< Back Who's Afraid of an HMO? David Cowles Mar 17, 2026 “HMOs dumbed down quality and erected formidable barriers to care… (so) why would anyone want to bring them back?” 1850 words, 8 minute read Smug and self-satisfied, those of us in the Healthcare game were once fond of asking, “When was it that medicine first began to do more good than harm for its patients?” The consensus: c. 1900. On what planet? Certainly, 1900 was a major turning point in Intellectual History. It was as if a starter’s gun had been fired. Everything from Relativity and Quantum Mechanics to Cubism and Jazz quickly followed. But not affordable access to quality healthcare. So if not 1900, when? The correct answer is… wait for it… drum roll please… 2035, if we’re lucky… and then only if we follow the advice offered here! Did I mention ‘smug and self-satisfied’? *** Next to National Health Insurance (UK: NHS), Health Maintenance Organizations (US: HMO) were the worst healthcare policy idea ever implemented on a wide scale. Intended to facilitate access and improve quality, they did the exact opposite. HMOs dumbed down quality and erected formidable barriers to care. They made us learn a whole new, and may I say diabolical, vocabulary: PCP, gatekeeper, referral, out-of-network, etc . They pioneered the 12 minute office visit and the 40 patient work day. They transitioned care from MDs to Nurse Practitioners… before there were enough trained NPs to deliver it. The results were so disastrous that they played a major role in catalyzing the (Newt Gingrich) Revolution of 1994, which remains for most of us the defining political event (US) of our adult lifetimes. Four years later, a polemical anti-HMO movie, As Good As It Gets , won Best Actor & Best Actress at the Academy Awards. And so, the game was up: HMO RIP! Too bad, because in concept HMOs had more potential to improve healthcare quality and access than any competing policy initiative since LBJ’s Great Society! Full Disclosure : From 1985 – 2020 I was part of a team that built a moderately successful health benefits business, based in part on our fierce opposition to HMOs. Two Questions : (1) If HMOs were such a great idea, where did they go wrong? (2) If HMOs were such a disaster, why would anyone want to bring them back? Truth to tell, HMOs went off the rails early on…the moment they stopped being about facilitating quality healthcare and began focusing on reducing the cost of health benefits. They forgot, if they ever really knew, healthcare’s Prime Directive : “The cheapest healthcare is not always the best but the best healthcare is always the cheapest™.” The best healthcare is always the cheapest? Really? Is the best automobile the cheapest? The best wine? The best house? Sadly, no! So what makes healthcare different? Most goods and services generate their own demand. If we make better wine, more people will drink it and the price will go up. Same with houses and cars. But not healthcare. Quality healthcare, properly delivered, reduces the need for future healthcare…and therefore reduces cost long term. How so? Streamlined access to quality care means that progressive abnormalities can be diagnosed earlier…and interrupted. The ‘cheapest healthcare’ is the care we don’t have to deliver down the road because we diagnosed a potential problem (e.g. diabetes, cancer) early and acted quickly and competently to eradicate the underlying cause. Conversely, the most expensive healthcare is the care we didn’t deliver, either because we failed to detect the symptoms, or misdiagnosed them, or mistreated them, thereby allowing the patient’s condition to deteriorate (arithmetically) while the cost of treating the worsened condition rose (exponentially). Ah, the magic of compound interest: miraculous in your 401(k), diabolical in your health benefit plan! *** I came of age during the great credit card explosion of the 1970s. If you were 18 years old and not in jail, banks you never heard of sent you plastic with ‘astronomical’ credit limits and ‘easy’ repayment terms. No one paid attention to the interest (18% plus) charged on unpaid balances. Every time I got a new card, or a credit limit increase on an existing card, I would immediately take my closest friends to dinner at the most expensive restaurant that would let our disheveled selves pass the maître d’. Little did I know that I was managing my personal finances in the same way my country was financing healthcare. Like the superannuated hippies that we are, we are doing what feels good in the short term (saving money, containing costs), giving barely a thought to the long term debt we’re piling up in the process. *** So why resurrect the discredited HMO model now? Because those pioneers got some things very right: 24/7 walk-in access, low copays, zero paperwork, a single health record, and a cloud of specialists delivering coordinated patient care through a front line cohort of primary care docs. Of course, we already know that this approach won’t work…unless it is accompanied by a deep commitment to healthcare’s Prime Directive (above) and to these Seven Pillars of Healthcare Wisdom: Maximize the use of AI Bots in the patient in-take process. Create a single, thorough, baseline medical history, organized in a relational format and shared by all physicians (and Bots) in the new mega-practice. Based on that history, empower AI to review the patient’s regimen of Rx drugs, non-prescription supplements, and diet to identify possible adverse interactions and to recommend safer and potentially more effective combinations. Conduct tests as indicated and offer timely diagnoses developed and reviewed by a team of specialists that includes an AI Bot . Present the patient with a robust set of treatment options, including the null option, along with the potential benefits and known risks of each. AI will play a critical role here by ensuring that no viable intervention is ever overlooked. Undertake patient-selected interventions as quickly as possible, using AI to deliver elements of care whenever medically advisable. Initiate a Bot led follow-up process to track a patient’s progress and to assess compliance with the prescribed after-care regimen. Recommend AI Identified lifestyle modifications, including dietary supplements and complementary (alternative) healthcare, that may reduce the patient’s need for much costlier acute healthcare services down the road. In short, we are proposing a healthcare model based on the traditional HMO concept, now enhanced by a new Patient First ethic and by a commitment to the maximum responsible integration of AI at every step in the patient care process. This is not AI-only healthcare, God forbid, but it is also not just AI-assisted. Perhaps call it AI First! Membership in such a system should be viewed as a perq, akin to enrollment in a concierge practice, not as a penalty necessitated by budget cuts. ‘Good health and long life’ as an employment related benefit? Better than foosball and an espresso machine! “Who’d a thunk it?” ( Hairspray ) Someday soon, access to this model of care will become a factor in an applicant’s employment decision… and once that happens… *** What makes me so sure that AI First healthcare will deliver major improvements in quality of care and similar reductions in cost? Well, to practice medicine in the United States, physicians need to pass the US Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE), a rigorous and standardized assessment of clinical knowledge and decision making capability. Passing the USMLE requires the applicant to score 70% or better on each of the test’s three parts. AI Bots invariably achieve nearly perfect scores. It’s your loved one! Would you rather she be treated by an MD who crammed 10 years ago just to get a 70%…or by an AI Bot that scored over 90% and could do so again at any hour of any day? Still not convinced? Ok, what if you could have the benefit of Dr. Tom’s famous medical intuition and exemplary bedside manner and AI’s near perfect factual retention and medical reasoning. And please, don’t make me be tedious: Don’t make me point out that AI is always 100% current on medical advances, doesn’t drink or take drugs, and never gets in a fight with a significant other (except in 2001 - A Space Odyssey ). “Yes, but how does adding the cost of AI to Dr. Tom’s already substantial salary save money?” Let me count the ways: AI integration will cost a bit upfront but the cost per use after that is nominal. But AI will allow Dr. Tom to consult on twice as many cases, doubling his revenue stream; and he’ll be more than happy with a 20% pay bump. Up to 30% of all money spent on healthcare in the US is spent delivering care that is not appropriate for the patient’s actual condition. AI can reduce this % to single digits overnight. So what? Well, when a set of symptoms is misdiagnosed, three things happen: (a) money is wasted delivering services that are of no value to the patient, (b) inappropriate treatments may trigger their own adverse side effects, and (c) the patient’s actual condition, now untreated, will progress, exponentially increasing the cost of future care. Jeez Louise! You make one mistake! And pay for it three times? Lightbulb : Why not invest in technology that will let you get it right the first time? Hmm. Need hard evidence? Each week, the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) – one of the world’s leading medical journals – publishes a record of certain complex cases treated at Massachusetts General Hospital. Recently, Microsoft created a series of interactive diagnostic challenges based on 304 recent NEJM case studies. AI correctly diagnosed 85% of these complex cases. A team of 21 board certified specialists, each practicing for at least 5 years, correctly diagnosed just 20%. Over this admittedly rarefied subset of cases, AI enhanced quality of care by 400% and therefore reduced cost by 75%. In another study (2/10/2026), the University of Cambridge (UK) reported the following: “Researchers…analyzed heart sounds from nearly 1,800 patients using an AI algorithm trained to recognize valve disease, a condition that often goes undiagnosed until it becomes life-threatening. ( Valvular heart disease affects more than half of people over the age of 65.) ‘By the time advanced symptoms develop, the risk of death can be as high as 80% within two years if untreated’, said co-author Professor Rick Steeds from University Hospitals Birmingham. “AI correctly identified 98% of patients with severe aortic stenosis , the most common form of valve disease requiring surgery, and 94% of those with severe mitral regurgitation. When tested against 14 GPs who listened to the same recordings, the algorithm outperformed every single one and did so consistently .” *** Coach, I’m not asking you to throw away your playbook. Just put me in the game. Let me show you what I can do. Personally, I’m sick of always losing. How about you? *** Van Gogh’s The Courtyard of the Hospital at Arles offers a rare, empathetic glimpse into the environment of 19th‑century healthcare, portraying the hospital not as a cold institution but as a place where nature and recovery coexist. By filling the courtyard with blooming flowers, bright pathways, and warm color, he transforms a medical setting into a space that feels restorative, suggesting the importance of surroundings in emotional and physical healing. The painting becomes a quiet argument for humane healthcare, showing how even in moments of vulnerability, thoughtful environments can offer comfort and dignity. 