Imagine a complete Theology (Judeo-Christian), Ethics (Pauline), and Cosmology (21 st century), condensed into just 50 words. Now imagine an army of out-of-work college professors and librarians. That is the Lord's Prayer. Time Crystals and the Lord's Prayer The Lord’s Prayer is a fractal: It consists of 3 stanzas, each in turn consisting of 3 verses, each verse self-similar to the other verses in its stanza, each stanza self-similar to the other stanzas in the prayer and to the prayer as a whole. Cosmologists today like to talk of the Universe as if it were a hologram (The Matrix). LP presents it just so! The Lord's Prayer Paul’s First Letter to Corinthians includes a well-articulated system of values, which upon analysis, turns out to be an elaboration of ethics embodied in LP:er for a crystal of time? What if I threw in Knicks tickets?” St. Paul's Lord's Prayer But before all else, LP is the cornerstone of a theological and spiritual tradition with roots in ancient Judaism and parallels in RCC tradition and Kabbalah. Kabbalah and the Lord's Prayer Folks often wonder why Jesus only taught his disciples one short prayer. Why? What more was there to say? The Our Father “This tiny prayer…is a cyber-wonks dream. The density of information content is out of this world, quite literally!” 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 Corinthians David Cowles How is it that God can perform the miracle of Incarnation? Or to put it more accurately, how is it that God is the miracle of Incarnation. In the Bible’s New Testament, 14 letters (‘epistles’) have traditionally been attributed to Paul of Tarsus, St. Paul. The authenticity of some of these letters is in dispute, but scholars agree that 7 of them were almost certainly written by Paul himself. One of the most important is Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians , often referred to simply as Corinthians (even though there is a second letter from Paul to the congregation). Corinthians is one of the oldest books of the New Testament (probably written before 60 AD). It reflects Christian Christology, ecclesiology and eschatology during a relatively early period in Christianity’s development. It is important to note that Paul wrote this letter while he was in Ephesus, a city in Asia Minor that has an outsized role in the history of Western philosophy and theology. Heraclitus, for example, was a member of the Ephesian royal family and John the Evangelist is thought to have been the Bishop of Ephesus at one time. Just before visiting Ephesus, Paul wrote his Letter to the Romans from Corinth. While the doctrines advanced in the two letters are certainly compatible, Corinthians marks a profound change in emphasis. While Romans is focused on sin and the salvific power of Christ’s crucifixion, Corinthians focuses more on Christ’s resurrection, the role of the Spirit and the nature of eternal life. Did Paul’s visit to Ephesus enrich his theology? Like any ordinary letter, Corinthians is a mixed bag. It contains personal greetings, biographical updates, advice, exhortations, and even a bit of old-fashioned gossip. But woven into the fabric of this letter, in between the dominant lacunae, lies a complete systematic theology. Nowhere except in the Gospel of John is early Christian theology so thoroughly spelled out. We proclaim Christ crucified…the power of God and the wisdom of God… Christ Jesus who became for us wisdom from God, as well as righteousness, sanctification, and redemption… Paul begins by juxtaposing ‘Christ crucified’ with ‘the power and wisdom of God.’ Superficially, the two seem to be in conflict, but Paul and his followers knew differently. Christ crucified is precisely ‘the power and the wisdom of God.’ How so? Creation is a neat trick if you can pull it off, but God’s defining ‘power’ lies in the Incarnation and Resurrection of Jesus, the Christ. God, the ‘creator of heaven and earth’ quite literally turns himself inside out to become a single quantum of being (Jesus) in the vast spatio-temporal universe. It is as true to say that the God is embedded in Universe as it is to say that Universe is embedded in God. Christianity threads with the needle between pantheism, on the one hand, and Deism, on the other. In Paul’s theology, God is ultimately “all in all.” You might say that God manifests himself in three stages: Creation & Providence Incarnation & Resurrection Salvation & Redemption And wisdom? Wisdom is you being aware of the world, and of yourself, and of yourself in the world, and of yourself being aware of yourself in the world, all at the same time. Wisdom is very different from knowledge. All the knowledge in the world does not make a person wise. Knowledge tends to be linear; not wisdom! Knowledge can masquerade as static information; wisdom is always dynamic. Knowledge is something you can park on a shelf; wisdom is a way of living, a state of being. If you are wise, you understand ‘the ecology of the moment.’ You are neither subject nor object, noun nor verb. You are the perceiver-perceived and the perceived-perceiving. God’s wisdom is his perception of himself through, with, and in Christ. Old Testament Wisdom ( Sophia ) is related to New Testament Logos . The Father is perceiver-perceived while Christ is perceived-perceiving. That is wisdom. God is wise by nature, you are wise through grace and through worship, study, prayer and good works. With wisdom comes righteousness, sanctification, and ultimately redemption. Through wisdom, one comes to know what is right (‘righteousness’), one comes to live what is right (‘sanctification’), one comes to be what is right (‘redemption’). This is why Solomon, the wisest of men, asked God for one gift only, Wisdom, trusting that all else would follow. “Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all other things will be given to you.” (Mt. 6:33) How is it that God can perform the miracle of Incarnation? Or to put it more accurately, how is it that God is the miracle of Incarnation. The Nicene Creed tells us it is “by the power of the Holy Spirit,” and Paul agrees. (Or perhaps we should say that the Council of Nicaea agrees with Paul.) It is by the power of the Holy Spirit that the Father knows the Son and the Son knows the Father. The Spirit “proceeds from the Father and the Son” ( Nicene Creed ) and Paul tells us that the Spirit dwells in each of us. Because we have received the Spirit because the Spirit of God dwells in us, we have the mind of Christ. Everything belongs to you be it… the world or life or death, or the present or the future, all belong to you and you to Christ and Christ to God. Each of us has a unique role to play in the cosmic dance. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ…whoever is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him… Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own. We belong to Christ, but not as material possessions. We belong to Christ as members of his body. Because we are members of Christ, the Spirit that dwells in Christ dwells in us. Paul’s theology is just as materialist as anything Karl Marx ever wrote. There is no wimpy bourgeois idealism here! In fact, Paul’s philosophy might best be described as Christian Materialism, an effort, in my view successful, to explain how the cosmos works at the most fundamental, and therefore most general, level. Because we are members of Christ, we are part of something much bigger than ourselves. We are an integral part of the cosmos (in Christ we inherit the cosmos), and we are part of something even greater than that. Everything belongs to us, but we in turn belong to the Lord of ‘everything’ (i.e., Christ). We are not alone, we are not our own! For us, there is one God, the father, from whom all things are and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things are and through whom we exist. Note the variation in voice here. We receive all things from the Father (active voice), we exist for the Father (passive voice), but it is through Christ (middle voice) that all things, including ourselves, come to be. From him, for him, through him – one reality perceived from 3 perspectives. The Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread, and, after he had given thanks, broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes. Christianity is a materialist theology, and nothing makes that point more clearly than the Eucharist. Eucharist is not Christ symbolically, or metaphorically, or even just spiritually; it is Christ materially, body as well as spirit. There are different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit; there are different forms of service but the same Lord; there