“This tiny prayer…is a cyber-wonks dream. The density of information content is out of this world, quite literally!” < Back The Our Father David Cowles Jun 1, 2023 “This tiny prayer…is a cyber-wonks dream. The density of information content is out of this world, quite literally!” 2000 words, 10 minute read Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name! Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven! Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, But deliver us from evil, Amen! Everyone knows the Lord’s Prayer . The version quoted in the Gospel of Matthew (6: 9-13) is probably the best known 50 words in all Judeo-Christian scripture. Yet when Roman Catholic children first learn this prayer, they don’t call it the “Lord’s Prayer”; they call it the “Our Father” in recognition of the prayer’s personal tone and pastoral focus. Attention is drawn to the compassion of a father rather than to the majesty of a Lord. This tiny prayer is a cyber-wonk’s dream. The density of information is out of this world, quite literally! One way (not the only way) to parse this prayer is as three stanzas of three verses each, followed by a surprise ending! (3 x 3 = 9 + 1 = 10) The first stanza concerns the identity of God and the nature of our relationship with him; the second stanza has an eschatological focus, while the third is concerned with every day social relations. We are all so familiar with this prayer that we may not always notice these sharp thematic breaks. In the first stanza, we learn that God is “our father” – not just the father of the cosmos or of Israel or of Jesus, but the father of everyone, our father – not just “the maker of heaven and earth”! The role of father is very different from the role of creator. As creator , God establishes the conditions necessary for existence per se , including our own existence; he is the ground of our being. But as father , God also enters into a personal relationship with each of us. This is the incredible heuristic power of Judeo-Christianity: God transcends the World and yet he is immanent in each member. Next, we learn that our father is in heaven. Transcendent and therefore eternal, he is not subject to the corruption and death characteristic of the spatiotemporal realm. Finally, we acknowledge that God’s name is holy . In the ancient world, a person’s name was not just ‘her handle.' A name defined the person’s role in society; in God’s case, it defines his role in the universe (which is his ‘society’). This is why Moses ( Exodus 3) was so concerned to learn God’s name. He knew the Israelites would ask and would not follow him until they knew…and knew that he (Moses) knew. Knowing a name was like knowing a password…or a secret handshake or coded door knock. In the language of philosophy, name was ‘essential,' not ‘accidental.' God does not disappoint. He tells Moses that his name is YHWH (“I am who am”). God’s ‘name’ defines him as unique. Obviously, one and only one entity can answer to the name YHWH . Only one being can be Being itself. Some philosophers have gone so far as to assert that Ex. 3:14 is self-evidently true and therefore ‘proves’ the existence of God; but we’ll leave that one alone… at least for now. God’s name is certainly ‘holy’ (or hallowed): it is by definition unique and that makes polytheism an oxymoron. The second stanza of the prayer is eschatological. While the first stanza reveals the ‘primordial’ state of things, this stanza presents the ‘ultimate’ state: God’s kingdom comes, God’s will is done, and the boundary between heaven and earth disappears. As stated in the Book of Revelation , “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” (22:13) Our first stanza identifies God as the ‘Alpha Dog’ while the second stanza confirms that he will be ‘the last man (sic) standing.' But these stanzas provide no hint of how we are to get from Alpha to Omega. Rightly so! The first two stanzas are visions, not a parenting guide, a political platform, not a legislative agenda. We still need GPS, and fortunately, the third stanza provides just that! This stanza is concerned primarily with daily life, the spatiotemporal realm. We have already been introduced to Alpha and Omega; here is where we learn the rest of the alphabet, i.e. everything in-between ( aka the Delta). As ‘father,' God has a care to provide for and protect his ‘children,' and it is very specific: feed me, forgive me, protect me! What child has not uttered these same petitions at one time or another to his own father? And what loving father has not granted these petitions, when appropriate, to the best of his ability? “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?” (Matthew 7: 9-10) In this stanza, we learn that our primordial relationship with God and God’s eschatological vision for the universe are relevant…and not only in the transcendent realm. Here we learn something key: we are co-creators with God, first in the temporal realm, but ultimately in the eternal realm as well (‘on earth as it is in heaven’). We ask God to give us ‘our daily bread’; but here we can step up too. In the spatiotemporal realm we can function as God’s agents by giving ‘bread’ to those in need. Likewise, when we “forgive those who trespass against us," we also do the work of God (mercy). Finally, “Lead us not into temptation” refers to the level of care God has for each of us and that we in turn must have for one another. We have a duty of care, a duty to protect others. Each of us is ‘our sibling’s keeper’… and ‘our neighbor’s keeper’ as well. “And who is my neighbor?” a student of the law asks Jesus. His answer is the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Does it take a village to raise a child? Heck no, it takes a cosmos! And now for what you’ve all been waiting for, the finale! Earlier I promised you a ‘surprise ending’ (remember how The Sixth Sense ended?). Now you’re wondering whether you’ll be let down, once again, by an overhyping author. Will you be disappointed? Yes, probably, you will. But should you be disappointed? By no means! But enough with the suspense; here’s what you’ve been waiting for: “But deliver us from evil. Amen!” First of all, this petition seems redundant; and it is! After all, didn’t we already pray for that when we asked God to provide for us and protect us? But something much deeper is at work here! While neither Jesus nor the Evangelists knew the Second Law of Thermodynamics, they were all keen observers of the natural world. They knew that ‘all things must pass,' and they were familiar with texts like Ecclesiastes : “Vanity of vanities! All things are vanity.” They understood the universality of mortality, they understood change . (After all, 500 years earlier Heraclitus had articulated Ephesian cosmology : Everything flows! Today we understand ‘change’ as ‘entropy’ and we know that every ‘change’ works to increase the overall entropy of the universe. (Entropy is the measure of disorder.) Consider the cosmos: “In the beginning…the earth was without form or shape (maximal disorder)…Then God said ‘Let there be light’ and there was light…God then separated the light from the darkness (order)…Then God said, ‘Let there be a dome in the middle of the waters to separate one body of water from the other’ (order)…the water under the sky was gathered into its basin and dry land appeared (order)…God created mankind in his image…male and female he created them (order).” (Genesis 1) Whether you prefer the model of creation known as ‘Genesis’ or the modern version known as ‘Big Bang,' it is clear that ordering per se is synonymous with the creative act. Big Bang or Fiat Lux , take your pick, entropy is at an all time low . Then, call it Original Sin or Thermodynamics, the entropic process begins. From the instant of cosmogenesis, entropy inexorably increases; order decreases. At some time in the far distant future, the universe will reach or approach a state of maximal entropy; all order will be lost and, effectively at least, the universe will cease to exist. “You cannot count what is not there.” (Ecclesiastes 1: 15b) Order is denotatively synonymous with Being and therefore also with Good. Where then does that leave evil ? If order is good, then entropy (disorder) must be defined as ‘evil’. Entropy is ‘evil’, not in itself but because it erases what is Good, i.e. Being, which is intrinsically good. But that is the reality of our temporal world. We relish the marvelous things we experience as entropy unravels the mysteries of creation for us; but we dread the inevitable consequence: Nothingness. According to Stephen Hawking, no friend of theology, entropy is just another word for time (and vice-versa). Time