< Back The Intellectual History of Planet Earth David Cowles Jul 22, 2026 “Orangutangs and Oysters are more interested in the how of living than they are in the how come.” 1600 words, 8 minute read As humans, we seem to have an insatiable desire to ‘understand’ the world we live in; there’s little evidence that other species share our theoretical curiosity. As far as we know, Orangutangs and Oysters are more interested in the how of living than they are in the how come . We, on the other hand, have been puzzling out the phenomenon of Being at least since the earliest cave paintings and epic poems. Amazingly, the results of 50 odd millennia can be neatly divided into just two theoretical buckets: Bucket #1 : “There is nothing to understand. Things are just as they are.” What is is , period. We are extremely sophisticated Orangutangs and Oysters. Our ‘job’ is just to catalogue what is. There is no need to posit noumena in order to understand phenomena. There are only phenomena! ‘That it is’ explains itself: It is is as far as it goes. What you See is What you Get ( WYSIWYG ). What you see is all there is to see, it’s what’s there ! In the language of Parmenides I , Aletheia = Doxa ;Heidegger , Dasein = Wassein . Growing up in the 1950s, I am familiar with this model. “Why? Because I say so!” Surprisingly, thinking along these lines is what we call Science . The authority of the parent has been replaced by that of the academy; in place of rewards and punishments, we have empirical data and the Scientific Method. Science is an incredibly powerful tool, unmatched in our planet’s intellectual history. Sure beats the Oracle at Delphi! But it has two significant limitations: It concerns itself only with what can be repeated and measured. Whatever is unique (one off) or imperceptible must fall outside the scope of Science. We love Science; it’s easy! (Never thought I’d write that sentence.) But Physics is a ‘gut’ compared to Metaphysics . Being able to repeat an experiment over and over and witness the results (albeit with technologically enhanced eyes) is a true luxury. No wonder we can send folks to the Moon! The scientific paradigm is the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (i.e. no ‘interpretation’ at all): Once you’ve catalogued and sorted all the data, there is nothing more to be done. The data points and their superficial patterns are what is, all there is, or at any rate, all that can be known or expressed. Those of us gifted with the sense of sight have special access to a narrow range of the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum. Other sighted animals have similar access but often over slightly different ranges. The full EM spectrum spans 20 orders of magnitude; all in, the animal kingdom has access to less than one such order. And yet we go through life thinking that ‘seeing is believing’, i.e. that what you see is what there is…and all there is. According to an old Hasidic tale, a Rabbi was on his way home from Schule when we saw a widow on her hand and knees under a street lamp. Not wishing to be an unsympathetic character in someone’s Good Samaritan story, the Rabbi offers to assist: “How can I help?” “I only have one penny in all the world and I’ve lost it.” “Is this where you lost it?” “No, I lost it over there.” “Then why are you looking here?” “Because the light is better.” We live in a Universe that spans about 60 orders of magnitude (from the Planck length to the event horizon). The EM spectrum spans 20 of those orders; our unaided visual experience of the world is limited to less than one such order…but we trust it! Of course, IRL we have technology that translates a much wider range of data from the spectrum into visible effects; but it’s still well short of the whole. Still, those of us who ‘trust science’ and only science, are like the widow in this tale. We are looking for answers where they are easiest to find (the realm of the empirical and the repeatable) whether or not this is where they are to be found. To confirm our bias we’ve evolved a language, logic, and mathematics that reinforce the scientific paradigm. At the extreme, we accept only propositions that can be verified (actually, falsified) by the Scientific Method. According to the high priest of Analytic Philosophy, Ludwig Wittgenstein, we cannot speak meaningfully outside the limits imposed by the scientific method and “whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” Later in his career, Wittgenstein softened his position slightly, calling non-scientific communication important nonsense . *** Bucket #2 : “The world we see is at most the tip of the world that is.” Like Alice , we are left to ponder whether all of Lookingglass World is similar to what Alice can see in the mirror. More likely, it’s a random sample (fractal), a shadow (Plato), a projection (hologram) or a graphical representation (map) of what is . We cannot just accept phenomena at face value; we need to build an algorithm that allows us to reason from what’s observable to the deep structure that underpins it. With this approach, we do not have the blessing (or curse) of excluding data that falls outside a particular universe of discourse. We must consider the unique, the subjective, the complex, the fleeting. If we feel it, we must account for it. As I said (above), this is both a curse and a blessing – a curse that we have to account for so many more data points, a blessing that we have so much more data from which to tease