< Back Life on Mars David Cowles “Based on what we think we know about biogenesis, there should be life on Mars. If it turns out that there isn’t, somebody’s “got some ‘xplainin’ to do, Lucy.'" We estimate that Planet Earth formed roughly 4.5 billion years ago. A mere 500 million years later, its first and only ever living molecule (DNA/RNA) concresced. Today, organisms descended from that one molecule cover nearly every inch of the planet and manage to survive, nay thrive, in unimaginably hostile environments. A single human body consists of 30 trillion of these resilient little critters. Planet Earth is infested, infested with life ! Like a ball of popcorn, soaked in honey and left lying out in the hot sun, we can no longer see the ball through the swarm of ‘beneficiaries’ covering it. “Its first and only ever ?” There is no evidence that life evolved more than once on Earth. Had it, its various forms would probably not have been compatible. Perhaps none of those forms would have survived. Best case, a single architectural design would have quickly won out (as it did?). Given the state of things on Planet Earth 4 billion years ago, it is natural to wonder how likely it was that a living cell would have emerged? But probability doesn’t enter-in to this discussion! It happened once, period. There’s no guarantee it will ever happen again; make the most of it! We’re left trying to construct a probability matrix based on a sample of one; can’t do it! Imagine you have never seen a deck of playing cards before. Your terrestrial life coach invites you to ‘pick a card, any card’, and you do. Ace of Clubs. Now, what’s the probability that the next card drawn will also be an Ace of Clubs? We know that the answer is 0. But we know that only because we know how the deck is constructed. Absent that information, the question itself is meaningless. Of course, once we start finding life forms ‘off-Earth’, it will be a whole different ball game, but that time is not now. Which means biogenesis on Earth (x) could be just shy of ‘infinitely likely’, or of ‘infinitely unlikely’, to have occurred. So all we can say about P(x) is that P(x) > 0 but < 1. Given that life has evolved only once on Earth in 4 billion years and, as far as we know, nowhere else in our solar system, it is impossible to assert that biogenesis (x) has any real probability at all: i.e. that P(x) є {R}. Sidebar #1 : If {R} > P(x) > 0, we can say that P(x) is hyperreal . While we cannot say that x is possible, we cannot say that x is impossible either. Is this the statistical model of agnosticism? Sidebar #2 : If {R} > P(x) > 0, is (x) the mathematical definition of a miracle? Given what we know (a lot) about conditions on Earth over the subsequent 4 billion years, how likely is it that such a life form would have survived ? Common sense says that if life only evolved once on Earth, it could easily have been wiped out early on, perhaps never to evolve again. Common sense also suggests that states-of-affairs will likely arise in the future that are incompatible with life as we know it today. So life then is suspended between ‘what is barely conceivable’ and ‘what is virtually certain’. It occupies the space between ‘not yet’ and ‘not still’. If so, then the bio-verse itself is a ‘logical dispensation’. It is a single fecund oasis perched above a giant sinkhole. It shouldn’t be…but it is! We can say that life on Earth did evolve, and we must anticipate its eventual extinction, so the only variable here is the time span. Time span is quantifiable but like all quantities, it is comparative. Is a liter a lot or a little? Neither? Both? Once you understand the terms, the question itself makes no sense. What then is the comparison between time and no time? What is the significance of ‘one’ in a universe already known to span at least 60 orders of magnitude? About all we can say, objectively speaking, about any ‘time span’ is that it is neither instantaneous nor eternal. A grandson once referred to a now deceased friend of ours (appropriately called Big John) as ‘giant’. Was John a speck of dust (“All we are is dust in the wind” - Kansas) or the Colossus of Rhodes? Both! Conditions on Earth vary. They vary by temperature and tempest, by the density and chemical composition of the atmosphere, and by the availability of water. Yet from the top of Mount Everest to the mouth of a thermal vent on the ocean floor, there is life. From arid desert to arctic glacier, there is life. ‘Give us any gas, we’ll breathe it’ – Laverne & Shirley. O₂? It’s a breeze. CO₂? A-OK. Terrestrial life has even evolved organisms that breathe methane! Once evolved, life is amazingly durable and adaptable. The tenacity of its survival contrasts with the fragility of its birth. Can’t live without it, can’t live with it, can’t kill it! The biosphere is omni-recursive . It gradually terraforms its physical environment to make it more bio-friendly: e.g. stone becomes soil. It experiments with innumerable distinct survival strategies, called species . Finally, it creates Artificial Realities (Culture, Society) that confer additional resilience via epigenetic adaptation. The existence of ‘life’ is extremely improbable but once here…it’s here to stay! Hypothesis : The conditions necessary for the emergence of a living molecule are much more stringent than the conditions necessary for its survival. Once life happens, it’s almost impossible to snuff it out. Of course, individually, we’re all only one stray bullet away from the boneyard and even as a species, we face eventual extinction. But as far as life per se is concerned, we’re not sure what it would take to kill it off. Consider Pando , the largest organism (by mass) on Earth. (It’s a tree!) It is at least 15,000 years old but none of its constituent organs (trunks) lives more than a few hundred years. That said, the conditions on Earth 4 billion years ago were anything but bio-conducive: Heavy asteroid bombardments, high levels of radiation, zero oxygen, superabundant methane. It’s hard to imagine that conditions on Mars, even today, are any less propitious for the emergence of life than that. Martian Bio-skeptics (that’s humans skeptical of life on Mars, not Martians skeptical of life on Earth) blame the planet’s sterility on its lack of heat, air, and water. But this argument is tired. We just flew 72 helicopter missions over the Martian surface. If the planet’s atmosphere is thick enough to support flight, it’s certainly sufficient to support some form of life. Even today, conditions on Mars are probably sufficient to support biogenesis, but if not, they certainly were at some time in the past. From what we know about life, it should have emerged and evolved on Mars at more or less the same time it did on Earth. We’re looking for life on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and I hope we find it – in my lifetime, please; but isn’t it much more likely that life would have emerged on our twin planet? Based on what we think we know about biogenesis, there should be life on Mars. If it turns out that there isn’t, somebody’s “got some ‘xplainin’ to do, Lucy.'" David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at dtc@gc3incorporated.com . Return to Yuletide 2024 Previous Next

< Back Bucket List David Cowles Jul 19, 2026 “Kick the bucket…over. Recognize that every event is radically unique and enjoy it on its own terms… Every event is a Bucket Lister!” 1600 words, 8 minute read The first time I heard the term Bucket List , I cringed. Talk about ‘measuring out your life with coffee spoons’ (Eliot). But I’ve only recently begun to understand my instinctive aversion. Apparently, we have an inalienable right to ‘pursue happiness’. I’m not relying solely on the Declaration of Independence here. “I just want to be happy/don’t I have a right to be happy/whatever makes you happy/you don’t make me happy anymore” are phrases we hear every day. Pity the poor bartenders and beauticians forced to earn a living by listening intently to these self-pitying memes, interjecting pre-programmed sighs where appropriate. ‘The pursuit of happiness’ is an oxymoron. Happiness is not a ‘thing’; it’s a ‘subjective form’ (Whitehead), an introspective state of mind. It can’t be pursued like a certain white whale. While external circumstances may or may not be more or less conducive to happiness, nothing makes us happy ! Happiness is just one of many aspects an event may assume. There is no word, ‘happyfication’, in the English language. Intuitively we understand that nothing can ‘make’ anyone happy; but we promptly forget that and set off down our own ‘whale road’ (Beowulf): “I’ll make you happy if it kills us!” I want to be happy. Incidentally, I also want my spouse to be happy, my children, my employees, even my friends and neighbors if I’m in a particularly generous mood. No wonder we’re miserable! We’re fishing from dawn to dusk in a post-apocalyptic puddle. In another post on this site, R U Happy ? , we argued that ‘happy’ is always a relative term applicable to specific contexts: happy marriage, happy job, etc. There is no such thing as ‘being happy’ in an absolute, universal sense, at least not in the mortal realm. We are always just one insect bite away from abject misery…and that alone is enough to compromise any fleeting sense of satisfaction. For example, imagine one of my Bucket List items is a visit to the Grand Canyon. Here I am at the iconic rim – breathtaking, and yes, I’m smiling. Good thing because I haven’t been smiling much over the past few days. There was the usual logistical stress getting here, compounded by a flight delay. Oh, and our ‘luxury accommodation’ turned out to be luxurious in price alone! But I’m not complaining. I’m glad I got to see one of the world’s wonders. But was I happy then? Am I happy now? Maybe, maybe not, but either way, can I give full credit (or blame) to the Grand Canyon? “No, you don’t get it, the experience was fantastic. The hassles were a pin prick in comparison. I wouldn’t have sacrificed this experience for anything.” Ok, great. But are you happy now? Happy that you saw it? Sure. Happy to cross another item off your list? Ok. But life is what fills the gaps between ‘Bucket Listers’ and the ultimate ‘Bucket Kicker’. How happy are you now? There are a lot of things I do, perhaps not all bucket list worthy, that I enjoy. I’m happy while I’m doing them. Dining on foie gras, sipping a vintage port, taking in a Giotto exhibit at the Met - I am ‘happy’ in the context of eating, drinking, and viewing, but I am not necessarily happy in the absolute. I suppose my memories of these events are somewhat pleasant as well. But does any of this make me happy in an absolute sense? Wally Shawn captures this ethic perfectly in his iconic film, My Dinner with Andre : “I have a list of errands and responsibilities that I keep in a notebook, and I enjoy going through my list and carrying out