claimed that since pain and death didn’t exist prior to The Fall, the T-Rex was originally designed by God as a plant-eating reptile . The chapter even included an illustration of the T-Rex using its fearsome jaws to crack open and eat watermelons . I distinctly remember closing the book, glancing over to the plastic T-Rex toy on my nightstand, and thinking, There’s no way . I returned the book, disappointed and more than a little confused. But, like most young Christians, I buried my questions and split my scientific worldview in half . On one side, I had Adam and Eve, Noah’s Ark, and the Tower of Babel . And, on the other, I had dinosaurs, cavemen, the Ice Age, and extinction-level asteroid impacts . A secret bargain was struck between my opposing worldviews: they could peacefully coexist as long as they never overlapped . That compromise was easy to maintain in small-town East Texas. In Sunday school (and most of my high school science classes), the “theory” of evolution was regularly ridiculed and dismissed . In college, things got a bit more complicated. My degree track required a couple of science classes, so I signed up for the two easiest courses I could find – Oceanography and Geology. In my science classes, my scientific preconceptions weren’t so much as challenged as they were simultaneously and completely ignored and obliterated . Suddenly, the questions were coming at me faster than my theological framework could handle. For example, If we have fossilized evidence of interactions between Wooly Mammoths and early humans, how come we don’t have the same evidence for people and dinosaurs? If most of the fossil record is a result of a worldwide flood, why are fossils stratified across geological layers that seem to imply distinct periods of ecological diversity? Shouldn’t the bones of dinosaurs, mammals, and humans be all mixed up in the same rock layers? It takes the light from some distant stars hundreds of millions of years to reach Earth. Shouldn’t the universe be at least that old? And, as a Christian, am I supposed to ignore all the pre-human remains and artifacts we’ve uncovered that pre-date human civilization by tens of thousands of years? The two halves of my scientific worldview had finally collided and revealed several irreconcilable differences. Would I trust the infallible Word of God? Or would I backslide into the cold embrace of modern science? Weird Science When it comes to Christianity’s relationship with science and creation, there are three primary points of view (though variations exist within each): Young Earth Creationism : God created life, the universe, and everything in six literal and sequential days. The age of the Earth can be determined by counting and tracing back the genealogies in Genesis. Old Earth (Progressive) Creationism : God created everything in six literal days, but large gaps of time passed between each of the “days.” Evolutionary Creationism : God created everything, but did so through the testable and observable natural laws and processes He designed. One of the most prolific advocates for Young Earth Creationism is the evangelical ministry Answers in Genesis (AiG). Young Earth Creationists spin an alternative view of human history in which the Earth is only 10,000 years old ( a date derived from counting back on the Biblical genealogies found in Genesis ), but the catastrophic effects of the worldwide flood (as depicted in Genesis 7) creates the appearance of an old Earth . At the beginning of my crisis of faith, I was drawn to AiG for their hardline stances and conspiracy-like approach to “secular science.” But the deeper I dove in, the more I struggled. The Young Earth Creationism view appeared to be at odds with every major scientific discovery of the past century in the fields of geology, paleontology, astronomy, genetics, neuroscience, climatology, anthropology, and biology. It was a posture of constant warfare in a conflict that no one else seemed very interested in fighting anymore. In my mind, it was a battle between a middle-school Sunday School teacher who read a couple of articles on Answers in Genesis and a Geology professor with a doctorate and peer-reviewed research. But what if the battle was completely unnecessary? And what if we could stem the flow of casualties — people, like me, who felt as if they had to make an impossible choice? The Genesis Doctrine Since the beginning of time, people have been telling stories about how it all began . In the Babylonian creation story , the god Marduk kills the goddess Tiamat and forms the earth from her corpse. Humankind is later created to serve the gods and take care of the earth. But, humans get too loud and most are wiped out by a giant flood sent by the gods. In Norse Mythology , the All-Father Odin carved the first man and woman from two pieces of driftwood that floated ashore on a beach. He breathed life into the couple and named them Askr and Embla. In the Mayan creation account , the Creator Gods wanted to preserve their image in a new race of lesser beings that would also worship them. They tried making humans out of mud, but they crumbled in the sun. They tried again with wood, but these people had no soul and had to be destroyed by a flood. Finally, they tried with corn – the staple food of the Mayan culture – and it worked. In the Abrahamic religions , God brought the universe into existence and formed mankind from the dust of the Earth. The first human couple is placed in a garden paradise but is tricked by a talking snake into eating a magic fruit from a special tree. Where and when you were born (and how you were raised) determines which of these stories you would