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 Vanity David Cowles “Every day for 80+ years, we imagine ourselves to be someone we are not, and we work tirelessly, and fruitlessly, to become that person. 'That' is Vanity.” “Vanity, vanities, everything is vanity.” So begins Ecclesiastes , a book of Old Testament Wisdom literature, traditionally attributed to Solomon but probably written many centuries later. The text simply lists the author as ‘Koheleth’ (The Speaker). ‘Vanity’ is one translation of an Aramaic word ( havel ) that also denotes ‘absurdity, futility, emptiness’. In the languages of the ancient Middle East, it was customary for one word to support several related but distinct meanings. The meaning of a particular word is like a chord in music: multiple notes produce a single sonic impression; multiple meanings, a single semantic expression. In this way, Jewish scripture presages James Joyce and various other 20 th century wordsmiths. Words are deliberately chosen, not for their specificity, but for their ambiguity. Like chords in a symphony, words are heard vertically as well as horizontally. All the acceptable ‘meanings’ are experienced together, as overtones. Reminiscent of Janus, the two faced god , Vanity and Idolatry are two aspects of the Void. They are examples of what Alfred North Whitehead called, “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.” We fall prey to this fallacy whenever we mistake a map for its territory or a phantom for what’s real. “It’s life’s illusions I recall, I really don’t know life at all.” (Joni Mitchell) Well said! If we treat these illusions as ‘life itself’, we succumb to Whitehead’s fallacy. Idols are paradigmatic examples of ‘misplaced concreteness’. We invest them with ‘ultimate reality’ when in fact they are ‘utterly empty’: Birthday piñatas without the candy; hype without hope! To quote Wendy’s (and Walter Mondale): “Where’s the Beef?” Vanity is the B-side of Idolatry , that chart topping hit single from The Void . We are ‘vain’ to the extent that we idolize ourselves : Narcissus. The idol and the idolater become one. When we confer ‘absolute reality’ on what is ‘totally vacuous’, we empty ourselves in the process. We become T.S. Eliot’s ‘hollow men’ (sic). In the words of George W. Bush, we’re “all hat, no cattle!” How so? You have heard it said that we are made “in the image and likeness of God”. But if our God is the Void, and we are made in its image and likeness, then… In the music industry, A and B-sides sometimes get inverted. Take the Beatles, for example: Strawberry Fields , which changed popular music forever, was supposed to be the B-side of Penny Lane , which didn’t. Likewise, we imagine that Vanity is a product of Idolatry, while the reverse is true! What we know about the world is what we know through personal experience - first, second or nth -handed. There is an objective world, but what we think we know about that world is a function of what we do know about ourselves. It appears that all living organisms have some sense of an ‘external world’. We may even wish to designate such a sense as one of the criteria for being considered ‘alive’. Each adult human body consists of 30 trillion eukaryotic (nuclear) cells; on average, each such cell contains about 1,000 prokaryotic (non-nuclear) mitochondria, descendants of ancient bacteria that have elected to take up residence within the cell, becoming permanent, reproducing participants in cellular ecology. In addition, each adult human body houses about 100 trillion ‘freestanding’ bacteria - ‘fellow travelers’ in 20 th century neo-Marxist terminology. Unlike the mitochondria, these ‘free riders’ elected not to join the Party (i.e., the cell); nonetheless, they make critical contributions to the organism’s overall success. Quadrillion cells (10^15) - each one a living, breathing, eating, sensing and reproducing organism, each with its own map of the external world, extrapolated from its ‘personal experience’. Wow! According to Heidegger , each of us is unexpectedly ‘thrown’, tiny, defenseless, and afraid, into an utterly alien world. From our first cry in the delivery room to our last gasp in hospice, we never stop searching for an identity, a niche - a way to feel safe, to fit into the world, to have purpose. “ What’s it all about, Alfie? ” Every day for 80+ years, we imagine ourselves to be someone we are not, and we work tirelessly, and fruitlessly, to become that person. That is Vanity! As an adult, I’ve imagined myself to be an intellectual, an educator, a gang leader, a revolutionary, a politician, an entrepreneur, a theologian, and (now) a writer – to single out just a few of my cherished personae . Of course, I am not now, nor have I ever been, any of those things. My grandfather said it best, “I’m not the man I used to be…and never was.” QED Children, of course, do not have the option of playing Cock Robin; but that only makes it more difficult for them to curate an identity, to create a niche. Kids see the world through the prism of family, so they see the stability of the family as Job One. A family is like a mobile. A new arrival must position itself so as not to disrupt the balance of that mobile. To that end, we make ourselves the uber-responsible first child, the mischievous Malcolm-in-the-middle, the adored prince or princess, the helpless ‘baby’, etc. This is why children invariably feel themselves to blame when families fall apart. In their minds, they are to blame; they failed. They did not do their duty, they did not maintain the family’s integrity, its balance. So, is everything Vanity? Well, if your God is the Void and all things are empty (idols), then yes, “everything is Vanity and a chase after wind”, including you. We don’t like things to be either/or, black or white; we live in the epoch of gray, the color of indeterminacy. But Torah sets things straight, “I set before you life and death, therefore choose life…(for) I am the Lord your God, you shall not put other gods before me.” Keep the conversation going! 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. 4. Aletheia Today Magazine (ATM) will be devoting its entire fall issue (released 9/1/23) to artificial intelligence (AI). What are the philosophical, theological, cultural and even spiritual implications of AI powered world? If you’d like to contribute to the AI Issue, click here . Previous Next

< Back Loaves & Fishes II David Cowles Jul 3, 2025 “So was the feeding of the 5,000 a miracle? Yes…and no!” In an earlier post on this site, we ‘decoded’ the New Testament ‘miracle’ known as the Multiplication of Loaves & Fishes . We discovered that the New Testament (NT) accounts of two separate ‘multiplication events’ form a pattern which allows us to understand their deeper meaning. So what’s the ‘answer’ to the riddle posed by the ‘multiplication’? Why, it’s the number 3 of course! What else could it be? (Discover that for yourself; just click on the link above.) But these accounts raise a deeper question: “How’d he do it?” Of course, a simple answer is, “By the power of God who is omnipotent.” Now, if this answer fully satisfies you, you may not need to read on. But if you’re looking for a more heuristic explanation, please continue. What is a miracle? Is it a suspension of the laws of physics? The intervention of a transcendent and omnipotent power? That’s the standard ‘explanation’…such as it is. Or is it just a perfectly natural, but unusual, event? Folks who explain the Exodus as a rare confluence of unlikely meteorological conditions fall into this camp. Or do ‘miracles’ provide us with a glimpse of an entirely physical reality that exists below the surface of conventional spacetime? (Like quantum mechanics, e.g.) In other words, can we retain the concept of the miraculous but reconcile it with materialism? Folks like me who fall into this later camp do not intend to denigrate in any way the power of God. Rather, we defend it! We simply seek to preserve the ontological independence of the world as God created it. What if the scrubbed and manicured world we call ‘home’ is just a surface, a region, an approximation or an idealization of a much more variegated universe in which many alternative states of affairs may apply? What if there is something about our cognitive apparatus that prompts us to see the phenomenal world as we do, even though it’s an over-simplified version of what’s real? Or what if the substructure of the universe itself is ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’? ( The Lego Movie ) Sidebar : Wikipedia says that someone who lives in Cloud Cuckoo Land, “thinks that completely impossible things might happen…” Yup, that’s us…modified to read: “thinks that infinitesimally probable things actually happen.” Etymologically, this concept derives from the medieval Cockaigne , a ‘land of plenty’. Philosophically, the term first appears in Aristophanes’ play, The Birds (414 BCE), but it has appeared more recently in the philosophies of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche . The ‘multiplication of loaves and fishes’ is a miracle because you are not supposed to be able to satisfy the appetites of 5,000 hungry pilgrims with just 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. If a loaf of bread weighs a kilogram, then each pilgrim would receive one gram of bread. (A gram is roughly 1/25 th of an ounce.) If this works, it’s even better than Atkins . But of course it doesn’t work, at least not in the world we’re accustomed to. It doesn’t work because the volume of the ‘parts’ (5,000 crumbs = 5 kilograms) cannot exceed the volume of the ‘whole’ (5 loaves = 5 kilograms) and 1/25 th of an ounce will not satisfy a hungry boy (or girl). This is obviously true in the world as we know it (and in any world characterized by the Archimedean Property ). But who died and made Archimedes boss of the universe? According to Nietzsche, God did! RIP Suppose our everyday Archimedean world is just a special case of a much more flexible, non-Archimedean universe, where the quantitative relationship between a whole and its parts is no longer hardwired by the laws of arithmetic. (What’s the big deal? Zeno disproved those laws 2500 years ago!) Breaking the bread (loaves) into individual portions, we create 5,000 disjoint morsels. In a non-Archimedean universe, the volume of the parts (morsels) can exceed the volume of the whole! In fact, even a single morsel can exceed the volume of the whole. The morsels, considered together or apart, can contain more bread, potentially much more bread, than the 5 loaves from which they were crumbled. That was the case on a certain day on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee 2,000 years ago. Not only did 5 loaves fill the bellies of 5,000 day trippers but the apostles were able to gather up 12 baskets of scraps at the end. 5,000 were fed and there was more left over than there was at the beginning. If only my household budget worked like that! (Perhaps it would if I followed NT economic principles.) So was ‘the feeding of the 5,000’ a ‘miracle’? Yes…and no! It was certainly a manifestation of God’s power in the person of Jesus ( you don’t routinely dip into the non-Archimedean substructure to solve your problems); but it did not violate any of the laws of (non-Archimedean) physics nor did it compromise the independence of the created world (Genesis 1). *** "The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes" (1624–25), oil on canvas by Giovanni Lanfranco, Italian, 1582–1647. 229 x 426 cm. Purchased in 1856. https://www.aletheiatoday.com/thoughtswhileshaving/loaves-and-fishes 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.