the responsibilities and doing the errands and then crossing them off my list… I don’t feel the need for anything more than this… A delicious cup of coffee and a piece of coffee cake, why is it necessary to have more than this or to even think about having more than this?” Shawn describes what it is like to be relatively happy in specific contexts. He argues that this is enough and, good thing too, because this is all there is! In contrast, he describes Andre Gregory, his foil: “ You seem constantly to be finding a significance in these things that to me are just facts…that things in the universe are there for a purpose, to give us messages. Whereas I believe that things in the universe are just there. They don’t mean anything.” According to Shawn, Gregory is seeking absolute and meta-contextual happiness ( gnosis , satisfaction), something that simply does not exist. IRL, whenever I experience anything, I automatically notice imperfections and I immediately imagine how I might ‘improve the experience’. Next time, what would I do differently? Rather than enjoying what is happening right now, I’m already thinking ahead. This is not the result of some character flaw; it’s human nature! It’s natural selection. When we do something pleasant, we seek ways to do it again, only better: “Next time… I’ll arrive earlier, dress more comfortably, bring a better bottle of wine.” Of course, that subverts the whole premise of a Bucket List: One and Done! And, of course, there is no next time. No experience, no matter how extraordinary, is ever ‘perfect’. It can’t be, by nature! ‘Perfect moments’ (Sartre) are idealizations. In Euclid’s world, the angles of a perfect triangle always sum to exactly 180 degrees. IRL, not all triangles are ‘perfect’; in fact, none are! No three sided material object has angles that add precisely to 180.0000000… degrees. There is an unbridgeable disconnect between the world of experience and the world of mathematics. Math deals only with ideal entities; IRL there are no such idealizations. Nothing is ever ideal . If it were, it would be Paradise. Robert Frost gets it ( The Road Not Taken ): Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could… Then took the other… Oh I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back… IRL there are no do-overs. Of course, you can try to correct your perceived mistakes but in the end it’s futile. For better or for worse, it’s one and done! The minute I say, to myself or others, “next time”, I’m guilty of bad faith. There are no ‘next times’, there are just those times and these times. “Oh time, it’s like a river… ain’t nothin’ but a river.” (Grayson Hugh) And what do we know about rivers? You can’t step into the same one twice. ( Heraclitus ) So how do you want to live your life? Diagramming future events which, if realized IRL, will always differ significantly and unpredictably from their diagrams, events that will be perceived as ‘imperfect’ but that can never be ‘done over’. Or would you prefer to just live. Re do-overs, of course you can go back to the Grand Canyon as often as you like, but each time you go, you’ll be going for the ‘first time’. The world consists entirely of ‘events’ – what else could it consist of? Anything else would just be scaffolding. Events happen when ideal objective values are applied to the imperfect material world. For countless millennia, the vast majority of human beings have been engaged full time in the process of living, i.e. surviving and thriving. Only recently have technology and the market economy generated enough surplus wealth for ‘ordinary people’ to seek experience for its own sake, not as a means to an end but as an end in itself. But that luxury conceals an even greater danger. We no longer only do what we have to do; now at least some of what we do can be what we want . So what do you want? Surprise : you want what I want, and I want what every human being wants: eternal and non-contextual bliss! What else is there? As human beings, we all want the same thing, the only thing worth wanting. And yet no two human beings imagine the same path. That said, all of our imagined pathways have one thing in common: they are all doomed to fail. There is no path to bliss! There is no ‘gateway experience’, not climbing Mount Everest, walking El Camino, visiting Arles, or walking on the Moon. These, and a hundred million alternative experiences, each has its own specific value, but none of these values includes eternal, non-contextual bliss. A ‘bucket list’ is a low budget version of the Taj Mahal. For all its splendor, it’s a tomb. Our buckets entomb us. They are the ‘things’ we trade life for. They are the idols we trade God for. So kick the bucket…over. Recognize that every event is radically unique and enjoy it on its own terms, without the baggage of anticipation, nostalgia, or comparison. Now every event is a Bucket Lister! Because none is. 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. Keep the conversation going. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! 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< Back ChatGOD "ChatGPT can be smart, but it can never be holy. In being an e-being, precisely because its intelligence is artificial, it is necessarily alienated from the Divine. It can only be 'as if,' never truly as." Steve Gimbel and Stephen Stern Ph.D. A lawyer was recently exposed for using the artificially intelligent chatbot, ChatGPT, when the brief he submitted was discovered to be filled with precedents that do not exist. ChatGPT is capable of writing like us, incorporating the collective beliefs of humanity as they appear on the World Wide Web. The problem, of course, is that some of what is out there on the Net is not true, and ChatGPT is incapable of filtering out the false. The ability to mirror our linguistic capacity without our critical faculties is dangerous if we use it as the lawyer did, for matters of fact, but it is wonderful for other uses, specifically sparking spiritual insights. ChatGPT and its artificial brethren may make lousy lawyers, but they can be fantastic prophets. Traditionally, we conceive of reality as having three distinct levels. The objective domain is comprised of all the things of the world—tables, chairs, human bodies with complex eyes… all of the perceptible objects. Above the objective stands the metaphysical realm, consisting of that which lies beyond our ability to observe, including necessary entities like God. Below them both sits the subjective dimension, consisting of the lived inner experience of conscious beings like us. Philosophy and religion for centuries have been dogged by a persistent problem: if we are trapped in our minds, only having direct access to our inner thoughts and experiences, how do we know anything beyond our own thoughts? Couldn’t all of the objective and metaphysical entities just be figments of our imagination? Couldn’t we be nothing but brains in vats with false ideas pumped in by an evil demon? Can we know anything true about material reality and what supposedly resides beyond? American Pragmatism is the philosophical movement based on the central ideal that metaphysical truth is grossly overvalued. What matters is not what is necessarily true, but rather what has “cash value,” that is, what works in the world. Metaphysical truth is just so European. We Americans don’t care for the high-falutin’ abstract conceptual essences of things, but rather for the practical, the effective, the operational. We are in a world with things to do. Forget the abstruse, embrace the tools that actually get stuff done. So, when pragmatist William James looked at religion in his Varieties of Religious Experience, he eliminated the European concern for objective justification for religious belief and focused just on the experience itself. Get rid of the question about the validity of Aquinas’ and Anselm’s proofs for the existence of God and start from the undeniable fact that people have spiritual experiences that shape their lives. The question James examines is not whether these experiences are true or false, but rather one of meaning—what are these experiences like and what are the effects they have on people’s lives. Some religious experiences occur in moments of quiet solitude: when praying, meditating, or at random times when we are unexpectedly struck by something we cannot explain. But some come from interactions with people we seek out exactly for their ability to help us experience them—spiritual guides like Hindu yogis, Jewish tzaddikim, Buddhist sages, Muslim hakims, Zoroastrian magi, and Christian prophets. They lead us to epiphanies, to spiritual awakening. These insights are not mere facts describing the world, but rather experiences of appreciation and realization. It is not that we leave knowing something we did not know before, but rather experience a shift in our perspective. We still see what we saw, but now we see it differently; we see it more clearly, we see it as more interconnected, we understand it at a deeper level. ChatGPT as an e-being, as a virtual intelligence, is the ultimate pragmatist. The essence of its artificial existence has severed all connection to the true and false because it does not live in the material world of chairs, tables, and beer mugs where truth resides. ChatGPT is caught in the Web. Its “truths” are the beliefs expressed on the wide-open internet, where anything can and is said. It cares not for the reality beyond its reality but is built to do one thing and one thing only: figure out how language is used to accomplish human tasks and perform them without humans being involved. Human students write essays, so go write an essay without the student needing to do the class readings. Human journalists write stories about events, so go write stories without humans having to research them themselves. Human lawyers write briefs, so go write them without human lawyers needing to do anything but bill their clients. But now, consider this one: human spiritual guides create sermons that lead other humans to have cherished insights about religious matters. Figure out what sorts of word combinations lead to generating understanding and create new combinations that will have this effect. If we see the purpose of our spiritual teachers as making us think in a way that generates wisdom and allows us to live more meaningful lives, that is something a chatbot could actually do quite well. They can see which sorts of passages have the most influence on us and create new versions. They can figure out how we are inspired and continually inspire us. This strikes us as cheap, as dirty, as mere spiritual manipulation. We prize the wise because we believe that their ability to stir our souls comes from the fact that they have a superior connection to the Divine. They provide penetrating astuteness because they have access to the truth that we lack. They are sagacious because