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.” < Back Fr. Timothy Joyce, OSB, STL Contributor 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.” Jesus Meets Mr. Spock

< Back The Fork in the Road David Ritter "...And I'm ever grateful for His guidance." I came upon a fork in the road and paused to have a look. I was weary and filled with burdens, ashamed of past roads I took. The road I was on was battered and worn. I feared another mistake. So I bowed my head to say a prayer, before choosing which road to take. After my prayer, I looked to my left, that path was cold, dark, and bare. And I would have wandered off that way, if my God did not care. He spoke to me in a still small voice, “Why not try something new? You don’t have to keep living this way, there’s a better road for you.” I humbly mustered up the courage, to step towards the right. Suddenly I became misty-eyed, in God’s glorious light. The path was warm, bright, and peaceful, His love gently flowed. And I’m ever grateful for His guidance, facing the fork in the road. This poem is republished with permission. David Ritter is a Christian author and founder of the website Ritter's Rhyme and Reason . He can be followed at these handles: Etsy Store: https://thememoriesikeep.etsy.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheMemoriesIKeep/ Amazon Author Page : https://www.amazon.com/stores/David-Ritter/author/B0745HTLWH?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_3&qid=1596169661&sr=1-3&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true Click the cover image to return to Spring 2024. Previous Next

“We are not midway through the Second Act of a Mystery Play called Salvation… Brunhilda has sung; we just need to applaud!” < Back Apocalypse Now! David Cowles Feb 1, 2025 “We are not midway through the Second Act of a Mystery Play called Salvation… Brunhilda has sung; we just need to applaud!” (We are not waiting for the Apocalypse, it’s already here, now. Celebrate!) Christian eschatology is organized around two key concepts: Apocalypse and Parousia , ancient Greek words commonly translated as ‘revelation’ and ‘coming’ respectively. Such translations are not wrong; but neither are they optimal. Apocalypse primarily means ‘uncovering’ or ‘unveiling’. It can convey a sense of revelation, not in the way that one might ‘reveal’ a secret, but rather in the way one might ‘uncover’ something hidden beneath a surface. Think of the bride’s face that is ‘revealed’ at her ‘unveiling’. Parousia in turn means ‘presence’; it is derived from another Greek word, parontes , that means ‘near’ or ‘at hand’. In special contexts, it can have the sense of ‘coming’ (coming to be present) but ‘presence’ is the core concept here. Because of sub-optimal translation, Christian eschatology has been understood as the revelation of future events, the most of important of which is the second coming of Christ. This misunderstanding has inflicted untold misery on the Church. For example, New Testament texts are almost unanimous in their portrayal of Parousia as immanent; how then can it be that we are still waiting…2000 years later? Likewise, the understanding of Apocalypse as related to future events has led to gross misinterpretations of history: The world will end on Christmas Day, 1285…or is it 2185? Is Hitler ‘the beast’? Or Stalin ‘the anti-Christ’? And where does Nostradamus fit? How different would the development of Christian eschatology have been if we had properly understood Apocalypse as ‘uncovering’ or ‘unveiling’ and Parousia as ‘presence’! We would never have lost our way in the forests of the future ; we would always have known that we were talking about something that already is. Apocalypse is simply the ‘unveiling’ of Parousia , Christ’s ‘presence’. Jesus’ words at the close of Matthew’s Gospel (28: 18 – 20) testify to that presence: “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me…and behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” Tellingly, Jesus did not say, “All power in heaven and on earth will be given to me someday…and then I will be with you.” We are not midway through the Second Act of a Mystery Play called Salvation . The play is already over, Brunhilda has sung; we just need to applaud! Consider Jesus’ final words at the moment of his death on the cross, “It is finished.” (Jn. 19:30), not “We’ve only just begun” (Carpenters). Then check out Matthew’s account of the crucifixion: “…Jesus cried out again in a loud voice and gave up his spirit. And behold, the veil of the sanctuary was torn in two from top to bottom.” (Mt. 27: 50 – 51) The ‘sanctuary’ Matthew refers to is the Holy of Holies in the Jerusalem temple; the ‘veil’ is what hides God’s dwelling place from human eyes. At the moment of Jesus’ death, the veil is torn in two, revealing God’s dwelling to the world, and therefore revealing God’s universal presence. Sidebar : Torah conflates God’s dwelling place with God’s presence. The splitting of the veil makes it clear: God’s presence is no longer hidden; the ‘Holy of Holies’ is now the Universe. This quite literally is the Apocalypse ! But in a broader sense, Apocalypse can be understood as a process. It begins with Creation and continues uninterrupted to the end of time, except that from God’s perspective, all this happens in the Present. Law ( Written and Oral Torah ), history, wisdom and prophesy all work together to reveal Christ’s immediate presence in the world. There is no contradiction here. William Blake properly understood the relationship between the immediate and the eternal: “To see a World in a Grain of Sand and a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand and Eternity in an hour.” Apocalypse assumes a special focus and a new intensity in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus’ Nativity, Baptism, and Transfiguration, his parables, miracles, Crucifixion, Resurrection and Ascension, all work toward a single end: the manifestation of Christ’s presence ( Parousia ). And who is this Christ who was present then, is present now, and will be present to the end of time? “When everything is subjected to him (Christ), then the Son himself (Christ) will be subjected to the one (God) who subjected everything to him (Christ), so that God may be all in all.” (I Cor. 15: 28) The eternal, universal presence of Christ ( Parousia ) is indicative of a God that is all in all. But