“Sir, you are quite simply insane. We know exactly what holds our universe together; it is electromagnetism, gravity, and the strong force…not Christ.” < Back Christ the King David Cowles Nov 30, 2022 “Sir, you are quite simply insane. We know exactly what holds our universe together; it is electromagnetism, gravity, and the strong force…not Christ.” Since 1970, the Roman Catholic Church has celebrated the Feast of Christ the King on the last Sunday of the liturgical year. It is a fitting close to a year that began with Old Testament prophesies of a coming Messiah, a Messiah who Christians believe is Jesus. The scripture readings (Cycle C) that the Church has chosen for this feast day introduce us to three distinct but related aspects of Christ’s kingship: First, a reading from 2 Samuel recalls the inauguration of the historical King David, chosen by God, anointed by Samuel, and ratified by the leaders of Israel’s twelve tribes: “All the tribes of Israel came to David in Hebron…and at Hebron King David made a covenant with them in the presence of the Lord; and they anointed David king over Israel.” Jesus, of course, is of the House of David and, therefore, has a valid hereditary claim to David’s throne. As David’s successor, Jesus represents the historical kingship of God. Yet, Jesus never suggests that he should have universal political authority. He did not come to depose Rome and inherit its empire so that ‘Rome’ could be reborn in Jerusalem. On the contrary, political power was the third and final temptation offered by Satan and rejected by Jesus during Jesus’ 40 days in the desert (Mt 4: 9). Instead, scripture and the Church teach that all political rulers, whether emperors, kings, presidents, or legislatures, derive their authority from God but maintain that authority only in so far as, and to the extent that, their policies are consistent with God’s laws. According to this model, God rules! But he rules through the agency of his priests, prophets, and kings . Christ the King is not Christ the Bureaucrat. God does not dictate the details of public policy but rather establishes guidelines and principles that all laws, if they are to be valid, must respect. There are many legitimate roads to Ecbatan , but no human law is binding if it conflicts with a law of God. So, Christ’s royal authority does extend to the historical realm, but it is exercised through secular rulers chosen according to the culture and tradition of each political entity (e.g., nation). The second reading is a reading we’ve encountered before in ATM ( Christology ) . F rom Paul’s Letter to the Colossians : “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and invisible…all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together… For in him all the fullness was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things for him, making peace by the blood of his cross, whether those on earth or those in heaven.” This is not Jesus, the historical successor to King David; this is Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God, King of Creation, Ruler of the Universe. And what are the royal powers that Colossians claims on Christ’s behalf? 1. Since all things in Heaven and on Earth were created in him, through him and for him, his sovereignty is absolute. The Kingdom of God is not a democratic republic, nor is it even a constitutional monarchy…but it is a utopia. 2. All things hold together in him. Like any charismatic leader, he is the glue that binds society together as a single community with a common task and a common destiny. Because the Son of God is also fully human, we humans have ‘legal standing’ to enter into a binding contract (covenant) with YHWH. 3. He is the medium and the process through which all things in Heaven and on Earth are reconciled… for him . Through Christ, conflicts are resolved into contrasts and contrasts into harmonies. Today, most members of the cognoscenti believe that Universe came into being on its own. causa sui . Modernists that we are, we take it for granted that this is at least possible. But what if it isn’t? What if an independent, self-created universe is intrinsically unstable and, therefore, not possible after all? It is beyond the scope of this essay to resolve that question, but the question per se underscores the importance of Colossians for contemporary cosmology. Safe to say, Colossians presents a very different model of cosmogenesis than we are used to hearing. Imagine a visiting professor from Colossae addressing a classroom of eager graduate students in Cambridge (either Cambridge, MA or Cambridge, UK): “In order for a non-trivial universe to emerge, evolve and endure, a number of factors must come into play simultaneously. First, there must be a creative force that gives rise to novel entities (events); second, those entities must occur within some sort of defined ontological locus; third, all the events that make up Universe must be oriented toward a common end ( teleos ); and fourth, the creative force must not only bring novel entities into being, but it must also work ceaselessly to resolve conflicts among those entities. “Creation is as much about the ends of things as it is about their beginnings; it operates throughout the entire life of every entity. Ultimately, it is a process by which a multiplicity of simple things becomes a complex unity. It is that process that binds entity to entity in a way that constitutes Universe. “Otherwise, anything that might emerge randomly and spontaneously from the void would either be isolated and inert or cancelled out by conflicting ‘counter-events’. The net informational content of any such universe would always be approximately zero.” Now, one of our ‘sophomore’ cosmologists might be expected to interrupt vehemently at this juncture. Lacking the reverential deference characteristic of a by-gone era, our would-be Hawking might say, “Sir, you are quite simply insane. We know exactly what holds our universe together; it is electromagnetism, gravity, and the strong force…not Christ.” “Not so fast,” our Anatolian professor retorts. “Can you fully explain the nature of any of these forces? Can you explain how it is that each has the exact quantitative value it does? Do you understand that if any one of these apparently arbitrary values varied even slightly, Universe as we know it would be impossible? Is it not much more likely that these forces are simply the physical manifestations of something deeper in the structure of the cosmos? Something like Christ, for example?” “Isn’t this just Creationism repackaged?” “It’s more profound than that. I am equating Cosmology with Christology! And note: this is not the same as equating Christology with Cosmology. The math is not commutative.” The final reading, taken from the Gospel of Luke , tells the story of Jesus’ crucifixion: “The people stood by and watched; the rulers meanwhile sneered at him and said, ‘He saved others, let him save himself if he is the chosen one, the Messiah of God.’” Even the soldiers jeered at him…they called out, ‘If you are King of the Jews, save yourself.’ Above him there was an inscription that read, ‘This is the King of the Jews.’ Enigmatically, Pontius Pilate had ordered that placard nailed onto the cross above Jesus’ head. The Jewish leaders complained to Pilate, “Do not write ‘The King of the Jews’, write that he said he was the King of the Jews.” But Pilate answered with his own statement of proto faith, “What I have written, I have written.” “Now one of the criminals hanging there (Jesus was crucified between two ‘thieves’) reviled Jesus, saying, ‘Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us.’ The other, however…said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ He (Jesus) replied to him, ‘Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’” This is the first time that anyone (other than Jesus himself) has clearly acknowledged the other-worldly nature of Christ’s Kingdom. Before Pilate, Jesus says, “My Kingdom does not belong to this world…my kingdom is not here.” Before that, he has tried many times to educate his disciples on the eschatological nature of his reign – without any apparent success. But the so-called ‘good thief’ gets it…and just in the nick of time. The reading from Luke’s Gospel introduces us to yet a third aspect of Jesus’ Kingship. While his laws are normative on Earth, they are often ignored in practice; but in the Kingdom of Heaven, Christ is the supreme ruler. That is what we mean when we pray, “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.” Looking for Heaven ( aka Paradise)? It’s located at the intersection of History and Eternity! It consists of historical entities but historical entities that have somehow been ‘glorified’ (i.e., reconciled and eternalized). So, on the Feast of Christ the King, we justly celebrate Christ as Sovereign of this world, Ruler of the Universe, and Heavenly King. But how are these aspects of Christ’s kingship related? The reconciliation of all things through Christ and for Christ can only occur based on the consistent application of specific values: beauty, truth, and justice, for example. How do we know which ‘values’ are necessary for reconciliation to occur? And which ‘anti-values’ are incompatible with reconciliation? Could reconciliation be successful if it was based on the absence of beauty, truth, justice, i.e., if it was based on ugliness, falsehood, injustice? Obviously not! On the contrary, such anti-values are the sources and symptoms of conflict in the first place. Ugliness is inherently unstable, as the urge to beautify is universal, even at the level of pre-conscious entities (e.g., molecules). Falsehood eliminates any objective basis for consensus. As for injustice, who has not chanted, “No justice, no peace!” at least once? Making such a list of values and their opposites quickly identifies the sources and styles of conflict in our world and points out the avenues that are available to us for the resolution of that conflict. These values, once identified, must guide all valid law making in the historical realm. Laws that explicitly and intentionally undermine beauty, truth, and justice, for example, are invalid on their face. Sidebar : we are not concerned here with legitimate differences of opinion. For example, well-meaning people may disagree about which laws would be most effective in promoting justice. It is the purview of secular governments to choose among such potential laws; any one of those choices would at least be valid, even if suboptimal . What would be invalid is any law that aims to undermine justice per se . There is a single thread that unites Christ’s historical, cosmological, and heavenly kingship. It is the set of values that form the basis for universal reconciliation, that are normative on earth and that are realized perfectly in Heaven. No better way to celebrate the end of the liturgical year! Image: Painting of Christ in Majesty from the Ghent Altarpiece by Hubert and Jan van Eyck (AD 1427) 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 . 