Explore Aletheia Today's Groundhog 2025 issue: where philosophy, theology, and culture intersect. From Mark’s Gospel to Parmenides, faith, and love—thought-provoking insights await! Inside Resurrection 2025 Philosophy Freedom and/or Democracy? “Who is Peter Thiel? Conservative, libertarian, or 21st century Marxist?” The Eternal Present “The Present is…a series of concentric circles, with its axis perpendicular to linear spacetime…” Theology Is There ‘True Religion’? “We confuse a person’s right to express a hairbrained idea with the notion that that idea should be taken seriously.” Credo Ut Intelligam (Believe Me, I understand.) "I first believed, and only then, and only on the foundation of that belief, did I come to understand." Miracles “…Everything that happens happens only once…there is nothing under the Sun that is not new! Being and novelty are synonymous.” Ephesians 2:10 “In this one verse…St. Paul proposes a radically new model of what it means to be a human being.” Culture & The Arts How is the Cosmos Like DNA? “Most humans share about 96% of their DNA coding with common swine; politicians share 98%.” I Led 5 Lives “Everyone is right in their own eyes; therefore everyone else must always be wrong. Sound familiar? No wonder the world’s in a perpetual state of war!” Spirituality Quantum Theology Causation cascades through the cosmos until... New Life Through Pain "New life brings with it the joy of unquenchable hope, but a careless memory forgets that, like childbirth, new life comes only through great trial and, at times, pain." Hidden Hope in Spring’s Awakening Though hidden, life prepares for emergence in spring. Everyday Resurrections: The Divine Pattern of Healing and Transformation "Do you know that as a human being created in the image of God, you can experience everyday resurrections as part of God's pattern of healing and transformation?" Readers React What's the buzz about? Our readers' reactions to Aletheia Today... Additional Reading Can't get enough of Aletheia Today's content? Check out the books that inspire our magazine.

< Back Home Alone “Macaulay Culkin is ‘every boy’ and his Home Alone family is ‘America’s family’ – except it’s not!” David Cowles Another season of holiday specials has passed, but it was reassuring to see that the Home Alone movie franchise remains alive and well. In addition to being immensely entertaining, these films prompt some ‘AT ( Aletheia Today ) worthy’ questions, beginning with, “How do we come to know about the world we live in?” Seriously? Isn’t the answer obvious? We know about it because we live in it! Living is knowing, right? Well…maybe not: Imagine you’re a toddler. You’re certainly living in the world…but how much do you really know about that world? On the mappa mundi you drew for your Park Avenue therapist, 60% of the ‘canvass’ was taken up by your house and yard. The scrub pine at the corner of your lot was the tallest landmark, and your so-called ‘caretakers’ were pictured as giants. You are in the world, but your knowledge of that world is rudimentary at best. But come on! You're a toddler; you’ll learn, right? How? By living, of course. But if our knowledge of the world came from living in it, our maps would look more like Escher than Euclid! Things would recede geometrically from here and now. Bostonians could be forgiven for mistaking the Connecticut River for the Mississippi. Once upon a time, it’s possible that people did learn about the world by living in it…but not now! Today we learn about the world, not from our experience of that world but from representations projected at us by the media. Roland Barthes called such images mythologies . What’s a family and what’s it like to live in one? Turn on the TV and find out! Most of us grew up in families; many of us live in families now, but we don’t trust our experience. For our ideas about family, we rely on television and the movies. The contemporary American family has been defined for us by shows like Leave It to Beaver , The Simpsons , and Modern Family . Of course, we don’t live on the set of a TV sitcom. My own dad was less like Phil Dunphy than he was like Sir Robert ( Downton Abbey ), but I never expected to grow up like Prince Charles. I might have hoped to grow up like Luke Dunphy. Confronted with these images, we have two options: either (1) we ignore actual experience and imagine that our own families are ‘just like’ these sitcom families, or (2) we honor our experience and accept that we live in ‘failed families’. I think I do a bit of both, but either way, we do it to our detriment. Today, our social scientists are focused on the twin phenomena of Entitlement and Privilege . Our media diet certainly reinforces both. But it sets our socio-economic expectations as well. Macaulay Culkin is ‘every boy’ and his Home Alone family is ‘America’s family’ – except it’s not! The McCallister family is rich. Rabbit rich! They are unapologetic ‘one-percenters’. They live in a McMansion in a posh Chicago suburb. In 2023, the estimated price tag was a mere $2,800,000. Plus, the family can afford (money and time) to take an extended vacation in Europe. (Two vans to the airport; parents fly first class.) Both parents work, but the nature of that ‘work’ is posh-vague. Suffice to say, neither works in a sweat shop, coal mine, or cube. Economists estimate that in 2024, a family would need an annual income of at least $750,000 to support such a lifestyle. Yet, the Home Alone franchise encourages all of us to imagine ourselves Growing Up McCallister . Nice work if you can get it. The McCallister Life is the way life’s z’posed to be. It’s the way all of us were meant to live. According to Bernie Sanders, our actual lives fall short because our patrimony has been stolen from us by greedy robber barons. Sadly though, most of us locate the fault, neither in the stars nor in the social system, but in ourselves. “What’s wrong with my parents that they did not provide me with the McCallister lifestyle? What’s wrong with me that I cannot provide that lifestyle for my own children?” These questions seem ‘natural’, if self-denigrating, but they are anything but. They contain anaerobic assumptions that will not survive exposure to oxygen…or sunlight. First, the questions assume that the McCallister lifestyle is within the reach of median members of society. Of course, there are Families McCallister, and in a sense, any family could be a McCallister Family (they could hit on a scratch card, for instance), but such outcomes are at best loosely related to the skills, efforts, abilities, or virtues of the beneficiaries. Somebody’s got to win life’s lottery, but, Immanuel Kant and Bernie Sanders notwithstanding, not everyone can win. That’s not how lotteries work. Second, and even more perniciously, the questions assume that the McCallister lifestyle defines ‘the good life’. It is good to live in a mansion in a monochrome neighborhood. It is good for siblings to have their own rooms (and not to share). It is good for families to spend the holidays in Europe. Sez who? The consequences of these hidden assumptions are nothing short of ‘socially catastrophic’. Think I exaggerate? Think again! We have decided to view life in terms of winners and losers. That’s problematic at best. Do winners earn immortality? Then what’s the point? We have told all participants that they will win or lose based on their performance on a ‘standardized test’ called childhood. What the players don’t know is that their answer sheets are shredded the minute they are turned in; no one will ever even look at them. Winners and losers will be determined instead by a secret algorithm unrelated to test scores. After a suitable interval, our beloved founder, Gordon Oliver Day, enters the exam room to announce the results. James Astor – winner; Jonathan Baskin – loser; and so on through the entire roster. (Note: there are many more losers than winners.) After tears of grief, the losers are left to mourn: “I’ve let myself down, and not just myself, but my parents, my coaches, my teachers and any future spouse(s) and children.” After tears of relief, the winners begin to compare notes and quickly realize that they did not all perform brilliantly on the test; they begin to intuit that something else must have intervened in the selection process. Their euphoria turns to insecurity…or even guilt. In the down-under film Hunt for the Wilderpeople , the 12-year-old lead says, “I didn’t choose the Skux (gangster) life; the Skux life chose me.” Kevin McCallister might have said the same thing about the Posh life. So, we’ve managed to create a value system in which we are all designated ‘losers’, at least in our own minds. Not easy to do but we’ve done it. Brilliant! I’m not done! I’m not rich, but I’m not poor either. I have a ‘nice’ lifestyle; I’m ‘satisfied’. But it’s not the McCallister lifestyle. So I am dissatisfied with being satisfied, and I take every opportunity to mimic the Family McCallister. Some people ask, “What would Jesus do?” I ask, “What would Kevin McCallister (or his parents) do?” So, I buy a house bigger than I need…or can afford, and I take the family on a trip to Europe, even though I have no interest in things European. These are the things one does if one wants to think of oneself as an honorary McCallister...or Dunphy. Like everyone else in the game, I was dealt an average hand. It was all I needed. But I squandered it by trying to live someone else’s life. Looking back, I wish I had paid more attention to the Rolling Stones : “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try some time, you just might find, you get what you need.” Image: Home Alone. 20th Century Fox. 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 Yuletide 2023 Previous Next