the apocalyptic process does not abruptly end with Jesus’ Resurrection and subsequent Ascension. On Pentecost, Christ sends his Holy Spirit into the world, perpetuating the Apocalyptic Age until the end of time. The Church itself and each of its Sacraments point to Christ’s presence. The Church is Christ’s “Mystical Body” (vs. Jesus’ biological body) and Christ himself is in every sacrament, but in a special, material way in the Sacrament of Eucharist. “This is my body…this is the cup of my blood…do this in memory of me.” With these words, Jesus consecrated and then distributed the ‘bread and wine’ ritually consumed at the Passover meal. By this act, Jesus assured his disciples that his material presence was not confined to his biological body and that it would not vanish with the destruction (or glorification or ascension) of that body. Through the sacrament of Eucharist, Jesus demonstrated that his physical presence utterly transcends the limitations of mortality. Christ is present everywhere and at all times (God is all in all). But the Eucharist demonstrates that Jesus’ presence is at least potentially material at any place and at any time. Through the sacrament of Eucharist, transubstantiation occurs many times every day all around the world. Each time, Jesus is present. But his presence is not merely spiritual; it is just as physical after transubstantiation as the bread and wine were before. The Sacrament of Eucharist is the real physical presence of Christ in the world but, like all sacraments, it is also a sign. Eucharist symbolizes nothing less than the ultimate transubstantiation of the entire material world into the body and blood of Christ “…so that God may be all in all”. Therefore, the Sacrament of Eucharist, every time it is celebrated, is “Apocalypse Now!” It constitutes Parousia and it reveals Christ’s material presence. Traditionally, folks have thought of Apocalypse as synonymous with the end of the world, as something that happens at the ‘end of time’ (like Douglas Adam’s Restaurant at the End of the Universe ). But Apocalypse is not something that will happen billions of years from now; it ‘is now and ever shall be’. It exists outside of space and time and so is co-present with all things at all times in all places. In Eucharist, the elements retain the appearance of bread and wine, but they are substantially transformed into Christ’s body and blood. ‘Attributes’ create the appearance of bread and wine; but the ‘substance’ is Christ. British philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead, in his magnum opus, Process and Reality , presents a detailed model for the process by which conflicts become contrasts which in turn harmonize into new unities, “so that God may be all in all”. But we can find a similar but simpler model in each of the seven sacraments: Baptism, Penance, Matrimony, et al. Each brings about new unity out of what was previously an isolated or conflicted state. Christ is present in the sacraments because the sacraments effect the harmonization that is his essence. Commutatively, the sacraments effect unification and harmonization precisely because Christ is present. This is true for Eucharist, of course, but it is also true for each of the other sacraments. But Eucharist is really three sacraments in one because it effects that harmonization in three distinct ways: (1) It builds community through the common meal (‘messe’ or Mass). (2) In communion, the consumption of the so-called ‘bread and wine’, materially integrates Christ into the body of each communicant. (3) But by ‘commutative topology’, each communicant is simultaneously integrated into the body of Christ (so that God may be all in all). In Eucharist, not only is Christ present as the agent and the product of harmonization but Christ is materially present in the transubstantiated elements which merely retain the appearance of bread and wine. Eucharist truly is Apocalypse Now ! David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Return to Groundhog Issue 2025 Share Previous Next Click here. Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, Fall Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back Xiako Can't Count David Cowles So, what’s up with the Piraha? How can they get by without numbers? Xiako is a typical teenager. Self-absorbed and rebellious, she would fit right in at any American high school. Not to say that she isn’t different. She is a member of the Piraha tribe, a small, self-isolating community in the heart of the Amazon Rainforest. Imagine that she’s visiting the United States for the first time as part of some sort of cultural exchange program. She’s smart, hard-working, and enjoys taking care of younger children. Of course, language is an issue. Her language isn’t at all like English. (In fact, it’s not at all like any other living language.) But Xiako has a much bigger problem: Xiako can’t count! Because she can’t count, she can’t do even the simplest math. Her host family is making great progress teaching her English, but they’re having no luck at all with arithmetic. How come? You said she was smart, and I can see that from the progress she’s made learning English; so, what’s up with her numbers ? Well, for one thing, she doesn’t have any! (Yup, you read it right: she doesn’t have any numbers.) The Piraha don’t distinguish 1 from 2 or 2 from 10, so no wonder she finds math difficult. Try solving the simplest math problem without using numbers…See what I mean? Without a concept of number, all attempts to teach Xiako the simplest arithmetic were doomed to failure. Even 1 + 1 = 2 made no sense to her. There’s no 1 to begin with, so there’s no 1 + 1 and if there’s no 1 + 1, how than there be a 2 (whatever ‘2’ might mean)? So, what’s up with the Piraha? How can they get by without numbers? Turns out, the Piraha get along quite nicely thank you, that is, until they cross paths with folks like us, i.e., folks from ‘number enabled’ cultures like ours. When that happens, there’s trouble, not violence (the Piraha are a peaceful people), but trouble! For example, how can you conclude a modern commercial transaction when one party uses numbers, and the other party doesn’t? Imagine that I run a trading post several miles downriver from a Piraha village. I have a customer! And my customer wants fish. I’d like to be able to ask, “How much fish would you like?” or “How many fish do you want?” or “How much do you want to spend?” but I can’t say any of those things. I can’t put the fish on a table and count them; I can’t put them on a scale and weigh them, and I have no idea how to communicate what I mean by ‘price.’ Why do we have numbers while the Piraha don’t? Perhaps because we understand the world as a collection of objects and/or events. In mathematics, a collection of things is often referred to as a set . I immediately want to know the size of my set, how many members does it have? How many apples? How many oranges? The Piraha have no idea of sets. Each event stands on its own. “One is one and all alone and evermore shall be so.” But Being Piraha doesn’t mean being lonely . Far from it. The Piraha are extremely social. Many cultures have a less developed number system than ours. For example, there are cultures that rely on just 3 numbers: One, two, many. Inconvenient? Yes. Impossible to work with? No. With just the numerals 1, 2, >2, we can work through any transaction. It just might take a ‘bit’ (pun intended): remember, computers do all that they do with only two numbers: 0 and 1. Big Blue won Jeopardy using nothing but 0’s and 1’s. But Xiago has no 0 and no 1. We’re having great success teaching her English, why can’t we teach her math? The difference is that Piraha understand ‘language’ (they have one) but not ‘numbers’ (they have none). To move from Piraha to English is difficult but possible. To move from no numbers, not even a concept of ‘number,’ to the Set of Real Numbers might just be impossible. This total lack of numeracy in Piraha culture caught anthropologists by surprise. There are roughly 7,500 distinct human cultures. 7,499 apparently have a concept of number, one does not. Guess which one! David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com. Previous Next

< Back The Intellectual History of Planet Earth David Cowles Jul 22, 2026 “Orangutangs and Oysters are more interested in the how of living than they are in the how come.” 1600 words, 8 minute read As humans, we seem to have an insatiable desire to ‘understand’ the world we live in; there’s little evidence that other species share our theoretical curiosity. As far as we know, Orangutangs and Oysters are more interested in the how of living than they are in the how come . We, on the other hand, have been puzzling out the phenomenon of Being at least since the earliest cave paintings and epic poems. Amazingly, the results of 50 odd millennia can be neatly divided into just two theoretical buckets: Bucket #1 : “There is nothing to understand. Things are just as they are.” What is is , period. We are extremely sophisticated Orangutangs and Oysters. Our ‘job’ is just to catalogue what is. There is no need to posit noumena in order to understand phenomena. There are only phenomena! ‘That it is’ explains itself: It is is as far as it goes. What you See is What you Get ( WYSIWYG ). What you see is all there is to see, it’s what’s there ! In the language of Parmenides I , Aletheia = Doxa ;Heidegger , Dasein = Wassein . Growing up in the 1950s, I am familiar with this model. “Why? Because I say so!” Surprisingly, thinking along these lines is what we call Science . The authority of the parent has been replaced by that of the academy; in place of rewards and punishments, we have empirical data and the Scientific Method. Science is an incredibly powerful tool, unmatched in our planet’s intellectual history. Sure beats the Oracle at Delphi! But it has two significant limitations: It concerns itself only with what can be repeated and measured. Whatever is unique (one off) or imperceptible must fall outside the scope of Science. We love Science; it’s easy! (Never thought I’d write that sentence.) But Physics is a ‘gut’ compared to Metaphysics . Being able to repeat an experiment over and over and witness the results (albeit with technologically enhanced eyes) is a true luxury. No wonder we can send folks to the Moon! The scientific paradigm is the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (i.e. no ‘interpretation’ at all): Once you’ve catalogued and sorted all the data, there is nothing more to be done. The data points and their superficial patterns are what is, all there is, or at any rate, all that can be known or expressed. Those of us gifted with the sense of sight have special access to a narrow range of the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum. Other sighted animals have similar access but often over slightly different ranges. The full EM spectrum spans 20 orders of magnitude; all in, the animal kingdom has access to less than one such order. And yet we go through life thinking that ‘seeing is believing’, i.e. that what you see is what there is…and all there is. According to an old Hasidic tale, a Rabbi was on his way home from Schule when we saw a widow on her hand and knees under a street lamp. Not wishing to be an unsympathetic character in someone’s Good Samaritan story, the Rabbi offers to assist: “How can I help?” “I only have one penny in all the world and I’ve lost it.” “Is this where you lost it?” “No, I lost it over there.” “Then why are you looking here?” “Because the light is better.” We live in a Universe that spans about 60 orders of magnitude (from the Planck length to the event horizon). The EM spectrum spans 20 of those orders; our unaided visual experience of the world is limited to less than one such order…but we trust it! Of course, IRL we have technology that translates a much wider range of data from the spectrum into visible effects; but it’s still well short of the whole. Still, those of us who ‘trust science’ and only science, are like the widow in this tale. We are looking for answers where they are easiest to find (the realm of the empirical and the repeatable) whether or not this is where they are to be found. To confirm our bias we’ve evolved a language, logic, and mathematics that reinforce the scientific paradigm. At the extreme, we accept only propositions that can be verified (actually, falsified) by the Scientific Method. According to the high priest of Analytic Philosophy, Ludwig Wittgenstein, we cannot speak meaningfully outside the limits imposed by the scientific method and “whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” Later in his career, Wittgenstein softened his position slightly, calling non-scientific communication important nonsense . *** Bucket #2 : “The world we see is at most the tip of the world that is.” Like Alice , we are left to ponder whether all of Lookingglass World is similar to what Alice can see in the mirror. More likely, it’s a random sample (fractal), a shadow (Plato), a projection (hologram) or a graphical representation (map) of what is . We cannot just accept phenomena at face value; we need to build an algorithm that allows us to reason from what’s observable to the deep structure that underpins it. With this approach, we do not have the blessing (or curse) of excluding data that falls outside a particular universe of discourse. We must consider the unique, the subjective, the complex, the fleeting. If we feel it, we must account for it. As I said (above), this is both a curse and a blessing – a curse that we have to account for so many more data points, a blessing that we have so much more data from which to tease out and verify our noumenal model. And here, at the very outset of our journey, we run into ‘transportation problems’. We are in the first mile of a cross continent drive when the damn engine light comes on. We need some sort of medium to enshrine and communicate our discoveries, but English, like the kids in my backseat, is already acting up. Bucket #1 was so easy! Almost everyone can agree to call it Science. But what to call Bucket #2 ? Mythology? Religion? Theology? Philosophy? Art? Absolutely, all of the above…and more! But each of these words comes with its own unique load of off-putting baggage. English doesn’t have a single word perfectly suited to our purpose. What words it does have, share other, sometimes less savory, denotations. But we will make do: Mythology consists of supra-natural narratives that attempt to express the deep structure of Being in images that we can relate to and in patterns that we can comprehend. The mythos of a society consists of the things it takes for granted, its undefined terms: the seasonal cycles in Egypt (Nile), the movements of celestial objects (stars), the Patriots in the Superbowl. The Scientific Method (Bucket #1 ) was the dominant myth in the 20 th century North Atlantic community. Religion celebrates what mythology discloses. Our modern universities are temples to the gods of science. Theology and Philosophy dig more deeply into the theoretical underpinnings of our mythological narratives and religious rituals. Finally, Art is how we encode and share what we discover. As much as the rigors of the Scientific Method constrict its universe of discourse, Art blows through virtually every symbolic constraint. Every artist paints a picture, sometimes with images (painting, sculpture), or words (literature), or sounds (music). The function of Art (per Heidegger) is to reveal and convey to others something truly new about being-in-the-world. Therefore, Science is Art as well as Myth; it has revealed certain aspects of our world in mind boggling detail. But I believe there’s more. There are important aspects of reality that lie outside the universe of scientific discourse and if someone (Wittgenstein) wants to call them ‘nonsense’, I’m ok with that. *** “Bucket, bucket, who’s got the bucket?” This was a lovely presentation (above) but it’s all nonsense , ‘important’ or otherwise. Lean in close now, I need to keep my voice down for this: “There is no Bucket #1 .” Shh, don’t let on you know. Keep on keepin’ on. Scientific Method depends for its validity on the assumption of repeatability. Euclid virtually invented the concept. Every planar triangle has angles totaling 180 degrees. Everything is repeatable an unlimited number of times. But Euclid’s world does not exist. IRL there are no perfect triangles, and no two shapes are congruent. The material (Marx) is the death of the ideal (Hegel). Everything is novel, everything is one off, everything is in Bucket #2 . That said, novelty can be massive or minimal in any given event. Some events adhere more closely to the details of their inherited Actual Worlds than others; some are more creative or adventurous. But there is always an infinitesimal element ( differance per Derrida) that distinguishes any single event from all other events. Science proceeds by systematically minimizing the degree of novelty in each event and then by disregarding the inevitable residual. It works; it got us to the Moon (above). But is it enough to let us unearth the noumenal structure of Being itself. I doubt it. For that we need Mythology, Art, and dare I say it, Religion: “The grove needs an altar.” (Pound) 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 Amazon David Cowles Amazon provides reliable, rapid, and inexpensive delivery service; and the US Postal Service? Well, to be kind let’s say ‘not so much’. So who is being sued by the feds? You guessed it…Amazon. Apparently, success today is automatically an anti-trust violation. Amazon provides reliable, rapid, and inexpensive delivery service; and the US Postal Service? Well, to be kind let’s say ‘not so much’. So who is being sued by the feds? You guessed it…Amazon. Apparently, success today is automatically an anti-trust violation. Previous Next

Aletheia Today is a collection of essays designed to offer fresh insights into traditional philosophical and theological problems and to apply those insights to contemporary developments in culture, art and the social and physical sciences. About Us What is Aletheia Today? Aletheia Today is where philosophy, theology, and science converge in a collection of critical thought essays and personal reflections intended to provoke constructive dialog among people of varying ideologies, faiths and belief systems. Travel Back in Time... It’s circa 500 B.C. and Parmenides of Elea is teaching science and philosophy all over the Greek speaking world. Today, he is widely recognized as the Father of Western Science and the Father of Western Philosophy. Statement of Faith AT Magazine is dedicated to elucidating and encouraging the 21st century convergence of philosophy, theology, and science. The editors of ATM are people of faith in the Christian tradition. However, ATM is intended to promote respectful, constructive dialog among people of good will, regardless of religious affiliation, if any. Articles from independent contributors to ATM do not necessarily represent the views of its editorial board. Meet our team of writers. Click here for our masthead.