are different workings but the same God who produces all of them in everyone. To each, the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit… But one and the same Spirit produces all of these, distributing them individually to each person... As a body is one, though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also is Christ. For in the Spirit, we were all baptized into (his) one body. We belong to Christ; but we do not just belong to him (I-It), we are members of his body (I-Thou), and not members in the way that elements of a set are members of that set or in the way that friends become members of a club. We are members of Christ as parts of his glorified body! A body is unlike a mathematical set and unlike a social club. In a body, each member’s health reflects the health of the whole; and in turn, the health of the whole (body) reflects the health of each of its members. This is the language of mutuality and reciprocity, not dualism: subject/object, active/passive. A body has many parts, and each of those parts makes a unique contribution to the overall functioning of the body. So, too, each of us has a unique set of gifts and a unique role to play in the community that is Christ’s body. Now the body is not a single part but many… God placed the parts, each one of them, in the body as he intended. If they were all one (the same) part, where would the body be? Christianity is not only materialist; it is also pluralist. The many constitute one, and that one adds to the many. Buckminster Fuller was fond of saying, “Universe is plural and at minimum two.” Was he paraphrasing Paul? There are many parts, yet one body… But God has so constructed the body…that there may be no division in the body, but that the parts may have the same concern for one another. The body is one organism with many organs. These organs (parts) do not just relate to the body (whole); they also relate to (i.e., have the same concern for) each another. In this topology, each part relates, not just to the whole, but to every part of that whole. In fact, it is that network of relatedness, that mutual concern, agape (love), that constitutes the body as a body. The earliest Western philosopher, Anaximander, held a similar view. He believed that it was as a result of mutual concern (“reck”) among parts that the whole came to be. 20th century British philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead, shared this view as well. In his ‘Philosophy of Organism’ every part (‘actual entity’) is related to every other part and to the whole as ‘whole.’ A relates to B. A relates to C. B relates to C. A relates to B in C and B relates to A in C. Confused? Try this: If one part suffers, all parts suffer with it; if one part is honored, all parts share its joy. Now you are Christ’s body and individually parts of it. To use Whitehead’s language, God does not just ‘prehend’ us, we prehend each other, and we prehend God. This tight network of relatedness is, I think, what John meant by Logos . (According to Martin Heidegger, originally, logos originally meant ‘net’ or ‘weir.’) According to Anaximander (above), the whole exists because of the parts, but the parts in turn subsist in the whole. If there is no resurrection of the dead, then neither has Christ been raised. This is a remarkable verse. It rules out the possibility that Christ was raised, but we will not be. Paul argues that either there is resurrection or there is not. If there is, then Jesus was raised and will we be too; if there is not, then Jesus was not raised, nor will we be. Paul is an ontological democrat; he rejects the gnostic concept of an ontological hierarchy. Whitehead (above) agrees: God is not an exception to natural law, but its highest exemplar. Our fate is inextricably linked to Christ’s. And if Christ has not been raised, then empty is our preaching and empty too your faith…if the dead are not raised, neither has Christ been raised, and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is in vain… Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If one rises, all rise, otherwise none rise. But since we are members of Christ’s body, if Christ rises, we must inevitably rise with him. But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep… For just as in Adam all die, so too in Christ all shall be brought to life, but each one in proper order; Christ the first fruits; then at this coming, those who belong to Christ… Christ has been resurrected and so as members of his body we can be assured that we too will be resurrected. Then comes the end when he hands over the kingdom to his God and Father… When everything is subjected to him, then the Son will be subjected to the one who subjected everything to him, so that God may be all in all. Alfred North Whitehead (above) thought that this was the pivotal verse in all scripture. But in another sense, it is merely a restatement of a much earlier idea: “Everything belongs to you and you to Christ and Christ to God.” But in this later version, Paul goes one step further and points out explicitly that God is ‘all in all.’ This is certainly the climax of Corinthians. But Paul goes on to give us a deeper understanding of resurrection: What you sow is not brought to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel…So, also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown corruptible; it is raised incorruptible… It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual one. Only by living (and dying) in the spatio-temporal world can we be resurrected in the eternal world: a seed must fall to the ground and ‘die.’ Mortality is the gateway to eternity. We understandably dread death, the suffering, the uncertainty, the utter loss of control. We pray to be delivered from danger and ill health so that me may live as long as possible. Fortunately, God does not grant all petitions! If he did, we might ask him for immortality, and he might grant it, and there is no greater punishment than immortality (think of the poor souls in Dante’s Inferno ). There is no greater punishment than immortality (think of the poor souls in Dante’s Inferno ). Unknowingly, we are praying for a fate far, far worse than death, but God will overlook our folly. Resurrection is physical and material, but it is not ‘natural.’ The resurrected body is different from the natural body. The natural body, for example, is ‘corruptible’ while the resurrected body is ‘incorruptible.’ The resurrected body is ‘spiritual’ but nonetheless physical. From here on, I will ‘shut up’ and let Paul speak for himself: Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not fall asleep, but we will all be changed, instantly, in the blink of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For that which is corruptible must clothe itself with incorruptibility, and that which is mortal must clothe itself with immortality (sic). And when this which is corruptible clothes itself with incorruptibility and this which is mortal clothes itself with immortality, then the word that is written shall come about: “Death is swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” … But thanks be to God who gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Image: Rembrandt van Rijn (and Workshop?) (Dutch, 1606 - 1669 ), The Apostle Paul, c. 1657, oil on canvas, Widener Collection. 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