< Back Kaddish David Cowles Aug 24, 2023 “God is our fellow traveler. He suffers along with us; we are simpatico… like Bill Clinton, God feels our pain.” It is a commentary on our times that entering ‘Kaddish’ in a search engine is more likely to deliver an Alan Ginsberg poem of the same name than the 2,500-year-old prayer on which Ginsburg’s poem is based. Not that I have anything against Ginsberg; after all, he was Bob Dylan’s John the Baptist. Ginsburg’s Kaddish is great, but so is the original! The Kaddish is a prayer that observant Jews recite at the death of one who is loved and/or a member of the House of Israel . Praying over the dead is certainly not a uniquely Jewish practice. Both in Pharaonic Egypt and in Buddhist Tibet, for example, it was customary to recite long prayers over the body of one dead or dying. These ancient funerary rites are preserved for us in each culture’s distinctive Book of the Dead . The stated purpose of such prayers was to guide the departed soul through the After World , to deliver it unscathed into ‘Objective Immortality’ (Whitehead’s term). Fast-forward, in many Christian churches today it is still customary to pray for the souls of the ‘dearly departed’, that they may ‘rest in peace’, and that their spirit may be ‘borne by flights of angels’ unto the ‘bosom of the Lord’. Kaddish is different! It is certainly meant to benefit the deceased, but it is also intended to benefit the mourners and, perhaps less expectedly, to benefit God. According to the underlying eschatology, every death rips a hole in the fabric of Being. As such, it causes the pain of loss which is felt by all those in the ‘society’ of the deceased, i.e., co-religionists, friends, relatives, and of course, that member of every society, i.e., God. In Eastern cosmologies, the divine is ineffable and utterly transcendent (Nirvana); in Classical cosmology, we are effectively gods’ pets, sometimes loved but often mistreated. For the most part, the gods regard us as an inferior life form. There are no ‘civil rights’ on Mount Olympus. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, however, God is our fellow traveler. He suffers along with us; we are simpatico . God sees the suffering of his people in Egypt, so he acts to free them. In the New Testament, God suffers and dies on a cross for the sins of the world ( pecata mundi )…our sins! We are God’s creatures, but we are also his co-conspirators. Our relationship is governed by a series of Covenants (cosmic constitutions). Torah should be read, not as an elaboration of the Ten Commandments but as ‘the Civil Rights Act of 1564 BCE’. We are responsible to and for God, as God is responsible to and for us. So, of course, it falls to us to comfort God in our moments of shared grief. In fact, these are the times when our role as God’s comrades may be most evident. Kaddish means ‘holy prayer’ in Aramaic (the language of its composition). It begins, “May the great name be exalted and sanctified ( kadash ).” As in the Christian Lord’s Prayer, the Name of God is God’s presence in the world, his ‘role’ in society; it is to be ‘hallowed’. According to the Magid of Mezritch, we are ‘limbs of the Shekinah ’ (God’s Presence); so, like Bill Clinton, God feels our pain. A Christian parallel is found in the Mystical Body of Christ . Any death dims God’s light in the world. Reciting Kaddish restores it. According to Rabbi Dovber Pinson, “the function of Kaddish is to comfort the Divine Presence.” We are comforted as well. We have been basking in God’s light ( Ohr ), as reflected ( Chozer ) by our beloved; now we can experience that same light directly ( Yashar ). Every experience requires both Light (God) and Vessel (us). In the cosmology of Alfred North Whitehead, this ‘Light’ corresponds to God’s Primordial Nature (the source of all values) while ‘Vessel’ points to God’s Consequent Nature (the objective immortality of all Events). The alignment of Light and Vessel is Meaning. In other words, events (vessels) acquire meaning from the values (light) they manifest. Vessel without Light is Kelipa - concealment, division, separation, randomness, negativity, darkness, death, and void. Is that all ya got? It is popular today to say that we don’t need God. Ok, maybe not, but Kelipa gives a sense of what the world would be like without Light, i.e., without God’s Presence . Genesis’ second verse describes such a world: “…Without form or shape, with darkness over the abyss and a mighty wind sweeping over the waters.” Reciting Kaddish rescues us from Kelipa (‘Deliver us from evil’) and it enables us to see the Great Name through the events of the day (‘our daily bread’). “May his Kingdom be established…and may his Anointed One (Messiah) come soon…May it happen in your lifetime and in your days…” This is undoubtedly a reference to Job (19: 25 - 27): “As for me, I know that my redeemer lives and that he will at last stand forth upon the dust…and from my flesh I will see God…my own eyes, not another’s, will behold him.” “Amen. May his great name be blessed forever and for all eternity.” At this, the climax of the prayer, God is comforted, the wounded world is healed, and the gates of Gan Eden , the ultimate destination of all souls, have opened wide to greet our comrade. “May there be abundant peace ( Shalom ) from Heaven and…may he (God) make peace for us...Amen.” Shalom is one of the names of God, so when we pray for peace, we pray for God’s Presence. Roman Catholics celebrate shalom , “the peace that the world cannot give” every day in Eucharist. So a tip of the cap to Alan Ginsberg but an invitation to all of you to pray the Kaddish for me when my turn comes. Shalom! 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 Quantum God David Cowles May 28, 2024 “What would it mean for the Proposition “God exists” to be both T and F…or neither T nor F?” A 6th century CE Irish poet (St. Dallan) is credited with “Naught is all else to me save that thou art.” The author framed the intellectual history of Europe in terms of a single question: Does God exist? On one side, there are those who argue that the concept of God is non-phenomenal, illogical, or even monstrous. Atheism is their ‘theology’. On the other side, folks believe that God is evident in Nature (biology, cosmology, etc.), or deducible via a chain of logical reasoning, or the subject of irrefutable personal experience. Theists! Most of us are neither pure atheists nor pure theists. We believe that the ‘God Hypothesis’ either does or does not adequately account for the details of our experience. But we admit we might be wrong, or if we don’t admit it, we credit our conviction to Faith , and Faith this is only possible via the gift of God’s Grace. Therefore, Faith is God believing in God! Both Sartre and Camus (‘The Ex-Men’), fierce rivals but affirmed atheists, admitted that it is possible that God does exist. However, they agreed that it would make no difference either way. They turned our Irish poet on his head. Were they inclined to ‘hymn’, they might have intoned something like, “That thou may be is naught to me.” It makes no difference one way or the other. Now I like to think of myself as a would-be existentialist, but I must part company with my idols on this point. Anything that is makes a difference; if something doesn’t make a difference, then it isn’t. It does not exist! (Whitehead) In other words, you cannot both exist and make no difference; to say so is to misuse the vocabulary. Clever lads, this might have been exactly their point! “Sure, you can have your God if you insist, as long as you understand that your ‘God’ can’t make any difference.” Of course, ‘a god who makes no difference’ is not God; in fact, that’s the very definition of an idol. Anything that makes no difference is nothing at all. Mistaking what is not for what is (and vice versa) is what Whitehead called, The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness . May I explain? I dreamt I spilled a glass of scotch ( quelle domage ). Next morning, I found that there were no wet surfaces in my apartment and that my supply of scotch was not abnormally low. My dream was real, but the scotch I spilled was not…because it didn’t make