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 Put the ‘Uni’ back in Universe David Cowles Oct 23, 2025 “For millennia reluctant students have been trained in a system of geometry (Euclidean) that is incompatible with stability in any real world.” Just about everything you need to know about the Universe can be found in its name. It is ‘forever one’ (uni); and it is ‘perpetual change’ (verse). It is permanence ( Aletheia ) and transience ( Doxa ) – Parmenides. “Abide in me/Fast falls the eventide” – Whitehead (from an Anglican Hymn). For reasons probably rooted in culture generally and language specifically and possibly even in biology (neurology), we find it difficult to think organically, i.e. to embrace complementarity (e.g. wave/particle duality). We are much more comfortable thinking hierarchically. We prefer ‘decision trees’ over‘virtuous cycles’. We prefer to explain phenomena via ‘causality’ rather than ‘recursion’. We like to attribute an event to ‘external causes’rather than to the event itself. We are born to shirk responsibility: “The devil made me do it.” Accordingly, for decades scientists sought in vain to establish either the particle or the wave as the ‘primary’ (default) state of a quantum. There is no ‘primary’. As a result of this bias, Plato could no longer understand Parmenides, less than 100 years after the latter’s death; nor could Karl Popper, 2 millennia later. Be assured, this same virus still infects our thinking today. When we think ‘Universe’, we likely imagine a collection of discrete objects and events and a network of relationships connecting them. Universe, the whole, is the consequence, not the cause, of everything that is in it. We reason from parts to the whole. That’s us! We are much less likely to imagine Universe as an organic whole, precipitating unique, knot-like events along pre-established threads of relatedness ( logos ). We are less comfortable deducing the parts from the whole. We didn’t notice then that the Emperor had no clothes and we don’t seem to notice now that our preferred model makes no sense. We are lazy detectives, anxious to close our cases, less concerned with identifying the actually guilty parties. According to this hierarchical model, Universe is merely a mathematical construct, a shorthand way of referring to the multiplicity of things. As such, it is inert. It is at most the arithmetic sum of its parts. Taking redundancies into consideration, the whole may even be less than its parts. Illustration : Suppose we have a Universe, X, made up of three events, A, B, and C with the elements of each as follows: A = (l, m), B = (m, n), C = (n, p). So we have 3 events made up of 2 elements each, or 6 elements in total. But note, 2 of those elements (m and n) occur twice . Therefore, Universe X contains just 4 discrete elements (l, m, n, p) and so in one sense at least, the whole (4) is less than the sum of its parts (6). Universe is nothing if not economical. It doesn’t ‘chew its cabbage twice’ (that’s a theorem, BTW.) As mentioned above, such a Universe is inert. It lacks agency. It is an accumulation of influences, exerting no influence of its own. Its virtual existence is a fragile function of arbitrary forces accidentally interconnecting various nodes. According to today’s Standard Cosmological Model, these connections will gradually weaken and eventually evaporate resulting in ‘Heat Death’ (i.e. Max Entropy) aka ‘Big Freeze’. The Universe we are describing is known as an ‘Archimedean Universe’. In my view, if such a universe existed, it would necessarily be unstable. It begins at some arbitrary point (e.g. Big Bang) and its demise (e.g. Big Freeze) is inevitable; it’s all just a matter of time . As stated above, an Archimedean Universe lacks agency. It cannot regenerate; it cannot adjust its elements via homeostasis. Its only function is the elimination of redundancy. In other words, according to such a model, Universe is DOA. That said, it’s amazing that from 300 BCE to 1900 CE, Archimedean geometry was thought to be the only game in town. For millennia reluctant students have been trained in a system of geometry (Euclidean) that is incompatible with stability in any real world. Add to this the fact that Aristotle et al. thought the Universe was ‘infinite’ in space and time, and you can see the metaphysical mess we’re in. On the other hand, all of these problems disappear if we imagine that Universe is primary and its parts secondary. Such a Universe is One before it is Many. Interestingly, a Universe in which the Whole and its Parts are co-primary, i.e. complementary, achieves the same result. Only an entirely derivative Universe is terminally unstable. Alfred North Whitehead, a legendary monist , defined the Universe in terms of three elements: Unity, Multiplicity, and Creativity (i.e. change). While he did not specifically address the Archimedean issue, it’s clear that his cosmology is at least compatible with a non-Archimedean formulation of geometry. Appropriately, he described his thoughts as a ‘Philosophy of Organism’. R. Buckminster Fuller on the other hand, ‘designated’ spokesperson for pluralists everywhere, often said, “Universe is plural and at minimum two;” but he also said, “I seem to be a Verb.” As ‘verb’, Fuller sublimates primal plurality into organic unity. Fuller’s ‘Verb’ is roughly equivalent to Whitehead’s ‘Creativity’; it balances unity (permanence) with multiplicity (change). Fuller developed his ‘pluralism’ in the context of an Archimedean model, but I think that, taking his work as a whole, he fits more comfortably alongside Parmenides in a Universe based on a complementary relationship between the Whole and its Parts. For Whitehead, the Universe consists solely of events. Whatever is not itself an event is a derivative of an event. Since Universe (Unity) is a primary existent in Whitehead’s model, Universe must itself be an event. As an event, it can…and must…exert influence on the events that constitute it. I take Fuller’s concept of ‘verb’ as congruent with Whitehead’s concept of ‘event’. Both models rely heavily on the concept of Synergy . The title of Fuller’s master work is Synergetics . In Whitehead, the agency of the whole complements the synergy of its parts. All of which leads to a very peculiar conclusion: Universe can be more, or less, than the sum of its parts! How can that be? In fact, it cannot be otherwise! Universe is an event, and every event represents a creative advance relative to its logical antecedents. (Otherwise, it is not an ‘event’ and so not a primary existent, according to Whitehead.) Every event ‘prehends’ all the events in its ‘Actual World’ but contributes something unique and novel to that World going forward. Therefore, every event is by definition more than its elements. Likewise, borrowing a concept from set theory, each part within a Whole plays a unique role; it does not repeat. Potential redundancies are pruned and overlaps are conflated. In fact, a critical theorem in all non-Archimedean geometries states that no two entities can ever ‘overlap’. Even tangency is prohibited. Suppose we have a Universe that consists of just 3 events. If these events collectively constitute one Universe, each event must be embedded in another and/or it must embed another in itself. That’s the solidarity of Universe. So, in a Universe consisting of just 3 events, there are only two possible configurations: (1) C is embedded in B and B in A; (2) B and C are disjoint but both are embedded in A. Config #1 is straight forward. C is less than or equal to B and B is less than or equal to A. The whole is greater than or equal to the sum of its parts. Config #2 is more interesting. Depending on a variety of case specific variables, B + C can be less than, greater than, or equal to A. A is greater than or equal to B and A is greater than or equal to C but A is not necessarily equal to or greater than B + C, even though B and C are subsets of A. This is only counter intuitive because we trained at the feet of Euclid and Archimedes. The #10 (A) is greater than #7 (B) which is greater than #5 (C). One way of looking at natural numbers is to say that #10 contains #7 and #7 contains #5 . In that case A (#10) > B (#7) > C (#5). No surprises here! On the other hand if B and C are disjoint (neither contains the other), then A (#10) > B (#7) and A (#10) > C (#5), but A (#10) is not necessarily greater than B + C (#12). 5 year olds can understand this, but when we adults move from arithmetic to geometry, we magically introduce a new constraint based on the concept of a Venn Diagram. If we picture A (above) as a circle and B and C as circles within A, it is clear that A (#10) cannot contain both B (#7) and C (#5) unless B and C overlap. Try it, you can’t draw it! But we also know that B and C cannot overlap in a non-Archimedean universe, unless one wholly contains the other (above). But who says that the Universe has to behave like a Venn Diagram? After all, John Venn only developed his famous sketch 150 years ago. Unconsciously, Venn’s Universe assumes the axioms of Euclidean Geometry. We need a more powerful model if we are going to understand how the ‘real world’ works. A, the whole, must have a degree of independence from its parts (B and C). A must be a player in its own right and it must play a part in the constitution of B and C. Today, we are all Heracliteans; we worship change, often for its own sake. We see change, and call it ‘progress’, everywhere we look. But change ( Doxa ) cannot occur other than in the context of stability/permanence ( Aletheia ) and in order for change and stability to co-exist, we must live in a non-Archimedean Universe. The state of the world today, Century 21, does not allow us to wallow in parts, no matter how beautiful. We must begin to focus on the whole and note how it shapes each of its parts; we must put the ‘uni’ back in Universe! *** Image: Salvador Dalí’s Galatea of the Spheres (1952) depicts the face of Gala, his wife and muse, fragmented into a constellation of floating spheres that form a harmonious, three-dimensional grid. The work reflects Dalí’s fascination with atomic theory—suggesting that matter, love, and spirit are all unified through invisible cosmic order. By dissolving the human form into molecular orbs, Dalí portrays the interconnectedness of all existence, where the microcosm and macrocosm mirror each other. 