is the true “destroyer of worlds” ( Bhagavad Gita ). From the perspective of a purely temporal world, death not only terminates our existence…it erases it! The only intellectually honest emotion then is despair. The opposite of faith is not doubt, which is unavoidable, but despair. (Yes, despair also negates hope and love .) Unless …reality also has a transcendent (eternal) aspect. The finale of the Our Father asks God to deliver us from evil. It is the climax of the greatest prayer ever written. We are asking God to free us from the otherwise inevitable ravages of entropy. We, like the Psalmist (Psalm 23), are asking God not to let our existence be erased. We are simply asking for eternal life, that’s all! To be clear, it is not enough for God to provide for us (‘feed’), to treat us mercifully (‘forgives’), and to protect from the whips and snares of the material world (‘lead us not’); we also expect him to grant us eternal life. Cheeky Monkeys! Any self-respecting God would surely smite at us…and feel good about it! But very, very fortunately, our God just happens to be in the eternal life business. “Who’d a thunk it?” ( Hairspray ) “If that’s all you wanted, you should have said so. It would have saved me the trouble of feeding, forgiving and protecting you all these years.” Eternal life is the ultimate gift, the only gift, the ‘pearl of great price,' the difference between being and nothingness (sorry, Sartre). But spoiler alert : we don’t need to pace the floor on Christmas Eve worrying that Santa won’t bring us what we asked for…because it’s already purchased and delivered (and not by Amazon). The incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus delivered us from evil, once and for all. And if we wish, we can re-experience that deliverance every day in the Sacrament of Eucharist. In the ontology of the Our Father, everything that happens in the temporal realm is real; and to the extent that anything temporal can be harmonized with God’s values, everything is preserved eternally. The terrible pall of certain and impending mortality evaporates. But we knew that all along, or should have: “The Lord is my shepherd (father); there is nothing I lack (daily bread) …He guides me along right paths (lead us not into temptation) for the sake of his (holy) name. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death (the temporal world), I will fear no evil (death), for you are with me (deliver us from evil) …I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever (eternal life).” Amen. 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 our Summer 2023 Table of Contents Previous Next Share Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. 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< Back Big Crunch, Big Freeze, Big Bang David Cowles Aug 31, 2025 “…The Universe is a perpetual process of autogenesis and auto-annihilation. We are the friction, the turbulence at the interface.” My car isn’t running as it should. She (sic) shakes at high speeds, stalls at traffic lights, and won’t start on wet mornings. I’ll take it to a mechanic I know. He’ll (sic) know what to do. Sure enough, Sid diagnoses the problem, implements a fix, et voila , I’m back in the pink…sort of. No more shaking but starting and stalling are still issues. So I’ll take my car to another shop. Hank fixes the stall, but ‘old Betsy’ still won’t turn over in the rain. So now I’m off to the new shop in town – just opened. I’m introduced to Marge! Who’da thunk it? (I must be living in 2025.) Marge works her magic and now my 1970 Chevy runs like new. No one mechanic had all the answers but by putting their heads together I was able to complete my cross country trip without a hitch. Say ‘Hello’ to the Quantum Mechanics…the best pit crew any driver ever had: Planck, Bohr, Schrödinger, Heisenberg, Everett, Bell, Feynman – it’s a star-studded roster – and that’s just to name a few. If I take something from each - making sure not to let Bell undo Bohr, etc. - I might be able to piece together a coherent and heuristic model of the real world. Let’s give it a go: According to Schrodinger, being is a wave function that describes the probability (P) that an entity (X) will exhibit a discrete value (M) in a specific region of spacetime (R). The wave function fills spacetime and therefore constitutes a field . Spacetime is discrete (Zeno) but it behaves as if it were a continuum down to the Planck metric; therefore, on any realistic scale any defined region will seem ( doxa ) to be continuous. The wave function predicts that X will have a specific value (M) at R with a probability of P. The Sum of the Probabilities of all values of M equals 1. Everyone is someone! Likewise, X is potentially found in any sub-region of spacetime but the probability that X is found within any one sub-region (R) is less than 1. However, the probability (P) that X will be found in R plus the probability that it will be found outside of R does equal 1. If P(R) = .25, P(-R) = .75. Now things get interesting! According to Schrödinger and Feynman, P of M at R evolves deterministically; but according to Everett, ‘probability’ is off the table entirely. All possible M’s occur at every R and each specific M at each specific R corresponds to its own unique Universe. (Hence, Everett’s model is known as the ‘Many Worlds Interpretation’, MWI, of Quantum Mechanics.) According to Everett, the world is continually branching, everywhere, every when, and each branch creates its own distinct universe. Everybody is somebody sometime! The math works…but the metaphysics is unsatisfying. The number (N) of Universes grows exponentially! After just 10 generations of events, N > 1,000. Unimpressed? Ok, 10 generations later (20 total), N > 1,000,000 distinct universes. Dizzying! MWI is best represented as a lattice of nodes (N) with each node assuming one of a finite number (e.g. 2) of possible values. Assume each node (N) has a value (M) of 1 or 0. According to MWI, every N takes on both an M of 1 and an M of 0 (both...and, not either...or) so the Universe itself bifurcates, with one daughter universe including M = 1 and the other including M = 0. So, everything is a wave, a field, a probability function. When the wave function collapses, M becomes 100% probable, i.e. certain, at one particular R. When P=1 at R, X manifests as a particle. Beyond the cosmic horizon, particles are receding from us faster than the speed of light. In that case, those particles should behave like tachyons which we would normally experience as particles traveling backwards in time. In this case, however, since it is space that is expanding faster than c rather than the photon receding faster than c, we experience the tachyonic effects a bit differently. Instead of particles travelling backwards in time, we see the cosmic horizon effectively collapsing on us as a singularity. I am my own black hole. The day will come when the Planck Scale will have been so inflated that the lifetime of the universe will be insufficient for light to span it. Contrary to the Yellow Submarine , reversing the flow of time does not make our watches run backwards. We experience ‘time reversal’ as the contraction of the observable universe. Yes, it is Big Bang run backwards… sort of. While the cosmos itself is expanding, our visible universe is contacting. Celestial objects potentially visible today will no longer be visible tomorrow. Eventually, the observable universe will devolve into a point-like state at or below Planck. We have come to call this state ‘Big Crunch’; but instead of a Hot High Density state, as assumed in previous models, the cosmic temperature approaches 0° K in our model. Phenomenally then, Big Crunch and Big Freeze turn out to be the same thing (ontological isolation @ 0° K) – not a fun state to be in - just viewed from different perspectives. What is experienced locally as Big Crunch is experienced globally as Big Freeze; both are manifestations of a single universal phenomenon, Heat Death. Either way we are talking about an approaching singularity and a temperature of Absolute Zero, the universe’s ‘omega point’. And now, for my final act, the one you’ve all been waiting for, I turn Heat Death into Big Bang! As in the Book of Revelation , Alpha is Omega and vice versa. To quote Queen Mary, “My end is my beginning.” ‘Time’ is an epiphenomenon characteristic of our expanding-contracting Universe. To the extent that time runs ‘forward’, Omega is the Alpha point, but to the extent that time runs ‘backwards’, Alpha is Omega. The state of the Universe at Big Bang, Big Crunch, and Big Freeze is exactly the same. Big Crunch = Big Freeze viewed on opposing spatial