any difference (left no trace). Others, however, have refined the middle position into a more coherent theological stance known as agnosticism. Broadly speaking, agnostics come in two flavors. Strawberry Spice believes that the existence of God is merely unknown; Pistachio Spice believes that the existence of God is fundamentally unknowable. So would you agree that we’ve pretty much covered the field? There can be lots of nuances but, fundamentally, these are our three options: atheism, theism, agnosticism. There are no other possibilities, right? Wrong! There would seem to be at least two other possibilities: (1) God neither is nor is not; (2) God both is and is not. Ok, these are solutions, but they make no sense…do they? And anyway, they violate the Law of the Excluded Middle: Every well-formed proposition (P) must be either True (T) or False (F). In these cases, P is (1) neither T nor F or (2) both T and F. The Excluded Middle – says who? I can’t find it anywhere in the Torah and, oh yeah, it’s flat out wrong! In Quantum Field Theory, a bit can be both ‘1’ and ‘0’ at the same time; it’s called superposition and it’s what makes quantum computing possible…and what keeps Schrödinger’s superannuated cat alive, at least potentially. So do we say that P = both 1 and 0 or do we say that P = neither 1 nor 0? When you put it like that, it’s clear that our ‘two’ new solutions are really the same solution expressed in different terms. There is only one non-binary solution…but it’s a doozie. How might this apply to the matter of God? What would it mean for the Proposition “God exists” to be both T and F…or neither T nor F? If P is both T and F, it might imply that there is a higher order Value, call it X, that subsumes both T and F. If so, then there is a something more general than Being (ⱻ or ~ ⱻ) itself: (ⱻ and ~ ⱻ). This is the realm of the mystic: Nirvana, Keter, Ein Sof . If P is neither T nor F, it implies the existence of meaningful propositions to which the categories True and False do not apply. Like quiet Wittgenstein! 20th century British philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead, defined Propositions as ‘lures for feeling’. True and False are subjective forms that apply to just a small subset of these Propositions. In effect then, all language is poetry. As such, it is only occasionally concerned with propositional truth. More often, propositions take the form, “Look dere ! See dat !” See what? Something that relates, metaphorically, to everything that is. The job of the artist-philosopher is to find local patterns that resonate with the pattern that is universe. i.e. “to see a world in a grain of sand…” (William Blake) Fortunately for Bach, Joyce, Kandinsky , et al., the World has just such a fractal structure. Patterns repeat at all scales. The challenge is to identify those local patterns that scale-up to the whole. Each of us is challenged to be William Blake: ‘to hold infinity in the palms of our hands’. At the end of the day, theology is about something much bigger than ‘being/not-being’, it’s about ‘harmonics’, about finding the pattern(s) that connect the infinitesimal with the infinite. Once you’ve found those patterns, it matters not whether you call the result ‘God’…or not. You have found ‘what is’ (Ex. 3: 14). You have found, “I am” (John XX). You have found the Being that animates every being, the one thing that all things share. God is not a ‘thing’; God is not a ‘being’. God is Being: “It is, God is.” God is not in all things; God is the common essence of every thing. 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 Christianity David Cowles Jun 11, 2021 In an earlier post, we talked about the need to think ‘complementarily’ in order to understand the cosmos and our place in it. We spoke, for example, of the need to understand sub-atomic entities as both waves and particles. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Ultimately, we need to think of the entire universe in such terms. In an earlier post, we talked about the need to think ‘complementarily’ in order to understand the cosmos and our place in it. We spoke, for example, of the need to understand sub-atomic entities as both waves and particles. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Ultimately, we need to think of the entire universe in such terms. For example, I own a pair of socks. For the most part, I wear them “outside-out and inside-in”. But thanks to the miracle of topology, we have the option to reverse this relationship. If we choose, we can wear our socks “inside-out”. My grandfather, for reasons known only to him, did this on a daily basis; and I must admit I’ve done it more than once merely out of carelessness. On a much deeper level, the topology of the sock is also the topology of the universe. ‘God’ (however you understand that term) is either the totality – not the sum – of all the entities and events that we call universe OR God is a transcendent being in whom that we call universe subsists. This formulation is characteristic of almost all the world’s religions. Christianity, however, turns the sock inside out. God (“The Father”) is still the entity that transcends or totalizes the events we call universe. But God (“The Son”) is a quantum entity within that universe. That is why Catholics, rightly in my view, call Mary “the mother of God”. Here’s where complementarianism comes into play. Christian theology ‘asks’ (or demands) that believe that the sock is at all times simultaneously both outside-out and inside-out. That reality itself is also God (“The Spirit”), which is God manifest (not always perfectly but always to some extent) in each and every event in our universe. 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 Am I? David Cowles Sep 6, 2022 “My job is to experience, even enjoy, the prairie, not fix it…” I’ve always wanted to see America, ‘from sea to shining sea’ and all that, an d I have done so many times – through an airplane window. I dream of seeing it again, but this time through the window of a transcontinental train. The time has come. I board Amtrak at Penn Station (NYC): destination, San Francisco. I’ll see all the sights along the way, all the sights that can be seen from the window of a train, that is. Other than that, I’ll have nothing to do for at least 4 blissful days. I have placed my body in the care of the RR employees, but my mind is free and, within the confines of the train, I can do whatever I want. I can read, listen to music, take naps, go for walks, eat heartily, and drink ‘til my money runs out. But for all that, I’m a passenger, a spectator in relation to the main event . But my trip, even though it’s virtual, gives me a chance to think. How is life like taking a ride on the Reading ? (Admit it, ever since you learned to play Monopoly you’ve been asking yourself this question!) Through no fault of my own, I am a passenger on the train of life. I didn’t ask to be here; somebody else bought me my ticket. But it’s passably comfortable, and I’m totally free to do whatever I want whenever I want, subject only to the facticity of my body and the train itself (the roadbed, the rails, the cars, my fellow passengers, the rules of the road, the Amtrak employees on board, etc.). Mary bloody or virgin, an incredible show is taking place just outside my window. Who am I with respect to that show? I am nothing, no one, nemo . The prairie knows not that I exist, nor that I’ve been where I’ve been; I’ve left no crumbs, nor any footprints. I live life like an anthropologist studying an alien culture. Unknowingly, I am obeying Star Fleet’s Prime Directive . I leave everything as I found it, undisturbed. Just as my railroad self is ‘nothing’ with respect to its medium, the prairie, so I am ‘nothing’ with respect to my so-called real life. Is this a gospel of disillusionment, or even despair? Is this the preface to a full-blown nihilism? No way! The reverse is true. That I have nothing to do with the prairie is liberating. As a passenger, my job is to experience, even enjoy, the prairie, not ‘fix it’ (as though it needed any fixing). Whatever happens, I’ll still be me. Nothing, absolutely nothing, can ever change that. And that’s a glorious thing. Even if I am nothing ? Especially if I am nothing! In Eastern spirituality, the goal is often to break the bond that attaches the self/soul ( atman ) to the world ( maya ). The good news is that there is no bond to break; there never was such a bond. I’m already fully liberated, always have been. I just need to realize it – and of course, that’s the hard part. Hard, because it involves a paradox. How can I… be …nothing? The question itself involves a contradiction. How can ‘not being’ and ‘being’ co-exist? With respect to crossing the continent, I am nothing. How is that a glorious thing? Well, let’s get out our Descartes: cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am). I’m thinking right now, poor as those thoughts may be, so I must be being ; but we’ve already determined that I am nothing. So how can I be being ? Talk your way out of this one, you, you, philosopher ! As is so often the case, paradox here is the mother of discovery . I am nothing with respect to the prairie. What is the prairie? It’s space and time, spacetime . What else could the prairie be? I am nothing with respect to the prairie, therefore I am nothing with respect to spacetime, yet I am . So, I must be with respect to something beyond spacetime and whatever is beyond spacetime is, by definition, eternal. Jesus said to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world.” Each of us can say the same to our own ‘Pilates’ – internal as well as external. We live in spacetime; our minds and bodies are in spacetime. But we are not of spacetime, we are of eternity, we are eternal beings. But if we are ‘eternal,’ then ‘eternity’ must be as well, and spacetime can be no more than an underprivileged bubblein an infinite sea. What have we accomplished? Have I proven that I exist? No, I didn’t need to prove that. Per Descartes, we can infer that we are from the ‘phenomenal’ fact ( phenomenal in both senses of the word) that we think. No, we have proven something much more important than that! We have proven that we exist eternally. 