“So what is it that makes children so much better than us? First…a child is not a ‘mini-you’… Is an Octopus a mini-you? Then neither is a child.” < Back Christ and the Kids David Cowles Dec 1, 2023 “So what is it that makes children so much better than us? First…a child is not a ‘mini-you’… Is an Octopus a mini-you? Then neither is a child.” Jesus did not have a lot to say about childhood…but when he did speak, his words were blockbusters. In all three synoptic gospels, his rare, reported interactions with children all broadcast a single message: ‘ They are better than you !’ “Let the little children come to me; do not prevent them, for the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these.” (Mark 10:14) As I said (paraphrasing Jesus), children are better than you; theirs is the Kingdom of God, and “…unless you turn and become like children, you shall not enter.” (Matthew 18:3) Israel at that time was a ‘caste-conscious’ society: ‘Pharisees talked only to Levites, and Levites talked only to God’. Among the lower castes were slaves, oxen, women, Samaritans, and children – a proper proletarian stew if ever there was one! Dry kindling, one spark short of a conflagration: “I have come to set the world on fire, and oh how I wish it were already ablaze.” (Luke 12:49) Today, if someone says you’re 'childlike', that might be meant as a compliment, but not in ancient Israel. There, to be compared to a child, would have been a great insult. And so, as always, Jesus’ message is revolutionary: “Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven…” (Matthew 18:4) and “…Whoever does not accept the Kingdom of God like a child will not enter it.” (Mark 10:15) Karl Marx was ‘Jesus-light’. Marx advocated a specific revolution focused on access to the means of production. Jesus understood that no such ‘specific revolution’ could be successful. It’s pointless to put lipstick on a pig. And the proof is in the pudding. All of history’s specific revolutions have ended the same way: “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” ( The Who ) Jesus, and the Christian movement around and after him, understood that only a ‘global’ revolution could succeed. Even before Jesus' birth, his mother is quoted as saying, “He (YHWH) has scattered the proud…put down the mighty…exalted the humble and meek. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.” (Luke 1:46–55) Society must be turned upside down. The stone which the builders rejected must become the cornerstone. To cement the point, Jesus, regarded by many, then and now, as the Messiah, the Lord of the Universe, self-identifies as a child: “…Whoever receives one child such as this receives me.” (Matthew 18:5) So what is it that makes children so much better than us? First, they are not proto-adults; a child is not a ‘mini-you’. They are an entirely different phenomenon. Is an Octopus a mini-you? Then neither is a child. Your brain is wired for action and production. You raise a family, earn a living, tend livestock, grow crops, build houses or work in a cube. Children can do none of these things. Their brains are wired for discovery and contemplation. They can rarely even impact the world, much less change it, but they can study it (and themselves in the process) and come to understand it, at least provisionally. Prior to about the age of 12, children’s brains are still ‘plastic’; they are in the process of wiring themselves based on the child’s experiences. During this developmental phase, children can juggle multiple, conflicting maps of the world at the same time; they are oblivious to the apparent inconsistencies. If some kind adult points one out, that adult is likely to be met with a shrug of the shoulder, meaning, “So what! Who cares?” (The child is being honest, not rude). Many years ago, I was playing with Play-Doh with a three-year-old grandchild; we made a car. But he startled me when he asked in all sincerity, “Why doesn’t it start?” At that moment, I realized for the first time the magnitude of the cognitive gulf that exists between adults and children. No wonder we can’t communicate; we don’t even share a common universe of discourse. Reading this, you might be tempted to say, “You just needed to teach him the principles of auto mechanics.” Sorry, but that is precisely the wrong response. Instead, you need to savor this rare window onto a radically different conceptual landscape. Soak it in; don’t stifle it! Children’s minds are more magical than they are scientific. Initially, children take events at face value. Very gradually, they come to realize that events can form patterns that allow us to make predictions and divert the flow of Heraclitus’ famous river. By the time we reach adulthood, we no longer see ‘one-off’ events at all; we see only patterns. We cannot see the elephant in a room if it is not part of our logos , our pattern of expectations. But put any child in a room with an elephant and I guarantee you, it will be seen, smelled, felt, and, God forbid, licked. Are you with me so far? Great, but that may soon change! Consider yourself warned. Events occur, patterns emerge, and we exploit those patterns to manipulate our world and optimize our experience in that world. What could possibly be wrong with that? Nothing…except those patterns are not of your own making. Once you realize that experience discloses order, you’re ready for what society calls ‘education’. Just as the invention of the calculator made arithmetic easier for generations of hapless youngsters, so ‘education’ in general has made it easier for adults to live productive lives. The message: “You don’t need to find patterns on your own. You stand on the shoulders of giants, and they have already found all the patterns you need to live a successful life. So, just learn them.” And so you do. You listen to the adults around you. You imitate what they do. Eventually, you go to school and learn to read, so you can inhale the welter of patterns others purport to have discovered. As you do, you lose even the ability to form patterns on your own. Use it or lose it; your native intelligence atrophies. Ultimately, you find that you have voluntarily exchanged your individual consciousness for a spot in the collective consciousness of the Borg. ( Star Trek – The Next Generation ) We are the Borg! (Sorry, Captain Picard.) How do we know? 97% of the things we think are actually the thoughts of others. We imagine that we are swapping information back and forth with our fellow adults, but in reality, we are just reading from a dogeared script. Unlike children, who see the world naked and as it is, we see the world masked by language. If you can’t say it, it doesn’t exist. We only see what our language allows us to see, and unfortunately, that is a highly distorted version of reality. Modern Indo-European allows us to see the world only in terms of subjects and objects, mediated by active or passive verbs. Worse, the ‘language mask’ creates ‘blind spots’, massive holes in the panorama of the world that our brains do not see. We think we’re looking at the whole picture when, in fact, we are only seeing a culturally curated version of the world. Children, of course, experience the world unfiltered. They recognize ‘truth’ that we don’t even notice. “When the chief priests and the scribes saw the wondrous things he (Jesus) was doing, and the children crying out in the temple area, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David’, they were indignant and said to him, ‘Do you hear what they are saying?’ Jesus replied, ‘Yes, and have you never read the text, ‘Out of the mouths of infants and nurslings, you have brought forth praise’?” (Matthew 21:15–16) So where does that leave us? First, we will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven unless we ‘convert’ and become childlike again. That’s bad enough, but it gets way worse. When we interact with children (not babies), we are almost always wearing the uniform of a drill sergeant. Well-meaning, we do precisely the wrong thing: we teach our children to ‘grow up’. Why? For what? So can they be as miserable and closed-off as we are? Apparently, misery does love company. “A dragon lives forever, but not so little boys. Painted wings and giant’s rings make way for other toys.” ( Peter, Paul, and Mary ) Adult toys! (I’ll spare you the enumeration; you’ve already been through enough.) So where does this leave us? Hint: it’s not good! “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were put around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.” (Mark 9:42) We spare no effort encouraging our children to shed their ‘childish fantasies’, to stop ‘believing fairy tales’ and to begin living in ‘the real world’. When they do, inevitably but unwittingly, they ‘sin’. But they sin our sins – the sins we taught them – not their own sins; for their part, ‘ they know not what they do’. The sins of the parents are visited on them. 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 Share Previous Next Click here. Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, Fall Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