out and verify our noumenal model. And here, at the very outset of our journey, we run into ‘transportation problems’. We are in the first mile of a cross continent drive when the damn engine light comes on. We need some sort of medium to enshrine and communicate our discoveries, but English, like the kids in my backseat, is already acting up. Bucket #1 was so easy! Almost everyone can agree to call it Science. But what to call Bucket #2 ? Mythology? Religion? Theology? Philosophy? Art? Absolutely, all of the above…and more! But each of these words comes with its own unique load of off-putting baggage. English doesn’t have a single word perfectly suited to our purpose. What words it does have, share other, sometimes less savory, denotations. But we will make do: Mythology consists of supra-natural narratives that attempt to express the deep structure of Being in images that we can relate to and in patterns that we can comprehend. The mythos of a society consists of the things it takes for granted, its undefined terms: the seasonal cycles in Egypt (Nile), the movements of celestial objects (stars), the Patriots in the Superbowl. The Scientific Method (Bucket #1 ) was the dominant myth in the 20 th century North Atlantic community. Religion celebrates what mythology discloses. Our modern universities are temples to the gods of science. Theology and Philosophy dig more deeply into the theoretical underpinnings of our mythological narratives and religious rituals. Finally, Art is how we encode and share what we discover. As much as the rigors of the Scientific Method constrict its universe of discourse, Art blows through virtually every symbolic constraint. Every artist paints a picture, sometimes with images (painting, sculpture), or words (literature), or sounds (music). The function of Art (per Heidegger) is to reveal and convey to others something truly new about being-in-the-world. Therefore, Science is Art as well as Myth; it has revealed certain aspects of our world in mind boggling detail. But I believe there’s more. There are important aspects of reality that lie outside the universe of scientific discourse and if someone (Wittgenstein) wants to call them ‘nonsense’, I’m ok with that. *** “Bucket, bucket, who’s got the bucket?” This was a lovely presentation (above) but it’s all nonsense , ‘important’ or otherwise. Lean in close now, I need to keep my voice down for this: “There is no Bucket #1 .” Shh, don’t let on you know. Keep on keepin’ on. Scientific Method depends for its validity on the assumption of repeatability. Euclid virtually invented the concept. Every planar triangle has angles totaling 180 degrees. Everything is repeatable an unlimited number of times. But Euclid’s world does not exist. IRL there are no perfect triangles, and no two shapes are congruent. The material (Marx) is the death of the ideal (Hegel). Everything is novel, everything is one off, everything is in Bucket #2 . That said, novelty can be massive or minimal in any given event. Some events adhere more closely to the details of their inherited Actual Worlds than others; some are more creative or adventurous. But there is always an infinitesimal element ( differance per Derrida) that distinguishes any single event from all other events. Science proceeds by systematically minimizing the degree of novelty in each event and then by disregarding the inevitable residual. It works; it got us to the Moon (above). But is it enough to let us unearth the noumenal structure of Being itself. I doubt it. For that we need Mythology, Art, and dare I say it, Religion: “The grove needs an altar.” (Pound) 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 Amazon David Cowles Amazon provides reliable, rapid, and inexpensive delivery service; and the US Postal Service? Well, to be kind let’s say ‘not so much’. So who is being sued by the feds? You guessed it…Amazon. Apparently, success today is automatically an anti-trust violation. Amazon provides reliable, rapid, and inexpensive delivery service; and the US Postal Service? Well, to be kind let’s say ‘not so much’. So who is being sued by the feds? You guessed it…Amazon. Apparently, success today is automatically an anti-trust violation. Previous Next

Aletheia Today is a collection of essays designed to offer fresh insights into traditional philosophical and theological problems and to apply those insights to contemporary developments in culture, art and the social and physical sciences. About Us What is Aletheia Today? Aletheia Today is where philosophy, theology, and science converge in a collection of critical thought essays and personal reflections intended to provoke constructive dialog among people of varying ideologies, faiths and belief systems. Travel Back in Time... It’s circa 500 B.C. and Parmenides of Elea is teaching science and philosophy all over the Greek speaking world. Today, he is widely recognized as the Father of Western Science and the Father of Western Philosophy. Statement of Faith AT Magazine is dedicated to elucidating and encouraging the 21st century convergence of philosophy, theology, and science. The editors of ATM are people of faith in the Christian tradition. However, ATM is intended to promote respectful, constructive dialog among people of good will, regardless of religious affiliation, if any. Articles from independent contributors to ATM do not necessarily represent the views of its editorial board. Meet our team of writers. Click here for our masthead.