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 Genesis Reconsidered David Cowles Aug 4, 2026 “Whether you are an Idealist, a Materialist, an Empiricist, or a Vitalist, you are espousing a cosmology that was first outlined 2500 years ago...in Genesis.” 1600 words, 7 minute read For most of my adult life I have argued that the description of ‘creation’ found in the first chapter of Genesis is compatible with the prevailing scientific theories of cosmogenesis and evolution. More recently, I came to believe that the Genesis narrative is denotatively equivalent to those theories. Now I have concluded that the Genesis account is actually superior to the standard model. How so? According to the standard model, the Universe came into being spontaneously, along with spacetime itself, at an event of uncertain etiology that we call ‘Big Bang’. At that moment, the Universe was presumably at the maximum possible temperature, the Planck temperature, i.e. 10^32 Kelvin, with the least possible entropy (disorder) – a neat trick if you can pull it off! But within one second (10^0) that temperature dropped 22 orders of magnitude to a relatively comfortable 10^10 K at which point various elementary forces and particles began to crystallize, ultimately leading to nucleosynthesis. Now fast forward 14.8 billion years ( 10^17 seconds ) and the Universe has cooled another 10 orders of magnitude, down to an admittedly bracing 3° K (I wonder what the wind chill is). So far, this model fits the data better than almost any competing theory , but ‘needless to say’ the required physics is extremely complex, ever evolving, and in some respects a bit dubious. ‘Almost any competing theory’? Almost! I am aware of only one exception: the Old Testament Book of Genesis delivers an even better data fit, and it’s overwhelmingly preferred according to the standard known as Occam’s Razor : First, the Genesis model is temperature agnostic; Planck temp not required at birth. Second, it relies on just a single fundamental force, called ‘separating & gathering’ ( aka yin & yang, warp & woof, love & strife). Check it out: “In the beginning when God ‘created’ the heavens and the earth, the earth was formless and empty, darkness covered the surface of the abyss and a mighty wind swept across the waters. And God said, ‘ Let there be light,’ and there was light…and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light ‘day’ and the darkness ‘night’.” (Genesis 1: 1 – 5) The first two things to notice about the Genesis account of ‘creation’ is (1) that entropy naturally assumes its lowest possible value (“Fiat lux”) and (2) that no one makes anything. God lets be (light), separates (light from darkness), and labels (day and night)…only! Sidebar : It is standard practice to refer to models of cosmogenesis inspired by Genesis as ‘creationism’ - ironic considering that Genesis makes no mention of any active process. God’s role is that of ‘enabler and labeler’; the so-called ‘creation’ is akin to bootstrapping . The verb ‘to be’ appears twice in Genesis 1: 3. The Hebrew grammar (e.g. the Jussive Mood) is unfamiliar to Indo-European speakers but in the much respected pre-Christian Greek translation, the Septuagint , ‘to be’ first occurs in the passive voice (“let it be”) and then in the middle voice (“it came to be”). God is more Michaelangelo than Frankenstein (sorry, kids). God uncovers/reveals ( aletheia ) form latent in the formless (e.g. a block of marble), i.e. Aristotle’s pure potentia. Mary Shelley’s anti-hero manufactures his Monster: Frankenstein assembles (active voice), God enables (middle voice). “Then God said, ‘ Let there be a vault between the waters… Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear… Let the land produce …plants and trees…according to ( separated into ) their various kinds’. And it was so…” (6 – 11) Again, Genesis sticks to the formula: ‘Let there be…and it came to be’…followed by differentiation (i.e. separation of light from dark and of apples from oranges). “And God said, ‘ Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night…’ and so it was.” (14) Genesis presents separating and gathering , not as two conflicting forces but as two aspects of a single process, resembling the dynamics of a two stoke internal combustion engine. At the time that Genesis received its final edit, a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, Empedocles (c. 450 BCE ), was espousing a similar concept, independent of the Judeo-Christian tradition: “At one time all coming together by love into one and at another time all being borne apart separately by the hostility of strife.” (Fragment 25) Note : The idea that a single force can separate and/or gather depending on circumstances should pose no difficulty for us. The OT Book of Ecclesiastes (3: 1 – 8) famously speaks of “a time for everything…a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them.” The Electro-Magnetic (EM) force can repel (like charges) or attract (opposite charges). Plus, the standard model of cosmology includes forces (gravity, dark energy, cosmological constant) that may be alternately attractive or repulsive; the Genesis model is not introducing any new level of complexity. “And God said, ‘Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky’. So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds , and every winged bird according to its kind … (20 – 21) Speciation (“according to its kind”) is a product of ‘separation and gathering’ – an elongated continuum of genetic mutations spontaneously breaks into disjoint populations ( aka species) capable of sexual reproduction. That single force is presented as Wisdom ( Sophia ) in the Old Testament… “ ’The Lord brought me forth as the first of his works, before his deeds of old; I was formed long ages ago, at the very beginning, when the world came to be… I was there when he set the heavens in place…and when he marked out the foundations of the earth. ” (Proverbs 8: 22 - 29) …and as Word ( Logos ) in the New: “In the beginning was the logos and the logos was with God and the logos was God… Through him ( logos ) all things came to be.” (John 1: 1 – 4) But back to Genesis : “Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness’… So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them…” (26 – 27) At last we have a reference to what might be considered God’s creative act but that too proves illusory: ‘in our image…(and) likeness’. We are a reflection of God. We are ‘created’ in the same way that I ‘create’ my image in the bathroom mirror every morning. God separated the genus homo from the rest of the animals, gathered us into a single species, sapiens , and then differentiated us into genders: “Male and female he created them.” Separating and gathering, gathering and separating, via mundi (the way of the world). As a species we reflect (image and likeness), but as an individual (gender specific) I refract, God. The process of human reproduction (sex) is itself a reflection (or metaphor) of ‘divine creation’. A man and a woman ‘gather’ in sexual union and generate offspring (separation) who in turn gather with others of their generation to form sexual unions of their own, and so on . Warp and woof! The process of ‘creation’ as imagined in Genesis is on-going even today. According to Genesis , we are in the 7 th day (phase) of cosmogenesis. God has rested; ‘the material world’ (Marx & Madonna) has taken over where God left off. So how is this model better than Big Bang? First, it imposes fewer preconditions (e.g. no need for Planck temps and only a single ‘force’). Second, it is ongoing, phenomenal, even today. (When was the last time you witnessed a Big Bang?) Still, you may be balking. After all, Genesis is so…ancient. Can it really be relevant today? You bet, it is as ‘now’ as Tik-Tok. Continental philosophy in the 19 th and 20 th centuries was dominated by dialectics (Hegel, Marx, et al.). Every thesis generates its own antithesis (separation) which in turn leads to a synthesis (gathering), i.e. a fresh thesis. On the other side of the channel, English Empiricism (Mill, Hume, et al.) climaxed in the systematic philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, aka the Philosophy of Organism or Process Philosophy. Whitehead built his magnificent theoretical edifice around just 3 undefined terms: “one, many, creativity.” The many (multiplicity) are gathered into one (actual entity) which in turn adds to the many. What Whitehead calls ‘creativity’ the authors of Genesis called ‘separating and gathering’. So whether you are an Idealist (Hegel), a Materialist (Marx), an Empiricist (Mill), or a Vitalist (Whitehead), you are espousing a cosmology that was first outlined 2500 years ago...in Genesis . 