view as myths and which one you’d approach as fact. It’s important to remember that the Bible was not written with a twenty-first-century scientific worldview in mind . The idea that the earth is a globe spinning through the cosmos wasn’t on anybody’s radar for most of human history – especially during the late Bronze Age when Genesis was written and compiled by Moses. Instead, ancient Near East Cultures believed the world was a flat disc with waters above and below the earth . The land was held in place above the ocean below by ancient pillars. They had little to no concept of outer space. All celestial bodies – the sun, moon, and stars – resided below the solid dome that kept the ocean above from flooding the earth. Windows or doors in the dome would allow rain to fall and irrigate the land. To our modern ears, this sounds crazy. But, remember, these views were formed by people whose observations were limited by their geography and technology . And you can find the fingerprints of this ancient cosmological view in early Old Testament writings: In Genesis 1:6 – 8 , for example, we read about God creating a “vault” ( the King James Version reads “firmament” ) to separate “the water under the vault from the water above it.” In the Flood story, we’re told the “ springs of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of heaven were opened .” In Job, the main character says God “ shakes the earth from its place, and make its pillars tremble ” and “ walks on the vault of heaven .” Also in Job, God speaks about laying “ the earth’s foundation ” and “ shutting up the sea behind doors .” In multiple Psalms, we read about the earth’s foundations , the ocean above , and the doors of heaven . Of course, all of us read these verses as figurative or metaphorical now , but to an ancient Near East audience, they were references to a literal understanding of the natural world . So, instead of asking, “Is this story factually and scientifically correct?” a wiser and more helpful question would probably be, “ What is this ancient story trying to say? ” The Storyteller God Prior to the invention of reading and writing, tribes would pass their cultural history, myths, and wisdom from generation to generation through storytelling and oral tradition. Therefore, it was very important that these ancient stories were easy to remember and recite . And if you re-read the Genesis account with poetry (rather than science) in mind, a lot of things will start falling into place. Take, for example, the literary structure of Genesis 1: On Day One , God creates the cosmos. On Day Four , God fills the cosmos with stars, the sun, and the moon. On Day Two , God creates the sky and ocean. On Day Five , God fills the sky and ocean with birds and fish. On Day Three , God creates land and vegetation. On Day Six , God fills the land with animals and people. Do you see the pattern? In the first three days, God creates specific habitats . And three days after He creates each habitat, God fulfills its purpose . The lyrical cadence of the creation account in Genesis even includes a chorus (“ and it was good “) and an easy-to-memorize verse structure (the days of the week). Biblical scholar N.T. Wright puts this more eloquently in his book Surprised by Scripture : “The Genesis account is a highly poetic, highly complex narrative ; it’s main thrust has nothing to do with the number of 24-hour periods in which the world was made, and everything to do with the wisdom, goodness, and power of the God who made it. “ In other words, the Bible isn’t a science textbook. And we shouldn’t expect it to operate as one. The early Biblical authors didn’t live and write within a cultural vacuum. Remember, the most important historical event to happen to the Hebrew people was their deliverance from Egyptian slavery by Moses . The Hebrew people spent more than 400 hundred years enslaved in Egypt, and the Egyptian people had their own religious beliefs and mythologies. One of these Egyptian mythologies involved Apep , a large serpent who was known as the “Lord of Chaos” and an “Eater of Souls.” And then there was Wadjet , an Egyptian goddess who took the form of a snake . The Pharoah would wear a symbol of Wadjet on his crown , which indicated divine authority . So, when the Hebrew people listened to a story about the first couple being tricked by a snake, they did not think, “Oh, that’s the Devil!” Instead, they associated it with what they knew – the snake was symbolic of chaos, death, and – most importantly – slavery under the Egyptian Pharoah . Do you see how taking a story literally can actually strip it of its cultural significance and narrative power? (And that’s only one small example). What if focusing on the “How” and “When” of creation is just a textbook example of missing the point ? The Gift of Science Saint Augustine of Hippo was an early Christian philosopher from Africa who lived in the fourth century. He is considered by many to be one of the most influential Western theologians of all time. Like many intellectuals at the time, Augustine believed the world to be flat. However, one of his most famous works is The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, a commentary on the first book of the Bible. In the commentary, Augustine warned Christians against denying future scientific discoveries just because they didn’t line up with their interpretation of Scripture. He wrote “ it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel [non-Christian] to hear a Christian, while interpreting Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics ” and that Christians should “ take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation .” In A Flexible Faith , Bonnie Kristian writes, “Augustine worried that if Christians deny science, non-Christians will not be able to take our faith seriously. He warned against tying our theology too tightly to scientific theories that may become outdated as new discoveries are made .” In other words, Augustine thought that if Christians held onto pre-scientific ideas in the modern era about the natural world, it could literally prevent people from coming to know Christ . And that’s coming from someone who lived in the fourth century and thought the earth was a flat disc! To be honest, I really don’t think it matters much what Christians think about the first few chapters of Genesis (says the guy who just wrote a 3,000-word blog post on the subject). It holds little to no consequence on how we live our day-to-day lives. However, a Young Earth Creationist worldview can pre-package the assumption that science was out to undermine my faith. I thought all of “secular science” was propelled forward by the demonic goal of erasing God and spitting in the face of Christianity. And it led to a completely avoidable crisis of faith . Francis S. Collins – leader of the Human Genome Project and author of The Language of God – writes, “Science’s domain is to explore nature. God’s domain is in the spiritual world , a realm not possible to explore with the tools and language of science. It must be examined with the heart, the mind, and the soul—and the mind must find a way to embrace both realms .” You can have a high view of science and the Bible . We just have to tweak our expectations of each . It’s true that a lot of modern scientists hold atheistic or agnostic worldviews. But could that be a consequence of how Christians negatively portray the scientific community to their children? We need Christians to be at the forefront of quantum mechanics, evolutionary biology, cancer research, ecology, dietary nutrition, space exploration, climatology, and neuropsychology. Science is a gift . Along with art, it allows us the opportunity to become co-creators with God . But it is shackled with a heavy weight of responsibility. With the tools at our disposal, what type of world will we choose to create? Will we use our scientific progress to invent new ways to kill each other, pollute our planet, and exploit our natural resources for our own consumerist gain? Through science, we can heal the sick, feed the hungry, and repair the world. Through faith, we can mend the souls of the broken-hearted and the poor in spirit. United, we can bring light into the darkness – both physical and spiritual. So, let there be light . This is a republish with permission from Joe Terrell and Instrument of Mercy , a progressive Christian blog created and written by Joe Forrest. Featuring in-depth and long-form articles regarding complex and controversial issues about faith, culture, politics, and the church, the goal of Instrument of Mercy is to foster informed and constructive dialogue and encourage radical empathy among citizens of Heaven and Earth. Previous Next

< 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 Language…or Logic? David Bowles Jul 13, 2026 “Don’t you just hate it when real-physics spoils meta-physics?” 1500 words, 6 minute read Few ideas in Intellectual History remain constant across diverse cultures and through successive eras. One exception? The privileged relationship between Language and Logic. The Old Testament story of the Tower of Babel directly connects our ability to solve physical problems (logic, engineering) with our use of language. In the creation narrative (Genesis 1: 3), “God said , ‘Let there be light’, and there was light.” Across the Bosporus, the father of Western philosophy, Parmenides ( On Nature , 5 th century BCE) also linked speaking with being: “What there is for speaking and knowing, there is for being.” (Fragment 6) . Apparently, physis (being) and logos (language) are two sides of one coin on both sides of the Strait. 500 years later, the Apostle John retold the creation story from the Christian perspective, incorporating material from the Old Testament and from the Pre-Socratics, resulting in an even heavier emphasis on the linguistic component: “In the beginning ( arche ) was the Word ( logos )…through whom all things were made and without whom nothing came to be. In him ( logos ) was life and that life was the Light of the world.” (John 1: 1 – 4) Now fast forward a few millennia and see various schools of North Atlantic Analytic Philosophy, from Logical Positivism through Deconstruction, attempting to ‘reduce’ philosophy to linguistics once and for all. Do names like Ayer, Wittgenstein, Austin, Derrida and Chomsky ring any bells? But it’s all for naught! (Don’t you just hate it when real-physics spoils meta-physics?) A recent study conducted at MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research concludes that “language isn't necessary for logical reasoning.” Wow! That’s 2500 years we’ll never get back! Our ability to induce from experience and deduce from assumptions is neurologically unrelated to our ability to use language. Brain imaging shows that language-processing parts of the brain are not involved in logical reasoning. In research published in the journal PNAS , and reported by Medical Xpress (July 9, 2026), researchers led by MIT associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences Evelina Fedorenko showed that people can perform well on tasks that require logical reasoning even if their language abilities are severely impaired. Researchers presented participants with challenges involving geometric shapes, numerical