< Back How ChatGPT Robs Students Naomi S. Baron "When AI does our writing for us, we diminish opportunities to think out problems for ourselves." When the company OpenAI launched its new artificial intelligence program, ChatGPT, in late 2022, educators began to worry. ChatGPT could generate text that seemed like a human wrote it. How could teachers detect whether students were using language generated by an AI chatbot to cheat on a writing assignment? As a linguist who studies the effects of technology on how people read , write and think , I believe there are other, equally pressing concerns besides cheating. These include whether AI, more generally, threatens student writing skills, the value of writing as a process, and the importance of seeing writing as a vehicle for thinking. As part of the research for my new book on the effects of artificial intelligence on human writing , I surveyed young adults in the U.S. and Europe about a host of issues related to those effects. They reported a litany of concerns about how AI tools can undermine what they do as writers. However, as I note in my book, these concerns have been a long time in the making. Users See Negative Effects Tools like ChatGPT are only the latest in a progression of AI programs for editing or generating text. In fact, the potential for AI undermining both writing skills and motivation to do your own composing has been decades in the making. Spellcheck and now sophisticated grammar and style programs like Grammarly and Microsoft Editor are among the most widely known AI-driven editing tools. Besides correcting spelling and punctuation, they identify grammar issues as well as offer alternative wording. AI text-generation developments have included autocomplete for online searches and predictive texting. Enter “Was Rome” into a Google search and you’re given a list of choices like “Was Rome built in a day.” Type “ple” into a text message and you’re offered “please” and “plenty.” These tools inject themselves into our writing endeavors without being invited, incessantly asking us to follow their suggestions. Young adults in my surveys appreciated AI assistance with spelling and word completion, but they also spoke of negative effects. One survey participant said that “At some point, if you depend on a predictive text [program], you’re going to lose your spelling abilities.” Another observed that “Spellcheck and AI software … can … be used by people who want to take an easier way out.” One respondent mentioned laziness when relying on predictive texting: “It’s OK when I am feeling particularly lazy.” Personal Expression Diminished AI tools can also affect a person’s writing voice. One person in my survey said that with predictive texting, “[I] don’t feel I wrote it.” A high school student in Britain echoed the same concern about individual writing style when describing Grammarly: “Grammarly can remove students’ artistic voice. … Rather than using their own unique style when writing, Grammarly can strip that away from students by suggesting severe changes to their work.” In a similar vein, Evan Selinger, a philosopher, worried that predictive texting reduces the power of writing as a form of mental activity and personal expression. “[B]y encouraging us not to think too deeply about our words, predictive technology may subtly change how we interact with each other,” Selinger wrote . “[W]e give others more algorithm and less of ourselves. … [A]utomation … can stop us thinking.” In literate societies, writing has long been recognized as a way to help people think . Many people have quoted author Flannery O’Connor ’s comment that “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.” A host of other accomplished writers, from William Faulkner to Joan Didion , have also voiced this sentiment. If AI text generation does our writing for us, we diminish opportunities to think out problems for ourselves. One eerie consequence of using programs like ChatGPT to generate language is that the text is grammatically perfect. A finished product. It turns out that lack of errors is a sign that AI, not a human, probably wrote the words, since even accomplished writers and editors make mistakes. Human writing is a process. We question what we originally wrote, we rewrite, or sometimes start over entirely. Challenges in Schools When undertaking school writing assignments, ideally there is ongoing dialogue between teacher and student: Discuss what the student wants to write about. Share and comment on initial drafts. Then it’s time for the student to rethink and revise. But this practice often doesn’t happen. Most teachers don’t have time to fill a collaborative editorial – and educational – role. Moreover, they might lack interest or the necessary skills, or both. Conscientious students sometimes undertake aspects of the process themselves – as professional authors typically do. But the temptation to lean on editing and text generation tools like Grammarly and ChatGPT makes it all too easy for people to substitute ready-made technology results for opportunities to think and learn. Educators are brainstorming how to make good use of AI writing technology. Some point up AI’s potential to kick-start thinking or to collaborate. Before the appearance of ChatGPT, an earlier version of the same underlying program, GPT-3, was licensed by commercial ventures such as Sudowrite . Users can enter a phrase or sentence and then ask the software to fill in more words, potentially stimulating the human writer’s creative juices. A fading sense of Ownership Yet there’s a slippery slope between collaboration and encroachment. Writer Jennifer Lepp admits that as she increasingly relied on Sudowrite, the resulting text “didn’t feel like mine anymore. It was very uncomfortable to look back over what I wrote and not really feel connected to the words or ideas.” Students are even less likely than seasoned writers to recognize where to draw the line between a writing assist and letting an AI text generator take over their content and style. As the technology becomes more