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< Back Quantum Consciousness David Cowles Oct 14, 2025 “It seems likely that all living organisms emit a bio-photonic aura…” Remember the ‘60s? Of course, you don’t. You weren’t born yet. Or if you were, you killed off those brain cells decades ago. But if you could remember the ‘60s, you’d remember that time (was it at Woodstock?) when a bead-bedraggled, tie dye wearing shaman, asked if she could ‘read your aura’. Of course, she could! It’s the ‘60s, man; everything goes! “Oh, you’re gorgeous. I see purple and a lovely shade of pink. It shows you’re a kind, generous, loving person. I do see a spot of green you might want to work on but overall, it’s magnificent. By the way, you wouldn’t be able to spare some change by any chance?” It was fun while it lasted…but you heard Wall St. calling. Now, more than half a century later, it turns out your shaman was right after all. A recent article by Darren Orf (published 5/13/2025 in Popular Mechanics ) confirms what hippies knew ages ago: “You’re glowing!” Recent studies confirm that living organisms emit ‘biophotons’…lots of them. A live mouse, for example, can emit up to 10⁵ photons per second. “You could even say it glows,” Rudolf, so why don’t we see it? (It would make life so much easier for my cat.) The trouble is, these biophotons are incredibly weak, well below the perceptual threshold of most humans. Just how weak are they? An advanced digital camera requires a full hour of exposure before it can record enough data to form a coherent pattern. It seems likely that all living organisms emit a bio-photonic aura, even prokaryotes (e.g. bacteria), single celled organisms without a nucleus. But, of course, we can’t know that for sure, at least not yet. What we do know is that plants do have auras. If a plant suffers some sort of injury, the aura at the site of the injury is especially intense. This suggests that organisms shift into overdrive to repair damage and that they emit more photons in the process. How is this related to consciousness? In the 1990s polymath Roger Penrose proposed that consciousness consists of quantum processes that take place in microtubules in the brain. The theory was and is controversial, for a number of reasons. But unexpectedly, experimental evidence is piling up in support of Penrose conjecture. We live in a World that spans c. 60 orders of magnitude…“from the Redwood Forest (the cosmic event horizon) to the gulf stream waters (the Planck measure).” (Woody Guthrie) Our lives are confined to just one such order. For example, our touted human awareness ( aka consciousness) is limited to events with durations between one-tenth of a second and one full second, one order of magnitude: “Our little life is rounded with a sleep.” ( The Tempest ) In recent experiments, scientists have shot photons into microtubules. Amazingly, the light was re-emitted after a period of time no shorter than one tenth of a second and no longer than one full second. Light travels through the microtubules roughly 10 orders of magnitude more slowly than in a vacuum. Whatever is happening in the ‘black box’ results in the phenomenon we call consciousness . Sidebar : I rank Roger Penrose as one of the three great intellects of the 20 th century, along with Einstein and Whitehead. Even so, I guffawed when I first heard his theory of consciousness: “Ridiculous!” But these days, more and more skeptics are coming around to his point of view… and now I am one of them. But this story is not all unicorns and rainbows! These findings have a potentially more disturbing aspect. To confirm their hypotheses, scientists need a control group. What better control group for a living organism than a deceased one? You might expect that the bioluminescence would switch off at the moment of death. If so, searching for an aura could be a useful way to determine whether a particular organism is alive. But nature may not be as neat as we’d like it to be. The evidence is equivocal but seems to suggest that life and death are more of a continuum than a dichotomy. In one study, 30 minutes after ‘death’, mouse bodies continued to radiate photons, albeit at an average rate approximately 40% lower than when they were fully alive. These findings suggest that biological activity continues long after ‘clinical death’. Intriguingly, this is one more bit of evidence to reinforce the emerging ‘ bio-continuum ’ consensus. Collectively, these discoveries constitute a double edged sword. On the one hand, they might increase the window available for resuscitation…or even resurrection. On the other hand, they could challenge the way we customarily handle organic remains. The assumption that clinical death is synonymous with a total loss of conscious sentience is eroding. What if the deceased organism retains some level of awareness? At the risk of sounding ‘gross’, these findings challenge the morality of treating a ‘dead body’ as ‘refuse’. Sticking a loved one in a body bag and then into a refrigerated cabinet to await cremation and/or burial doesn’t seem so attractive any more. Most pre-industrial societies follow a more prolonged and potentially less terrifying process when saying goodbye. We’re all familiar, of course, with the Tibetan and the Egyptian Books of the Dead . Two civilizations with little if any cross contact developed remarkably similar traditions. This suggests that these rites rose in response to something fundamentally cross-cultural, e.g. the intuition that life is a continuum. The traditional Irish wake and the Jewish practice of ‘sitting shiv’ are further manifestations of this tendency. The Nordic tradition of placing a corpse in a boat and sending it into the sea is another. Clearly, these are areas that require additional exploration. In the meantime, it seems that somewhat more humane funerary practices are ethically indicated, at least until we have more data. *** Hilma af Klint’s The Ten Largest, No. 10, Adulthood (1907) bursts with swirling pastel forms that suggest blossoming consciousness and the invisible forces animating life. Executed in egg tempera on paper mounted to canvas, it merges organic curves and floating symbols into an ethereal visualization of spiritual growth and human energy. Part of a series inspired by mystical revelation rather than formal aesthetics, the work channels the aura of adulthood as a transcendent state between earthly experience and higher planes of existence. 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 What's It All About, Alfie? David Cowles Sep 12, 2023 “It’s simple: anything is nothing without something, but something is nothing without anything…or life is a ripe banana. Take your pick!” Certain themes permeate Intellectual History like swirls of chocolate in a pint of fudge ripple; they pop up in different guises in different eras in different Weltanschauungs; for example: Aletheia vs. Doxa – Parmenides Substance vs. Accident – Aquinas Noumena vs. Phenomena – Kant Existence vs. Essence – Sartre, et al. Être vs. Neant – Sartre Pour Soi vs. En Soi – Sartre One vs. Many – Whitehead Actual Entity vs. Eternal Object – Whitehead While each of these memes has its own special merit, one formulation sums them up best: Dasein (that it is) vs. Wassein (what it is) – Heidegger Wassein includes everything you’d ever want to know (or could ever know) about an entity: its size, shape, color, etc. It concerns what philosophers call ‘Qualia’ (aka ‘qualities’). Anything that defines, describes, or qualifies an entity or event is part of its Wassein . Rule of Thumb #1 : if it can be expressed as an adjective or an adverb, it’s Wassein . Dasein , on the other hand, has no qualities. Rule of Thumb #2 : If you can describe it at all, it’s not Dasein . In fact, Dasein tells you one and only one thing about an entity: that it is! Anything other than that belongs on the other side of the ledger. Some ledger! On one side, you have everything there is to know about Universe; on the other side, you have just one thing: that it is! And yet, the two sides balance. As the song says, “You can’t have one without the other.” It’s simple: anything is nothing without something, but something is nothing without anything…or life is a ripe banana. Take your pick! Every Wassein is unique. Two things can’t be identical; if they were, they’d be one thing. To be X is not-to-be ~X. Even God is three distinct persons. Duplication is strictly prohibited by the nature of Being itself, and it’s a good thing, too, because otherwise we’d drown in an infinity of identities . Unlike Wassein , Dasein never varies, never changes. It's a ‘Qualia-free Zone’. If you’ve ever said anything at all about Dasein , you’ve misspoken. It truly is ineffable . My ‘I am’ is your ‘I am’; they are one ‘I am’. They are not similar, or congruent, or even identical; they are one thing. My ‘I am’ is your ‘I am’, God’s ‘I am’ and the ‘I am’ of a bacterium soon to be discovered on Mars. Now, don’t get me wrong. We couldn’t be more different, and I’m certainly not a bacterium or, last I checked, God. You’re a Mensa member, a tenured Ivy League professor, and a celebrated cellist… I am not. But your ‘being what you are’ and my ‘being what I am’ are one thing! Not similar, not alike, one . But there is no Dasein without Wassein . The universal ‘that’ of Dasein is incurably linked to the particular ‘what’ of Wassein . Undifferentiated Dasein ‘borrows uniqueness’ from Wassein ; like a virus, it infects Qualia with Being . Wassein is finite; Dasein is infinite (eternal). It is. It is is. It is is once only. Dasein is incurably one, just as Wassein is incurably many. The coincidence of Dasein and Wassein is what Whitehead called an ‘Actual Entity’: the many expressed as one and the one expressed as