20 th century science has attempted to produce a model of cosmogenesis that eliminates the need for a transcendent agent ( aka God). The result is still incomplete and incredibly complicated. (Think ‘Ptolemy’ before Copernicus!) It includes a number of underivable values that function as transcendental actors in the cosmic drama: Is God sneaking in through a back door? Fortunately, we don’t have to wait for another Copernican Revolution to straighten things out. That revolution already took place…2500 years ago. We just need to acknowledge it. 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 Leviticus and the Fed "The Fed’s 2% inflation policy is a modern version of the Levitical program. It pays for the social safety net that is our way of redistributing wealth.” David Cowles From the Industrial Revolution to the AI Explosion , intellectual, social, and economic history has been dominated by the struggle between Socialism and Capitalism. Two great challenges confront every economic system: the generation of wealth and the distribution of that wealth. The success of every economic system must be measured according to these two criteria, and Socialism and Capitalism offer dramatically different approaches. In the Manifesto of the Communist Party , first published in 1848, Karl Marx famously wrote: “…The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.” That single sentence became the rallying cry for a movement that, in many respects, dominated a 175-year period of world history. At the other end of the ideological seesaw, of course, was the 18th-century theory of Capitalism. These two great economic philosophies battled over one issue above all others: Who should own (control) society’s “means of production”? We have Marx to thank for this concept. He correctly understood that each society, each social epoch, is characterized by its means of production, i.e., by the way, in which it generates wealth. In Marx's 19th century, the means of production consisted of factories and machines, augmented by the labor of “wage slaves”. The bourgeoisie owned these means of production, either de jure as in the case of factories, or de facto, as in the case of labor. Marx did not decry the Industrial Revolution; he was no Green! He saw factories and machines as the instruments that would generate the wealth that would free the workers of the world from their chains. He decried the fact that ownership of the means of production was centralized in the hands of a few capitalists, who accumulated wealth and power at the expense of the proletariat, merely because they owned society’s productive assets. Marx’s solution was to abolish the institution of private property (at least as it relates to productive assets), collectivize productive property under the common ownership of the workers, and entrust the management of that property to institutions representing those workers (e.g., the Soviets, the Communist Party, or the State). Faintly but persistently, that great debate was punctuated with calls for a “Third Way”…a socio-economic alternative that might capture the most attractive features of both systems while discarding the undesirable elements of each. Proponents of a Third Way are typically looking to combine the egalitarian and communitarian virtues of Socialism with productivity and personal liberty, the strengths of Capitalism. It turns out that just such a Third Way was proposed…over 2500 years ago in the Old Testament book of Leviticus. The socio-economic blueprint laid out there embodies just those positive elements that we have come to associate with the best aspects of both Capitalism and Socialism. At first glance, it might appear that a socio-economic program written over two millennia ago for an agrarian economy could not possibly be implemented in a modern industrial society. But that would be incorrect. Upon deeper reflection, it is not only clear that the Levitical program can be implemented; it is clear that it has been implemented, at least in the United States. Evaluating the generation of wealth is easy; it’s basically a matter of arithmetic. Evaluating the distribution of wealth is much more difficult; values enter the discussion at every turn: Should wealth be distributed among members of society in proportion to the contribution of each toward the production of that wealth? Should wealth be distributed among members of society in proportion to the needs of each member? Should wealth be distributed equally among all members of society, regardless of the contribution or the need of any particular member? There are no immediately obvious, universally correct answers to these questions. Plus, there is another question that cuts diagonally across all three: If the production of wealth is in any way a function of the way in which that wealth is distributed, should the value of maximizing wealth influence in any way the decisions we make regarding its distribution? In his Theory of Justice , John Rawls proposed a solution to this enigma. He suggested that the optimum distribution of wealth was the distribution that would maximize production, consistent with the extension of civil rights and the provision of basic economic security to every member of society. His rationale: this is what an objective member of society would choose, provided that that member of society had no advance idea whether she would be at the top or the bottom end of the economic ladder. Rawls’ state of ‘disinformation’ is a modern version of Rousseau’s “State of Nature." The ideologies of Socialism and Capitalism have both been well tested in the laboratory of real life; how did each fare? Socialism did a reasonably good job of leveling economic (and therefore social) inequality, but it did an absolutely horrible job of maximizing production. Capitalism, on the other hand, did an astoundingly good job of maximizing production but a poor job managing social and economic inequality and providing basic economic security. After 65 years of real-life experimentation, the “workers of the world” did indeed unite. They voted with their feet: Yes to Capitalism, No to Communism! Apparently applying Rawls’ calculus, they decided it was better to risk being at the bottom of a Capitalist ladder than to languish hopelessly in the middle of a Communist heap. But this does not solve the dilemma: social justice is not an option; it is an imperative! Just as no one can validly sell themselves into slavery, neither can they bargain away their natural right to a basic share of society’s goods. A person may choose to ‘live poor’ (St. Francis) but they cannot justly be ‘made poor’ as a matter of law. Capitalism cannot celebrate its triumph until it fulfills Rawls’ condition of providing basic economic security to every member of society. Of course, folks will disagree, and rightly so, about what constitutes basic economic security, but most will agree that it has not yet been universally achieved. It certainly includes a decent place to live, decent clothing and enough to eat, but it’s more than that. It must include a safe environment, a healthy diet, health care and education. Even more than that; it must include the opportunity for economic, social and intellectual advancement…the right to ‘self-actualize’, to ‘be all that you can be’…and finally, it must include an acceptable level of social status, consistent with a positive self-image. Implementing an effective security net is useless if we label its beneficiaries ‘welfare cheats’. Clearly, the Capitalist world has a ways to go to meet John Rawls’ standards. Most, if not all, Capitalist societies have made some effort to construct a safety net. In some countries, the net is weak and full of holes; in other countries, it is stronger but tends to rob initiative and the sense of self-worth from those who rely on it. We can do better! “You shall count seven weeks of years – seven times seven years – such that the seven weeks of years amounts