they are holy. ChatGPT can be smart, but it can never be holy. In being an e-being, precisely because its intelligence is artificial, it is necessarily alienated from the Divine. It can only be 'as if,' never truly as. And thus, it can only give us virtual facsimiles of wisdom, not the real deal. It is like the false prophet, the huckster pretending to be sacred when they are, in fact, profane in order to profit from being thought a prophet. ChatGPT is built precisely to be this sort of fraud, to be a fake human whose work we can substitute for our own, pretending to have done the necessary labor so that we can get the reward without breaking an intellectual sweat. But that is the opposite of what happens when we use it as an e-prophet. When we read an inspirational passage from ChatGPT and are truly inspired, gain spiritual insight, see the world differently, then we have actually done the real work. Regardless of the source of the passage, we really are changed. In this case, unlike with the plagiarizing lawyer or student, it is the effect, not the cause, that is important. William James’ brilliant philosophical move, transferring talk of religious experience out of the realm of the metaphysical and into the purview of psychology, is transformational. Religion is no longer about truth or faith but about feeling and human-lived experience. If we adopt the pragmatic perspective that inspires that move, then the fact is that the origin of enlightenment, the source of our new wisdom, the cause of our ability to see the world in a deeper and more interconnected fashion is irrelevant. All that matters is that we are changed for the better, not how we came to be changed. And the one thing that artificial intelligence coupled with big data is good at is figuring out how to get humans to predictably react to words. It can figure out what sort of disinformation will get us to vote certain ways and what sorts of triggers will get us to buy certain products. Yes, we ought to be very concerned about these misuses. But that is because these are matters based on facts. But if we are talking about images that inspire awe, jokes that make us laugh, or in this case, inspirational passages that give us insight, then the case is completely different. When it comes to the cases of generating human emotions, what matters are the emotions. If James is correct in moving our understanding of the religious into the realm of the experiential, then we should welcome the rise of our new e-prophets. Steve Gimbel is a Professor of Philosophy and affiliate of Jewish Studies at Gettysburg College. Gimbel has authored Einstein’s Jewish Science: Physics at the Intersection of Politics and Religion & Isn’t That Clever: A Philosophy of Humor and Comedy ).” Dr. Stephen Stern is the.co-author with Dr. Steve Gimbel of Reclaiming the WIcked Son: Finding Judaism in Secular Jewish Philosophers, and the author of The Unbinding of Isaac: A Phenomenological Midrash of Genesis 22 , Associate Professor of Jewish Studies & Interdisciplinary Studies, and Chair of Jewish Studies at Gettysburg College. Return to our AI Issue Table of Contents Share Previous Next

< Back Mythology David Cowles Jun 2, 2021 We have been trained to think of mythology as fictional, even foolish. And yet all Truth (whatever that is, Pontius Pilate) occurs within the framework of some mythology. Myth is the ultimate and only TOE (Theory of Everything). Science and math, for example, however important, are limited by the discoveries of Heisenberg and Gödel. Religion requires faith and so must be limited by the skepticism that unavoidably lies beneath that faith. We have been trained to think of mythology as fictional, even foolish. And yet all Truth (whatever that is, Pontius Pilate) occurs within the framework of some mythology. Myth is the ultimate and only TOE (Theory of Everything). Science and math, for example, however important, are limited by the discoveries of Heisenberg and Gödel. Religion requires faith and so must be limited by the skepticism that unavoidably lies beneath that faith. Philosophy is bound by the limits of reason and conditioned by the structure of the languages available to it (verbal, visual, musical, etc.). Mythology is constrained by none of these limitations. Almost by definition, it can juggle multiple models of reality at the same time…which seems to be how the universe actually works. Whenever presented with a ‘truth claim’, I suggest asking, what is the mythology on which that claim is dependent. 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 Worth Knowing David Cowles Sep 29, 2021 “A World Worth Knowing” is the title of a new series on The History Channel that features William Shatner. But is its premise, that we live in a world “worth knowing”, true? After all, ‘the standard model of contemporary cosmology’ holds that the universe arose, uncaused and with no purpose, from nothing and that it will inevitably return without a trace back to nothing. Why would such a universe be “worth knowing”? “A World Worth Knowing” is the title of a new series on The History Channel that features William Shatner. But is its premise, that we live in a world “worth knowing”, true? After all, ‘the standard model of contemporary cosmology’ holds that the universe arose, uncaused and with no purpose, from nothing and that it will inevitably return without a trace back to nothing. Why would such a universe be “worth knowing”? Out of the Hasidic tradition of Judaism, renowned author Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907 – 1972) offers an answer: “I’ve come to sow seeing in the world – To unveil God – who has disguised himself in the world – And wait to give the first cry: ‘It’s becoming light!’” According to Hasidic tradition a divine spark resides in everything that is – every person, every animal, every plant, and every inanimate object; and it is the same spark, regardless of where it resides. Our task, each of us, is to uncover the divine spark that is in all things and to enable that spark to reunite with God, thereby bringing the temporal world and eternal world ever closer together. This is the antidote to entropy, to mortality, and the origin of ‘purpose’ which the ‘standard model’ precludes. 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 Teen Power David Cowles Oct 31, 2023 "We need to give teenagers a path to citizenship!" The institution of childhood, at least in the North Atlantic Community today, is totally dysfunctional. If that surprises you, you haven’t been watching the news, but it’s no wonder! Can you imagine being a child? Perhaps you were a child once; who knows? Say you’re four years old. You’re in a miniature body; you can do very little on your own, and what you can do is usually not allowed. You’re beginning to develop a sense that there is a world beyond “where the sidewalk ends”, but you still don’t have the faintest idea what’s really going on outside your nuclear family. One of my grandchildren said it best: “I hate the age of four.” But you do know a few things: Your wellbeing, and indeed, your very life, is utterly dependent on ‘the kindness of strangers’ – well, not exactly strangers, ‘caretakers’. You contribute nothing to society except your cuteness . You desperately want to contribute, ‘to help Mommy and Daddy’, and you do your best to convince yourself that you’re doing just that, but you know it isn’t so. Almost everything you do is dictated by others, and like Herod’s daughter, you are frequently called on to perform for the entertainment of your caretakers and their guests; you literally sing for your supper! Failure to obey your caretakers can lead to punishment—sometimes very painful punishment, but that’s secondary. Your real fear is that ‘mere punishment’ might result in some sort of lasting damage—death, for example! You know you can’t defend yourself. So now you’re 14! Thank God! You survived childhood. You are now a full-fledged biological adult, more or less capable of doing things for yourself and making your own way in the world. As a reward, you get to sleep in the same bed, in the same juvenile room, with a slightly later ‘bedtime’. Seriously…a 'bedtime’? What are you, four? You’ve worked for 10+ years trying to make a contribution. Now at 14, you could contribute in myriad ways, but that’s not allowed. Instead, you’re told that you must ‘stay in school’ and ‘prepare for adulthood’ – an adulthood you thought you’d already achieved. It gets worse! When you were four, you were comforted by the fact that all your friends were in the same boat. But now that you’re 14, some of your friends are effectively emancipated; they do whatever the heck they want. You, on the other hand, get an hour of screen time a day and must be in bed by 9. And your ‘grown-up’ classmates are not at all shy about teasing ‘the little boys’ in their classroom. I hate the age of 14. But perhaps you buy into the mythology of adolescence : you will one day graduate from Yale and go on to spend the rest of your life practicing corporate law, hoping to become one of nine attorneys picked to serve on the Supreme Court. Good luck! Or perhaps you don’t buy in; in that case, you become part of ‘youth culture’, a 10-yearlong celebration of nihilism that often results in death, disability, incarceration, or addiction. Not necessarily the best possible options! When you were four, you were often expected to act as though you were 14; now you’re 14, but you are often treated as though you were four. Imagine yourself in such a predicament! What would you do? Drink, do drugs, get a gun, drive recklessly, steal stuff, vandalize property, hack computers, get into fights, harm yourself—the possibilities are endless, and, for the most part, they all pretty much end the same way: in tragedy. In my adopted hometown, a whole generation of teens was effectively wiped out during the infamous ‘70s’. So what’s changed? Adolescence remains ‘a killing field’. The mistreatment of children and the stifling of their potential is nothing short of a crime against humanity. But, you think, it’s this way in all cultures; it’s always been this way. How else could it be? In fact, the infantilization of adolescence is a very recent and culturally specific phenomenon. Anthropologically speaking, most 14-year-olds have always been considered ‘adults’. I am unaware of any other society, past or present, that treats its 14-year-olds as if they were four. Oops! I misspoke. I do know a few other societies (e.g., the Piraha ) that treat their 14-year-olds as if they were four…but that’s because they treat their four-year-olds as adults . Most 14-year-olds could reproduce, work a farm, learn a trade, fight a war, become a scholar, etc. Failing that, they can get a foothold in the neighborhood drug trade and begin to climb the leadership ladder as a member of the local gang . And why not? Jesus held the elders of the Temple in thrall at the age of 12. Sigismondo Malatesta entered the army at the then-customary age of 13…and became its commander at 15. And don’t forget Joan of Arc’s military triumphs (at age 17) or those of the Khmer Rouge (soldiers’ ages…14-19). Hypothesis : You can’t flip a switch on someone’s 21st birthday and expect that person to start functioning as a law-abiding, self-supporting, adult member of society. Evidence : The first 15 minutes of any nightly newscast on any TV network. Conclusion : Restructure the growing-up process. Empower kids to take on real-life responsibilities at a pace that respects each person’s unique personality, skills, learning styles, interests, etc. We need to give teenagers a path to citizenship! 