< Back How ChatGPT Robs Students Naomi S. Baron "When AI does our writing for us, we diminish opportunities to think out problems for ourselves." When the company OpenAI launched its new artificial intelligence program, ChatGPT, in late 2022, educators began to worry. ChatGPT could generate text that seemed like a human wrote it. How could teachers detect whether students were using language generated by an AI chatbot to cheat on a writing assignment? As a linguist who studies the effects of technology on how people read , write and think , I believe there are other, equally pressing concerns besides cheating. These include whether AI, more generally, threatens student writing skills, the value of writing as a process, and the importance of seeing writing as a vehicle for thinking. As part of the research for my new book on the effects of artificial intelligence on human writing , I surveyed young adults in the U.S. and Europe about a host of issues related to those effects. They reported a litany of concerns about how AI tools can undermine what they do as writers. However, as I note in my book, these concerns have been a long time in the making. Users See Negative Effects Tools like ChatGPT are only the latest in a progression of AI programs for editing or generating text. In fact, the potential for AI undermining both writing skills and motivation to do your own composing has been decades in the making. Spellcheck and now sophisticated grammar and style programs like Grammarly and Microsoft Editor are among the most widely known AI-driven editing tools. Besides correcting spelling and punctuation, they identify grammar issues as well as offer alternative wording. AI text-generation developments have included autocomplete for online searches and predictive texting. Enter “Was Rome” into a Google search and you’re given a list of choices like “Was Rome built in a day.” Type “ple” into a text message and you’re offered “please” and “plenty.” These tools inject themselves into our writing endeavors without being invited, incessantly asking us to follow their suggestions. Young adults in my surveys appreciated AI assistance with spelling and word completion, but they also spoke of negative effects. One survey participant said that “At some point, if you depend on a predictive text [program], you’re going to lose your spelling abilities.” Another observed that “Spellcheck and AI software … can … be used by people who want to take an easier way out.” One respondent mentioned laziness when relying on predictive texting: “It’s OK when I am feeling particularly lazy.” Personal Expression Diminished AI tools can also affect a person’s writing voice. One person in my survey said that with predictive texting, “[I] don’t feel I wrote it.” A high school student in Britain echoed the same concern about individual writing style when describing Grammarly: “Grammarly can remove students’ artistic voice. … Rather than using their own unique style when writing, Grammarly can strip that away from students by suggesting severe changes to their work.” In a similar vein, Evan Selinger, a philosopher, worried that predictive texting reduces the power of writing as a form of mental activity and personal expression. “[B]y encouraging us not to think too deeply about our words, predictive technology may subtly change how we interact with each other,” Selinger wrote . “[W]e give others more algorithm and less of ourselves. … [A]utomation … can stop us thinking.” In literate societies, writing has long been recognized as a way to help people think . Many people have quoted author Flannery O’Connor ’s comment that “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.” A host of other accomplished writers, from William Faulkner to Joan Didion , have also voiced this sentiment. If AI text generation does our writing for us, we diminish opportunities to think out problems for ourselves. One eerie consequence of using programs like ChatGPT to generate language is that the text is grammatically perfect. A finished product. It turns out that lack of errors is a sign that AI, not a human, probably wrote the words, since even accomplished writers and editors make mistakes. Human writing is a process. We question what we originally wrote, we rewrite, or sometimes start over entirely. Challenges in Schools When undertaking school writing assignments, ideally there is ongoing dialogue between teacher and student: Discuss what the student wants to write about. Share and comment on initial drafts. Then it’s time for the student to rethink and revise. But this practice often doesn’t happen. Most teachers don’t have time to fill a collaborative editorial – and educational – role. Moreover, they might lack interest or the necessary skills, or both. Conscientious students sometimes undertake aspects of the process themselves – as professional authors typically do. But the temptation to lean on editing and text generation tools like Grammarly and ChatGPT makes it all too easy for people to substitute ready-made technology results for opportunities to think and learn. Educators are brainstorming how to make good use of AI writing technology. Some point up AI’s potential to kick-start thinking or to collaborate. Before the appearance of ChatGPT, an earlier version of the same underlying program, GPT-3, was licensed by commercial ventures such as Sudowrite . Users can enter a phrase or sentence and then ask the software to fill in more words, potentially stimulating the human writer’s creative juices. A fading sense of Ownership Yet there’s a slippery slope between collaboration and encroachment. Writer Jennifer Lepp admits that as she increasingly relied on Sudowrite, the resulting text “didn’t feel like mine anymore. It was very uncomfortable to look back over what I wrote and not really feel connected to the words or ideas.” Students are even less likely than seasoned writers to recognize where to draw the line between a writing assist and letting an AI text generator take over their content and style. As the technology becomes more powerful and pervasive, I expect schools will strive to teach students about generative AI’s pros and cons . However, the lure of efficiency can make it hard to resist