to forty-nine years…You shall treat this fiftieth year as sacred. You shall proclaim liberty in the land for all its inhabitants. It shall be a Jubilee for you…In this year of Jubilee, then, each of you shall return to your own property…The land shall not be sold irrevocably; for the land is mine, and you are but resident aliens and under my authority.” Leviticus (25:10) The social system outlined in Leviticus is based on the theory that every tribe of Israel began its career in Canaan with an equal share of productive property (i.e., land) and that every family within each tribe likewise began with an equal share. At the time of the Exodus from Egypt, land was the fundamental means of production and the primary source of all wealth, augmented by livestock and labor. In theory, at least, every family in the new society started out with an equal share of the means of production. But the social code of the Israelites reflected the fact that economic relations are never static. Some families grow wealthier, others poorer. The authors of Leviticus understood that some folks would ultimately be forced to sell their land, and even their labor, in order to survive. Leviticus did not forbid such economic activity…but it did limit its impact via two buffers: (1) a social safety net (Sabbath) and (2) a program to redistribute wealth (Jubilee). Leviticus calls for the total redistribution (or “restoration”) of productive wealth (i.e., the means of production) every 50 years. “…On the tenth day of the seventh month let the ram’s horn resound; on this, the Day of Atonement…each of you shall return to your own property.” Every 50 years, there’s a do-over. According to Leviticus, the State of Nature is renewable. Compare this ‘primitive’ social system with the more sophisticated Capitalist and Socialist systems. Under Capitalism, there are generally no do-overs; the sins (or mere mistakes) of the father/mother are most definitely visited on the sons and daughters for generations to come. Socialist societies, on the other hand, have a different problem. Here, the means of production are owned in common. This at least theoretically solves the problem of inequality, but it does nothing to motivate production. Without a system of economic incentives, labor languishes and there is little in the way of innovation or investment. Monday morning pep rallies are no substitute for profit sharing! The economic system offered by Leviticus solves this conundrum. All productive property is private! There is no ‘state’ per se . There are few restrictions on amassing wealth; incentives for labor and commerce abound. Yet, every 50 years, all productive property is redistributed, so every second generation gets a fresh start. It seems like the best of both worlds, a perfect solution. But you say, “It’s impractical; there’s simply no way that the productive property of the United States could be totally reallocated.” Is that so? Would you be surprised to learn that we have been living according to the Code of Leviticus for more than a decade? In fact, Jubilee has become a bright-letter Fed policy. Rather than redistributing all productive property every 50 years at the sound of a ram’s horn, the Federal Reserve has made a 2% annual rate of inflation a matter of policy. 2% x 50 years = 100%. The Fed’s 2% inflation policy is a modern version of the Levitical program. It pays for the social safety net, which is our way of redistributing wealth. How does this work? Consider our response to COVID-19. The US spent about $5 trillion that we didn’t have to mitigate the economic impact of COVID. We used that money to maintain our social safety net. They say money doesn’t grow on trees…yes it does! Ok, gold doesn’t grow on trees, but paper does. To pay for COVID, we printed money and effectively devalued our currency. We experienced that devaluation in the form of short-term hyperinflation (>2%). Essentially, we borrowed $5 trillion, and now we’re paying the ‘vig’…every time we purchase a roll of toilet paper. The wisdom of our response to COVID-19 is not our subject today, but as to the wisdom of the Fed’s 2% inflation target, we have only to look to the Book of Leviticus for confirmation. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Click the cover image to return to Spring 2024. Previous Next

< Back Cordoba 999 David Cowles Dec 6, 2022 “…the city had 260,000 residential units, 80,000 shops, 13,000 looms, 5,000 mills, and 4,000 open air markets… the central library contained over 400,000 volumes (allegedly more than the library at Alexandria before the conflagration.)” It is customary to trash the Middle Ages (500 – 1500 CE). Historians used to refer to this period as the ‘Dark Ages’, and when we wish to describe an incident of extreme violence, we call it going medieval . There is some truth to this characterization, but as we shall soon see, not much . For example, it is true that both the per capita GDP and the literacy rate declined precipitously after the Fall of Rome (476). But these things did not happen in a vacuum. The last 100 years of the Roman Empire had been a ‘feeding frenzy’ as Northern tribes broke through Rome’s defenses, invaded Italy, and sacked Rome, denuding her of her wealth. The economy of the late Roman Empire was undoubtedly bloated. It was a ‘bubble economy’, based in large part on plunder and slavery. It was unsustainable. To make matters worse, the period from 500 to 800 CE was a period of ‘climate change’; drought ravaged the agricultural economy. Then, the advent of Islam in the 7 th century closed the Mediterranean to ‘international’ commerce and put military pressure on Europe’s southern borders. A perfect storm! The meteoric rise of Christianity didn’t help…at least not at first. These pesky goodie-two-shoes were uncomfortable with slavery, had little taste for war, and failed to place ‘personal wealth’ on its proper pedestal. They were, in a word, more concerned with the economy of heaven than they were with the economy on earth. What’s the Federal Reserve to do? All in all, it was undoubtedly a tough 300 years! “A great time to visit, but…” By the coronation of Charlemagne in 800 CE, however, Europe was once again in growth mode, and with growth comes opportunity. The world is being reborn; get in on the ground floor! This is going to be bigger than Microsoft and Apple combined. So begins a 700-year period of progress: social, economic, and intellectual. This was the golden age of Middle Earth, before the Twilight of the Gods , Götterdämmerung ( aka Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment). Shorn of Roman authority, society clearly needed to reorganize, top to bottom, to reflect the new facts on the ground. The resulting feudal system is a work of ‘cosmic genius’…but that’s not the subject of this article. Hint : stay tuned to ATM and TWS for more! Sadly, this cannot be a complete account of the achievements of the Middle Ages; but rather than risk ‘damning with faint praise’, I will limit myself to a single data point: Welcome to Cordova, 999. It is widely assumed that urbanization was a late and ‘imperfect’ development in Medieval history, so let’s just test that hypothesis. Take the money you saved by cancelling your first-class ticket to Lhasa and travel in coach to Cordova, Spain. (Cordova is a more expensive destination because to get there, you need to travel more than 1,000 years… as well as 5,000 miles.) The year is 999, the midpoint of feudal society’s ‘middle age’. Are you expecting a sleepy village with pack animals roaming the streets and residents lounging in precious shade? Disabuse yourself! In 999, Cordova had a population of at least 500,000. To put this in context, that’s more people than live right now in Miami, Atlanta, Cleveland, or St. Louis. To serve this massive population, the city had 260,000 residential units, 80,000 shops, 13,000 looms, 5,000 mills, and 4,000 open air markets. Lest you think this teeming metropolis neglected public works, Cordova had 300 public baths, wide, paved streets, lit every evening by oil lamps, an underground sewerage system, and raised sidewalks to facilitate pedestrian traffic. Farmers relied on irrigation and crop rotation to optimize yield. Nor did Cordova neglect the life of the mind. It has been said that books were more highly prized there than jewels; the central library contained over 400,000 volumes (allegedly more than the library at Alexandria before the conflagration.) “Ok, this is amazing. How come everyone doesn’t know about it this?” It is said that history is written by the winners. True, but more than that, history is written by the would-be winners. The first spin-doctors were historians. The primary purpose of ‘History’ is to provide the now current social order with an appropriate ‘origin story’, one that explains and justifies the world that is . History is first and foremost Mythology. Marx said that the purpose of Philosophy is not to explain the world, but to change it. He might have said the same of History. History has a dual function: to justify the world that is and to shape the world to come. History is Propaganda! 