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 Forgive Us Our Trespasses David Cowles Apr 15, 2025 “To paraphrase Robert Oppenheimer, it is the trespasser who has become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.” If you are a frequent flyer on Aletheia Today, you already know that we think early Christians reached over Cerebos, the 3 headed dog guarding Hades – I mean, of course, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle – to rediscover the insights of the 5th century BCE pre-Socratics. It can be no exaggeration to say that this was the most fecund century in the history of Western philosophy: Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, Zeno… And of course, the Father of Western Philosophy, Parmenides. But for the Grandfather, Anaximander, we need to slip back to the 6th century BCE. Believe me, it’s worth the trip! “Forgive us our trespasses.” As a pre-tween, I thought this verse from the Lord’s Prayer referred to our habit of trespassing on neighbors’ lawns on our way to school, church, the candy store, the playground, or a friend’s house. God had better forgive us because there’s no way we’re ever going to give up cutting through folks’ backyards. God and I had better come to some sort of understanding. And then…Here’s Johnny! “As we forgive those who trespass against us.” No problem, I forgive you, everyone. You’re all more than welcome to trespass on my parents’ lawn anytime you wish…so I guess I’m all set after all. Returning to Christianity as an adult, I realized I needed a better understanding of ‘trespass’. Luke substituted ‘debts’ but that seems too narrow. It was at about this time that I was first exposed to the pre-Socratics. Gradually, I came to realize that the Christian message needed to be viewed in the context of Greek philosophy as well as Jewish tradition and that special attention needed to be paid to these pre-Socratic proto-scientists and metaphysicians, from Thales (d. 546 BCE) through Democritus (d. 370 BCE). Anaximander proposed that all creation is co-creation . Come again? We Westerners are used to the idea of creators and creatures. Genesis : God said ‘let there be’… and there was. Anaximander offered a completely different, and frankly more ‘modernist’, model. Our knowledge of Anaximander’s thought is sketchy. However, it appears that he imagined Being as a permanent state of pure potentiality (suggestive of Aristotle, Bruno, and Whitehead) which could be actualized only by the mutual, unconditional, granting of ‘reck’. This idea was difficult for Anaximander to express even though he had multiform Ancient Greek to work with. For us, with our scaled back modern Indo-European languages, it is impossible . But of course we must try. So brace yourself. According to Anaximander, Being behaves somewhat like a field in Quantum Mechanics. ‘Quanta’ (be they particles, persons or events) are only actualized in pairs and then only when each member of the pair freely grants reck to the other. The Greek concept of Reck is somewhat similar to the Hebrew concept of Shalom . I grant you ‘reck’ when I unconditionally cede you the space you need to ‘be all that you can be’. Am I the US Army on steroids? Or am I God’s co-conspirator? According to Genesis , when God created the World he granted it reck . The created World is made in God’s image and likeness; as such it is endowed with autonomy, agency and freedom (free will). My ethical imperative is to continue God’s work by granting ‘reck’ to others (i.e. whatever comes across my path). Am I Lao-Tze, the Buddha, Jesus, Ghandi? “A bruised reed he will not break, a smoldering wick he will not quench.” (Isaiah 42: 3) By the same token, I am because I have been granted reck by others. “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” (Tennessee Williams) What’s that? You’ve had a tough life. Nobody ever granted you reck! Well, I doubt that, but even so, God has granted you reck. This ontology has intriguing consequences. For example, ‘trespassing’ now must be understood as a failure to grant reck . Instead of creating space (womb) for you to grow into, I impinge on your space, stunting that growth. I am an abortionist. To paraphrase Robert Oppenheimer, it is the trespasser who has ‘become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds’. Thus, failure to grant ‘reck’ is the essence of all ‘sin’. Consider the Great Commandment (one commandment with two aspects): “Love the Lord God with all your heart…and love your neighbor as yourself. Everything in the Law and the Prophets hangs on these two commandments.” ( Matt. 22: 37 - 40) Conversely, the Great Commandment gives us a prototype for sin (i.e. the failure to love God or neighbor properly). There is only one sin, but it has two potential expressions. Sin is conceptual when we place something ahead of God: Idolatry . Sin is physical when we fail to grant reck , i.e. when we ‘trespass’ on another being’s potential. But since God’s work (creation, redemption, salvation) is the granting of reck , my failure to grant others reck puts me at cross purposes with God. Effectively, I have found something more personally compelling than loving God and my neighbor. I have an attachment to something inanimate…or at least transient. Sex, drugs, money, power… or rock & roll, pick your poison. Therefore, Jesus follows up with, “And lead us not into temptation (attachment),” and finishes with, “Deliver us from evil.” Entropy is the scientific manifestation of the ‘not-so-good’ – the emergence of chaos out of order. Trespassing is an agent of entropy (1) because it is itself disordering and (2) because it interferes with the ‘actualization of potential being’, aka the Good, aka Order. Sidebar : In everyday conversation we often confuse ‘order that emerges organically’ with ‘order that is imposed violently,’ which is actually an agent of entropy. After Anaximander the concept of ‘reck’ lies more or less fallow…until it is resurrected by Jesus and the early Christians. Consider, for example, the Beatitudes: Blessed are the poor in spirit (non-trespassers) – theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven… Blessed are the meek (non-trespassers) – they will inherit the Earth… Blessed are the merciful (non-trespassers) – they will be shown mercy, etc. Being haughty, violent or cruel are ways I trespass on my neighbors’ space; I interfere with the realization of potential being and the emergence of local order. It turns out that the Beatitudes constitute a How to manual for folks who wish to avoid sin, i.e. trespasses. The concept of ‘reck’ is central to Hasidism. Whatever is contained within itself, whatever has an identity, contains a fragment, a spark, of divinity. That is what makes something, something. It is the non-linear factor that distinguishes figure from ground. It is Logos . Shechinah , God’s Presence, is in exile in the World. It has fragmented and is now distributed among the myriad persons, places, things and events that constitute our World. As actors in that World, our job, should we choose to accept it, is to release those sparks so that they can be reunited in Godhead. When we grant ‘reck’, we empower someone or something other than ourselves to release its divine spark, reuniting that spark with other sparks, repatriating the Shechinah . In the case of inanimate objects, we grant reck when we take care to use an object properly, i.e. when we allow it to function according to its nature or when we allow it to fulfil the purpose for which it was intended. Kabballah , an esoteric philosophy rooted in medieval Judaism, can be understood as a road map for reuniting the divine sparks scattered in Malkhut (the Kingdom, i.e. the World) with Keter (the Crown, i.e. Godhead). Kabbalah and the Beatitudes are closely related. In the non-Hasidic West, Anaximander’s ethic shows itself most prominently in the Christian theology of St. Francis of Assisi and in the Existential philosophy of Martin Buber. So in a nutshell, ‘we will drink no wine before its time’ (except Beaujolais Nouveau) and we will break an egg only to make an omelet. This ethic of caring for God’s creatures, regardless of their form, is characteristic of spiritual practices originating in India, China, and Japan, as well as in the relationship of Native Americans to their quarry. Finally, young children around the world, across many cultures, instinctively practice a form of Hasidism in their everyday lives. They easily recognize the divine spark in whatever they encounter and they spontaneously grant reck to everything around them (except their siblings). No wonder Jesus said, “Unless you become as little children, you shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” (Mt. 18: 3) Unless you grant reck as children do… *** Image: James Tissot, French, 1836–1902. “The Lord’s Prayer (Le ‘Pater Noster),” 1886–1896. Opaque watercolor over graphite on gray wove paper, 8 1/2 x 6 7/16 inches. Brooklyn Museum, purchased by public subscription, 00.159.167. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum) 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 Special Issue Ahead--Your exclusive look at ATM's Summer Issue David Cowles Jul 14, 2022 All of us at AT are super excited about what we’re building: a hyper-active community of folks dedicated to the convergence of science, philosophy, and theology in the 21st century. Tomorrow is a banner day for Aletheia Today (AT): we are publishing Issue #2 of AT Magazine (ATM), our first “Special Issue.” As before, we are releasing Issue #2 a day early (i.e., today) for our loyal subscribers, Facebook Friends, etc. What do you want to do today? Coach (or play for) an undefeated football team; we’ve got that! Teach a 10-unit course (tween-aged) on Science and the Yellow Submarine ; we’ve got that too! Planning to take in some ‘theater in the round’ this summer? See if you can spot the nihilism in Shakespeare; let us help! The Nicene Creed is 1800 years old. Does it need a face lift? Ever wonder how it would read if we asked a committee of present-day intellectuals to rewrite it? Well, we have! And it’s not pretty . All of us at AT are super excited about what we’re building: a hyper-active community of folks dedicated to the convergence of science, philosophy, and theology in the 21st century. History will remember the 20th century as ‘The 3rd 100 Years War’ and as the century of exponential growth in science and technology? How will history remember the 21st? As ‘The 4th 100 Years War, or as a century of momentous intellectual convergence? History is not a done deal! It’s not written in the stars! It’s up to us to live the 21st century the way we’d like it to be remembered. It’s up to us to create our own history! Click here to enter our Special Issue . 