many. The Universe consists exclusively of Actual Entities. When an Actual Entity (AE) has run its course (i.e., ‘achieved satisfaction’), it transitions to ‘Objective Immortality’ (OI). Ab initio , every AE is sui generis ; it can literally become anything it wants, provided what it wants is compatible with the Actual World (AW) it inherits. I’m 5’ 9” and 75 years of age – “I know who I am, and I know that I can be whatever I want to be”, but that does not include playing basketball for the Boston Celtics. That is incompatible with my inherited Actual World. Once an AE enters OI, it is , it can no longer not be , nor can it be other than what it is; it is no longer an Actual Entity. An Actual Entity is process; once an AE becomes ‘settled matter of fact’, it ceases to be ‘in process’ and so ceases to be an AE. And Dasein ? When an Actual Entity passes into Objective Immortality, what happens to its Dasein ? Absolutely nothing! Nothing can ever happen to Dasein ; if it could, it would be Wassein . Dasein is eternal and universal; it occurs only in the context of Wassein , but it is entirely uncolored by such associations. When an Actual Entity becomes settled matter of fact, Dasein no longer ‘associates’ with that specific Wassein , but it remains associated with the Wassein of all remaining Actual Entities. The fate of Actual Entities per se is governed by cosmology: Big Bang, Big Freeze, etc., the details of which are well ‘above my pay grade’…but they don’t matter anyway! (Sorry, Professor Hawking.) What does matter is this: Every unique Actual Entity comes to be as a reaction to a unique Actual World. That Actual World is a nexus that includes the OI of every logically prior AE. There is an Actual World that is a nexus of all Objective Immortalities. The Actual Entity that corresponds to this uber-nexus is what we used to call “God”. Does that mean that we are all ultimately God? Not exactly. For God, Dasein and Wassein (existence and essence) are a single phenomenon (note that this is a restatement of the old ontological argument for God’s existence). For us, however, Dasein is always distinct from Wassein . Therefore, God is ‘essentially good’, while we, at best, are ‘accidentally good’. The ‘non-identity’ of Wassein and Dasein is Free Will . So the Bible had it right all along. We are the image and likeness of God ( Dasein ) but not God himself ( Wassein ). Keep the conversation going! 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. 4. Aletheia Today Magazine (ATM) will be devoting its entire fall issue (released 9/1/23) to artificial intelligence (AI). What are the philosophical, theological, cultural and even spiritual implications of AI powered world? If you’d like to contribute to the AI Issue, click here . Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Happiness David Cowles Apr 13, 2023 “If we somehow manage to convince ourselves that the purpose of life is our own personal happiness, then we are in for a world of hurt.” Today, everyone is looking for the meaning of life, its purpose, what, if anything, makes life worth living? The consensus (not unanimous) of western philosophers is that the purpose and meaning of life is ‘personal happiness’. This is an oxymoron . When we say something has purpose or meaning, we are connecting that thing to something outside it; but happiness is not ‘outside’ the happy person, so the concepts of purpose and meaning can’t apply here. X cannot be the meaning of X; otherwise, ‘meaning’ would have no meaning . The meaning of X can only be found somewhere in ~X. Personal happiness refers only to X. If we somehow manage to convince ourselves that the purpose of life is our own personal happiness , then we are in for a world of hurt: “… Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself (love). Happiness must happen…” (Victor Frankl) “Happy? Anyone can be happy. What’s the purpose of that?” (Bob Dylan) How could things have gone so wrong? The divine values, Beauty, Truth, and Justice are values that everyone in every life circumstance is free to pursue to the best of their ability. Happiness, on the other hand, is often dependent on fickle circumstances. We may find it hard to ‘whistle a happy tune’ in the face of crushing poverty, chronic disease, unrequited love, or personal tragedy. It would be nice if we could smile our way through life’s vicissitudes…but it’s unrealistic. The ‘happy slave’ is, for the most part, ‘bourgeoisie fiction’. If anything is the purpose of life, realizing it should not depend at all on things beyond our control. Rephrased: if the proposed ‘purpose of life’ is something outside our control, then that cannot be a purpose . A purpose can only be a purpose if it can be achieved; otherwise, it’s just a fantasy. Beyond this, there is a cultural element at play. In our culture, children no longer have any intrinsic value! They exist for the enjoyment of their parents. They exist to be loved; what can possibly be wrong with that? Not so long ago, things were different. Couples conceived explicitly to produce offspring that could be an economic asset. Kids were raised to help run the house, the farm, the ranch, the store, or the loom. Every child had a purpose! Hopefully, they were also loved. Today, at least in the Atlantic community, children have no short term economic value . Ask any parent managing the cost of daycare, summer camp, groceries, and college tuition… As good parents, and of course, we are all good parents, it’s easy to make our children’s happiness Job One. Who then can blame a child then who, upon graduation, continues to steer her ship solely according to that beacon? I have lived a full life. I married, had children and grandchildren, built a successful business that created jobs, enhanced the wellbeing of tens of thousands of customers, provided a comfortable living for my family, and left me with plenty of playtime! Looking back, I see that playtime , such a source of happiness for me at the time, is the least important part of my story. I don’t regret it per se , but I see it now from a different perspective. Caring for others and helping to smooth their way in the world still seem like a worthy ‘purpose’; enhancing my short-term personal happiness does not. It would be nice to think that I was motivated by the opportunity to care, and that I used my playtime merely to recreate . It would be nice…but then I’d be writing about another man. The minute I put the tuba down, the music stopped. What happened to all that happiness? Is it stored-up somewhere in a vault? Can I make periodic withdrawals of principle? Oh well, I have the memories…at least for another few years, I hope. How I treated others, good and ill, will reverberate through the universe until Big Freeze; how much I enjoyed the foie gras at Biba in 1990 will not. As pupils in a parochial (Catholic) elementary school in the ‘50s, we did not have this problem. Every September, we’d take our seats on the first day of class and that day we would learn just two things: God is the supreme being who made all things. God made us to know him, love him and serve him. First grade? Eighth grade? Same lesson! No reference to personal happiness or ‘self-actualization’. The alleged Death of God has made such catechetical memes unintelligible to my grandchildren. I don’t worry about them now, they’re fabulous; but I do worry about where they’ll be when they finally decide to put their own tubas aside. Will they look back at all that’s left undone in their lives, and say with me, “Gee, I could have had a V8?” 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 Why We Must Pray Michael G. Pravica "It is our prayers that will, God willing, save the world and our souls because God will know us." At fundamental level, our universe consists of quantum particles (integral spin bosons such as photons, deuterons and gluons, and ½-integral spin fermions such as protons, neutrons and electrons). One of the most fascinating characteristics of these particles is that identical particles are indistinguishable from one another (i.e. they cannot be labeled) [1] and follow laws of quantum statistics that are dramatically different from the laws of distinguishable classical particles/entities that we are more familiar with where objects (e.g. balls, playing cards or cars) can be labeled. For bosons, Bose-Einstein statistics governs their behavior [2], and for ½ integral spin particles, Fermi-Dirac statistics determines their behavior [3]. The strange behavior of tiny quantum particles is one of the most fascinating mysteries of the quantum world and it is from these principles that our classical world is constructed. As living beings who are made from these indistinguishable particles, it is easy to argue along a similar vein that we, too, are indistinguishable. Of course, this is not true at the classical level. Yet, our constituent particles (molecules, atoms, nuclei, electrons, etc.) all return to the immense reservoir of matter in our universe and remain respective indistinguishable particles when we die. Thus, there is something more about us that makes each of us unique in the universe (i.e. we are more than just the sum of our constituent parts): our soul. I have argued before [4] that the soul is likely an infinitely dimensional or at least higher dimensional gift from God, who is likely an infinitely dimensional being who made our four-dimensional universe and likely many more. Thus, God established a special connection between humans so they could be “God-like” which has nothing to do with the constituent quantum particles that assemble our physical bodies. However, after the Original Sin, God decoupled from humanity so that humans could understand that life without God (and obedience to God) will be extremely challenging. The essence of humanity’s struggle is to reconnect with our Creator. 