powerful and pervasive, I expect schools will strive to teach students about generative AI’s pros and cons . However, the lure of efficiency can make it hard to resist relying on AI to polish a writing assignment or do much of the writing for you. Spellcheck, grammar check and autocomplete programs have already paved the way. Writing as a Human Process I asked ChatGPT whether it was a threat to humans’ motivation to write. The bot’s response: “There will always be a demand for creative, original content that requires the unique perspective and insight of a human writer.” It continued: “[W]riting serves many purposes beyond just the creation of content, such as self-expression, communication, and personal growth, which can continue to motivate people to write even if certain types of writing can be automated.” I was heartened to find the program seemingly acknowledged its own limitations. My hope is that educators and students will as well. The purpose of making writing assignments must be more than submitting work for a grade. Crafting written work should be a journey, not just a destination. This essay was republished with minimal edits in cooperation with The Conversation . Professor Baron is interested in language and technology, written language, reading, the history and structure of English, and higher education. She is a former Guggenheim Fellow, Fulbright Fellow, and Visiting Scholar at the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Her books include Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World (which won the English-Speaking Union’s Duke of Edinburgh English Language Book Award for 2008), Words Onscreen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital World (2015), and How We Read Now: Strategic Choices for Print, Screen, and Audio (2021). Her newest book (forthcoming) is Who Wrote This? How AI and the Lure of Efficiency Threaten Human Writing. Professor Baron taught at Brown University, Emory University, and Southwestern University before coming to American University in Washington, DC, where she has served as associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences, chair of the Department of Language and Foreign Studies, Director of the TESOL Program, and executive director of the Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning. Professor Baron has appeared extensively in the media, including interviews on Good Morning America, ABC News 20/20, CNN, The Diane Rehm Show, All Things Considered, the BBC, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Chronicle of Higher Education, New Yorker, Fortune, and Time. Return to our AI Issue Table of Contents Previous Next

Philosophy, theology, and science merge in Aletheia Today, the magazine for people who believe in God and science. Process philosophy, scripture study, and critical essays bring science and faith together with western philosophers like Alfred North Whitehead and Jean-Paul Sartre. Deep dives into the meaning of the Old Testamant, the New Testament, and where the Bible fits into modern-day society. Is God real? Does Heaven exist? Find your answers to life's questions at Aletheia Today. Inside This Issue Philosophy Friedrich Nietzsche “Value-based judgments assume a transcendent point of view and sooner or later, that way of thinking leads to God-talk and any such talk is strictly verboten.” I Am the Walrus “Popular music after World War II is a treasure trove for the philosophically curious… Paraphrasing Ecclesiastes, there’s a time to wind and a time to unravel, and now is the time to unravel.” Personae “Turns out, I am the Worldwide Wrinkle…and so are you!” Ship of Theseus “There is only one I am, shared by YHWH and Jesus…and me…and you…and Rene Descartes (…ergo sum).” Theology The Theology of Mikhail Bakunin “Bakunin was fierce in his profession of atheism; but unlike his Marxist counterparts, he was not shy about using the language of Judeo-Christian theology to make his points.” A Jewish Approach to Cognitive Dissonance "I would like to be an intellectually honest spiritual seeker, a warm and loving and dynamic wife and mother, a supportive friend; but at the end of the day, I look in the mirror, and see an annoyed and tired dish rag, and all I want to do is have a cup of coffee and a bar of chocolate. Warm dynamic spiritual seeker aside, anyone who stands between me and my mug is in for it." Korach Over Dinner "Like most people of my generation, I cringe when I hear the M word." Eucharist “…The spacetime world of matter and energy, 14 billion years old and almost 100 billion light years across, is not the final word.” Culture & The Arts Read on a Beach “Tell us what you did (read) on your summer vacation!” Lord of the Flies Shows How Humans Are Hard-Wired to Help Each Other "We can only speculate what the six boys on the island in the Pacific Ocean would have done if they had run out of food – but whatever it is, I would certainly not draw any conclusions from it in terms of the essence of human nature." What Are My Values? “We live under another emperor today. It is even more insidious than Constantine for it appears that this is all for our good.” How to Think Like a Woman Author Regan Penaluna on female philosophy and the risks of being too smart throughout history... Spirituality Ave Maria “Of course, no one needs to invoke Mary’s intercession… (but) imagine OJ without his Dream Team.” Burying Biscuit (to Cole Porter) -- a Childhood in a Single Tale "...of course it would be the home of a hamster with a preference for a song about a bunch of sinners on a cruise ship begging for a revival." Summer of Enchantment "This is a rally cry for believers to be the most enchanted people on the planet. Otherwise, what are we even doing here? " Never Skip Over the Miracle "Once upon a time, a grittier version of me roamed barefoot and luxuriated not in material but in emotional response. " Readers React What's the buzz about? Our readers' reactions to Aletheia Today... Additional Reading Can't get enough of Aletheia Today's content? Check out the books that inspire our magazine.