Philosophy, theology, and science merge in Aletheia Today, the magazine for people who believe in God and science. Process philosophy, scripture study, and critical essays bring science and faith together with western philosophers like Alfred North Whitehead and Jean-Paul Sartre. Deep dives into the meaning of the Old Testamant, the New Testament, and where the Bible fits into modern-day society. Is God real? Does Heaven exist? Find your answers to life's questions at Aletheia Today. Inside This Issue The Great Convergence Science & the Yellow Submarine – Part II In this issue of ATM, we will finish our journey. We will visit all the remaining “seas” (I promise), plus Pepperland itself. So, hang on tight! The Nature of Time Confining events within a single order of magnitude reinforces our tendency to categorize events as past, present, or future. After all, if a quantum of experience can be no more than one second long, almost everything must seem past or future from that perspective. Philosophy Imagine! Ridding the world of values comes at a very great price: “…they paved Paradise and put up a parking lot!” Parmenides I Who says there was no Facebook before Zuckerberg? It was just called ‘philosophy.’ Speaking Piraha The hidden grammar censor in our Euro-brains whispers inaudibly, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Why did the speaker place ‘tall’ and ‘basketball’ in the same sentence, unless they are somehow connected?” A major fallacy that comes with a huge price tag. Seen or Unseen, why the Background Matters If a tiny thread had the power to ruin a movie, what in my own life, deep in the background, bears such importance to my bigger picture? And if it’s so important, why isn’t it front and center? Theology Corinthians How is it that God can perform the miracle of Incarnation? Or to put it more accurately, how is it that God is the miracle of Incarnation. The Final Psalms Ultimately, the Kingdom of Heaven is the transfiguration of the historical realm into the eternal realm, according to God’s values. Culture & The Arts Learn to Swym “Language Endures. We Don’t” – now that is a bumper sticker! Social Dynamics Pulling that off was more artistic in his opinion than any of the “new age” stuff out there pushing the envelope. Tweens, Teens, & Young Adults Alice In Looking-glass world, there’s plenty of there and then, but not a whiff of here and now. Xiako Can't Count So, what’s up with the Piraha? How can they get by without numbers? Spirituality Judas Taught Me the Beatitudes This nasty turn unnerved me, so I gathered myself together and drew a table with my comfortable beatitudes on one side and my uncomfortable ones on the other... BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different Land is imbued with holiness, which means that, like God, it is beyond human measures of usefulness or control. The Serenity Prayer Is the Sermon ‘in the can’ after all? Prayer to Combat Disillusionment in Faith 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 Kids and Curiosity David Cowles Jul 1, 2026 “No parent or grandparent fails to notice that their kids’ insatiable curiosity wanes with the onset of puberty.” 1500 words, 6 minute read In a short reflection in Scientific American (August 29, 2025) Andrea Tamayo accurately observed that children, as they age, seem ever less interested in exploring the world around them. She reasons that this might be due to linguistic cues coming from adults. For example, when talking to children, we might say “Let’s be scientists today” or “You’re such a good scientist!” This language focuses on science as an identity, a role, something you play at or perform, rather than something that is an integral part of daily living. Andrea is right, of course! No parent or grandparent fails to notice that their kids’ insatiable curiosity wanes with the onset of puberty. And yes, adults’ language can be spirit robbing and demotivating. But at most, the two phenomena are loosely connected and identifying one with the other denatures both. First, face facts: adults have a deeply felt need to infantilize the children in their orbit. In Andrea’s example, we make it abundantly clear to our charges that they are not doing real science (whatever that is), that they are not being real scientists…they are just playing . Adults are bigger and stronger and know more than most kids, so why do we feel a need to marginalize them and trivialize their contributions; why do we damn them with faint praise? My hypothesis : Consciously or not, adults realize that their rugrats are orders of magnitude smarter than they are and that makes us insecure and defensive. Wait, smarter than we are? My kid is smarter than me? You bet! Here’s how it works: A 10 year old’s brain processes information 4x more efficiently than a 40 year old’s. Raw mental acuity declines in what approximates a straight line (i.e. arithmetically) from birth to death. However, learning is predicated on what we already know (we stand on the shoulders of giants) and the average 40 year old knows 4² (16x) more than the average 10 year old. Knowledge increases geometrically: the magic of compound information . In one year, a 40 year old will learn 4x as much as a 10 year old, even though the 10 year old is learning 4x faster than we are: 1/4 x 16 = 4. That’s how it is that superannuated ‘know-it-alls’ can’t keep up with their size 10s. Memorize the periodic table? You have an edge. Find an imaginative solution to a unique problem? Don’t even bother! Let’s break this down. Studies show that the central nervous system ‘reorganizes’ according to a timeline that doesn’t map neatly onto the milestones we typically celebrate (6, 16, 21, etc.). For one study, scientists compared MRI diffusion scans of more than 3,800 people, ranging from newborns to 90-year-olds; they found that our brains ‘molt’ 4 times, once at around age 9, and then again around 32, 66, and 83. I am reminded of how caterpillars totally reassemble in the chrysalis as they become butterflies . Our brain’s connections wire themselves in a certain way from birth to nine years of age. Our neural architecture reorganizes as we prepare to enter adolescence and that pattern persists into our early 30’s, marking our transition to full onset adulthood . This is the point at which intelligence plateaus and personality crystalizes. Since Plato, Westerners have thought in terms of classes and their members. There is a class of objects known as ‘chairs’; they all serve a common function though no two of them are identical. Organizing experience into classes and members is a form of data compression; it is our way of adjusting to declining metal acuity. It works…but at a price: we are now one step removed from the material world as it actually happens. Children know no classes. They only learn how to ‘classify’ from adults. Initially, every object is its own class, a class of one. When I was a child, our house was filled with all sorts of interesting furniture. Each piece had its own unique name. I had no idea that what was called the Winged Chair was simply a chair that had wings . Children routinely nominalize adjectives. Ab initio , every noun is a proper noun. To the extent that we internalize Plato’s categorial scheme, tangible things become the intersections of abstract qualities; we lose contact with the concrete . Children have no role in society. They serve no function (unless ‘being cute’ qualifies). When children age from day care through kindergarten into first grade, they begin to understand their day to day experiences in the context of a ‘role’. How many parents have said, “Our job is to go to work and earn; your job is to go to school and learn?” And so learning becomes a scheduled task, not a spontaneous response to one’s environment. As we age further, we become immersed in our roles. We are players on a Little League team, members of a Cub Scout den, voices in a church choir. Later, we are in the cast of a high school musical, we play right guard on a football team, and we write for our school newspaper. We not only break down the external world into classes and their members, we define ourselves in the same way. Our roles abstract us from naked experience. We gain competence…but at the expense of the concrete contact that promotes curiosity. It doesn’t have to be this way! There’s nothing wrong with competence per se ; in fact, it’s a good thing and it is a prerequisite for survival in this world. The problem comes when we identify with the roles associated with those skills. We do not just ‘play’ football, we are football players; we do not just ‘write’, we are authors. And yes, Andrea, we do not just ‘do’ science, we are scientists. In fact of course, we are none of those things. We’re not anything in this world. We are, potentially at least, much, much more! We are the world transcending itself. We are not just conscious, we are consciousness . We are stereoscopically aware of our environment and of ourselves being aware of that environment. We are not just recursive, we are recursion . We are how the Universe looks at itself, judges itself…and adjusts itself. We are right to be terrified. The power is awesome…and we are totally alone with it. Unbearable! And so, like tweens on their first day of middle school, we sand-down our rough edges and cover-over our identifying marks. We yearn to be ‘just like everybody else’, someone who belongs, a member, one who plays role, an adult . As we get older, we