scales (spatial), while Big Bang = Heat Death viewed from opposing temporal perspectives. Caveat : The identity of parameters at Big Bang and Heat Death have led some to introduce a concept called, ‘Big Bounce’. There is no bounce , the universe is not perpetually regenerating. There is just one cosmic singularity which can be called Big Bang, Big Freeze, or Big Crunch at the discretion of the speaker. However, this neat model has one drawback: it predicts that everything should be nothing. Inconvenient! But perhaps after all “we are such things as dreams are made of.” ( The Tempest ) According to this model, the Universe is a perpetual process of autogenesis and auto-annihilation. We are the friction, the turbulence at the interface. We are Derrida’s differance , the infinitesimal displacement between coming to be and being. Our model telescopes Penelope’s 3 year process of weaving and unweaving Laertes’ shroud into each and every moment. Space collapses to a Planck ‘point’, time to a Planck ‘instant’. It’s not the cosmic extravaganza we’d imagined…but if the shoes fit, no matter how ugly, we might just have to wear them. *** Piero di Cosimo’s The Destruction of the World by Fire and Water (c. 1524–29) imagines a universe collapsing in elemental fury, much like our own cosmos where Big Bang and Big Crunch are not opposites but two perspectives on the same singularity. 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 Who Invented the Internet “Al Gore claims the honor, but research shows that proof of concept testing began in 802 AD...” David Cowles The history of Europe is, in some sense, the history of the Franks (now the French). We first met this civilization in 8 th grade Latin when, side by side with Julius Caesar, we fought a Gallic War. (Sad to say, most of us suffered more than Caesar.) We encountered the Franks again during the protracted fall of Rome (476 AD). After Rome, the mysterious Merovingian dynasty appeared and took control of the Frankish empire. The Merovingians ruled until they were gradually replaced in the 2 nd half of the 8 th century by the Carolingians. On Christmas Day, 800 AD, the Carolingian king, Charles I (Charlemagne) was crowed Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire (the Western Empire having been without an emperor since 476 AD). Charles dreamed of restoring the military, economic, and cultural power of Rome but he lacked one thing: infra-structure. Recall that in the 9 th century there was no radio, no TV, and no printing press. Following the collapse of Rome, there were few good roads, fewer central markets, and almost no literacy outside of the monasteries; but worst of all, in 800 AD there was no internet! What’s an enterprising young emperor to do? Wait 1200 years for Al Gore to invent it? Or… build it himself! That’s exactly what Charles did! Al Gore claims the honor, but research shows that proof of concept testing began in 802 AD, a few years before Gore was born. Charles revived a moribund Merovingian institution (the Missi ) and made it the cornerstone of his imperial rule. It was a brilliant strategy. Charles acknowledged the natural tendency of his empire to fragment along pre-determined fault lines and he used the Missi to turn those faults to his advantage. Missi were ‘sent’. Just as Jesus sent his apostles two-by-two, so Charles sent his Missi in pairs. Except Charles’ Missi were usually bishops and counts, not fishermen and tax collectors. Their brief was thoroughly pragmatic but based on the fundamental belief that Church and State were ‘one and inseparable’, two hypostatic reflections of the Kingdom of God. For a more detailed treatment of various church/state models, visit " Church And State ." According to the Carolingian model, the relationship of Church and State is complementary . Just as the behavior of subatomic particles only makes sense when they are understood both as waves and as particles, so human society only makes sense when it is understood both as Church and as State. Note, we are not talking here about a quantum behaving first as a wave then as a particle (or vice versa). That’s how we perceive things, but it’s not how things are . To understand the behavior of quanta, we need to accept that a quantum is always both wave and particle, not ‘hare today, goon tomorrow’. Accordingly, to understand the behavior of human society, we need to accept that society is always both Church and State. We may only be able to deal with one Gestalt at a time, but we must recognize that both are operating at all the times. In another stroke of genius, Charles made sure that his Missi didn’t quit their day jobs. He took pains not to create a new, insulated, self-perpetuating bureaucracy. Like the ‘citizen legislators’ still governing in a few of our not-so-very-United States, Charles’ counts and bishops were still expected to perform all the duties of their respective stations but now they were also expected to spend a couple of months each year ‘in the district’, carrying the emperor’s water. No doubt, being a Missi was inconvenient at times (months away from home, etc.), but each pair enjoyed power and authority beyond that of any other imperial functionary, save only the emperor himself. As Roman Catholics regard the Pope as the Vicar of Christ, so the Carolingians regarded the Missi as Vicars of the Emperor. Reprising somewhat the role of the Old Testament judges, Charles’ Missi were empowered to right wrongs, adjudicate disputes, and impose the emperor’s will. Short of a rare direct appeal to the emperor himself, there was no way around the judgment of the Missi . The Missi gave the emperor extraordinary power. They were not only his eyes and ears ‘in the neighborhood’ but also his hands and voice. Missi were expected to report back to the emperor at least once a year on the ‘state of the neighborhood’ while communicating the emperor’s will to the ‘neighbors’. Like Charles, we struggle today with the competing values of hierarchy and subsidiarity. We do ourselves a great disservice if we fail to draw on ideas from the past, just because they are ‘past’. Hurry, Charlemagne, a once and future king. Thoughts While Shaving is the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine ( ATM) . To never miss another Thought, choose the subscribe option below. Also, follow us on any one of our social media channels for the latest news from ATM. Thanks for reading! Share Previous Next

< Back Good God! David Cowles Oct 1, 2024 “Good is God’s essence. ‘Good’ defines ‘God’. Good is what God is. Good is how the material and historical World experiences…God.” Kabbalah, an ancient mystical practice closely associated with Hasidic Judaism, uncovers a spiritual bridge that connects Ineffable God with the Kingdom of this World, i.e. our human lives. This doctrine is represented by the Tree of Life , a geometric figure that connects Godhead ( Keter ) with Kingdom ( Malkhut ) through a series of 10 steps called Sefirot . Between Godhead and Kingdom (above), 8 Sefirot express the aspects of God’s Goodness as it is experienced by us in the World. Etymologically, ‘God’ and ‘Good’ have separate Anglo-Saxon roots but those roots share in turn a common Proto-Germanic precursor. Theologically speaking, the idea that God and Good are synonymous goes back at least as far as the Book of Job in the Old Testament. There Job maintains his belief in God’s essential goodness, all real time evidence to the contrary and against the long-winded advice of his ‘spiritual advisors’. Events vindicate Job’s faith: God is Good after all! Good is not a pose God incidentally strikes; Good is God’s essence. ‘Good’ defines ‘God’. Good is who God is. Good is how the material, historical World experiences the Ineffable and Eternal God. Good is God, manifest to the World as Value (Beauty, etc.). Kabbalah refracts that Good into 8 intermediate Sefirot , connecting Godhead ( Keter ) with the World ( Malkhut ). While translations vary, these may be roughly listed as follows: Wisdom, Understanding, Love, Strength, Beauty, Victory, Splendor, and Foundation ( aka Procreation). These 8 Sefirot connect Keter and Malkhut and each other via a complex network of 22 vertical, horizontal and diagonal relations. The order of these relationships is critical to the doctrine. Linked in properly, they represent the unfolding of the Good that is God in the World, reminiscent perhaps of the unfolding of the Thousand Petal Lotus in certain Eastern spiritual traditions. Importantly, Kabbalah organizes the 10 Sefirot into three columns: a central core consisting of Godhead, Beauty, Foundation (Procreation), and Kingdom (World), flanked by two vertical ‘wings’: Wisdom, Love and Victory on the right, and on the left, Understanding, Strength and Splendor. Different schools of Kabbalah label the 8 intermediate Sefirot differently, just as different sects of Christians might characterize Virtue by its various, distinct aspects. Nietzsche, for example, paid special attention to a virtue he called Nobility , but not everyone shares Nietzsche’s understanding of that term or his outsized appreciation of that value. This is where the Christian symbol of the Cross resonates with the Tree of Life. In the graphic above, the horizontal beam represents the divine virtues (Wisdom and Understanding) while the vertical beam represents the core: Godhead ( Keter ) above the crossbeam and Beauty, Foundation and Malkhut (World) below it. Asked to enumerate the manifestations of God’s Goodness in the World, different Christian sects would undoubtedly produce different lists – but the overall thrust of those lists would be similar. Likewise, in Kabbalah, Godhead ( Keter ) is understood to be manifest in the World ( Malkhut ) via 3 vertically arranged columns consisting of the 8 intermediate Sefirot , regardless of how each is named. The Roman Catholic Crucifix displays Jesus’ body nailed on that Cross. Coincidentally, his hands are fixed in the positions designated for Wisdom and Understanding by Kabbalah; his core (head, heart, reproductive organs, and feet) occupies the positions assigned to Crown ( Keter ), Beauty, Foundation, and World. Of course, Christianity and Kabbalah share a common origin ( Torah ) but the two traditions diverged long before the Tree of Life became the symbol of one and the Cross of the other. The resonance of the two is clearly coincidental, expect in so far as it testifies to that common origin and perhaps, to a shared sense of spirituality. Still, why shouldn’t Christians map the body of Christ Crucified onto the Tree of Life? Could anything be more appropriate for the Savior of the World at the moment of its Salvation? Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to contact us on any matter. How did you like the post? How could we do better in the future? Suggestions welcome. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Advertising David Cowles Nov 17, 2022 “Madison Avenue knows us. It knows that our deepest longing is to be ourselves, to be what we are, to lose our absolute freedom in the security of an identity....'Never happening!” Once upon a time, advertising was information – ok, ‘spun information’, but still, information. Is anyone old enough to remember “Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is?” And what a relief it was! It soothed many an upset stomach and aching head back in the day (i.e., back when we used to eat and drink). Truth in advertising! Ok, truth packaged in a catchy jingle sung by a loveable cartoon character but ‘truth’ nonetheless. Now, fast-forward to today. Take drugs! (Well, only if they’re legal…and safe, of course.) Today’s ads for drugs (Rx and OTC) barely mention what the drug does (positively), but there’s plenty of attention paid to potential complications and contraindications. Some of my personal favorites: heart attack, stroke, kidney failure, and that old chestnut, death. But my all-time favorite, yes, trumping even death, is “Don’t take this drug if you are allergic to it.” Duh! Anyway, nobody cares. Today, ads are all about who you’ll be if... That’s weird. Won’t I still be me ? No, you won’t! You’re not yourself now; you never were, and a new car or a designer drug isn’t going to change that. You know, and you have always known, that there is a disconnect between who you are and what you are . You felt it when you were 3, and 13, and 33; you’ll still feel it when you’re 66…or 99! Alienation (‘being other than you are’) doesn’t go away; you don’t outgrow it, and there’s nothing you can take for it. At every moment of every day of every year of your life, you are, you have been, and you always will be someone , just not yourself . Life is like an old 8MM home movie: you can see yourself crawling, walking, off to school, getting married, etc., but you can never see ‘you’. You’re not there (it’s cellulose for cryin’ out loud!). In film, as in life, there are always only images of you, never you . We’re taught that we are shape-shifters: there is some mysterious ‘substance’ that defines us and that remains us even as we, like Proteus, assume a million different personae. It is one of the many things we’re taught that are not true. Deep down, you know that you’re unmoored, untethered, that you are an exile, a stranger, an imposter. You are like Shakespeare’s actor who “in his time plays many parts.” Yet, the actor is none of his parts, and none of your parts is you. What about all your parts taken together? Still not you. Don’t waste your time pushing this envelope, the result will always be the same. Being someone (or something) is irremediably different from being you . A persona is not a person! Hang on, it gets better! It is not just that you are unrelated to your personae – you are the negation of those personae. Neti, neti! You are not this, or that. In fact, not being them is who you are ! You are a verb. You negate, therefore you are! Non sum ergo sum. You are ground for the figures of the world, or they are ground for you, but either way, never the twain shall meet. So what? So, everything! Not being who you are is who you are! Are you lonely, anxious, scared? Of course, all the time…you should be. Welcome to existential angst . So, what does any of this have to do with advertising? Today’s ads don’t tell us about a product, about how it works, about how it can benefit us in our lives. Today’s ads are about who we are . They promise that you can become your persona du jour…if only you’ll drive a certain car or take a certain drug. Madison Avenue knows us. It knows that our deepest longing is to be ourselves, to be what we are, to lose our absolute freedom in the security of an identity. Who wouldn’t want to be a doting parent, playing ball in the park with your child, or a beaming child, riding shotgun in your parent’s brand-new pick-up? Never happening! We can never be ourselves in the way Madison Avenue intends. (I may have a family, but I cannot BE spouse, father, etc. There’s always a thin film between myself and my roles.) Today, most ads promise just that – but falsely, because nothing could ever do what they promise, not even when Hell has finally frozen over. We are not who we are and that’s all there is to it, madmen (sic) notwithstanding! Thoughts While Shaving is the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine ( ATM) . To never miss another Thought, choose the subscribe option below. Also, follow us on any one of our social media channels for the latest news from ATM. Thanks for reading! 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 Chaos David Cowles May 30, 2023 “Butterflies are beautiful, but they can keep their flapping to themselves, thank you! We already have enough environmental catastrophe to contend with.” Everyone says we live in a chaotic world , but do we? Aunt Gertrude makes the point every time she visits. Mathematicians have coined a phrase for it: The Butterfly Effect, and news organizations have turned it into a livelihood: Man bites Dog . Everyone says so, but do we? Chaos has a bad name. People equate it with Anarchy (the absence of order). They assume that events happen randomly in a chaotic world. Nothing could be further from the truth! ‘Chaotic’ and ‘random’ are antonyms, not synonyms. ( But wait for a surprise twist !) A chaotic universe is causal …to a fault! It’s Laplace on steroids. Causality is so strong that every event literally causes every other event. A perturbation of one becomes the perturbation of all. To be is to be omnipotent, but there is a trade-off: to be is also to be impotent . The more I control Dasein (that it is), the less I control Wassein (what it is). The more we can influence “the shape of things to come” (Ramones), the less power we have to make those things happen. “The nearer your destination, the more you’re slip-slidin’ away.” (Paul Simon) Have we discovered a new Uncertainty Relation a la Heisenberg…or Heidegger? In a chaotic world, everyone, every ‘thing,’ is a malevolent magician. We point our wands where we will and bring into being what may come. Every event effectively recreates the entire Universe, not ex nihilo but de nuovo . Post hoc ergo propter hoc , the bane of every aspiring logician (can one really aspire to be a logician?) is perfectly valid in a chaotic world. In a chaotic world, a butterfly flapping its wings in Borneo may indeed trigger a tornado in Topeka… and an avalanche in Anchorage or a mudslide in Malibu. Do we live in such a world? Let’s see. First, imagine that we all live on the surface of a sphere. Every event since the Big Bang can be represented as a ‘point’ on that surface. Events are positioned so that proximity reflects relevance. The relative positions of points on the sphere correspond to the causal strength of each event vis-à-vis every other event. Causal influences travel along great circles , but their impact is mitigated by the Inverse Square Law (ISL) and mediated by the events they encounter along the way. Here and now and then and there are defined by these mediated relations, woven into a fabric that we call ‘the real world.’ I could live here! Now imagine instead that every point on that sphere has a direct, unmediated connection to every other point. We just transformed our smooth spherical surface into a pock-marked cacophony of chords. Causal influences no longer ‘travel’ (they are instantaneous) and ISL no longer applies. In such a world, anything that can happen may happen; we have zero ability to predict events… or influence them. Here’s the twist I told you about earlier : a chaotic world like this behaves exactly the same way a random world would behave , even though ‘chaotic’ and ‘random’ are antonyms! I could not live here! In a chaotic world, there is no such thing as ‘intentional agency;’ therefore, ‘values’ are irrelevant, aka non-existent. Likewise, such a world has no room for God, either as the creator of heaven and earth or as the fountainhead of all value. The Power is not the Glory! All this suggests a new take on the Garden of Eden story. God created a perfect world, subject to just one limiting condition: non-recursion. The world cannot act upon itself, either by praxis or by gnosis . How could it? It’s already perfect. Any change can only be a step-down. Like isolated Q-bits in a Quantum Computer, if any element of the whole becomes aware of that whole, the wave function collapses and the whole (Eden) is shattered. According to Genesis , Adam and Eve were forbidden to eat fruit from the Tree of Knowledge because knowledge is inherently recursive. They were free to ‘eat’ though warned not to; but Eve held cheap the riches of Paradise…if they came at the price of ignorance. But Eve held cheap the riches of Paradise…if they came at the price of ignorance. At the first opportunity, she traded immortality for knowledge…and the rest, as they say, is history. No, I mean, it really is ‘history’… not ‘as they say,’ per se ! Adam and Eve “paved Paradise and put up a parking lot.” (Joni Mitchell) They traded bliss for gnosis , and so they saw that they were naked! Hallelujah, consciousness! And eternal Eden became the spatio-temporal universe we know and still love - 14 billion years later. Remember the bumper sticker: “If you can read this, thank a teacher?” Well, if you can understand this essay, thank Eve. Later, Job spoke for Eve when he ranked ‘dying without knowledge’ as life’s greatest tragedy (Job 3: 21). (I wonder how many folks today would share Job’s assessment.) Eve and Job risked everything for something we can’t give away today: knowledge! Imagine, we have to force our kids to go to school! East of Eden, it is the project of Homo Sapiens to rebuild Paradise on earth, “to build the City of Dioce” (Pound). God made a perfect world merely by willing it. For millennia, we have been trying to rebuild (Babel?) the world we lost – yup, it was that good – but unlike God, we can’t create things just by willing them. We actually have to build them, and we can only build in a non-chaotic medium like spacetime . So do we live in a chaotic world? Aunt Gertrude notwithstanding, we do not ! Butterflies are beautiful, but they can keep their flapping to themselves, thank you! We already have enough environmental catastrophes to contend with. 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 Sic Semper Tyrannis David Cowles Oct 5, 2023 “His immediate fate is not the 'result' of your shooting at him; it’s the act itself.” Once upon a time, Ethics 101 was a gut course. The syllabus? “Be a good boy!” There were things you were supposed to do and things that you were not to do. The choice was yours…as were the consequences. “I set before you life and death, therefore choose life.” (Deuteronomy) Later, we realized that things were not quite so simple IRL. Take Adolph Hitler…if we must! While he fooled most of the people most of the time, men and women of goodwill eventually realized that he was slaughtering innocents and devastating Europe. You stood next to Hitler once, didn’t you? You were armed, weren’t you? Why didn’t you shoot him in the head, right then, right there, and put an end to this whole sorry mess? You could have changed history (perhaps) but for some unknown reason you chose not to do so; why? For all those who ever have an opportunity to intervene in history by cutting off the head of a snake, here are some ethical considerations that might weigh on their decision: Saving the lives of 6,000,000 Jews and preventing the destruction of Europe constitutes a moral imperative. Anyone who had an opportunity to kill Hitler and didn’t do so is guilty of a grave moral evil…and a crime against humanity. Ends do justify means, regardless of what you learned in Sunday School. (Machiavelli) So go ahead, do it! "Thou shalt not kill,” even when it would be convenient to do so. Assassinating a political leader would always be wrong in every circumstance, regardless of the leader or their policies. The moral quality of an act is defined by the act itself, without regard to its consequences. (Exodus) Don’t do it! What’s in it for me? Sure, I might save Europe. But I’d certainly be killed, and probably much worse, in the process. (Bart Simpson) I won’t do it! So you’re going to kiss (oops, I mean ‘kill’) Hitler and ‘make it all better’. Who are you, God? You know the future, do you? You may conjecture that killing Hitler will save lives, but you have no way of knowing that for sure. Worse things might follow, maybe immediately, maybe later. On November 11, 1918, the world celebrated the end of World War I, not realizing that the way the war ended made conditions ripe for World War II, 20 years later. Trying to change the future is a fool’s game. (Hume) So why do it? Do it or don’t do it, but stop wringing your hands over the decision. Decide and accept responsibility for your decision and its repercussions. Whatever you do, you’ll do for reasons you thought valid at the time. There’s no higher court of appeal than ‘good faith’. (Sartre) So do it…or don’t! By the year 2100, everyone alive in 1940 will be dead. (J. Leo Foley) It doesn’t matter! Fate has already determined Hitler’s destiny. Whatever you do, or try to do, you will simply be acting as an agent of fate. There are innumerable paths (choices, actions) but only one destination. (Nietzsche) Do it…or don’t! Everything that happens happens according to God’s plan. Whatever you do, you will simply be following that plan. (Anonymous funeral oration) So? Everything is determined by the laws of physics. Everything you do is pre-determined, and whatever comes about as a result of your actions is also pre-determined. (Laplace) You’ll do what you’ll do! Obviously, there is no way to reconcile these radically inconsistent views. Or is there? Earlier, Aletheia Today proposed a new model of causality . Like the strong force, causality dominates a limited region of spacetime; like gravity, it exerts only a weak influence outside those limits. According to this model, there is no ‘cause and effect’, nor are there ‘means and ends’. Divorcing one from the other is one of the major errors of Western philosophy. The proximate effect (or end) of an act is part of the act itself. It begins as its ‘subjective aim’ (intention) and ends as its ‘satisfaction’ (objective immortality). Hitler’s immediate fate is not the result of your shooting at him; it is part of the act itself. Of course, things do not always go as planned. But whatever happens to Hitler when you shoot at him is part of the act itself. It is the ‘satisfaction’, the legacy, of your effort. A completed action includes its immediate result, welcome or not, intended or otherwise. That result gives your gesture its final meaning. I catch a fly ball; a runner on third base tags-up and heads for home. I try to throw him out. My action is incomplete until the umpire gives the sign. Safe or out, that’s the meaning of my act, and that meaning is part of the act itself. Traditionally, Western ontologies have separated actions from their results. This makes no sense. If it did, there would only be one play in all of football – the Hail Mary! Put the ball in the air and see what happens. This is not the way the world works! So, follow Voltaire! “Il faut cultivar notre jardin.” ( Candide ) Everything has its patch, its locus of subjectivity; outside one’s ‘garden’, acts are just objects. Within the garden, events are self-determined; beyond the garden, they are merely influential. So it is right to hold the actor responsible for what happens on her patch, but wrong to blame her for what happens beyond her garden walls. So where does all this leave Hitler? Dead, of course! Go ahead , shoot the SOB! 