sequences, etc. As participants solved increasingly difficult puzzles, it became clear that people don't need language for this kind of reasoning. Patients with language impairments solved the problems as well as the ‘verbo-typical’ control group. The MRI scans showed the brain's language system was not engaged for either inductive reasoning (when participants identified hidden rules) or deductive reasoning (when they assessed the validity of syllogistic arguments). How come? Why don’t the language and logic functions converge, or at least overlap, neurologically? For one thing, language is naturally, and probably necessarily, fuzzy . Wittgenstein (above) spoke of word meanings as familial relationships . We’ve all experienced frustration when talking with someone whose speech is unwaveringly literal. Logic, on the other hand, is inherently precise. Much blood has been shed, figuratively and literally, because someone applied rigorous logic to an imprecisely defined concept (language). Plus, language is multifunctional. It can ‘compare thee to a summer’s day’, it can talk you through an IKEA assembly maze, and it can inspire soldiers at Agincourt. Logic is, well, more logical. Finally, most languages are linear in structure, progressing one word at a time, whereas evaluating available information to reach logical conclusions often requires thinking along several tracks at once, connecting those tracks via reciprocity and recursion. The closest thing we have to that in English is the work of James Joyce, especially Ulysses and Finnegans Wake . In these ‘novels’ the narrative follows multiple story lines simultaneously: Leopold and Stephen in Dublin, Ulysses and Telemachus in Ithica, King Hamlet’s ghost and the Prince in Denmark, YHWH and his Christ in Roman Catholic Liturgy. As in polyphonic music, each line maintains its integrity but harmonizes with others. These extraordinary works are to the rest of literature as Beethoven is to Gregorian Chant…or as today’s quantum computers are to their analog ancestors. In truth, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake are exceptions that prove the rule. They demonstrate both the limitations and the potential of linear language foe modeling non-linear reality. When we approach the whole with language, we necessarily break the entirety into a sequence of stages (so-called causes and effects); we think horizontally. By contrast, Logic is threadbare; but it is also inherently holistic and recursive. We conceptualize our problem as a whole and then break it down into discrete modules, each modifying and being modified by the whole. We reason vertically. We trust that we can gain information about the whole by understanding its self-similar parts ( aka fractals). Because I know that 1 + 1 = 2, I can calculate x + y for any values of x and y. *** "(This research) really upends a(ny) theory that says that symbolic rule induction is not possible without linguistic capacities." Yes, it does…and it upends more besides. For example, I no longer have any reason to assume that my poor pussy cat, who struggles mightily but unsuccessfully to participate in family conversations, is any less conscious than I am (and perhaps even more so after I’ve had a couple of bone dry martinis). Fedorenko’s team has provided a major boost to advocates of panpsychism and/or animal rights. On the other hand, the implications for AI are less sanguine. Large language models like ChatGPT and Claude are trained entirely on text and use text as their output—yet they convincingly simulate some kinds of human reasoning (Turing, Searle). My LLM bot, for all its apparent genius, relies exclusively on language to reach logical conclusions. Knowing that, it is hard to assign any logical validity to its output. Is this the greatest con job in history? Like many a fast talker I’ve known (and one I’ve caught sight of in a mirror), does Claude use language facility to mask logical inadequacy? Does he have a career in politics in mind? Earlier we smirked that physics was overturning metaphysics; could it also be said that rhetoric (LLM) is overturning logic? Or is it just possible that at the performance extremes achieved by today’s AI, horizonal reasoning (language) genuinely reproduces the results of vertical reasoning (logic). If so, can we treat that confluence as significant or must we consider it mere coincidence? I am reminded of Aristophanes’ Clouds . In this play, the students in Socrates’ Thinkery are trained to apply logic to nonsense…with predictably hilarious results. Are today’s LLMs extensions of Socrates’ academy? Could it be that Kitty is conscious and Claude is not? And what of Turing’s Test ? And Searle’s Room ? These philosophical paradigms draw their power from an assumed relationship between Logic (reasoning) and Language (communication). But what if there is no such relationship? *** “What if there is no such relationship?” What if? There is none! (assuming we trust the research of course) So now what? What can we say we know? And how do we live? Imagine a triangle. Label the apex R for Reality. Label the base points L1 and L2 (L1 is Language, L2 Logic). This figure lies, unrecognized of course, at the foundation of all of our conceptions of the World; no more! R ↙ ↘ L1 ↔ L2 We have concluded (above) that Language and Logic provide irreconcilable accounts of Reality; our triangle is inherently unstable. That leaves us with a choice of three possible models: (1) The world of Lewis Carroll ( Alice and her Lookingglass ): Language but no Logic. (2) The world of Jacques Ellul ( Propaganda ) and George Orwell ( 1984 ): Language and Logic but no Reality. (3) The world of Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco: Logic and Reality but no Language. (Of course, all three employ language masterfully in their works but it has no agentic force, it does not advance the narrative, its function is subservient to Logic and Reality.) Hold up! If there are three models of the World that fit the data with equal fidelity, don’t we have to conclude that ALL of them are true? Yes indeed, we do! No single model of the World that includes Logic, Language and Reality can be stable; but no model can be complete without all three. So, we must accept that we live in a world of wave-particle duality, of quantum complementarity, of Feynman’s Sum over Histories, or Bell’s entanglement. No single model can account for the World as it is but multiple models, applied separately but simultaneously, just might; but you’ll have to stay on your toes to make sure that they never meet. And they say Atlas had a tough job. 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< Back Nothing David Cowles Jun 4, 2024 “Nothing is the ‘space’ that allows something to occur. If it weren’t for nothing, there’d be nothing at all!” We are in love with the idea of nothing ; and why not? Something requires explanation: What is it? What’s it made of? Where did it come from…and when? How did it get here…and why? It’s an exhausting piece of work and at the end of day, we can’t be sure we’re any further along than we were when we started. Nothing on the other hand requires nothing, and we love everything that requires nothing. We love weekends, we love vacations, we love snow days…because those are the times when nothing is required of us. Genesis tells us that God created the world ex nihilo – out of nothing. Contemporary physicists agree: the universe sprang into being spontaneously, and it will return to nothing (at ‘Heat Death’ aka ‘Big Freeze’). Theologians might say that the spatiotemporal world must become nothing so that the eternal world can be all-in-all . Others say that the universe is already nothing , the energy of expansion being precisely balanced and therefore canceled by the force of gravity. We imagine nothing as though it were Plato’s Receptacle, the womb of the world. We imagine it as a vast empty space – a night sky without stars. When we think about nothing , we see ourselves standing on our back porch, drawing in a deep breath of pre-industrial air on a chilly, starless night. Nice! Nope! Nothing could be further from the truth. Astronaut-poet Michael Collins has attempted to disabuse us of our space camp fantasies. His description of a vacuum, free even of light itself, is terrifying. Imagine you are encased, alive, in a medium that is both infinitely dense and infinitely permeable. No forlorn gazes, there’s nothing to see; no deep breaths, there’s nothing to breathe; and, of course, no back porch. Tell me now, what’s to love about that? So what? Who cares? Well, we might care. Love of nothing isn’t nothing; it can have real life consequences. For example, if we love nothing , we may at some point wish to be nothing. Suicidal ideation may follow. Also, nothing is a defense-of-convenience against all forms of gnosis or ethos . Nothing is an acceptable response to any positive proposition. It offers a conceptual foundation for Nihilism, Skepticism and even Solipsism. Of course, nothing has its bright side: “No more pencils, no more books, no more teacher’s dirty looks.” Yes, nothing has a lot in common with the last day of school: “Free at last, free at last! OMG, we’re free at last?” Free to do what exactly? The euphoria of summer vacation fades quickly. It is soon replaced by the steady chant of a Tibetan monk: “I’m bored…I’m bored.” Still, nothing frees me to do whatever I want to do, whenever I want to do it. Cool beans! No rules! Now I just need to come up with something I want to do, not to mention a reason why I, or anyone else, would ever want to do it. So nothing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be! Yet, we can’t live without it! Nothing is the ‘space’ that allows something to occur. If it weren’t for nothing , there’d be nothing at all! ‘Something’ is a one word oxymoron; something can only exist in the context of nothing. Nothing and something are the ultimate dialectical pair. Nothing is what something isn’t. Literally. Therefore, whatever comes to be comes to be out of nothing . What comes to be comes to be out of what is not. Suppose there was something, just something , no nothing . It is , but it reveals no origin, no destiny, no composition, no trajectory, and no relations. Naked something is a degenerate case of Heisenberg Uncertainty. We’d know everything about its position (where it is) and therefore we’d know nothing about its momentum (where it came from, where it’s going). IRL, we know a bit about the position of things ( something ), things as they are, and a bit about the trajectory of things ( nothing ), things as they are not, but we can never know everything about both. Like quarks in a proton, something and nothing do not exist independently of one another. Something is the negation of nothing ; nothing is the negation of something . You can’t have one without the other. They are dialectic and symbiotic. Christian cosmology anticipated this state of affairs with its Trinitarian theology. According to Christian doctrine, God is process. God is the relationship between the Father (God) and the Son (God); that relationship is the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit is God. Jean-Paul Sartre talked about entities that are not what they are and are what they are not. It is generally thought that he was