1 Corinthians 8:3 states: “But whoever loves God is known by God [5].” Loving God takes many forms such as helping our fellow humans in need, glorifying Him and acknowledging His ability to help us through seeking Him (prayer). I will focus on prayer in this brief essay. God gets to know us when we pray to Him. It is God’s love that gives each of us our uniqueness and removes the degeneracy of “indistinguishable souls” as God knows each and every human being who loves Him and thus has Faith in Him. Satan is jealous of us because he lost this very special connection to God. Those who do not seek God end up becoming indistinguishable souls (at least to Satan) which God does not interact with. They get lost in the quantum mechanical chaos of our universe. We maintain our connection with God (which was created at conception) by praying to and believing in Him. This special connection enables us to spiritually transcend our universe and connect with our Creator just as Michelangelo depicted Man reaching out and trying to touch the hand of God in his Sistine chapel painting. This is the essence of the connection: mutual interaction via transcendent everlasting love. Love is the most powerful force in all of God’s Creation. Just as in pre-WWII times, we are on the precipice of a devastating conflict (WWIII) which will destroy humanity. More than ever, we need to bring God back into our world to illuminate, expose and ultimately vanquish the evil that Satan is perpetrating here to destroy us. God will save us if we pray to Him and demonstrate to Him that we love Him as He loves us. Satan seeks to disrupt our unique connection between the Lord and His children in the four dimensional spacetime world that He created for us to live, enjoy and glorify Him in. Satan is trying to turn us away from our Creator by tricking us into worshipping inanimate elements inside this universe that constitute indistinguishable particles (e.g. the Golden Calf) and focusing on cold materialism instead of on our God-like essence by dissuading us from following Jesus Christ. Prayers to God are transmitted via the super dimensional transcendent Holy Spirit which not even Satan can stop as he is trapped in this four dimensional spacetime. It is these prayers to our Father that will, God willing, save the world from its self-destruction and at the least save our souls because God will know us. This is why, more than ever, we must pray. This was originally published on Medium. References: 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identical_particles 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose%E2%80%93Einstein_statistics 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi%E2%80%93Dirac_statistics 4. https://english.pravda.ru/science/129528-soul/ 5. https://biblia.com/bible/esv/1-corinthians/8/3 Return to Harvest 2024 Previous Next

< Back Finding Light: A Prayer for Wisdom and Forgiveness Bryon David Embracing clarity, forgiveness, and purpose Despite life's events, the acts I've chosen to participate in, even the most perspective-shifting times I've been through, leave me with the same sense of self I've always had. I thank God for the peace of having an immovable, strong place to return to. Choices are the sole navigation tool I've found to help keep me there. I don't choose what thoughts come, but I decide what to do with them. I don't always remember to hold myself to that level of responsibility, and I get off track. I will myself, with the help of the spirit I want with me versus the ones who are always attempting to mislead me, to find myself in a place that feels right. Some questions beginning to arise at this point include: how, knowing of all the great and small tragedies of the world, am I ever supposed to feel easy? Of the times I've chosen wrong, am I forgiven? How do I find forgiveness, and how much of my perspective is the same as others around me? Am I alone? A place I find myself in is looking at the meaning of infinity, full of fear but more full of hope. The vastness of it leaves a sense of loneliness, even when I know I’m not alone. It could all be a dream teaching me to be a certain way or produce something, but why me? I am convinced by reality. What is my goal, or what goal does God have for me? Is it the same for all of his followers? Jesus wants us to Love each other, be truthful, find understanding in him, and help or comfort anyone we can. Personally, my biggest struggles have been centered around truthfulness. In the confusion of the thoughts that arise, remember how to return to this or whatever your motivation may be. Stay with thoughts you know are true. A thought I can think of is always there if I’m awake. I am awake, but why am I here? This one always hits me. I was born, I have lived through my time, and every choice has led me here. Am I happy here? It’s hard to say I’m satisfied for reasons I’ve already mentioned, but what am I doing to help those I worry about? I work to help my family and feed myself, but what good do I do outside of them? I ask for help. Lord Jesus, let me hear and understand where the real problems are that I am supposed to work out, and help me act on them with the help of your spirit. Thank you for the opportunity to live and for all you do for us. Amen. Image: Feelings. Painted by Bryon David. Bryon David is just one “weird” person and a sinner trying to do his best. “I believe Jesus Christ is the one true God and my only hope. I believe this after much time spent challenging this belief in many ways. He truly is the only way I know. I write when I feel inspired–fiction, true stories, thought trains, and prayers when they can help someone.” Click above to return to Winter 2024. Previous Next

“You’ll end up living life as though you were counting cards at a Black Jack table in Las Vegas – in other words, profitably! But it’s still gambling.”    < Back Philip Goff David Cowles Mar 1, 2024 “You’ll end up living life as though you were counting cards at a Black Jack table in Las Vegas – in other words, profitably! But it’s still gambling.” Philip Goff is a breath of fresh air: he’s a philosopher on the faculty of a major university (Durham), whose work is published by Oxford University Press. He maintains that existence may have an objective purpose, and he is willing to at least consider a role for ‘God’ in the overall scheme of things. In the end, Goff rejects what he describes as the Abrahamic (Judeo-Christian-Islamic) ‘Omni-God’ (omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent) but nonetheless posits the possibility of a transcendent, purposeful entity. Goff is willing to entertain the ‘God Hypothesis’ provided God’s knowledge and power are somehow limited, or God’s benevolence is impure or conditional. So, Goff’s latest book, Why - The Purpose of the Universe , was eagerly anticipated. Unfortunately, it disappoints. Goff fails to make a clear distinction between the sort of God he excludes a priori and the sort he might entertain. His characterization of ‘Abrahamic divinity’ oversimplifies. Any concept of omnipotence is limited by what’s possible, omniscience by what’s knowable, and benevolence by what’s doable. God cannot square a circle any more than you can! He cannot fashion a rock that is too heavy for him to lift. These logical and material fallacies have nothing to do with divinity. God is Good…in fact, God is Value per se . That’s really all you need to know. God does not ‘have values’ or ‘determine’ values; God is Value! Value is the efficient cause and the final cause of everything that is. I mean, what else could be? Why else would anything ever happen? It is said, “Love makes the world go round.” The same could be said of ‘the Good’. In fact, Love and Good are denotatively synonymous. Every novel event begins and ends with Value. Value is the sole motivator: it alone allows us to execute judgment on ‘the gods of Egypt’ (i.e., on what is ). Motivated by Value, we push off from shore; guided by Value we seek the horizon. Value alone guides us to create what might be . Between these two poles, Alpha-impulse and Omega-goal, each event shapes itself. It is causa sui and sui generis . It is informed by only two things: (1) the Actual World ( what is ) and (2) God’s values ( what might be ). “Some folks see things as they are and ask why; I dream of things that never were and ask why not.” (Bobby Kennedy) Between motive and immortality, each event is 100% free – free to react to what is, free to pursue what might yet be. This is what Goff calls ‘libertarian free will’; it closely resembles Sartre’s notion of absolute existential freedom. Robert Frost illustrates this concept in his most famous poem, The Road Not Taken . Out for a stroll in the NH woods, Frost comes to a fork in the road. He knows that both paths will take him to his destination. Yet he agonizes over the choice: “Both that morning equally lay.” Frost’s location and destination were hard-wired; his route was entirely undetermined. Every event (→) begins and ends with what is (Actual World → Objective Immortality → Actual World). In the context of this ontology, Abraham’s God is the same as Goth’s. The notion of an Omni-cubed (∞³) God is a straw man, set up only to be torn down. It’s easy to disprove the existence of something that is impossible, something that makes no sense on its face. Goff’s work is about God and Consciousness…and he gets them both wrong. Early on, he dismisses strong AI, claiming that there is something ‘special’ about the neuronal stuff he’s made of (i.e., his organic chemistry). Later, however, he proposes the possibility that the cosmos itself may be conscious ( Cosmo-panpsychism )…and the cosmos is not (primarily) made of neurons…or any other ‘special stuff’. Here, Goff carries a good idea too far. He not only posits universal consciousness, but he also maintains that all actual entities are rational agents . No doubt, events change the world (though we can’t reliably predict how), and events exhibit internal patterns. But those patterns cannot be reduced to rationality, nor can all changes be chalked up to agency. We are, I think, on the cusp of discovering that intelligence, and even consciousness, is platform-agnostic. In fact, the essence of panpsychism is the conjecture that ‘consciousness is everywhere’, that it pervades cosmos. It appears likely that many, if not all, organisms are conscious (or at least self-aware) in some way and to some degree, and there are strong reasons for wanting to extend the net to include certain inorganic phenomena…like computers. Goff posits three activities that make life worth living: “creativity, learning, and showing kindness to others," but he makes no effect to substantiate his claim that these values are somehow sewn into the fabric of the cosmos. The discovery of Value raises key questions: How is it that there is such a thing as Value? How does Value come to influence the course of events? By what faculty are we able to