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 Civilization Part II David Cowles Feb 25, 2025 “There is more to reality than civilization lets us see.” We are born into mortal bodies. Bummer! But worse, we are born into a finite universe. When we die, we leave a legacy behind or not, for good or ill or both or neither. But when the universe dies, we leave nothing behind because there is no longer anything to leave or anywhere to leave it. There is nothing to show for our having been. We are in the realm of absolute non-entity. In a recent TWS , we explored the purpose of civilization and agreed, I think, that civilization is an elaborate structure built by us to shield us from immediate awareness of our impending doom! Who has the time or the energy to think about entropy when you’re trying to scrape together the rent money? Civilization invests the details of our daily lives with what Whitehead called, “misplaced concreteness.” Thanks to the topology of spacetime itself we are born looking at the World through the wrong end of a telescope. Civilization is a powerful lens we add to that telescope; it increases the spatiotemporal distortion by at least an order of magnitude. Things that are a bit removed from us seem far, far away. As a result, we imagine ourselves functioning in a very tight space and we gladly lose ourselves in the minutia of navigating this artificial domain. “I am the Walnut.” My secretions form a ‘civilizing shell’ to protect me from the noumenal world. Likewise, human beings secrete the structural components that form ‘civilization’, a barely translucent shell that keeps us only dimly aware of what lies beyond. 97% (Derrida) of the things we do are motivated or mediated by the structures of civilization: clan, caste, class; family, nuclear and extended; economics – ‘getting and spending’ (Wordsworth); language itself; and, of course, recreation, play – first person (exercise), third person (local sports teams as totems), etc. It’s hard work being ‘me’ when ‘me’ is an avatar I’ve crafted to get by in a civilized world, “a face to meet the faces that you meet.” (Eliot) What can we say about civilization? Parmenides called it Doxa , the realm of Appearance (seeming). This is where you find ‘bright lights’; it’s downtown (Petula Clark). It’s where you go to get distracted: “To come to be and to perish, to be and not to be, to change place (motion), and to exchange bright color.” This is the Realm of Doxa , ‘the realm of distraction’. Think the Lower East Side in its day. There’s nothing wrong with life’s pyrotechnics, as long as we don’t mistake them for Aletheia , the Realm of Truth. This is the noumenal world. Here there are no ‘qualia’ (sense data), truth is not perceived but intuited. It is everything that experience conceals. This is the realm of focus, the emptying of mind (the goal of mystics), the sound of one hand clapping, bodhi . It’s exclusively uptown . Think the East 90’s. Now consider King David’s famous meditation ( Psalm 23 ): “The Lord is my shepherd…he leads me on the path of righteousness… Even though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no evil (for you are with me)… Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” David is able to go beyond the conceptual limits of civilization. Against entropy , he proposes eternity . Against the appearance of shadow and death, he proposes eternal life and light. But that is only possible if there is more to reality than civilization lets us see. David posits a transcendent dimension and a transcendent entity ( Lord ). Accepting Parmenides’ classification of Reality into the Realm of Truth ( Aletheia ) and the Realm of Appearance ( Doxa ), the two realms share a common limit: Death, the absence of being ( Aletheia ), the absence of experience ( Doxa ). According to Parmenides, Being consists of Aletheia , and Doxa . Death falls in neither category. That’s because it is not a thing but a limit. It marks off the furthest extent of Doxa ; it is Aletheia ’s doorstep. Death throws a deep shadow over Doxa , where whatever is perishes, but it floodlights Aletheia where whatever is, is eternal. In another recent TWS , we explored the power, and the limitations, of Science. To rephrase, science can tell us anything we want to know about how the world as it appears but nothing about the world as it is. Science is stupendous…but superficial. We are told, “Seeing is believing.” The well intentioned folks who teach us this are condemning us to a life of ignorance. Not that seeing is necessarily deceptive, it’s just never the full show. For that we need to ‘escape from civilization’. Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Order and Anarchy David Cowles Mar 21, 2023 “The order that emerges among self-governing entities is the only real order.” Notice the title, Order and Anarchy . Anarchy is the absence of imposed order, not the absence of order per se . In fact, no one is more invested in the emergence of order than the Anarchist. Anarchism celebrates the spontaneous emergence of order, i.e. ‘self-ordering’ aka ‘bootstrapping’. In fact, to be is to combine an element of order inherited from the Actual World with an element of spontaneous ordering (novelty); every genuine event requires both: Order + Order! Every event is both rejection of an old order and appetition for a new order. Of course, from the perspective of inherited order, emergent order appears as mere discord; and from the perspective of emergent order, inherited order appears as institutionalized resistance to novelty. Yet, every event inherits a settled past and proposes a novel future. That’s exactly what an event is. The reaction of the present (event) to the past is never mindless copying or blanket rejection. Something of the past must be conserved to serve as exoskeleton for the present and endoskeleton for the future. Rejection of inherited order is never blind or capricious. It is always done in the service of a proposition, i.e. a concrete proposal. Sidebar : Abbie Hoffmann notwithstanding, there is no such thing as a Revolution for the Hell of it …except in book(s). Where is the Youth International Party today? What happened to yesterday’s Yippies ? Did they turn into Yuppies ? A coherent critique of the 60’s radical youth movement in the US might include the observation that the radicals lacked a coherent ideology. Sure they had issues: Vietnam, Civil Rights, etc. but issues alone do not translate into a detailed political platform and, per Lenin, “There can be no revolution without a revolutionary ideology.” Something of the past must be destroyed to ‘make room’ for novelty. New order cannot simply pile-up on top of old, like levels of civilization at the site of an archeological dig. Gertrude Stein wrote that mortality is nature’s way of making room for the future. Philosophical Anarchism is the belief that all true order is sui generis , that it emerges in the course of an event, any event, and that it is conserved as the ground from which all future events emerge. True order must be organic and unconstrained. Freedom is prerequisite; imposed order, on the other hand, springs from a desire to preserve what is at the expense of what might have been and could yet be. It is a form of disorder disguised as its opposite. Think 1930’s Germany for example. Some men (sic) see things as they are and ask ‘why change’; others dream of things that are not yet and ask, ‘why bother’. Inherited order is the exoskeleton that protects embryonic order in utero , but later, as imposed order, it functions as a strait jacket. Neither is anarchy synonymous with chaos . In fact, it might be its antonym. Chaos, ab initio , appears as disorder , but upon deeper investigation chaotic systems are shown to be deterministic . Anarchy is neither! Anarchy is order, freely emergent. An-arch-ism is the belief that certain entities are capable of self-government but self-government must include the ability to enter into ordered relationships with other entities; otherwise it becomes a form of nihilism. 