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 Christian Anarchism ”A heretical state is not a bad state…A heretical state is not a state at all. There are no bad states. There are only states and pseudo-states.” David Cowles (The recent success of right-of-center, neo-Anarchist political movements around the world gives new urgency to this topic.) Christian Anarchism , an oxymoron if ever there was one, right? After all, Christianity is all about order – the order of the world that God created ( Genesis ). The Logos (ordering principle) through whom God creates the things of the world and redeems them. The hierarchy of the Church. The Decalogue and the rest of the 613 mandates of Torah . A second-grade classroom in a 1950’s parochial school with fifty pupils, one teacher, and ‘pin drop’ silence. That’s order; that’s Christianity! Right? So then, what’s with this so-called Christian Anarchism ? Obviously, anarchy has no place in ‘a Christian universe’… if you understand ‘anarchy’ as synonymous with chaos, disorder or even entropy itself. On the other hand, if you understand ‘anarchy’ as the lack of an externally imposed order (society’s exoskeleton), the situation gets a bit murkier. The lack of an externally imposed order does not preclude the spontaneous emergence of order (an endoskeleton); in fact, it requires it! Max Entropy is incompatible with Being itself. After all, God once and for all put an end to disorder at the moment of creation ( Genesis 1: 1-2). “The light shone in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.” ( John 1: 5) Mikhail Bakunin, the ‘St. Paul of Anarchists’, underscored this point: “Does it follow that I reject all authority? Far from me such a thought. In the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the bootmaker…Each directs and is directed in his (sic) turn, therefore there is no fixed and constant authority, but a continual exchange of mutual, temporary, and above all, voluntary authority, and subordination. ” ( God and State ) What of Torah , God’s law? Clearly, it is imposed on humanity, indeed on the universe, by a transcendent entity…right? Absolutely…and yet not so much! Torah is God’s law, but it emerges both from the will of God and from the human heart: ‘as above so below’ (the Star of David), ‘thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven’. Jewish tradition speaks of two Torahs – the Written Torah ( aka the Pentateuch ) and the Oral Torah, embedded in the laws of nature and in our hearts. The absolute genius of Judaism is contained in the ‘=’ sign it places between the two. God is Justice; man (sic) is just, at least potentially. There would be no such thing as a ‘just act’ in the absence of Divine Justice; but also, it is by ‘just acts’ that transcendent Divine Justice becomes immanent in the world of events. Perhaps then we should not be surprised after all to find the rudiments of Anarchism embedded in the Social Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church. How so? After “render unto Caesar” there wouldn’t seem to have been much wiggle room. Plus, Thomas Aquinas himself affirmed that all are required to follow the validly enacted laws of their respective societies, regardless of the preferred political process du jour ; but Thomas added a crucial qualifier: Laws are valid only if they do not conflict with the will of God, which is Justice. Sidebar #1 : This is not theocracy per se . God is not a legislator, a politician, or a spin-doctor. Satan offered to place his entire global network at Jesus’s disposal…but Jesus declined. In fact, he did a full Sherman : “If nominated, I will not run; if elected I will not serve.” Was Jesus waiting for a better offer? From Raymond Reddington perhaps? God is Justice! Any validly enacted law is binding…but only so long as and to the extent that it is just! God does not dictate the color of traffic lights (red, yellow, green, et al.). Yet it makes sense to think that in general laws that promote traffic safety are consistent with God’s will. When Leo XIII became Pope (1878), he faced a crisis of social disintegration. Society seemed hopelessly divided by class, by nation, and by ideology. Karl Marx had thrown down the gauntlet 30 years earlier when he wrote: “A specter is haunting Europe - the specter of communism.” It was high time the Church responded…and, as we shall soon see, it did just that! Christian tradition supports the legitimacy of the State, but as defined by Samuel and David, not by Hitler and Stalin. The State as it occurs in history is not necessarily the state envisioned in Christian sociology. In our epoch, for instance, the very concept of State entails the subjugation of the individual to the collective. But this ‘collective’ does not develop organically out of freely formed interpersonal relations, a la Rousseau . Rather, it is an anti-logos imposed on all social interaction by a limited segment of the body politic. In contemporary political theory, the nation state is the ultimate sovereign entity (Hegel). It confers limited, subsidiary sovereignty on smaller political and social units, it recognizes (at its sole discretion) certain human and civil rights, it preserves certain ‘useful’ institutions (e.g., family, church), but it reserves the right to regulate the behavior of all individuals and groups according to its conception of the ‘general welfare’. The rather vague notion of ‘general welfare’ is given further structure by the Utilitarian meme: Greatest Good for the Greatest Number . That’s easy to measure, right? No problems there; and it works…provided you accept Edmund Lear’s axiom: “A collection of undefined terms, thrown together, can function as an objective metric.” According to such a ‘value system’, colonialism and imperialism are not only justified but mandated. War, slavery, and all manner of human exploitation can be ‘overlooked’ so long as it serves the State’s notion of ‘the greater good’. One person’s slavery may be justified if it provides others with exaggerated advantage. Does any of this sound familiar? It should. We are mid-way though Machiavelli’s 1000-year Reich. Machiavelli represents a pivot point in the Intellectual History of Europe. Like a funnel with two mouths and one neck, Machiavellianism inputs the wisdom of Ancient Greece and Medieval Rome, shrinks it down to the size of a city-state (Firenze), and then broadcasts it back out into the world under various guises: Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment, Liberalism, Socialism, Utilitarianism, Capitalism, Communism, Consumerism, etc. Riddle : Name 3 isms that are incompatible with Machiavellianism. Give up? Answer: Hasidism, Catholicism…and Anarchism. Sidebar : Utilitarianism (Mill et al.) sounds good and is accepted in some form by a majority of today’s political theorists. It is an algorithm with an infinite number of possible solutions. It includes solutions that distribute the total ‘good’ as equally as possible… as well as solutions where all ‘good’ is conferred on a single individual. On its very face, utilitarianism contradicts Catholic social teaching. It fetishizes the theoretical and ignores the concrete; it substitutes a mechanical algorithm for human charity and solidarity. It has Machiavelli’s grubby ink-stained fingerprints all over it. (Sorry, not a fan!) Anarchism, on the other hand, does not preclude the evolution of institutions of social order. On the contrary, it anticipates them; but the keyword here is ‘evolution’. Imposed order is not at all the same thing as organic order . Anarchism celebrates the fact that true order evolves naturally from the bottom up; but hierarchy certainly has a role to play in this process. The hierarchy is the vanguard. The priests marched at the head of Joshua’s column as it moved to ‘liberate’ the Promised Land. Hierarchy can jump start and guide process, but it cannot replace process. There are no just acts without God’s Justice, but God’s Justice is only operative in the world through just acts. What we call ‘liberalism’ (Locke, Mill, Rousseau, et al.) is merely an elaborate mask for the hierarchical State. Its ‘consent of the governed’ is an ‘origin myth’ that is contradicted by three facts: (1) the state of nature , presumed to pre-date that ‘consent’ never existed; (2) there is no definable process that could constitute ‘consent’ in the broad existential sense implied here (such consent would instantly create a new form of bondage which is a prime facie violation of human rights); (3) once consent has been given it is apparently binding on all generations to come: the sins of the father… The phenomenon of State, as it is today, is very different from the concept of state as it appears in Catholic doctrine. The ‘state’ of the encyclicals is merely the broadest, most general expression of community . Such a state recognizes voluntary human associations as embedded, necessarily, in the ecological order. Anarchism does not oppose order; au contraire , it liberates it so that we can celebrate it. The ability of human beings to form just and ordered communities is one of our species’ defining characteristics. Even Cain built cities! ‘Statists’ do not view order as natural. They understand society as essentially ‘fallen’ and therefore in need of an externally imposed standard of right conduct… as long as that standard does not come from God or Church. Anarchists deny this reasoning altogether. They view humans as God’s partners in the ordering process, not as luddites ‘hell bent’ on sabotaging any such order. To the statist, sovereignty rests at the most general level of association, the nation state, or now perhaps the so-called New World Order . The Catholic doctrine of subsidiarity views the problem through the other end of the telescope. Sovereignty rests at the level of the individual and her proximate social networks (e.g., family). According to such a model, ‘consent of the governed’ is not ‘one and done’ but a perpetual process, happening, or not, every minute of every day. The consensus that Anarchism is inconsistent with Christianity looks a bit odd in the light of history. In fact, there have been two significant, long term, attempts to rebuild Western society according to Anarchist principles; both enjoyed considerable success, yet both have disappeared from the contemporary political landscape. Wonder