< Back A Theory of Everything (TOE) David Cowles Thirty years after the death of Jesus…St. Paul quoted an already ancient Christology…a TOE. It all started with Einstein, of course: modern science’s search for a Theory of Everything (TOE). 100 years gone and still no joy! But thirty years after the death of Jesus, in a letter to the Christian community at Colossae in Asia Minor, St. Paul quoted an already ancient Christology that itself constitutes a complete Cosmology, a TOE (click on image for expanded view): Not convinced? Not a problem! The search for ‘a better TOE’ goes on. However, the decision to reject Paul’s cosmology has consequences. It seems you must hold one (or more) of the following views: (1) The Cosmology we’ve presented is not a TOE. (2) The Cosmology we’ve presented is not consistent with Paul’s Christology. (3) The TOE we’ve presented contains internal inconsistencies. (4) The Cosmology we’ve presented is a valid and consistent TOE, but it is only one of many possible TOEs. Can you come up with an objection to our thesis that does not fall under one of the objections listed above. If so, please let us know. If not, then I respond as follows. (1) It is true that our Cosmology does not let you predict the outcome of next year’s Super Bowl; nor tell us why the sky is blue. But it does answer every question that matters: How is it that what is is? Why is it that what is ( Dasein ) what it is ( Wassein )? What will what is come to be? (2) If our ‘translation’ doesn’t work for you, suggest one that does. How do you understand the cosmological assumptions implicit in Paul’s Christology? Feel free to sketch out an alternative cosmology that is more consistent with Paul’s Christology. (3) With all due respect, show me! (4) Surprise: This objection may be valid …or not! Of course, there are indefinitely many possible TOEs, but will the others stand up to a deep structural analysis? Or will it turn out that any successful TOEs must be mappable onto Paul’s Christology? David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com. Previous Next

Healthcare is a problem and not just in the US. Everywhere cost and quality battle; everywhere both are losing. But as in so many other things, the US is the bell cow. Aletheia Today is the magazine for believers in God and science. Process philosophy, scripture study, and critical essays bring science and faith together. AI First Healthcare June 1, 2026 Issue Healthcare is a problem and not just in the US. Everywhere cost and quality battle; everywhere both are losing. But as in so many other things, the US is the bell cow. Healthcare has been an issue in the US since the mid-60’s and it has perhaps been issue #1 over the last 40 years. Today, it consumes almost 20% of our GDP but 30% of that cost is spent on treatment that is not appropriate for the patient’s actual condition – that’s 6% of GDP lost…not to mention the human cost. We’ve tried provider networks, we’ve tried managed care, we’ve tried consumerism, we’ve tried wellness – nothing works! Surprised? We know that government control, price fixing, supply rationing, and demand management never work…ever, anywhere, for almost anything. So why should healthcare be any different? What does work, almost always, almost everywhere, for almost anything? Technology. Why not give it a go? Lord knows we’re tried everything else. Now don’t get me wrong. Doctors know a lot; they know how to do a lot of things. But the system is structured so that this knowledge rarely benefits the typical patient during a typical interaction. ‘Patient management’ takes the place of genuine care. We have the technology to transform healthcare…we just need the will to deploy it and we will begin to build that will only once we stop moving furniture. Healthcare & The Titanic “We have the technology to transform healthcare…we just need the will to deploy it and we will begin to build that will only once we stop moving furniture.” Can AI Save Healthcare? “What was once a healing art has become physiological engineering… the healthcare system treats me as if I were a cheap knock-off of the 6 million dollar man.” My PCP Should Be a BOT “Dr. Bot would handle patient in-take, conduct the initial interview…order appropriate tests, and offer a preliminary diagnosis…” Who's Afraid of an HMO? “HMOs dumbed down quality and erected formidable barriers to care… (so) why would anyone want to bring them back?” My MD Should Be a Bot “AI is 4 times better at diagnosing complex medical conditions than MDs. This…could be the death knell for the traditional practice of medicine.” Readers React What's the buzz about? Our readers' reactions to Aletheia Today... Additional Reading Can't get enough of Aletheia Today's content? Check out the books that inspire our magazine.