talking exclusively about human beings. But in the cosmology outlined in this post, Sartre’s meme would apply equally to everything that is . To be is not to be what you are and to be what you are not! Being is the process of Becoming. Being is inherently restless. In an earlier TWS , we pointed out that every being includes its own negation. But that negation does not annul what is, it preserves it in a subsequent synthesis. Negation is the foundation of faith, not fear, hope, not despair. Thanks to nothing, the Universe is a perpetual process of self-preservation and improvement. When ‘my reach exceeds my grasp’ (Burns), I am reaching into nothing . Nothing creates the space for something to happen. As Being hurtles toward the Kingdom of God, spatiotemporal imperfection must give way to eternal perfection. The progression of Being from ‘spatiotemporal and imperfect’ to ‘perfect and eternal’ requires nothing , i.e. space…for growth and change. As kids in the 1950’s, whenever we were disappointed or disgusted, we would say, “Thanks for nothing!” Now, I repeat that every night in my prayers: “Thanks for nothing, God!” No, really, thanks! 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 Joseph’s Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat David Cowles Nov 6, 2025 “Jacob’s gift of a robe is symbolic of Joseph’s special status in the ancient line of mystical succession.” The Book of Genesis is many, many things. It begins with a Hymn of Creation (1:1 – 2:4) and continues with a Prologue (2:5 - 11:32) reprising various Middle Eastern myths (e.g. the Flood), reinterpreted a millennia later in the light of now fully developed Jewish theology. From there Genesis moves onto the proto history of the Hebrew nation (12:1 – 36:41). These are the stories of the Patriarchs (Abraham, Issac, and Jacob) and they represent a transition from myth to legend. (Think King Arthur.) The final 14 chapters contain the story of Joseph, son of Jacob ( aka Israel). They form a bridge connecting the legendary Patriarchs with the historical Exodus and they introduce another dimension to our narrative: the mystical . Mysticism here refers to a fabric of super-ancient spiritual practices, woven across cultures, irrespective of boundaries, topological or political. It would appear that this wisdom precedes the development of religions per se . Let’s listen in: “Now Israel (Jacob) loved Joseph more than any other of his sons…and he made him a long sleeved robe ( aka a ‘coat of many colors’). When his brothers saw that their father loved Joseph more than any of them, they hated him… (Then) Joseph had a dream and they hated him still more.” Jacob’s gift of a robe is symbolic of more than just parental favoritism. It is a recognition of Joseph’s special status in the ‘ancient line of mystical succession’. In the 1st Book of Kings (19: 17 – 21), Elijah passes the prophetic mantle to Elisha in a very similar ceremony: “ So Elijah…found Elisha son of Shaphat. He was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen, and he himself was driving the twelfth pair. Elijah went up to him and threw his cloak around him. Elisha then left his oxen and ran after Elijah… He took his yoke of oxen and slaughtered them. He burned the plowing equipment to cook the meat and gave it to the people, and they ate. Then he set out to follow Elijah and became his servant.” Interpretive Notes : The coat and cloak are the veil of maya , the woven garment (shroud) covering noumenal reality (Kant), i.e. Aletheia ( Parmenides ). The 12 yoke of oxen are the signs of the Zodiac, signifying the cosmic dimension of mystical initiation, corresponding to Joseph’s welcoming the 12 tribes of Israel (his brothers) to Egypt. The Electro-Magnetic (EM) spectrum (Joseph’s colors ) is an alternate way (vs. signs of the Zodiac/yoke of oxen) of representing entirety, i.e. kosmos . In the spirit of the New Testament Letter of James , both Joseph and Elisha give expression to their faith by ‘feeding the people’ (see below). Jesus picks up on this critical theme by feeding first 5,000 and then 4,000 hungry followers . We are indebted to Kings . It’s only that light that we can confidently interpret Jacob’s ‘anointing’ of Joseph as a sacrament in the Mystical tradition. It is unclear (intentionally so?) whether the bestowal of the robe is an acknowledgement on Jacob’s part that Joseph has a special connection with the divine or whether the gift itself confers new powers on the son. I am reminded of Mary Poppins : “ What I want to know…is this: Are the stars gold paper, or are the gold paper stars?” (Jane Banks) In each case, of course, the answer is both ! The world is maximally recursive. What goes around comes around. IRL, all verbs need to be Middle Voice (vs. Active/Passive). The Jacob stories are nothing if not down to earth. Neither Jacob nor Joseph model what we would call virtue . Joseph is a right Eddie Haskell ( Leave it to Beaver ), a goodie-two-shoes intent on currying his father’s favor by ‘tattling’ on his older brothers. Joseph is only too eager to lord his advantage over his senior siblings. Shamefully, he exploits his spiritual gifts to tease and demean them; his behavior is so egregious that even the doting Jacob is offended: “Must we come and bow low to the ground before you, I and your mother and your brothers?” “His brothers were jealous of him, but his father did not forget.” Like all marks of social distinction, Joseph’s coat inspires jealousy, and even hatred, in those less favored (e.g. his brothers). Any modern day parent could have written this script. Out of 13 siblings, one is ‘the favorite’… and treated as such. What could