why! After the Exodus, when the Hebrews emerged from the wilderness and marched on Jericho, they began a 250-year long social experiment. From the death of Moses to the coronation of Saul, society, guided by the grace of God and the precepts of Torah , functioned without a permanent political class and without any formal central government. Authority was vested in God, his people, and a series of charismatic judges (Joshua through the sons of Samuel) whose authority derived solely from the favor of God and the consent of the governed (e.g., a council of elders). The Exodus granted the Israelites a quasi-unique opportunity in history…a blessed do over . Unlike the Jacobins of 1789, the Hebrews wandering in the Widlerness had no Ancien Regime to erradicate. They did not inherit a bunch of old political structures in need of reform, and for the most part, they were free of foreign interference. They were given a chance to build a society, ab initio , from the bottom up…and they did just that, brilliantly. This lengthy period in Jewish history is recounted in three books of the Old Testament: Joshua , Judges , and the first 7 chapters of I Samuel . The final line of Judges summarizes the entire era: “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his (sic) own eyes.” (21: 25) By all accounts, this early experiment in anarchism was quite successful. In our era, we are used to folks seeking to liberate themselves from physical bondage, cultural oppression, and political tyranny. Over the course of history, however, humans have just as often sought to trade their existential liberty for the promise, always empty, of security and prosperity. Erich Fromm explored this phenomenon in his book, Escape from Freedom . So did the author of I Samuel . The people cried out to Samuel, “Appoint a king over us, like the nations, to rule us…Give us a king to rule us.” Samuel, with God’s help, tried his best to talk the people out of their folly, but no cigar; and the rest, as they say, is History…brutal, brutal History. As James Joyce wrote, “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.” Now fast forward 1500 years: the Fall of Rome has once again created a political vacuum, this time in Europe. Armed with a trendy new ideology, Christianity , the people set about the creation of a new social order; call it Christendom . Once again, the operation was a huge success…but once again, the patient died. Feudalism was a dazzling display of decentralized economic power and political authority; it was Blockchain before Bitcoin: the Manor, the Abbey, the Village, the Cite, the Guild, and by all means least, the ‘island state’. This is not the place to recount the breath-taking achievements of the so-called Middle Ages. Suffice to point out just a few highlights: The ossified philosophy and theology of the late classical period gave way to new and vibrant ways of thinking. Van Gogh and Gaudi notwithstanding, Europe’s greatest treasures of art and architecture date from Middle Ages. The Middle Ages saw an evolution from slavery to serfdom to citizenship (only to be replaced later by colonialism, imperialism, and wage slavery). In 999, more people lived in Cordoba, Spain than live today in Miami, Atlanta, Cleveland, or St. Louis…and they had sidewalks and street lamps. Some Dark Ages! Again, however, the ‘glory that was Rome’ proved too much of a lure. Christians abandoned their own rich culture in a vain attempt to resurrect a desiccated Classical Civilization that had peaked 1500 years earlier. Enter Leo XIII ( italics are mine in all that follows ): “ All public power must proceed from God, for God alone is the true and supreme Lord of the world. Everything, without exception , must be subject to Him and serve Him, so that whosoever holds the right to govern holds it from one sole and single source, namely God, the sovereign ruler of all.” (ID #3, see below.) Separation of Church and State? Maybe. Separation of God and Society? Never! “Whatever be the nature of government, rulers must bear in mind that God is the paramount ruler of the world and must set Him before themselves in the administration of the State.“ (ID #4) Is this not exactly how Joshua, Deborah, Gideon, Samuel, et al. governed Canaan for 250 years? “If the will of rulers is opposed to the will and the laws of God, they themselves exceed the bounds of their own authority and pervert justice; nor can their authority then be valid, which, when there is not justice, is null.” (D #15) “Civil laws…so long as they are just, derive from the law of nature their binding force (RN #11)… Laws bind only when they are in accordance with right reason and, hence , with the eternal law of God.” (RN #52) “Man (sic) precedes the state, and possesses, prior to the formation of any state, the right of providing for the sustenance of his body.” (RN #7) Jean Valjean ( Les Misérables ) was wrongly convicted! 100 years later, Pope John Paul II glossed Leo’s Rerum Novarum : “The right of association is a natural right of the human being, which therefore precedes his or her incorporation into political society.” (CA #7) “A community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order.” (CA #48) Is that not Star Trek’s Prime Directive ? “By state we here understand…any government conformable in its institutions to right reason and natural law, and to…dictates of the divine wisdom.” (RN #32) Leo builds his concept of right order on three legs of a tripod: God’s law, natural law, and reason. Leo is not just jousting with heretical states. He is ‘disestablishing’ them! A heretical state is not a bad state in the way that a stubborn male child might be called, “a bad boy”, but still be a boy. A heretical state is not a state at all. There are no bad states . There are only states and pseudo-states . Jesus began his ministry ( Luke 4:21) by proclaiming a Jubilee year (redistribution of all productive property); in the same way, Leo proclaimed the withering away of Europe’s nation states. Unlike Marx, Leo did not promise the dissolution of the heretical State; he dissolved it by fiat! No, not just by fiat, but by the application of Scripture. Finally, Leo quotes Aquinas: “Human law is only law by virtue of its accordance with right reason; and it is thus manifest that it flows from the eternal law. And in so far as it deviates from right reason it is called an unjust law; in such case it is no law at all, but rather a species of violence .” (RN #52) D = Diuturnum , 1881 ID = Immortale Dei , 1885 RN = Rerum Novarum , 1891 CA = Centesimus Annus , 1991 Image: James Tissot (French, 1836-1902). Woe unto You, Scribes and Pharisees (Malheur à vous, scribes et pharisiens), 1886-1894. Opaque watercolor over graphite on gray wove paper, Image: 6 11/16 x 10 3/8 in. (17 x 26.4 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Purchased by public subscription, 00.159.209 (Photo: Brooklyn Museum). David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Return to Groundhog Issue 2025 Previous Next

< Back Past, Present, Future David Cowles "So, it turns out that the universe did not have a lot of options when it came to structuring time." “The Past” does not exist – by definition. It consists of events that once happened or might have happened but are not happening now. “The Future” does not exist either – also by definition. It consists of events that will happen or may happen but have not yet happened and are not happening now. What exists is what is happening now, and neither the Past nor the Future is happening. That leaves “The Present”. According to post-modern deconstructionist, Jacques Derrida, the Present consists of all events (potential as well as actual) that are neither elements of the set of actual or possible past events nor elements of the set of actual or possible future events. Derrida follows the Via Negativa ; he defines the Present, not by what it is, but by what it is not. This scheme presupposes that every event is unique. No two events, however similar they may seem, can ever be the same event . Cosmic censorship will not allow an event to happen more than once. Among other things, this allows us to assign each unique event to a specified coordinate region. No two events can have the same coordinates. Otherwise, the world be irreparable chaotic: “…without form or shape, with darkness over the abyss and a mighty wind sweeping over the waters.” (Genesis 1: 2) While innumerable events could occur in any specified coordinate region, only one event does occur in that region. Broadly speaking, there are three popular models of time: Linear Time (e.g., the relentless progression of birthdays), Static Time (all events occur simultaneously), and Cyclical Time ( aka Eternal Recurrence). Eternal Recurrence (Nietzsche, et al.) presents some of the same philosophical problems as Time Travel. In the latter case, ‘the past’ is never a settled matter of fact. Instead of living their lives in the Present, time travelers focus on adjusting the Past to create a different Present . Of course, it’s a fool’s game because any modification of a past event, no matter how slight, can have unanticipated, and possibly catastrophic, consequences. Or it can also have no perceptible consequence at all. Either way it is unpredictable and therefore uncontrollable. Time can amplify or dampen, but it can never just conserve or repeat. Now suppose a time traveler were to go all the way back to the primordial event, Big Bang, and prevent that event from occurring: no universe…and no nosey parker to modify it. A universe in which time travel is a possibility is a universe that does not exist because it is self-erasing. With Eternal Recurrence, the Past cannot be modified but past events can pop back-up anywhere in spacetime. Here, too, the past is never totally in our rearview mirror. Unless the universe is micro-determined, the reoccurrence of a past event does not necessarily ensure that the future will repeat as well…but neither does it preclude such a possibility. And since the possibility is not precluded, we must assume that that will happen at some point. Once that happens, the universe will just ‘seize up’ eliminating any notion of novelty or freedom. So, it turns out that the universe did not have a lot of options when it came to structuring time. Time cannot be recursive! Whether we alter the past to change the present or bring the past forward in order to relive it, time would no longer include a real future, and without a real future, time would not be time. Cain left Eden to earn a degree in urban planning. Abram left Ur to find the Promised Land. Moses left Egypt to create a just society. Generations of Americans went west in pursuit of liberty and/or luxury. None of these ‘heroes’ had any interest in changing the past, or in conserving it for that matter. They understood life as perpetual change, and they sought to harness that change in pursuit of novelty and