ask, “Who am I?” and we expect an answer! Of course, Odysseus ( via Homer) gave us that answer 3000 years ago: we are Nemo , we are no one! More recently, we were reminded by Jean-Paul Sartre that we are Neant . We are the subjects of our lives, not artifacts of a civilization. We are like sleeper agents of a foreign power - not the USSR this time but God ( Kosmos or Gaia if you prefer). Our MO is to blend in, to attract no notice, to be as much like everyone else as possible. And just like sleeper agents during the Cold War, we are almost certain to go native . We forget all about our existential mission and we focus on lowering our handicap (golf talk). As we age, we become ever more identified with our roles. We become spouses, parents, employees, managers, entrepreneurs. Gradually, these are no longer things we do or even roles we assume; they become who (or what) we are. The pressure of living in our aspirational society is all consuming. We are 100% invested in making a living, raising a family, saving for retirement. Work/Life Balance is a meme without meaning. Or, if it means anything, it refers to balancing different roles , e.g. cutting back on the job so that we have time to coach our kids’ sports teams. There’s no question of making any room for us . So we gradually become what we are here to observe and correct; we become the problem we were meant to solve. And, of course, we eagerly perpetuate this cycle of doom with our own offspring; our fondest hope is for a mini-me. Once we’ve bought in, most of us will not have a realistic opportunity to pull back until we reach seniority (or senility, whichever comes first). Then we’ll yearn to reinvent ourselves, but by then we have no idea where to begin. Perhaps Social Security benefits should include a free class: Reawakening the Kid in you . 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 Deborah Rutherford Contributor Hi. I am Deborah Rutherford, a Christian wife, passionate about Jesus and her family. I am currently a writer, makeup artist, and sometimes singer. You can find me on my blog at www.deborahrutherford.com. The Sacred Pause of Autumn Embracing the Sacred Season of Summer: Who Will You Be at the End of Summer The Dance of Autumn Prayer for Resting in God's Timing, Ways, and Rhythm

< Back Pando and Me “Pando is Pando because Pando isn’t ‘Pando’ anymore!” David Cowles The largest living organism on Planet Earth is not a Sea Mammal or a Dinosaur or Nessie; it’s a tree. A single tree. One organism. And it’s not a Redwood or a Cedar but an Aspen, a Quaking Aspen as it turns out. Where is this mega-biome located? Utah. Where are they hiding it? In plain sight. In fact you could be standing in the midst of Pando right now. To you, it would look like a forest, and so it would be. But all those tree trunks that surround you, blocking your way are ‘stems’ (parts) of one, single tree. Pando is triploid, meaning that its cells contain three copies of each chromosome rather than two. As a result, Pando cannot reproduce sexually; instead it clones itself, over and over. Today, it consists of 40,000 trunks, supported by a single, vast root system covering an area the size of 100 American football fields. Pando is at least 15,000 years old. Its individual trunks, however, have a Life Expectancy of just a few hundred years. This is the Ship of Theseus Hot Link writ large; not one of Pando’s OG trunks is alive today, and yet Pando is still very much Pando. Materially, we are dealing with an organism that is completely different now from what it was in its early years. What has been preserved is the DNA, the computer code that runs it; as a result, the pattern of relationships we call Being Pando is conserved over however many generations: Pando is Pando because Pando isn’t ‘Pando’ anymore! Let’s go back to the beginning. Out of some undetermined past shrouded in biology’s mythical mists, an aspen-zygote has been conceived. Call it ‘Alfie’. On schedule, Alfie undergoes mitosis leaving us with ‘Brian’ and ‘Charlie’. How are they related? And what happened to Alfie? You can say that neither Brian nor Charlie is Alfie; or you can say that both Brian and Charlie are Alfie. But please don’t say that Brian is Alfie but not Charlie, or Charlie but not Brian, because Brian and Charlie are interchangeable products of Alfie’s mitosis. Alfie doesn’t play favorites; like you, it loves all its children exactly the same. So are trees sentient, intelligent, self-aware, conscious? Interestingly, debate over this goes back millennia. It seems, for example, that the ancient Greeks and the Celts, at least, believed that trees displayed intentionality and self-awareness. This idea would have been a lot less popular in the latter half of the 19th century CE. However, the pendulum has swung back. There is little doubt now that trees and forests display some mental processes. Communication occurs, family members are recognized. In the allocation and exchange of resources (minerals, water), special care is taken to provide for the young, the sick, the unthriving, the elderly, and even the deceased. Unlike some members of another species I could name, trees naturally engage in eleemosynary behavior. Is this the product of natural selection or is it evidence that trees follow some sort of ethical code? If so, how does that code come to be? Does it emerge democratically or is it hard wired by a transcendent agency? Smart as it may be, Pando can’t read the Bible. But there is a school of thought that considers Written Torah (the first 5 books of the Old Testament) to be a codification of pre-existent Oral Torah , ( aka Natural Law). In this way, Torah is accessible to all sentient beings, including Pando: “signatures of all things I am here to read.” (Joyce) Natural Law is woven into the fabric of being itself. It’s what gives it its shape. In Written Torah , there are 2 verses that, taken together, constitute what’s known as the Great Commandment . According to some schools these 2 mitzvoth summarize the other 611. One, as cited by Jesus, is to “Love your neighbor as yourself.” As, not like! Unlike standard prescriptions to ‘behave charitably’, the Great Commandment eliminates the ontological distinction between the donor and the donee. This is not ‘charity’; it is ‘mutuality’. You give to your neighbor, if you do, for only one reason – because your neighbor is you – and you don’t get any extra credit for doing right by yourself. So Pando does seem to follow some sort of ethical code, but it is not easy imagining what sort of ideation might accompany that process. Is Pando ‘conscious’? If so, where does that consciousness reside? Externally (in the noosphere), in the organism-entire, in the individual trunks, or in each of the constituent cells? The form of our questions betrays us. We have assumed that consciousness is an either/or affair: there is only one Pando-consciousness and it occurs at only one particular biological level. But what if it’s not? What if it’s an and/both affair? What if Pando-consciousness can and does occur at several different levels of biology simultaneously? Now if you were 5 years old, you’d know exactly what question to ask next. But you’re not so I’ll help you: “Are, for example, cellular-conscious and organism-conscious Pando aware of one another? Do they impact one another? Do they communicate (share info)?” If human physiology is the paradigm of a Hamiltonian central bank, the plant kingdom relies on blockchain. Imagine the Billboard: “Blockchain. Endorsed by the Plant Kingdom: It’s the only brain we trust .” Wow! I could-a-been a Mad Man! Lacking a centralized nervous system, decision making by plants is necessarily ‘distributed’ throughout the organism. And it’s not only plants. Animals too can process data on a decentralized network. In an octopus, for example, independent mental structures are located in each of the individual tenacles; they communicate and coordinate across a network. So far, we have been unable to isolate a particular structure that enables consciousness (an if and only if ). What does the human brain have in common with a bacterium that allows us to use the word conscious in both contexts? What would it mean to say that an adult human and a bacterium are both ‘conscious’? Would a bacterium’s experience of consciousness have anything in common with a human’s experience? What would it mean to have something in common…or to have nothing in common at all? Two entities that have nothing in common do not exist in the same universe. So there will be an element of commonality. That element may be precisely the phenomenon we want to call ‘consciousness’; but how to isolate it? …Oh…I get it…you were waiting for an answer? Sorry, I’m two Nobels short for that. All of which brings us back to that “certain unnamed animal species” we met earlier. Am I Pando ? (Or at least Pando-like ?) Am I one of the 8 billion living trunks (persons) or am I one aspect of a single organism (species)? Do I automatically do unto myself what I do unto others? If so, then morality is not a choice; it is a fact of life. What if reality itself is recursive? What if we live in a universe with a curved or folded (vs. flat) topology? In such a universe the Law of Karma is fundamental: it’s not about a reaction to an action. Karma is an embedded element in every action per se ; it is prerequisite to the constitution of an event. Every action bridges the gap between one settled state-of-affairs and another. But in bridging that gap, a twist in structure means that bridge also acts on itself, modifying itself as it performs its bridging function . So, Newton had it wrong. Every action (active voice) does not entail an equal and opposite reaction (passive voice). Rather action and reaction are two interchangeable aspects of a single event ( middle voice ). We have a lot to learn, working alongside our Quaking Aspen! 