< Back Jubilee 2025 David Cowles Jun 27, 2024 “Every 50 years we get a collective do-over! Golfers will recognize this as ‘Taking a Mulligan.’” I don’t care what you say, we’re in a pickle! We have been entrusted with a body of knowledge that is profoundly revolutionary, politically intolerable, and contrary to 500 years of so-called ‘accumulated wisdom’ (1500 – 2000 CE). We dare not proclaim this knowledge openly, so we speak in vague, euphemistic terms so as not to offend anyone’s secular sensibilities . For example, we’ve reduced Eucharist from ‘Transubstantiation’ to an ‘Expression of God’s Love ’. So when I read this recent Vatican press release announcing that 2025 would be a Jubilee Year, I was not in the least surprised: “VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- In the Hebrew Scriptures, God commanded his people to observe a Jubilee as a time to restore their relationships with God, with other people and with the land. Especially since St. John Paul II proclaimed the Holy Year 2000, part of the Catholic Church's Jubilee efforts to repair those relationships has included working for the forgiveness or just restructuring of the foreign debt of the world's poorest countries.” There is no more radical idea in all of social philosophy than the concept of Jubilee , yet somehow the Church has managed to boil it down to an NPR-like segment on ‘debt restructuring’. According to Torah , every 7th day is a Sabbath, every 7th year is a Sabbatical Year, and immediately after the 7th Sabbatical Year…Jubilee! That’s some build-up for ‘ a time to restore relationships’. If you have a sense that the real story somehow got buried, you’re right! Let’s compare what Torah actually has to say about this so-called ‘time to restore relationships’: “You shall count seven weeks of years – seven times seven years – such that the seven weeks of years amounts to forty-nine years…You shall treat this fiftieth year as sacred. You shall proclaim liberty in the land for all its inhabitants. It shall be a Jubilee for you…In this year of Jubilee, then, each of you shall return to your own property…The land shall not be sold irrevocably; for the land is mine, and you are but resident aliens and under my authority.” Leviticus (25) In other words, every 50 years we get a collective do-over ! Golfers will recognize this as Taking a Mulligan . Assuming Normal Life Expectancy (even by 1st century standards), each person will get at least one such do-over during their lifetime. To be clear, at Jubilee all of society’s productive assets (Marx’s ‘means of production’) are redistributed, equally, among all eligible residents. Personal property, including hearth and home, is exempt. Still, this is a long way from merely restoring relationships . The Church is frankly afraid to proclaim Jubilee in its full, Biblical sense…and understandably so! The first Card Carrying Christian, Member #1 , was nearly thrown off a cliff by a crowd of his neighbors on the very first day of his public ministry. Why? He proclaimed a Jubilee…beginning ‘this day’, i.e. immediately. Imagine you went to church some Sunday. As you’re sitting in your pew, perched smugly secure atop your ‘retirement nest egg’, you suddenly learn that your 401k has just been emptied out. The $1,000,000 that you saved, with the help of your employer and the tax code, has been confiscated. But not to worry. In return, you’ll receive an equal share of all of society’s aggregate productive property…how does $50,000 sound? Fortunately, you’re not the sort of person who would throw a prophet off a parapet…or are you? Jesus was bold; we’d expect nothing less from a Messiah. But even Jesus learned the lessons of realpolitik . After the disastrous launch of Christ 1.0 at Capernaum, it was all parables, pithy maxims, and portents of the Apocalypse. Then as now, the end of the World is a much safer subject than the redistribution of wealth! Millennia later, when JP II proclaimed the Year 2000 a Jubilee, I doubt he was worried about being thrown off a cliff. The very idea of such a thing is straight out of Monty Python : “The chief finance ministers of the G7 nations have broken into the Papal residence and kidnapped John Paul.” Not happening! This is the 3rd millennium; we take our politics and our religion seriously…but not that seriously! Even so, Pope Francis is taking no chances. He created an ecclesiastical version of Where’s Waldo . The challenge: Find the concept of Jubilee hidden in the Church’s current teachings. I understand that Leviticus can be challenging. I’m not opposed to reinterpreting the ‘letter of the law’ in order to preserve its ‘spirit’. It’s absolutely necessary and Aletheia Today attempted just such a ‘contemporary adaptation’ of the Jubilee concept in an earlier post . But our proposal went a lot further than mere ‘debt restructuring’. The cross-cultural application of ethical norms is tricky. A rubric from BCE may mean something entirely different if applied literally in a 3rd millennium setting. On the other hand, ‘interpretation’ can be code for ‘indoctrination’. The need to reinterpret an anachronistic norm can be a perfect opportunity for the introduction of heterodox ideology unsupported by Scripture. Discern. Even some non-believers sense the presence of Spirit in Biblical texts. That Spirit is in just as much demand when it comes to interpreting those texts. The goal of course is to preserve as much as possible of the original instruction, avoiding: (1) the temptation to let 21st century ideology hijack 1st century text, and (2) the temptation to water down the revolutionary implications of the original, hoping to make it more palatable to contemporary intellectual and ethical tastes. The way forward for the beleaguered Church is not some watered down compromise with secular modernity. After all, without the printing press, the internet or social media, a 1st century theological movement overthrew the late great Roman Empire. Ideas do have power! That is the revolutionary spirit that the Church needs to rediscover today…and no better place to start than by rethinking plans for Jubilee 2025. 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.