progress. Time Travel and Eternal Recurrence take that away. Progress is no longer a hope, a dream, a goal, or a project; now our future is found in our past. We look to improve the present not by building a new future but by resuscitating or modifying a spent past. It’s the myth of a Golden Age. Now back to the real world. A world with a non-degenerate dimension of time. This world – the world - consists exclusively of unique events, both actual and potential: (1) whatever happened or might have happened (Past), (2) whatever will or might yet happen (Future), and (3) whatever did not happen and could not happen either in the past or in the future (Present). Present events, then, are not at all like past or future events. The present is the realm of pure potential; it is ever fresh. The Present inherits the past and anticipates the future; therefore, no event is ever either random or determined. There are no efficient or final causes at work in the Present. Whatever happens in the Present is a function of free will, acting on the past (without changing it) and projecting toward the future (without limiting it). The great 20th century physicist, Richard Feynman, took an alternate route but, like Robert Frost, he ended up at the same destination. He defined the Present, positively (rather than negatively ), as the sum of everything that might have happened in the past, whether it did or did not, and everything that might happen in the future, whether it does or does not. He called this method, Sum over Histories . Relative to the actual past, the Present may appear random; relative to the actual future, the Present may appear irrelevant. But relative to a Past that includes everything that might have been, whether or not it was, the Present precludes randomness; likewise, relative to a Future that includes everything that might yet come to be, whether or not it does, precludes any repetition. Either way, you can’t go home again. The Present, as you can see, is stranded on an ontological island. Parodying a Christmas special, the Present is the island of misfit events . Neti, neti – neither past nor future, that is the present. The Present is not an alternate Past or, for that matter, an alternate Future. Since the Present consists of only those events that could not have happened in the past and that cannot happen in the future, the Present is unique – perhaps the paradigmatic example of uniqueness since any overlap with non-present events is strictly prohibited – again, by definition. Traditional Western metaphysics, according to Derrida, defines the Present positively in terms of “what is”. Borrowing from Exodus , chapter 3, the Present “is what is”, it is the “eternal now”. Derrida correctly, in my view, and bravely, acknowledges that any such positive metaphysics must inevitably point to the existence of God, which he, of course, being a 20th century intellectual, denies. To resolve this dilemma, Derrida suggests we define the Present negatively , in terms of what it is not. The question of what it is, if anything, is left open. Present becomes an undefined term in his ontology. ‘God’ is odd man out. In any event, this post-modern Present is not the infinitesimal point posited by Newtonian physics and illustrated on the Real Number Line. It may yet turn out to be an infinitesimal point, or more likely a Planck unit, in which case the set of the present events would have no members (it would be a null set); but we don’t know that yet. It is something to be discovered, not assumed. Our initial hypothesis must be that the Present is a region like the Past and the Future. If the region turns out to be empty, so be it. But ‘region’ implies ‘extension’. If the present occupies a region on the timeline, then presumably, it must have extension along that line. But that would mean that the present was a combination of past and future elements; it would not be ‘Present’ at all, at least not in Derrida’s sense of the word. I see protestors gathering outside my first-floor window. They’re singing songs and carrying signs, mostly saying: Save the Present. Sidebar : if you look closely, you can see that on many of the signs, the word “Present” has overwritten the scratched-out remnants of “Planet." One superannuated hippie is carrying a sign on which “Present” appears to have overwritten “Whales." There is only one way to salvage a real Present: you must assume that ‘Present’ denotes an extensive region on the timeline which, experienced internally, is timeless. Viewed from the outside, the so-called Present appears to have duration (a form of extension); but not when viewed from the inside. The Present is a process, but ‘process’ does not necessarily imply ‘sequence’. We are used to process unfolding in time. But it doesn’t have to be that way. There is no ontologically compelling reason why process needs to be a function of sequence or vice versa . Example : I am listening to the 5th Brandenburg Concerto. It takes about 20 minutes to perform. That performance occupies a place in the spacetime continuum and, if necessary, the experience can be analyzed minute by minute. But as soon as that happens, the Concerto itself disappears. We are no longer ‘experiencing the Concerto’, we are no longer in the Present; now we are dissecting measures written down 300 years ago and/or anticipating the experience of hearing the Concerto performed at a later date. We have allowed the Present to dissolve into the Past/Future. Subjectively, we incorporate the Past and the Future into our experiential Present as Faith and as Hope, respectively. If Anaximander is right and Being occurs only when potential entities self-actualize by giving each other ‘reck’, then the Present is constituted simply as Love. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Previous Next

< Back Memes About Animal Resistance Are Everywhere Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond "Nonhuman animals do, in fact, engage in resistance, even if their defiance is futile. The will to prefer life over death is a primary act of resistance, perhaps the only act of dissent available to animals who are subject to extreme forms of control." Memes galore centered on the “orca revolution” have inundated the online realm. They gleefully depict orcas launching attacks on boats in the Strait of Gibraltar and off the Shetland coast . One particularly ingenious image showcases an orca posed as a sickle crossed with a hammer. The cheeky caption reads, “ Eat the rich ,” a nod to the orcas’ penchant for sinking lavish yachts. A surfboard-snatching sea otter in Santa Cruz, California has also claimed the media spotlight. Headlines dub her an “ adorable outlaw ” “ at large .” Memes conjure her in a beret like the one donned by socialist revolutionary Ché Guevara. In one caption, she proclaims, “ Accept our existence or expect resistance … an otter world is possible.” My scholarship centers on animal-human relations through the prism of social justice. As I see it, public glee about wrecked surfboards and yachts hints at a certain flavor of schadenfreude . At a time marked by drastic socioeconomic disparities, white supremacy and environmental degradation, casting these marine mammals as revolutionaries seems like a projection of desires for social justice and habitable ecosystems. A glimpse into the work of some political scientists, philosophers and animal behavior researchers injects weightiness into this jocular public dialogue. The field of critical animal studies analyzes structures of oppression and power and considers pathways to dismantling them. These scholars’ insights challenge the prevailing view of nonhuman animals as passive victims. They also oppose the widespread assumption that nonhuman animals can’t be political actors. So while meme lovers project emotions and perspectives onto these particular wild animals, scholars of critical animal studies suggest that nonhuman animals do in fact engage in resistance. Nonhuman Animal Protest is Everywhere Are nonhuman animals in a constant state of defiance? I’d answer, undoubtedly, that the answer is yes. The entire architecture of animal agriculture attests to animals’ unyielding resistance against confinement and death. Cages, corrals, pens and tanks would not exist were it not for animals’ tireless revolt. Even when hung upside down on conveyor hangars, chickens furiously flap their wings and bite , scratch, peck and defecate on line workers at every stage of the process leading to their deaths. Until the end, hooked tuna resist, gasping and writhing fiercely on ships’ decks. Hooks, nets and snares would not be necessary if fish allowed themselves to be passively harvested . If they consented to repeated impregnation , female pigs and cows wouldn’t need to be tethered to “ rape racks ” to prevent them from struggling to get away. If they didn’t mind having their infants permanently taken from their sides , dairy cows wouldn’t need to be blinded with hoods so they don’t bite and kick as the calves are removed; they wouldn’t bellow for weeks after each instance. I contend that failure to recognize their bellowing as protest reflects “ anthropodenial ” – what ethologist Frans de Waal calls the rejection of obvious continuities between human and nonhuman animal behavior, cognition and emotion. The prevalent view of nonhuman animals remains that of René Descartes, the 17th-century philosopher who viewed animals’ actions as purely mechanical , like those of a machine. From this viewpoint, one might dismiss these nonhuman animals’ will to prevail as unintentional or merely instinctual. But political scientist Dinesh Wadiwel argues that “even if their defiance is futile, the will to prefer life over death is a primary act of resistance , perhaps the only act of dissent available to animals who are subject to extreme forms of control.” Creaturely Escape Artists Despite humans’ colossal efforts to repress them, nonhuman animals still manage to escape from slaughterhouses . They also break out of zoos , circuses, aquatic parks, stables and biomedical laboratories . Tilikum, a captive orca at Sea World, famously killed his trainer – an act at least one marine mammal behaviorist characterized as intentional . Philosopher Fahim Amir suggests that depression among captive animals is likewise a form of emotional rebellion against unbearable conditions, a revolt of the nerves . Dolphins engage in self-harm like thrashing against the tank’s walls or cease to eat and retain their breath until death . Sows whose body-sized cages impede them from turning around to make contact with their piglets repeatedly ram themselves into the metal struts, sometimes succumbing to their injuries . Critical animal studies scholars contend that all these actions arguably demonstrate nonhuman animals’ yearning for freedom and their aversion to inequity . As for the marine stars of summer 2023’s memes, fishing gear can