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 God-Proofing the World David Cowles Apr 11, 2023 “Just as World War I made the world safe for democracy (not!), so the Enlightenment made the world safe from theology.” The historical period known as The Enlightenment (c. 1700 – 1900 CE) gave us many things, some quite fortunate, others less so: the Industrial Revolution, Capitalism, Socialism, Communism, Nationalism, Militarism, Electoral Democracy, Civil Rights and Modern Science, to name a few. But the Enlightenment’s proudest achievement is God-proofing the world. According to the illuminati of our age, the Enlightenment made it impossible for any rational person ever again to believe in God, at least in the Judeo-Christian sense. Just as World War I made the world ‘safe for democracy’ (not!), so the Enlightenment made the world ‘safe from theology’. How do we know that something is true? We deduce it, or we demonstrate it. When we say we’ve ‘proved’ something, we mean that we have deduced something from other somethings that we believe to be true with an extraordinarily high degree of certainty. A proof’s chain of reasoning goes back to a very small set of ‘self-evident’ principles (axioms) and ‘undefined’ terms. When we say that we have ‘proved’ that something is true, we mean that it is true in any world where our axioms are true and our undefined terms operative. On the other hand, when we say that we’ve ‘demonstrated’ something, we are referring to certain patterns exhibited by empirical events. Beginning with hypothesis, we proceed through experiment, measurement, repetition, confirmation, peer review, and publication in Nature (or another universally respected academic journal). The existence of God cannot be proved by logic or demonstrated by science. Too bad, because the concept of God would have been very convenient. It could have helped us answer some of life’s most difficult questions: ➢ Why is there something rather than nothing? ➢ Why is there order rather than chaos? ➢ What does it mean to be ‘me’? But convenience is not the same thing as truth. Just ask Al Gore (An Inconvenient Truth). So, let’s come at this problem from the other end. What must we believe if we assume that the world is real, but that God is not? First, we must believe that a cosmic epoch, characterized by spacetime and energy, spontaneously came into existence with more than 90 ‘mission critical’ physical constants (e.g., the relative masses of the subatomic particles) in tow. A variation of less than 1% in any one of these quantities or ratios would preclude the existence of the universe as we know it. So far as we can tell, the values of these essential constants are not dependent on one another. A is not correlated with B, A is not caused by B, but without both A and B, no universe! Remember Bayes’ Theorem: if the probability of A is 0.01 and the probability of B is 0.01, then the probability of A and B is 0.0001. Now imagine carrying out this same calculation but with 90 such variables, each with a probability of less than 1%, each absolutely mission critical to project universe. How many zeros can you write before your hand cramps? Second, we must believe that our universe came to be without the existence of any transcendent values. Either the universe operates without objective values or objective values emerge in the ordinary course of events. Novel events (e.g. Big Bang) occur, apparently spontaneously, for no reason, and without any goal, purpose, or meaning. Without objective values, we have no criteria with which to judge those events. We can choose to call A ‘good’ and B ‘not so good’, but the distinction is subjective, if not arbitrary. And on what authority can we say that A is normative? Rebuttal #1 : “Values don’t need to be transcendent to be objective or normative.” Sez who? Which values? Were values operative at the moment of Big Bang? If so, they are transcendent by definition. If not, if values emerged out of the course of events, how can those values be normative for all events, including Big Bang, and even including the emergence of those values per se? A deadly circularity? Rebuttal #2 : “Values can be objective, normative and transcendent without God.” First, we define God in terms of Values; in fact, we define God as Value. God is the Summum Bonum. According to Jean-Paul Sartre, God is the one being whose essence (values) precedes existence. Second, even if values could be both transcendent and free floating, how would they enter into the universe and become relevant to the events that constitute universe? On what authority can we say, ‘values are relevant’ and move on? No doubt, this debate could go indefinitely, but to what end? Nietzsche ended the argument once and for all in 1882: “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.” Nietzsche stands out from other intellectuals of the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment eras for having the unflinching courage of his convictions: No God, No Values, end of! No event can be objectively any better, i.e. any more beautiful, true, or just, than any other. Without transcendent values, there is no objective way to distinguish Mother Theresa from Adolf Hitler. It’s all just a matter of ‘personal values’, aka taste. Oh, how convenient it would be if only there was a God! But we can’t prove that there is. We can only say that those who preclude the existence of God a priori have “a lot of ‘splainin’ to do”. ( I Love Lucy) 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 Heresy, Now and Then David Cowles Aug 8, 2023 “The Illuminati prefer their 19th century ideologies to science’s 20th century discoveries… the ‘sin’ of heretics, then and now, is narrowness of vision.” A single thread runs through the Intellectual History of the Western World. It occupied the Pre-Socratics in the 5 th century BCE; it dominated Christian theological speculation in the first centuries CE; and it is a major concern of non-analytic philosophy and theoretical science today: How can we account for the Unity of Universe and the Plurality of ‘things’ (e.g. events) that constitute it? Alfred North Whitehead (c. 1930), the last great systematic philosopher in the Western tradition (Plato through Hegel), grounded his magnum opus, Process and Reality , on this observation: “Creativity, many, one are the ultimate notions.” According to Whitehead, the World is a process (creativity) by which many become one and one becomes many. Whitehead’s project, the conciliation of unity and plurality, is no longer a focus for most philosophers but it has become an obsession for many scientists: The relationship between the Quantum Wave Function and its discrete measurements. The distillation of elementary particles and forces from the Big Bang singularity. The phenomenon of non-locality (Bell’s Theorem, 1964). The hypothesis of Dark Matter/Dark Energy. ‘Cutting edge’ is what’s happening at MIT, not Harvard, at Cambridge, not Oxford. (Ok, a gross overgeneralization…but you get my point!) Bad philosophy, bad theology, and bad science share one feature in common: they cannot accept the radical implications of their own discoveries (viz. Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman ). John Bell, Edwin Hubble, and the early Quantum Mechanics were subjects of the most vitriolic attacks. They had shamelessly shunned Empiricism & Rationalism, the twin pillars of modern Western thought. The reaction of the philosophical and scientific communities made it clear that the Illuminati prefer their 19th century ideologies to science’s 20th century discoveries. Even Einstein weighed in, “God does not play dice!” Sez who? Of course, he does; in fact, he’s a Craps Master . His picture hangs over the pit at Bellagio . Despite a century of effort by “the best minds of my generation” (Ginsberg, Howl ), not a single shred of evidence has been adduced to debunk any of these counter-intuitive models (above). “It’s yesterday once more!” (Carpenters, 1973) We’re back in the early centuries of the Christian Era. The Council of Nicaea (c. 325 CE) has just put the final stamp of orthodoxy on the Cosmology implicit in New Testament scripture and in the writings of the early Church fathers: “I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth…I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages…true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father… By the Holy Spirit (he) was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man…I believe in the Holy Spirit…who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified…” The theological heretics of that age, like scientific heretics today, could not accept the implications of the orthodoxy that alone can account for our everyday experience of unity, plurality, and creativity. St. Hilary of Poitiers, writing c. 