possibly go wrong? Pity Jacob that he did not have Dr. Spock to advise him! The Hebrew phrase translated as ‘many colors’ in the Septuagint is obscure. That said, much is baked into the traditional panchromatic symbolism. First, of course, there is allusion to the rainbow, bridge to Me Pot o’ Gold , nature’s symbol of harmony and peace, token of YHWH’s covenant with creation. On an even deeper level, the rainbow represents the essence of all Process, i.e. Being per se , described by Alfred North Whitehead as the creative flux of one into many and many into one. The noumenal EM spectrum becomes the phenomenon of white light which in turn refracts to give us that rainbow. As Genesis comes to a close, the Hebrews (descendants of Jacob), the Edomites (descendants of Esau), and the Ishmaelites (descendants of Ishmail) have all carved our successful niches in the Middle East. Our origin story is poised for a happy ending…but of course, human frailty ( aka sin) soon intervenes. Following his angry confrontation with Joseph, Jacob sends his chosen one to accompany his brothers ‘in the field’. Was this intended as punishment? Or was it Jacob’s attempt to toughen up his pampered offspring? Or was it done in the vain hope that sibling rivalry might be resolved? In any event, it was yet another miscalculation by the hapless Jacob; he certainly did not anticipate, much less intend, what happened next: “Seeing him approach from a distance, the brothers immediately conspire to do away with this Lord of Dreams .” Fortunately, Reuben commutes Joseph’s death sentence and instead they arrange for him to be sold into slavery. Soon Joseph is in Egypt where holds a series of administrative posts and earns his Pharoah’s respect and trust: “…The Lord is with Joseph and gives him success in all things.” While managing various offices of state, Joseph continues to interpret dreams. Pharoah dreams of seven fat cows followed by seven lean cows who proceed to devour their more corpulent predecessors. Based on that narrative, Joseph predicts seven years of ‘feast’ followed by seven years of ‘famine’ in Egypt. Pharoah acts on Joseph’s intelligence: he stores surplus during the fat years to cover the needs of the realm during the lean years to follow. As a result of God’s favor and Pharoah’s wisdom, Egypt alone prospers during an historic, region-wide famine, recorded simultaneously throughout the Middle East. The Book of Genesis is many things. It is history, legend, mythology, anthropology and ethics. But going back to the Hymn of Creation , Genesis also has a cosmological dimension. Pharoah’s dream allows the narrator to introduce a theory of time crucial to the later development of Judeo-Christian cosmology. Ask most people how they would describe time and you’re likely to hear a lot about beads on a string, buds on a branch, birds on a wire, Xmas lights on a strand. Why not? It’s a natural way to think of the succession of events that constitute our lives. But it is not the Judeo-Christian way. Genesis uses the story of Jacob’s sojourn into Egypt to propose a radically different way to imagine ‘sequence’. The Future does not follow the Past, it consumes it! A perpetual Present projects what has been into what is coming to be. It’s the Blob of cinematic fame (1958), consuming everything it touches. It confers eternal life, or at least potential immortality, on what is no more substantial than a “mist” (James 4:14), i.e. our mortal lives. We see this model displayed again and again throughout Judeo-Christian scripture and practice: YHWH is the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; he is the God of the living , not to the dead. The Patriarchs (above) are consoled knowing that their descendants will be numerous as grains of sand on a beach or as stars in the sky. King David is promised that the Messiah will be from his house . At the Transfiguration, Jesus reveals Moses and Elijah, ‘alive’ in him. Roman Catholics, et al., consume Jesus in Eucharist and are simultaneously ‘uploaded’ into his Mystical Body. The fat cows don’t become lean, nor do the lean cows simply succeed their plumper forebears. Nope! In a stroke that would have made another Josef (i.e. Stalin) blush, the lean cows devour the fatties. Pity the bourgeoisie! Incredibly, you have just entered the Twilight Zone , i.e. the bizzarro world of 20 th century mathematics. Welcome to the non-Archimedean (non-A) universe. Here, all events are either embedded in one another or disjoint . Events B and C are inert quanta until they are uploaded (embedded) into Event A. In A, B and C ‘interfere’ and that interference, X, in turn interacts with and modifies both B and C. Reality is on a perpetual, non-linear loop. B and C do not interact, but they do interfere…in A. Each contributes to A (in the form of X, their interference pattern) and through the intermediation of X, A modifies B and C. In this model, A corresponds to the future, B and C to the past, and X to the present. X is what we call History (or Process). So no, Dorothy, we’re definitely not in Kansas anymore! To find out more about this world where we actually live, check out: What’s the Matter with Archimedes? Archimedes and Christianity But in the meantime, bear one thing in mind: This is the real world. This is how things actually work. Deal with it! *** Diego Velázquez — Joseph’s Tunic (1630) depicts the dramatic moment when Joseph’s brothers present his blood-stained coat to their father, Jacob, leading him to believe Joseph has been killed. Velázquez uses strong chiaroscuro lighting to heighten the emotional intensity, illuminating Jacob’s grief and the brothers’ tense deception. The painting exemplifies Velázquez’s early mastery of psychological realism, conveying profound human emotion through gesture, light, and shadow. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? 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< Back Hide and Seek David Cowles Apr 25, 2024 “Being is a game of hide-and-seek…Enjoy it now but know that no one will ever find you.” It looks like an auto salvage yard. Our effort to prove the existence of things has littered the logical landscape with wrecks, now mercifully stored more or less out of sight in junk yards like this one. Proving that something exists should be easy. “Hello, I’m here!” But not so fast! “Hello, I’m here,” is exactly what I would expect to hear from you if you didn’t exist. Huh? Point is, claiming to be is not the same as actually being . Sidebar : You’re 10 years old (now…or again) and you’re playing hide-and-seek with your friends, as usual. This time, however, your friends aren’t able to find you. Bored, you come out of hiding, “Here I am.” But to your surprise, you get no reaction. It’s like they don’t see you…or hear you. Then you overhear one of your friends say, “He’s not here, he must have gone home,” and they leave you standing all alone in the forest. Being is like that; it’s a game of hide-and-seek. We hide, but no one ever comes looking. Enjoy it now but know that no one will ever find you. It’s scary… and lonely! “Claiming to be is not the same as being,” or is it? According to Rene Descartes, cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am). Well, that might work for Rene, but does it work for anyone else? Rene might be convinced that he exists but that won’t get him a grande at Starbucks…unless he can conjure up $3.49 as well. He says he thinks - who am I to judge? But that’s just the point: who am I to judge? I can either blindly accept Rene’s word for things (faith?)…or I can remain agnostic. Rene may have convinced himself that he exists, but he hasn’t convinced me. Come to think of it, neither have you! Nor has God; nor has the so-called External World (aka, the Cosmos). Turns out, nothing has ever been able to prove to anyone that it exists; and nothing ever will. No wonder “there was silence in heaven for about half an hour” when the final (7th) seal was opened ( John of Patmos, Revelation, 8:1 ). No wonder Kierkegaard had bouts of fear and trembling. Only followers of Douglas Adams enjoy the luxury of a quiet meal at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe . But better book now, I hear the wait list is insane; and don’t leave home without it, because I’ve also heard that the bill alone can be heart stopping. What about me? Well, like Rene, I may (or may not) have satisfied myself that I exist, but I can’t prove it to you, or to anyone else, any more than Rene could. If all this sounds weird, it isn’t! The idea that existential facts lie ‘below’ the level of sensation, perception, observation, logic, and language runs throughout Western philosophy: Parmenides’ Aletheia , Plato’s Forms, Aristotle’s Potentia , John’s Logos , Kant’s Noumena , Heidegger’s Dasein , Sartre’s Neant - all fundamental constituents of reality, all well-hidden, none of them accessible to ‘existential proof’. So, to be clear, we can reason logically about relations, appearances, behaviors, etc., but we cannot use logic to determine the existence of any entity underlying those phenomena. To put it more formally, we cannot prove a proposition on one ontological level using premises from a different ontological level. Math and logic deal with structure that is necessarily the same, always and everywhere; the goal is universality. Science, for its part, deals with contingent but reproducible events; the goal is repeatability. But Being consists of one-offs; its goal is novelty. Analogy : Math/logic : Real numbers :: Science : Even numbers :: Being : Prime numbers. ‘To be’ is to be , not to be like . In fact, to the extent that anything is ‘like something else’, it is not entirely novel and therefore gives up a bit of its own being. It subcontracts out part of itself. What is is what’s novel; the rest is just scaffolding. Consider the sentence, “it is!” The subject (it) is always the entirety, the cosmos, the universal; a particular person, place, or thing often ‘stands in’ for that entirety. The predicate (is) refers only to that aspect of the subject (it) that is unique, i.e. particular: “What’s new?” The function of language, the function of every symbolic system, is to confirm the relationship between the universal and the particular. The subject of every sentence is the entirety. The predicate of every sentence is a unique configuration of qualia. Paradigm : the Christian doctrine of Incarnation. The universal, God, is a quantum of being, Christ. ‘To be’ is always a scandal, ‘the scandal of particularity’: Why this and not that, why now and not then, why here and not there? For this reason alone, ‘to be or not to be’ will always be the question , the only question. What about causality and other patterns that seem to connect events? They exist only in the world of relations; they are not part of being per se . They give you a sense of balance and stability in this crazy world; they are an antidote to fear, trembling, angst, and nausea. They function as a fixed horizon for sailors made seasick by the fickle undulation of Being . The truth value of an existential proposition, on the other hand, remains oblivious to observation, experimentation, induction, or deduction. Being is always solitary: “One is one and all alone and evermore shall be so.” 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.