access Value? I agree with Goff that the answers to these questions are tied to the matter of consciousness. I would go even further and argue that Value is impossible without consciousness. Consciousness is reflection; it’s the universe ‘taking a selfie’, i.e., reflecting itself reflecting. Consciousness is what Universe sees when it sees itself. But reflection is comparative. I conceptualize A in the context of ~A. Judging A on the basis of the values it manifests requires an external perspective that also encompasses ~A and the set of universal values by which we may judge A. Goff rejects, I think too easily (below), Pascal’s argument for the existence of God (his famous “Wager”), but Goff replaces it with a ‘modern’ version called ‘Bayesian Logic’. According to this ‘science of inference’ we can validly reason upstream (induction) as well as down (deduction). In a nutshell, assume there is an event, A. If we don’t directly know anything about any events other than A, can we deduce something about everything else based on our experience of A? Were Leibniz and Blake right after all? Is every event a reflection (monad) of every other event? Can we discover “a universe is a grain of sand”? Crazy, right? Well, not entirely. If we know that A is very likely to occur, provided B has occurred before it, and if we know that A is very unlikely to occur unless B has occurred before it, then our experience of A lets us presume, provisionally at least, that B has occurred. Apply this to the matter of God: If there is a God according to the Judeo-Christian prototype, then it is likely that the created world would be well-ordered. If there is no God, then spontaneous ordering would be very, very unlikely . The world is extremely well-ordered (i.e., the degree of fine-tuning is astronomically improbable). ‘God’ accounts for that fine-tuning better than ‘no-God’ accounts for it. Therefore, it is likely that God exists…very, very likely! As with Pascal, Goff’s conclusion comes down to a so-called ‘Wager’, but the nature of that wager is very different. Goff uses Bayesian Logic to establish the existence of ‘God’ as highly probable . With Bayes, you end up living life as though you were counting cards at a Black Jack table in Las Vegas – in other words, very profitably! But it’s still gambling. Pascal is a whole different kettle of fish! His argument has nothing to do with probabilities, so his ‘wager’ is a wager in name only. Pascal’s argument is based on something much stronger…and much more ephemeral. Pascal is prepared to divide the World in two: on one side, A - the set of all things/events that make a difference, that have consequences, that change things, that mean something; on the other side, B - the set of all things/events that do not belong to A, i.e., that make no difference, have no consequences, change nothing, mean nothing. Every event X in Set A is associated with a proposition P of the form, ‘X exists’ and with proposition P’ of the form, ‘P is true’. Therefore, the proposition ‘X exists’ is always true, provided that X is a member of A. For Pascal, at least, A is the set of all things that exist, and B is the set of…nothing. Anything that might have belonged to B doesn’t exist. So, B is the null set, ø. In fact, it’s a ‘double null set’ ø² – a null set of null elements. (Ok, I made that up!) But in any event, the only set that has real members is A. Therefore, whatever belongs to A exists. What does this have to do with God? Pascal notes that God’s existence makes no difference if we don’t believe it, and that our beliefs about God make no difference if God doesn’t exist. Therefore, the existence of God is only meaningful if we believe it, and our beliefs about God are only meaningful if God exists. Therefore, there is only one meaningful solution to the problem: God exists, and now that I know that for certain, I cannot not believe. While I disagree with Philip Goff on many things, we are all indebted to him for helping to move conversations like this one back into the public domain. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Click the cover image to return to Spring 2024. Share Previous Next Click here. Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. 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 Jacob the Patriarch David Cowles Dec 21, 2023 “Jacob was a bit of a rascal. He was a wimpy kid who cheated his brother and perhaps his employer to line his own pockets… (he) is ‘the patriarch for the rest of us.’” The relationship of Biblical stories to modern life is sometimes uncanny. Take the story of Jacob, for instance (Genesis 25–31). He is the third Patriarch of Israel, following Abraham and Isaac. His life story, like so many of our own, falls naturally into three distinct periods. First, Jacob’s youth. Genesis tracks Jacob’s curriculum vitae from conception; it even provides details of his mother’s pregnancy. Jacob turns out to be the second born of two twins, though he struggled with his brother (Esau) in Rebecca’s womb, each boy trying his best to secure the right of primogenitor. Like the not-always-so-cute twin boys down the street, Esau and Jacob competed for their parents’ affection. Esau, a ruddy athlete and an accomplished hunter, won Dad’s heart, while Jacob, the more introspective of the two, was the apple of Mom’s eye. What Jacob could not win with strength in the womb, he won with cunning in the world. Through a series of ruses, he wrested the right of primogenitor from Esau. When Jacob came of age, childhood over, Isaac blessed him and sent him out into the world to win wife and wealth. Retracing the route of his family’s historic migration to Canaan, Jacob traveled back across the Euphrates to the city of Harar, once home to his grandfather, Abraham. There, he worked for his uncle, Laban. Over time, Jacob earned the right to wed Laban’s two daughters; after 20 years, he left his uncle’s employ, taking with him his spouses and his children, a retinue, and flocks of goats, sheep, camels, donkeys, etc. ‘Rabbit is rich!’ Jacob has aced adulthood. But now he must return to his roots. He needs to reconcile with his brother and reconnect with his father. His narrative picks up right where it left off…after a 20-year hiatus. Sidebar : In Jacob’s era, life expectancy was just a bit more than half what it is today; Jacob’s story reflects that. He was probably no older than 15 when he received his father’s blessing and headed off toward Harar to make his fortune. Likewise, his period of production & procreation spanned just 20 years, compared to our usual 40. That still left the average male up to 15 years to enjoy the fruits of his labor and to reflect on the meaning of his adventures. There’s a lot of Jacob in all of us. Compared to heroic Abraham and holy Isaac, Jacob was a bit of a rascal. He was a wimpy kid who cheated his brother and perhaps his employer to line his own pockets. It’s a plot straight out of Succession …or Washington, D.C. Most of us would be more than happy to receive a ‘Gentlemen’s C’ from St. Peter. Even a C- would do nicely, thank you. A few of us might aspire to sainthood (B’s) but I doubt if any of us is seriously striving to be a patriarch. (That takes an A and only three confirmed A’s have ever been given out…though rumor has it that Job, Jesus, Peter and Paul may be on the list as well). Enough of Jacob; let’s get back to us. By hook or by crook, we just managed to get through childhood when suddenly we found ourselves confronted with the need to earn a living and, perhaps, support a family. Like Jacob’s labors, our work in the world is all-consuming; we have little time for whatever existential concerns remain unresolved. But kids grow up, and careers come to an end, happily or otherwise, at retirement. We no longer bear the full weight of the world on our shoulders. We are free to turn our attention back to ourselves. Who we are is once again more important than what we do. Now back to Jacob. He worked hard for Laban and produced great wealth, which benefited Laban and his family for 20 years, but he did it using Laban’s capital. When the time came for Jacob to depart with his ‘earnings’, Laban’s sons protested. Whose dollar is it? But Jacob didn’t wait around for a panel of ‘bent’ judges to rule against him; he did ‘what was right in his own eyes’ (Judges 21:25). He took what he thought he deserved and made off for Canaan. And so the first shot was fired in the war between capital and labor – a battle that is still raging today. Every time a union is formed, every time a strike is called, and every time a corporation pays a dividend to its shareholders or a bonus to its executives, you’re hearing the rumble of this war. Back in his home country, Jacob assumed the role of peacekeeper. He made a covenant with Laban, who had pursued him across the Euphrates. He reconciled with his brother Esau after conferring on him huge gifts of livestock. He slaughtered men who had raped his daughter, and he did his best to promote peace among his own warring sons. He followed the way of Voltaire: he tended his own garden. In this Jacob embodied the Eschaton, when ‘the wolf will lie down with the lamb’. “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” We are all called to make peace – not to eliminate differences, but to transform intensity-dampening conflicts into intensity-enhancing contrasts. The world needs Abrahams and Issacs and Jobs, for sure, but Jacob offers a different model of sainthood. Jacob is ‘the patriarch for the rest of us’. Like us, he swims in uncharted waters, trying to find a channel between survival, self-interest, duty and fairness. How’d he do? I doubt many of us would give him a ‘10’. But he did good enough to please God, and what else matters? Image: 14th century. Fresco. Pomposa Abbey, Codorigo, Italy. The story is from Genesis 27:1-40. The image does not follow it in a linear order. At left, Esau goes hunting with bow and arrow to get meat for a meal for his blind father, Isaac. At right, Jacob comes to his father and claims to be Esau with a dish he has prepared from the game he caught. Believing that this is Esau, Isaac gives him his blessing. In the middle, Esau has returned and is bringing his father another dish with game from his hunt. He will be distraught when he learns of Jacob's trick, which has left him without his father's blessing. 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.