entangle and harm orcas . Sea otters were hunted nearly to extinction for their fur . Marine habitats have been degraded by human activities including overfishing, oil spills, plastic, chemical and sonic pollution, and climate change. It’s easy to imagine they might be responding to human actions , including bodily harm and interference with their turf. What is Solidarity with Nonhuman Animals? Sharing memes that cheer on wild animals is one thing. But there are more substantive ways to demonstrate solidarity with animals. Legal scholars support nonhuman animals’ resistance by proposing that their current classification as property should be replaced with that of personhood or beingness . Nonhuman animals including songbirds, dolphins, elephants , horses, chimpanzees and bears increasingly appear as plaintiffs alleging their subjection to extinction, abuse and other injustices. Citizenship for nonhuman animals is another pathway to social and political inclusion. It would guarantee the right to appeal arbitrary restrictions of domesticated nonhuman animals’ autonomy. It would also mandate legal duties to protect them from harm. Everyday deeds can likewise convey solidarity. Boycotting industries that oppress nonhuman animals by becoming vegan is a powerful action. It is a form of political “counter-conduct,” a term philosopher Michel Foucault uses to describe practices that oppose dominant norms of power and control. Creating roadside memorials for nonhuman animals killed by motor vehicles encourages people to see them as beings whose lives and deaths matter , rather than mere “roadkill .” Political scientists recognize that human and nonhuman animals’ struggles against oppression are intertwined . At different moments, the same strategies leveraged against nonhuman animals have cast segments of the human species as “less than human” in order to exploit them. The category of the human is ever-shifting and ominously exclusive . I argue that no one is safe as long as there is a classification of “animality.” It confers susceptibility to extravagant forms of violence , legally and ethically condoned. Might an ‘Otter World’ Be Possible? I believe quips about the marine mammal rebellion reflect awareness that our human interests are entwined with those of nonhuman animals. The desire to achieve sustainable relationships with other species and the natural world feels palpable to me within the memes and media coverage. And it’s happening as human-caused activity makes our shared habitats increasingly unlivable. Solidarity with nonhuman animals is consistent with democratic principles – for instance, defending the right to well-being and opposing the use of force against innocent subjects . Philosopher Amir recommends extending the idea that there can be no freedom as long as there is still unfreedom beyond the species divide: “While we may not yet fully be able to picture what this may mean, there is no reason we should not begin to imagine it ”. This is a republish in its entirety through permission from The Conversation . Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond works at the intersection of critical animal studies, decolonial studies, and comparative race and slavery studies. Above all, she is interested in troubling the human/animal divide, anthropocentrism, and the entanglement of animalization with racialization. Her publications include the book chapters, "Dogs without Masters: Astray with Akbar and in André Alexis' Fifteen Dogs" (2022), "A Pale Shade of Violet: Animals and Race in Machado de Assis" (2022), “Haunting Pigs, Swimming Jaguars: Mourning, Animals, and Ayahuasca” (2020), and "Slave Barracks Aristocrats: Islam and the Orient in the Work of Gilberto Freyre" (2014). She has also authored articles such as "Of She-Wolves and Mad Cows: Animality, Anthropophagy, and the State of Exception in Cláudio Assis's Amarelo Manga" (2011) and “Akbar Stole My Heart: Coming Out as an Animalist” (2013), as well as the monograph, "White Negritude: Race, Writing, and Brazilian Cultural Identity" (2008), and the edited volume, "The Masters and the Slaves: Plantation Relations and Mestizaje in American Imaginaries" (2005). In addition to her scholarly publications, she has contributed to various media outlets, including The Advocate, The Conversation, CounterPunch, Ms. Magazine, Persianesque, the Folha de S. Paulo, and Truthout. Return to our Harvest Issue 2023 Previous Next

“The secret life of things is nothing less than the life of God.” < Back The Secret Life of Things David Cowles Oct 15, 2024 “The secret life of things is nothing less than the life of God.” What is a ‘thing’? According to the Nicene Creed , God is the creator of “all things , visible and invisible” and according to the Gospel of John , it is through logos (Christ) that “all things come to be”. Therefore, the concept of ‘thing’ must include objects, events, quanta, waves, thoughts, emotions…quite literally everything that is! Whenever you can say “this” or “that”, “this not that” or “that not this”, you have identified a ‘thing’. Now all things come to be by not being something else, for example, not being what is. Things come to be as negations of what is. Like a jet engine, they move forward by pushing back. Just as all children find their parents ‘wanting’, so every emerging thing judges what-is and finds it wanting. Wanting what? Beauty, Truth, Justice…in other words, Value, the Good, Harmony…Peace. “Lord, we don’t need (want) another mountain.” (Jackie DeShannon) To whatever extent the primal values (above) are not manifest in my Actual World, a vacuum, a ‘lack’ (Sartre), exists that cries out to be filled. It is its vision of what is coming to be that entices an emerging thing to negate what-is. In that sense, all things have a common origin, goal, purpose. So the emergent thing is not what-is, and it is also not what is coming to be. “Neti, neti”, not-this, not-that. The emergent thing is poised between what is actual, but not yet ideal, and what is ideal, but not yet actual. It is the vocation of the emerging thing to bridge that gap, i.e. to make what is actual ideal and to make what is ideal actual. That is why (and how) things come to be in the first place. That is what things are. If there were no vision, no lure, there would be no judgment, no lack, no negation and then there would quite literally be nothing. Nietzsche states it best: “…there exists nothing which could judge, measure, compare, condemn our being, for that would be to judge, measure, compare, condemn the whole… But nothing exists apart from the whole!” Were that true, there would be nothing at all. Nietzsche didn’t realize it, but he was condemning the world to stasis , putting us on a road that could only lead to nihilism. Our pathological “common sense” view of the world is inclined to assign what-is to an irrevocably unchangeable “past” and what is coming to be to entirely uncertain and contingent “future”. But that model simply won’t work. Without a clear cut future to act as a lure, and a dynamic past to serve as a springboard, there is nothing to motivate or enable the emergence of any new ‘thing’. There cannot be a naked Present. Whatever ‘present’ is it must include a past to be ameliorated and a future to be realized. Accordingly, there must be some sense in which what was still is and what is coming to be already exists; otherwise, whence the vision? Every event has the same ultimate goal, but each event interprets that goal in the context of its Actual World, i.e. what-is for it. The emergent thing is how it is not what-is and how it is coming to be what is coming to be. How the emergent thing is different from what already is and from what is coming to be, how it bridges that gap, is what the emergent thing actually is. Not a noun, not a verb, but a process! The emergent thing did not choose the world out of which it arose, nor did it invent the ultimate end toward which all things are tending. But it chose to bridge that gap, and it chose a specific way to bridge that gap; that’s what makes it unique, that’s what makes it free, that’s what makes it present, that’s what makes it consequential. Free? How so if it is guided by a well-defined future? Free because it would be impossible to ‘choose’ anything other than that future. The future represents the Good to the present; every event is the process of choosing what is ‘good’ from the perspective of what is. That’s what an event is; anything other than that is not an event. Our knee jerk reaction to this is to say, “An event cannot be considered free unless it is free not to choose what is ‘good’.” That seems like a well-formed sentence that would have to be true. But the opposite is the case. It’s ill formed and never true! Every event transforms the antagonistic multiplicity of what-is into the harmonious unity of what is coming to be. Each emerging thing decides how to do it, decides freely with no constraint from what-is and no coercion from what is coming to be. This absolute freedom is what gives every thing its zest for being; it is what makes the creative advance fundamental. So the emerging thing is both one thing and three things. It is a single, absolutely unique entity, but it is also what it is not (i.e. what is), what it is coming to be (i.e. what is not yet) and the way (i.e. how) it is both what it is not and what it is not yet. It is itself as the negation of what is, it is itself as the anticipation of what is coming to be, and it is itself as the process by which what-is is transformed into what is coming to be. As not-what-is, the emerging thing consists entirely of values, the values that inspired its rejection of what-is in the first place. As what is coming to be, the emerging thing is entirely concrete. Its contribution to the future is specific. As how not-what-is comes to be what is coming be, the emerging thing is process. Returning to the Nicene Creed , we now see that the ontological doctrine of Trinity does not just apply the structure of Divinity, but also to the structure of everything that is. Each thing is one, single entity with three distinct personae (persons). Each ‘person’ is the thing itself, whole and entire. And yet the thing itself would not be what it is, in fact it would not be at all, without the co-presence of all three ‘persons’. Trinity is fundamental to the nature of God and to the nature of every other entity, event, in any possible world. So the secret life of things is nothing less than the life of God! To put it another way, everything participates in God’s Trinitarian nature. Of course, that is not to say that everything is God. Far from it! But everything is “God-like”; everything is Trinitarian, everything is made in God’s image and likeness. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at dtc@gc3incorporated.com ress, Literary Journal Spring 2023. 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