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 Share Previous Next

The purpose of this essay is not to resolve, or even rehash, the Problem of Evil, but rather to situate the Problem of Evil in the context of an even broader problem that I call, ‘the Problem of Good’. < Back The Problem of Good David Cowles May 29, 2022 The purpose of this essay is not to resolve, or even rehash, the Problem of Evil, but rather to situate the Problem of Evil in the context of an even broader problem that I call, ‘the Problem of Good’. You’re familiar with the famous Problem of Evil. It’s an argument often advanced by non-believers against the existence of God. It runs something like this: “God is omniscient, omnipotent and all good. So, any world that includes God should be perfect. After all, God knows everything, does everything, and always acts out of perfectly benevolent intentions.” But when we take a close look at our world, it certainly does not appear to be perfect – not even close! “Wars, famines, and natural disasters fill our TV screens every evening. Humans routinely commit unspeakable acts of cruelty, directed at fellow humans, animals and even nature itself. Moreover, everyone ages, most eventually get sick and become infirm, and all die, often horribly. In such a world, surely there can be no room for God.” Theologians have confronted this reasoning for centuries, but they have not always done a very convincing job of answering it. The Book of Job, for example, is a long meditation on the Problem of Evil. Job records a number of proposed solutions to the Problem of Evil, but it finds fault with each one…and yet, Job never offers a solution of its own (see The Riddle of Job , also in this issue). Philosophers haven’t done much better. According to G. W. Leibniz, for example, the world we live in is the best of all possible worlds. Hard to see how! Finally, Carl Jung, Rabbi Harold Kushner, and others reject the basic premises of the argument. They assert that God can be ‘God’ without necessarily being omniscient, omnipotent, or benevolent, as these terms are normally understood. For Jung, God is neither omniscient nor benevolent. For Kushner, God is not omnipotent. The purpose of this essay is not to resolve, or even rehash, the Problem of Evil, but rather to situate the Problem of Evil in the context of an even broader problem that I call, ‘the Problem of Good.’ ****** As hard as it is to explain the phenomenon of Evil, it is much more difficult to account for the phenomenon of Good. In fact, the Problem of Evil turns out to be just a special case, and a degenerate one at that, of the much broader Problem of Good. Good and evil. We speak of them as though they were symmetrical opposites, perfect antonyms. But they are not! Good is the quality by which we recognize and measure all that is of ‘value’ in our world; whereas Evil, as Saint Augustine pointed out, is simply the absence of Good. Beauty is not merely the absence of ugliness; but ugliness is certainly the absence of beauty. Truth is not merely the absence of falsehood, but falsehood is certainly the absence of truth. Justice is not merely the absence of injustice; but injustice is certainly the absence of justice. And so, symmetry is broken! What is it we mean when we call an event ‘evil?’ We might mean that… the event is less ‘good’ than it could have been, or the event is less ‘good’ than possible alternative events, the event is on balance ‘less good than bad,’ the event is ‘pure evil,’ or Evil per se (e.g., Satan) A purely evil event is not possible (see above); nor can Evil by itself ever constitute an event. Evil is not something, but the ‘lack’ of something (i.e., the Good). So, while ‘a lack’ may play an important role in the development of an event, it can never be an ‘event’ per se. Yet, every day, we experience events that seem more evil than good…or at least less good than they might have been. Three assumptions underlie the so-called ‘Problem of Evil:’ Evil is an objective characteristic of certain events, not just the subjective reaction of an observer. At least most of the time, we can recognize evil when we see it. We can identify and label events as relatively ‘evil’ with an acceptable degree of accuracy. Most proposed solutions to the Problem of Evil begin with a denial of one or more of these assumptions: “You can’t say that an event is ‘evil’ if it might be better than any possible alternative.” “While an event might appear to be evil, it may be part of a larger complex of events (a ‘divine plan,’ for example) that will ultimately result in the greatest possible good.” Evil will always have its apologists. But non-believers are understandably unimpressed with this argument: “I can easily identify as ‘evil’ events for which better alternatives exist: the Holocaust, for example. If I can’t label events like the Holocaust as ‘evil’ then I have given in to radical moral skepticism, the ‘null point’ of all philosophy. “If we have to tolerate objectively evil events in order to get to ‘the greatest possible good,’ then maybe it isn’t the greatest possible good after all. The greatest possible good should be a good we can get to without tolerating evil along the way.” So Evil objectively characterizes certain events, and we can recognize it when we see it. But how? How do we recognize a lack? By comparing it to its opposite, real or imagined. And what is the opposite of Evil but Good? If Evil objectively characterizes certain events, or aspects of certain events, then the same must be said of Good. We must be able to recognize Good when we see it; but how? Good is not something we see directly when we experience events. What we see are its manifestations: Beauty, Truth, Justice, etc. We don’t even perceive these qualities directly. We perceive them only in the patterns formed by the concrete qualities that the event embodies. A painting, for example, is ‘good’ if it is ‘beautiful’ and it is beautiful if its lines, shapes, and colors form patterns that possess a certain indefinable, but nonetheless objective, aesthetic quality. A proposition is ‘good’ if it is ‘true’ and it is true if it is consistent with other true propositions and if it accounts for relevant details of experience. A law is ‘good’ if it is ‘just’ and it is just if it treats folks both according to their merits and with compassion. Two paintings side-by-side on a museum wall may well include the same hues and shapes, but one may be beautiful and the other not. Essential Beauty is a function of the pattern of hues and shapes, not the hues and shapes themselves. Two propositions may include the exact same words, but one proposition may be true and the other not; it depends on the pattern formed by those words. Two laws may include the same elements, but one may apply those elements justly and the other not; it depends on how those elements work together to achieve ‘good?’ Again, it is all about the pattern. So, in determining whether a painting is good, we need to apply certain aesthetic criteria; in determining whether a proposition is good, we need to apply certain logical and experimental criteria; in determining whether a law is good, we need to apply certain ethical criteria. But where do these criteria (values) come from? Where do they ‘reside?’ Not in or among the concrete elements that make up the painting, the proposition, or the law! For something to qualify as a ‘value’ with respect to certain ‘elements,’ it must transcend those elements. If we use a different yardstick to measure different entities, those measurements are suspect. If we vary our unit of distance each time we measure, then our measurements are meaningless. Although values transcend the entities, they qualify – they are not values if they don’t - they are by no means strangers to those entities. A value that is wholly transcendent is no better than a wholly immanent value. Values only function as values if they are shared by both the judge and the judged. For this reason, legal systems that achieve at least a degree of buy-in from all elements of society are often the most successful. Again, let’s be clear: justice is just per se; it doesn’t need anyone to buy-in. However, when it comes time to apply that value to specific situations, buy-in is extremely helpful. A corner of the universe without values that are both transcendent and immanent (shared) is a corner of the universe that does not exist. Everything we do, we do, guided by our values. Values play three distinct roles with respect to events: They provide the initial impetus that sets an event in motion. They constitute the concrete, initial aim of that event. They form the objective criteria (yardstick) by which that event must ultimately be judged (or measured). Every event is subject to evaluation according to these ‘objective criteria’ precisely because every event shapes itself in response to those criteria. Therefore, values are both wholly immanent (as goals) and entirely transcendent (as measures). How is that possible? On the surface, it isn’t! According to the standard ‘secular’ model, the universe is a self-contained, self-explanatory phenomenon – a flat, ontologically democratic world where entities (events) are just facts…and nothing more. Events may refer to one another (e.g., cause and effect) but they cannot rely on anything that transcends them, anything beyond their collective selves because the model stipulates that there is nothing beyond their collective selves. Ludwig Wittgenstein famously wrote, “No statement of facts can ever be, or imply, a judgment of absolute value…(because) all the facts described would, as it were, stand on the same level.” In Twilight of the Gods, Nietzsche wrote, “…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!” According to these two models, human beings do whatever they do, for whatever reasons they do, and who are we to judge? Sound familiar? But if we believe that values are objectively real, we can’t settle for this sort of secular agnosticism. The Problem of Evil asks how an imperfect world can be reconciled with the existence of a perfect God. Instead, I pose the Problem of Good: in an ontologically flat (vs. hierarchical) universe (Nietzsche’s ‘universe’ for example), how can there be any objective values? And if there aren’t any objective values, how can there be any experience of Good? Specifically, how would we know whether something was ‘good’ or not, and how would we recognize the ‘good’ in an unfolding event? I am reminded of my grammar school days. A flat universe is the cosmological equivalent of letting students grade themselves without any need to justify those grades and without any accountability for the grades themselves, for the accuracy of those grades, or for the quality of the work being graded. For a pre-teen boy in the 1950s, this was Shangri-La. But unfortunately, that’s not how things worked in Sister Mary Francis’s 5th grade classroom. Neither is it the way things work in the universe! An event consists of three groups of elements: concrete elements (qualities) inherited from the event’s actual world (i.e., from other events), an element of novelty that every event must inject into the process of concrescence (no novelty, no event), and the transcendent elements (values) that motivate and guide the event from stem to stern and that ultimately characterize the entity’s ‘objective immortality.’ To the extent that events consist of concrete physical (i.e., historical) elements, they are temporal; to the extent that events consist of values, they are eternal. There are no ‘events’ without ‘values;’ therefore, Good is the eternal aspect of everything that exists. Corollary: to the extent that an event is ‘good,’ it is eternal, and to the extent that an event is eternal, it is good! Can we detour to Genesis for just one moment? “Then God said, ‘Let there be light, and there was light. God saw that the light was good…evening came, and morning followed – the first day.’” (Gen. 1: 3 – 5) The authors of Genesis waste no time! Just two verses into the very first book of the Old Testament, and they are already making it clear that ‘Good’ is the prerequisite of ‘Be.’ God makes no mistakes. Even so, he checks his work, and it is not until ‘God saw that the light was good’ that the ‘first day’ was ‘in the can.’ According to 20th century British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, every potential event can be expressed in the form of a ‘proposition.’ Values are what turn propositions into events. We are often reminded that ‘change is the only constant’ in our world. That is true as applied to the material and historical elements of that world; it is not true of values. Values are not subject to change, period. If values could change, how could we call them ‘values?’ And how could they function as standards of judgment? That said, the concrete application of these values to temporal events will vary from judge to judge and from event to event. But each one of those events should be judged using the same set of uber-values as the criterion. So, where are we? We rejected the idea that ‘Good’ can somehow emerge spontaneously from a set of events which, in aggregate and by themselves, must initially be assumed to be value neutral. To be is to be an event, or at least to be an element in an event. All events are characterized by a particular selection, emphasis and arrangement of values, applied to a unique ‘actual world.’ How can values that transcend our temporal world still play a necessary role in that world? So far as I can see, there is one and only one possible solution to this paradox: there must be an event that consists solely of values without any physical or historical contribution. Because, by definition, there is no physical or historical contribution to this event, the event cannot not occur in spacetime. It must occur ‘beyond’ spacetime. Because it occurs outside spacetime, it avoids the limitations normally imposed on emerging events by spacetime itself. This ‘special event’ has no physical or historical elements, yet it is eminently ‘real;’ therefore, it must participate in at least one other emerging event. And because it is outside spacetime, and is in the actual world of at least one other emerging event, it must then be in the actual world of every such event, past, present, and future. Therefore, this ‘special event’ is both immanent and transcendent: Immanent, because it lies in the actual world of every other event and because it motivates and guides each such event. Transcendent, because it is universal and eternal. Therefore, it is the one common event by which all other events may be measured and judged. Every other entity, by definition, must include selected ‘concrete’ elements as well as values and must have the potential to arrange those elements into patterns that are beautiful, truthful, just, ethical, loving, aware, etc. The values that constitute the ‘special event’ form a pattern to which all other patterns are called to confirm. Composed entirely of values that exist outside spacetime, but participate in the constitution of every event inside spacetime. If all this sounds strange and esoteric, it isn’t! In fact, it is totally ordinary and mundane. There already is a perfectly common word that we use whenever we refer to this ‘special event:’ That word is God. Some folks who have followed us this far may leave here. The introduction of ‘God’ into the conversation may be a bridge too far for them. But I would ask those folks to be patient and reflective. The logic of our argument is difficult to escape. Like it or not, there doesn’t seem to be any other way to account for the world as we experience it. Apparently, there is a God after all! So, let’s sum up. What have we demonstrated? We have shown that… The ‘Problem of Evil’ assumes that there are objective values and that those values may (actually, must) be relied on whenever we evaluate an event. We recognize Evil as the absence of those qualities we call ‘good.’ These qualities are the objective values that, by their presence or absence, allow us to recognize Good and Evil in our world. Those same objective values are found in every entity at its origin. Those values influence (but do not determine) the evolution of those events. They constitute the standard by which all events will (must) ultimately be judged. These objective values are both immanent and transcendent. For values to be immanent, they must be embodied in an actual event. For values to be transcendent, that event must occur outside of space and time. The event must be a-temporal, i.e., eternal. There can be but one such event – an event consisting entirely of values and constituted outside of time; we call this entity “God”. And now, if we accept these premises, we know that such an entity must, in fact, exist. So, have we proven the existence of God, the holy grail of philosophy for millennia? Not quite! What I hope we have done is define a very narrow set of conditions one must accept in order to deny God’s existence: Either Good and Evil do not exist (ontological nihilism); or Good and Evil do exist, but they do no not objectively characterize events (ethical nihilism); or Good and Evil do exist, and they do objectively characterize events, but we cannot recognize Good and Evil with anything close to an acceptable degree of accuracy (epistemological nihilism). So, it’s perfectly logical to deny the existence of God, but if you do so, you must be prepared to accept ethical nihilism, ontological nihilism (which could include solipsism), or epistemological nihilism. These are Macbeth’s three witches, Wagner’s three norns, the ‘null points’ of philosophy. So, it turns out that the Problem of Evil backfires! Based on its core assumptions, it morphs into the Problem of Good. In this new form, it strongly supports the very thesis it was designed to debunk, namely that God exists. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com. Share Previous Next Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. 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Annie D. Stutley lives and writes in New Orleans, La. She edits several small publications and contributes to various print and online magazines, most notably "Mississippi Magazine" and Worklight. Her blog, "That Time You," was ranked in the Top 100 Blogs by FeedSpot. To read more of her work, go to her website, or follow her at @anniedstutley or Annie D. Stutley-writer on Facebook. < Back Annie D. Stutley Contributor, Editorial Board Annie D. Stutley lives and writes in New Orleans, La. She edits several small publications and contributes to various print and online magazines, most noticeably Mississippi Magazine and Worklight . Her blog, " That Time You, " was ranked in the Top 100 Blogs by FeedSpot. To read more of her work, go to her website , or follow her at @anniedstutley or Annie D. Stutley-writer on Facebook. Never Skip Over the Miracle Burying Biscuit (to Cole Porter) -- a Childhood in a Single Tale How to Summer All Year The Resurrection Promises More than Heaven The Porta Potty Perspective That Time You Told a Sunrise Lie The Leading Player of Memories That Time You Were Not Exceptionally Divine That Time You Saw Dead People The Unexpected Sophistication of B Movies Messengers Among Us Yesterday, the Very Tomorrow

< Back Prayer for Restoration Hadassah Treu "I long to see the nearing restoration..." I need you in the ruins of my heart, In all the wounded, desolated places, Where darkness comes in as a flood, I need your tender, healing grace. Restore the ruins of my life Search out all the cracks and gaps, Invade them, filling them with light, Erase all paths to pain, all maps. I long to see the nearing restoration, To see it coming like the rising sun To hear it calling every ruin to alteration, Preparing them for the life to come. When all the broken becomes a space, Completely ruled by love and grace. Amen. Hadassah Treu is an international Christian author, blogger, and poet, and the Encouraging Blogger Award Winner of 2020. She is passionate about encouraging people in their journey to faith and a deeper walk with God. Hadassah is a contributing author to several faith-based platforms and devotional and poetry anthologies. She has been featured on (In)courage, Living by Design Ministries, Thoughts About God, Today’s Christian Living (Turning Point), and other popular sites. You can connect with Hadassah at www.onthewaybg.com. Return to our Summer 2023 Table of Contents Previous Next

< Back Theory of Everything David Cowles Aug 30, 2022 “Only six verses long, this Christology contains the elements of a complete Theology, and, beyond that, of a complete Cosmology.” St. Paul's Letter to the Colossians (the congregation at Colossae, east of Ephesus in Asia Minor) includes an ancient, Christological hymn (1: 15-20), possibly the earliest liturgical Christology to be found in Scripture. Only six verses long, this Christology contains the elements of a complete Theology, and, beyond that, a complete Cosmology: "He (Christ) is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for in him all things were created… All things were created through him and for him. He is before all things and in him all things hold together… He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead . For in him all the fullness was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things for him…" Let’s break this down: He (Christ) is the (visible) image of the invisible God . God is invisible, but Christ is Imago Dei. He is before all things, he is the beginning, the firstborn of all creation and the firstborn from the dead. Christ is universal and eternal; therefore, Christ is in the 'actual world' of every event and every event is in the ‘actual world’ of Christ. Therefore, elsewhere, Christ is referred to as the Alpha and the Omega. All things were created in him, through him, and for him . Christ is the locus of whatever is (i.e., whatever is now, was once, or may come to be in the future). Christ is the efficient cause (origin) of whatever is . Christ is the final cause (destiny) of whatever is . In him all things hold together. Christ is the order ( logos ) of creation. Whatever is , in so far as it is , participates in Christ and Christ in it. Therefore, all events share at least one element in common (Christ) and participate in at least one common event (Christ). Because, and only because, all events share at least one element in common (Christ) and participate in at least one common entity (Christ), whatever is enjoys the Solidarity needed to form Kosmos . In him all the fullness was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things for him. Christ is not just the sensible image of an insensible God; Christ is God (“all the fullness was pleased to dwell in him”). Solidarity presumes the ultimate reconciliation of all things. The reconciliation of all things is a necessary pre-condition for “God to be all in all” (I Cor. 15: 28). Now if Christ , God , and Creation are not your cup of tea…no problem! Use whatever words you like – just make sure that they do the same job that Colossians does with its choice of vocabulary: Colossians provides a cosmological model that seeks to account – successfully in my view – for our experience of the cosmos. Of course, it won’t tell us whether the Boston Celtics will win another NBA championship, but it does tell us most everything else that is important to us. Beginning with Einstein, physics and philosophy have been searching for a GUT (a grand unified theory) or a TOE (a theory of everything) to account for cosmos as we experience it. With all due respect to Hawking & Co., Paul of Tarsus gave us just such a TOE roughly 2000 years ago. Image: Philippe de Champaigne , Saint Paul (c. 1650) 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.

Rabbi Dr. Jon Kelsen is Dean at YCT, where he has previously taught Talmud and Pedagogy. Prior to this, Rabbi Kelsen was Rosh Kollel of the Drisha Kollel as well as an adjunct faculty member at the Pardes Institute. He received ordination from Rabbis Daniel Landes and Zalman Nehemiah Goldberg, and received his doctorate in Education and Jewish Studies at New York University as a Wexner Graduate Fellow. < Back Rabbi Dr. Jon Kelsen Contributor Rabbi Dr. Jon Kelsen is Dean at YCT, where he has previously taught Talmud and Pedagogy. Prior to this, Rabbi Kelsen was Rosh Kollel of the Drisha Kollel as well as an adjunct faculty member at the Pardes Institute. He received ordination from Rabbis Daniel Landes and Zalman Nehemiah Goldberg, and received his doctorate in Education and Jewish Studies at New York University as a Wexner Graduate Fellow. Parshat Emor: Making it All Count