2025 NYC Bumper Sticker: “Socialism not Solipsism!” At the risk of repeating myself, the order that emerges among self-governing entities is the only real order. Freedom and order have a dialectical relationship. There is no freedom without order and no order without freedom. Order without freedom is tyranny while freedom without order is barbarism. Pure order and pure freedom are concepts only; neither can be realized alone, by itself, in any actual entity. Taking a page from Sartre, no event can be what was, every event must be what is not yet. Without negation of the past and appetition for the future, there are no events. An event is not the Actual World it inherited, nor is it the Superject it contributes to the future, nor is it the self-satisfaction it hopefully feels. An event is the transition per se from what was to what is not. An event is a double negative: “Not what was, not what will be, therefore I am!” Anarchism then is the gnosis and praxis of Being. Anarchy is the universe in the image and likeness of God. Likewise, Political Anarchism does not advocate the disintegration of society; it merely opposes the mirage of order known as the State . But alleged anarchist plots to blow up critical infrastructure have understandably given it a bad name. We think of order and freedom, past and present as a continuum, a spectrum ranging from the complete absence of institutional constraints on one end all the way to a full-blown police-state on the other. But even that model may be too restrictive. It would be more useful and accurate to ‘graph’ the relationship between order and freedom on a plane with order on the X-axis and freedom on the Y. Every possible non-degenerate social structure (event) includes elements of order and elements of freedom in varying proportions. What then could be our paradigm? How about a Bach concerto? It is as rigidly structured as can be, but every note is astonishing, and every performance is brand new. We understand order and freedom so poorly that we do not see that they are locked in a dialectic embrace that spans all scales and all systems. “They paved Paradise and put up a parking lot.” (Joni Mitchell) But the very next day, green shoots appeared in the cracks and 10 years on, the lot was advertised for sale as ‘unimproved land…some litter removal required’. 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. 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“…Without Christ, the World would consist of a vast multiplicity of isolated events, a sea of ships passing in the night.” < Back Christology 101 David Cowles May 29, 2022 “…Without Christ, the World would consist of a vast multiplicity of isolated events, a sea of ships passing in the night.” St. Paul's Letter to the Colossians (the congregation at Colossae, east of Ephesus in Asia Minor) includes a very old Christological Hymn (1: 15-20), possibly the earliest liturgical Christology extant. It forms the basis of a complete Theology and a complete Cosmology: "He (Christ) is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation , for in him all things were created… “All things were created through him and for him. He is before all things and in him all things hold together … “He is the beginning, the first-born from the dead . For in him all the fullness was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things for him…" Can we peel back the leaves of this artichoke? What are the essential elements of Paul's Christology as reflected in Colossians and why is this Christological formulation so important in the development of Christian theology? First, the elements: He (Christ) is the (visible) image of the invisible God . God is insensible, but Christ is the sensible image of God. (He is) the first born of all creation . Creation (Genesis and/or Big Bang) is the moment of minimal entropy (maximal order). Christ is maximal order, the ordering principle, and order per se ( logos ). He is before all things . Christ is universal and eternal. Therefore, Christ is an element in every world from which novelty emerges. Christ conditions all things. All things were created in him, through him, and for him . Christ is the locus of whatever is (was or will be). Christ is the origin of whatever is (its efficient cause). Christ is the destiny of whatever is (its final cause). In him all things hold together Because all things (events) share a common origin and a common destiny (Christ), all things hold together; and because Christ is also the locus of all events, all things hold together in him. He is the beginning, the first born from the dead. Death is the moment of maximal entropy, minimal order. Whatever emerges from maximal entropy must (by definition) manifest an incremental increase in order . Christ is the source of all order, and order per se , so whatever emerges from a state of maximal entropy (death) manifests Christ. In him all the fulness was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things for him. Christ is not just the sensible image of an insensible God; Christ is God. ("In him all the fulness was pleased to dwell.") Entropy in the spatiotemporal world steadily increases due to conflict. Outside of spacetime (i.e. in Christ), reconciliation (through Christ) transmutes (for Christ) order-eroding conflicts into order-enhancing contrasts. According to this Cosmology, without Christ, the World would consist of a vast multiplicity of isolated events, a sea of ships passing in the night. There is no inherent reason why 'actual entities' should interact with one another, exhibit togetherness, mutually modify, or reconcile. Unlike 'birds of a feather,' things merely grouped together do not necessarily 'flock' together. Interactivity is needed and interactivity requires shared elements. But all things do hold together, and because they hold together, they do modify each other; and because they modify each other, they reconcile with one another, all through Christ, in Christ and for Christ. Christ, then, is the answer (the only answer?) to the ‘anti-isms’: solipsism, skepticism, nihilism. If A is an element of B and A is an element of C, then B and C are mutually interactive. Because they share an element in common (A), B and C are able to engage in a process of mutual modification and harmonization, ultimately leading to reconciliation: B and C reconcile via A. Christ (A) is an element of every entity…twice. Christ is the common origin and the common destiny, the Alpha and the Omega , of everything that is. That commonality constitutes the Solidarity of the World. But how? The origin and destiny of an event would be the same if the event were circular – if the event ended up restoring the status quo ante . In that case, however, the event in question could only be a virtual event , i.e. a ‘difference’ that makes no difference. According to Colossians , Christ is a real event and real events, by definition (Whitehead), make a difference; therefore real events cannot be circular. The World is a process of perpetual ‘advance’. You can’t step into the same river twice (Heraclitus). When an event is ‘circular’, it’s time factor (t) = 0. Therefore, it is not ‘real’ in spacetime; it’s a mathematical fiction. Like a line or a plane in geometry; it is a ‘virtual’ event. But this leaves us in a pickle: How can an event not be circular if its Alpha = its Omega ? The Christian doctrine of Incarnation provides a solution ( the solution?). Incarnation turns Being inside out. Destiny becomes origin and origin becomes destiny, yet they remain distinct. Think about a sock. You go to put it on. You try to push your foot through the mouth down to the toe. It won’t go. Someone is playing silly buggers; they’ve turned your sock inside out! The toe is where the mouth was and vice versa. The toe and the mouth have swapped places; yet they remain distinct. Also, a cacophony of protruding knots has replaced the lovely argyle patten you picked out in the shop. Now think about Kosmos . Incarnation turns the World inside out. The whole is its own quantum element. Bertrand Russell notwithstanding, this set ( Kosmos ) is an element of itself. The origin, locus, aim, and apex of the creative process enters that process directly…as an historical event. Of course, this ensures that Kosmos is non-linear and recursive; it modifies itself. Destiny ( Parousia ) is Origin (Nativity). Christ, the only begotten of the Father, not made, is the first of the living; Christ, resurrected, is the first-born of the dead. The first-born of the dead is the same, and not the same, as the first of the living. Christ is the overarching pattern of creation and salvation, outside of