350 CE ( De Trinitate ), called out several heretics by name: ‘On Valentinus, Manichaeus, Sabellius, Hieracas, on Arians, Dasher, Donner and Blitzen’. These men (and deer), much as they disagreed among themselves, all rejected orthodox Christology as defined at Nicaea. Specifically, they could not get their heads around the relationship between God the Father and God the Son. I will not take you through the details of each heresy. Collectively (but not uniformly), these heretics could not accept (1) that Father and Son could both be wholly God, (2) that the Father could beget the Son with no diminution of the Father’s divinity, (3) that the divinity of the Son did not compromise in any way the divinity of the Father, (4) that a Son could be born of the Father and of Mary and yet be co-eternal with the Father, and (5) that Father and Son could be two distinct persons sharing a single substance ( ousia ). The Church is right to condemn these heresies with extreme prejudice. Had any of them prevailed, Christianity would not be the intellectual force it is today. And the heretics themselves? Burn them, of course? Not so fast! Orthodox Christology is a tough sell to any crowd. As Muslims are fond of saying, “God forbid that Allah should have a son.” Hilary’s heretics share a common, dysfunctional ideology: 1 + 1 ≠ 1. When anything (even Godhead) is shared, it must be diluted; when something is one, it cannot be two or three. Similarly, if A is in B then B cannot be in A: ‘a mouse in the house’, not ‘a house in the mouse’. These reservations seem reasonable, and they may indeed apply within a certain range of experience; but the cosmology they represent is inadequate to account for the entirety of that experience. Similarly, Euclidean geometry and Newtonian physics ‘work’ within a certain range but do not constitute viable models of Universe. Ultimately, the ‘sin’ of heretics, then and now, is narrowness of vision. Infinity (∞) is, well, infinite, so ∞/2 is still ∞. The Son is the Word ( logos ) of God: “All things came to be through him. Without him nothing that is came to be.” (John 1: 3) But the relationship between God and Universe cannot be vectored (→); it must be reciprocal (↔): covenant, not just commandment. “In the beginning was the Word…and the Word was God… (and) The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” (John 1: 1, 14) The Eternal had to ‘happen in spacetime’ so that whatever happens in spacetime might be eternal. Perhaps Hilary’s ‘heretical five’ should be forgiven for not fully understanding this…but that makes the achievement of Nicaea all the more astonishing. Image: The Pharisees and the Sadducees Come to Tempt Jesus. Opaque watercolor over graphite on gray wove paper. Created by James Tissot (1836-1902). Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York. 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 Look in My Eyes… David Cowles Jun 10, 2025 “In this moment, the problem of other minds is solved and our concerns about mortality disappear.” “The eyes are windows on the soul” – a pithy turn of phrase traditionally attributed to William Shakespeare. He never said it…or anything like it. The man who gave us a Scottish power couple, a petulant Danish prince, and an Anglo-Saxon king was much too smart to fall for such claptrap. No, contrary to popular belief, when his beloved Globe Theater burned down in 1613, he did not turn to Hallmark to supplement his income while the venue was being rebuilt. He did pen a few pieces for J. Peterman , but I digress. If you want to know about eyes , avoid Hallmark and head directly to Jean-Paul Sartre ; he nailed it. Sartre understood that interpersonal experience begins when we become aware that we are being observed by another consciousness. (Of course, vision is not strictly required…but it makes for a convenient metaphor.) Le regard , the ‘look’, is what tells us that we are not alone in the universe. Folks who have a fear of public speaking often say, “I get very self-conscious when I know other people have their eyes on me.” Of course you do; you’re supposed to. Being aware of someone being aware of you is what self-consciousness is : seeing yourself as an object rather than solely as a subject. It is that self-consciousness that convinces us that ‘the other’ is real. How so? As usual, we can find all we need to know in the first 80 lines (3 chapters) of Genesis . History began when Adam & Eve ate the infamous apple: “Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew they were naked, so they sewed fig leaves together and made loin clothes for themselves. When they heard the sound of the Lord God walking about in the garden…(they) hid themselves… The Lord God then called to the man and asked him, ‘Where are you?’ He answered, ‘I heard you in the garden and I was afraid, because I was naked, so I hid.” Eating the apple, they became aware of each other’s gaze. For the first time, they became aware of themselves as objects as well as subjects. They truly experienced what it is like to be seen by another and so for the first time, they felt shame, a familiar reaction to the unexpected presence of the other , i.e. another Intentional being, at an ‘inconvenient’ time. Has anything changed? On my nightstand, I have a snow globe and a gorgeous cactus. Perhaps I am doing something I’m not especially proud of; still I probably don’t feel shame. A snow globe is not an intentional being in most ontologies. And my cactus? Probably not either. But then my cat enters the room. Do I feel shame now? Maybe. Later on, my landlord walks in without knocking; Oops! Shame is an instinctive response to ‘being seen’ by another , i.e. by an ontological equal. The snow globe is not my ontological equal; but my landlord is! My plant? My pet? Maybe. But my snow globe notwithstanding, please don’t make a fetish of biology! The ‘look’ from a supposedly inanimate object can cause shame. Examples, please! Sure : how about a child’s stuffed animal ? How about your favorite LLM Chatbot? And according to Hasidic Judaism, any Shekinah infused ‘object’ can be intentional. Bottom line, ontology does not recapitulate physiology. When your eyes accidentally meet mine, there is a moment of ‘mutual shared discomfort’. Beyond that, I see the color of your contact lenses, the dilation of your pupils, and the ill effects of last night’s bender. Now look into the eyes of a baby. Really stare and let yourself be stared at. There’s no discomfort here, just love…and peace. Is there any doubt that the Whole (Universe? Gaia? God?) is looking at you through those eyes? And seeing you, sees the world of which you are a part? Likewise, you experience the Whole in the other’s gaze. In this moment, the problem of ‘other minds’ is solved and our concerns about ‘mortality’ disappear. Descartes famously wrote, Cogito ergo sum ; Sartre might have written, Me pudet ergo es (I am ashamed therefore you are). You might add, paraphrasing St. Dallan , Es ergo sum . Beyond the baby making age? Not to despair. Pre-school children retain that same innocence…when they’re not crayoning frescoes on your newly repainted living room walls. After the age of 6, in our culture at least, things get a bit blurry. Gradually, the divine gaze is occluded by skill acquisition, etc. We are beginning to become conscious of ourselves to the exclusion of the other . We are making ourselves an uncomfortable habitat for the Whole. Another opening can occur during early adolescence (ages 10 through 14) but making contact at this stage requires a HazMat suit. After the age of 14, our connection with the transcendent goes into hibernation. There are grades to earn, colleges to cajole, bosses to impress, families to feed, 401(k)’s to fund. If you’re lucky, and most aren’t, you may reawaken sometime in later life, perhaps after your 70th birthday. Then you’ll look back bewildered, not necessarily regretful, but certainly dumbfounded: “Who was I? Where have I been? What have I done?” With one exception: Love! It conquers all, they say…even middle age. Most of us will truly love no more than a few people during our adult lives…if we’re very lucky. But in those moments, we are once again aware that we are being seen by the Whole and that that whole is seeing itself through us. In fact, however, anyone at any time can become a channel for the Look . Can, and must , if we hope to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. (Mt. 18: 3) The structure of ‘seeing and being seen’ is Trinitarian. I am seen by the Whole through your eyes; you are seen by the Whole through my eyes; through us the Whole views itself viewing itself. This is the structure of universal consciousness; it is endlessly self reflective, ceaselessly recursive. World without end, Amen! Image: Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa, c. 1503–1506 (possibly continuing until c. 1517), oil on poplar panel, 77 x 53 cm, Louvre Museum, Paris. 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.