spacetime. Jesus reflects and reiterates, fractal like, that pattern in the historical life of a single human being. The child born in Bethlehem is the same, and not the same, as the man crucified outside Jerusalem 33 years later, who is the same and not the same as the one “through whom all things were made… (and who) is seated at the right hand of the Father.” ( Nicene Creed ) Every 'novel event' includes the Christ-event (Incarnation) as one of its elements, but the Christ-event is also the whole that includes all events. So every event, including the Christ-event, is part of the whole, but that whole is also a part of itself (Incarnation). Kosmos spirals! Necessary and/or Sufficient? Is Paul’s non-linear cosmology sufficient to account for the existence of a Kosmos like ours? We know that there is a Kosmos because we participate in it. Cogito, ergo est. The defining features of our World are Novelty, Intensity, and Solidarity. Does Paul adequately account for the existence of a Kosmos defined by these key features? If a theory does indeed account for the phenomena in question, we say that it is sufficient . Sufficiency is the first test of any model. If it isn't sufficient, "Forget about it!" But the Holy Grail of model builders is not 'sufficiency' but 'necessity.' A model is necessary if it is the only model that can account for the phenomena in question. So, what can we say about the model presented in Colossians ? Is it sufficient? Can it account for Novelty, Intensity, Solidarity? Can it pass the easy test ? According to Colossians , all things were created in, through, and for Christ - Novelty ; in him all things hold together – Solidarity - and through him all things are reconciled – Intensity . So, yes, Colossians passes the easy test , the test of sufficiency; but what about the hard test , the test of necessity? Is it the case that only Paul’s model can account for a World characterized by Novelty, Intensity, and Solidarity? Of course, I can create a different model using different words that is still sufficient , but would that new model be unique, or would it just be Colossians …re-dressed a la mode ? Put it another way, can I (or you, or anyone) come up with a model that is still sufficient to account for our target phenomena but that cannot be mapped onto the Colossians' model? If the answer is, "No," then the Colossians' model is necessary as well as sufficient, and the author of Colossians (Paul) may be said to have found the modelers' Holy Grail. So, have they? 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! 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< Back Prayer to Combat Disillusionment in Faith Hadassah Treu For when you've lost the expectation of God in your life Lord, I struggle with disillusionment in faith. I have lost my expectation for You to move in my life. I have lost my belief that You still do miracles, and that You still do the impossible. I have lost my confidence that You still deliver and still move mountains. Please expose and heal the wounds through which the disillusionment has come. Help me replace the false assumptions with your truth. Help me believe what is true about You and Your involvement in my life. I declare now that You are gracious and compassionate, and righteous in all Your ways. (Psalm 111:4, Psalm 112:4, Psalm 116:5) I trust You are actively involved and working in my life, bending Yourself to hear and respond to my pleas. (Psalm 113:5-6, Psalm 116:1) I acknowledge that Your presence is here, in all my situations, and dark places, and it is enough. (Psalm 114:7) I declare that You are my help and defense. (Psalm 115:9) I trust You remember me and will bless me. (Psalm 115:12) I choose to believe that You still have a future for me dependent only on Your grace, mercy, and power. (Romans 9:16) I declare that pain and suffering are not my new life. This is just a season of pain and grief. (Ecclesiastes 3:4) Find the cracks in the foundation of my faith and fill them with Your grace and love. Instill in me fresh hope and perspective based on Your word. Help me see every obstacle overcome. Strengthen me to believe that You can do with me, in me and through me, exceedingly above all I could ever ask and imagine. Return to your rest, my soul, for the LORD has been good to you. In Jesus' name. Amen. Hadassah Treu is an international Christian author, blogger, and poet, and the Encouraging Blogger Award Winner of 2020. She is passionate about encouraging people in their journey to faith and a deeper walk with God. Hadassah is a contributing author to several faith-based platforms and devotional and poetry anthologies. She has been featured on (In)courage, Living by Design Ministries, Thoughts About God, Today’s Christian Living (Turning Point), and other popular sites. You can connect with Hadassah at www.onthewaybg.com. Previous Next

< Back I'm Bored! David Cowles “We are co-responsible for the world. We are all always our siblings’ keepers!” What parent has not heard this cry a million times? It’s annoying, but we usually just ignore it. We do so at our peril. Boredom is more than meets the eye. As we noted in the June 21st edition of Thoughts While Shaving (TWS ), information is the difference between what is and what might have been. Therefore, ‘information happens’ whenever an event occurs. The universe consists of events and only events. If it is, it is an event, or part of an event; and if not, not. Each event springs from a unique ‘actual world.’ An event has one and only one such world, but each actual world has the potential for innumerable, mutually exclusive , events. Every ‘real event’ occurs in lieu of many other, ‘potential events.’ The difference between a real event and its potential alternatives constitutes the information content of that event. Information is interesting! We are interested in ‘what is’…to the extent that it differs from ‘what might have been.’ What is and couldn’t have been other that it is is not interesting. Of course, the converse is true as well: anything interesting must have information content. Information and interest are two axes of the same phenomenon. ‘Information’ measures an event in terms of other (potential) events. In that sense, you might say that information is the ‘objective’ element of an event. Graph that quantity on the X-axis. Interest, on the other hand, is the ‘subjective’ element; it is a measure of the ‘intensity’ of the experience (every event is an ‘experience’). Graph intensity on the Y-axis. So, an event must be informative, and it must be interesting. A universe where so-called events are predetermined by other events (and, therefore, cannot be other than they are) is neither informative nor interesting; nor is it even event full . In fact, there are no actual events in such a world and without events, there is no world at all. Boredom is a symptom of ontological breakdown. To be bored is to deny the existence of anything interesting, and if nothing is interesting, nothing is. We refer to the end of the universe as Heat Death (or Big Freeze). A good definition of Heat Death is the absence of any communication, i.e., an information vacuum; and when there is no longer anything of interest to anyone, then there will no longer be anything…or anyone. In ancient mythology, there are many examples of individuals with outsized roles in the creation and/or maintenance of the world: Atlas supports Earth on his shoulders (Greek), three norns weave the threads that determine destiny (Norse), and God says, “I am who am.” (Hebrew) In contemporary mythology, we all have an outsized role. We are co-responsible for our world. We are all always our siblings’ keepers! We are called to imitate the Clerk in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales : “Gladly would he learn and gladly teach.” Chaucer’s dictum in a version of Kant’s categorical imperative. It is binding on all for the benefit of all. Imagine a world where no one wishes to teach, and no one wishes to learn. (Sounds like some schools I’ve encountered.) Such a world would not be a world at all: no interest = no information = no being. After completing work on the atomic bomb, Robert Oppenheimer, paraphrasing the Bhagavad-Gita , said, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” Next time a youngster complains of being bored, ask yourself, “Is this the beginning of the absence of Being?” Thoughts While Shaving is the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine ( ATM) . To never miss another Thought, choose the subscribe option below. Also, follow us on any one of our social media channels for the latest news from ATM. Thanks for reading! Previous Next