relying on AI to polish a writing assignment or do much of the writing for you. Spellcheck, grammar check and autocomplete programs have already paved the way. Writing as a Human Process I asked ChatGPT whether it was a threat to humans’ motivation to write. The bot’s response: “There will always be a demand for creative, original content that requires the unique perspective and insight of a human writer.” It continued: “[W]riting serves many purposes beyond just the creation of content, such as self-expression, communication, and personal growth, which can continue to motivate people to write even if certain types of writing can be automated.” I was heartened to find the program seemingly acknowledged its own limitations. My hope is that educators and students will as well. The purpose of making writing assignments must be more than submitting work for a grade. Crafting written work should be a journey, not just a destination. This essay was republished with minimal edits in cooperation with The Conversation . Professor Baron is interested in language and technology, written language, reading, the history and structure of English, and higher education. She is a former Guggenheim Fellow, Fulbright Fellow, and Visiting Scholar at the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Her books include Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World (which won the English-Speaking Union’s Duke of Edinburgh English Language Book Award for 2008), Words Onscreen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital World (2015), and How We Read Now: Strategic Choices for Print, Screen, and Audio (2021). Her newest book (forthcoming) is Who Wrote This? How AI and the Lure of Efficiency Threaten Human Writing. Professor Baron taught at Brown University, Emory University, and Southwestern University before coming to American University in Washington, DC, where she has served as associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences, chair of the Department of Language and Foreign Studies, Director of the TESOL Program, and executive director of the Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning. Professor Baron has appeared extensively in the media, including interviews on Good Morning America, ABC News 20/20, CNN, The Diane Rehm Show, All Things Considered, the BBC, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Chronicle of Higher Education, New Yorker, Fortune, and Time. Return to our AI Issue Table of Contents Previous Next

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 Philosophy Friedrich Nietzsche “Value-based judgments assume a transcendent point of view and sooner or later, that way of thinking leads to God-talk and any such talk is strictly verboten.” I Am the Walrus “Popular music after World War II is a treasure trove for the philosophically curious… Paraphrasing Ecclesiastes, there’s a time to wind and a time to unravel, and now is the time to unravel.” Personae “Turns out, I am the Worldwide Wrinkle…and so are you!” Ship of Theseus “There is only one I am, shared by YHWH and Jesus…and me…and you…and Rene Descartes (…ergo sum).” Theology The Theology of Mikhail Bakunin “Bakunin was fierce in his profession of atheism; but unlike his Marxist counterparts, he was not shy about using the language of Judeo-Christian theology to make his points.” A Jewish Approach to Cognitive Dissonance "I would like to be an intellectually honest spiritual seeker, a warm and loving and dynamic wife and mother, a supportive friend; but at the end of the day, I look in the mirror, and see an annoyed and tired dish rag, and all I want to do is have a cup of coffee and a bar of chocolate. Warm dynamic spiritual seeker aside, anyone who stands between me and my mug is in for it." Korach Over Dinner "Like most people of my generation, I cringe when I hear the M word." Eucharist “…The spacetime world of matter and energy, 14 billion years old and almost 100 billion light years across, is not the final word.” Culture & The Arts Read on a Beach “Tell us what you did (read) on your summer vacation!” Lord of the Flies Shows How Humans Are Hard-Wired to Help Each Other "We can only speculate what the six boys on the island in the Pacific Ocean would have done if they had run out of food – but whatever it is, I would certainly not draw any conclusions from it in terms of the essence of human nature." What Are My Values? “We live under another emperor today. It is even more insidious than Constantine for it appears that this is all for our good.” How to Think Like a Woman Author Regan Penaluna on female philosophy and the risks of being too smart throughout history... Spirituality Ave Maria “Of course, no one needs to invoke Mary’s intercession… (but) imagine OJ without his Dream Team.” Burying Biscuit (to Cole Porter) -- a Childhood in a Single Tale "...of course it would be the home of a hamster with a preference for a song about a bunch of sinners on a cruise ship begging for a revival." Summer of Enchantment "This is a rally cry for believers to be the most enchanted people on the planet. Otherwise, what are we even doing here? " Never Skip Over the Miracle "Once upon a time, a grittier version of me roamed barefoot and luxuriated not in material but in emotional response. " 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 A Theory of Everything (TOE) David Cowles Thirty years after the death of Jesus…St. Paul quoted an already ancient Christology…a TOE. It all started with Einstein, of course: modern science’s search for a Theory of Everything (TOE). 100 years gone and still no joy! But thirty years after the death of Jesus, in a letter to the Christian community at Colossae in Asia Minor, St. Paul quoted an already ancient Christology that itself constitutes a complete Cosmology, a TOE (click on image for expanded view): Not convinced? Not a problem! The search for ‘a better TOE’ goes on. However, the decision to reject Paul’s cosmology has consequences. It seems you must hold one (or more) of the following views: (1) The Cosmology we’ve presented is not a TOE. (2) The Cosmology we’ve presented is not consistent with Paul’s Christology. (3) The TOE we’ve presented contains internal inconsistencies. (4) The Cosmology we’ve presented is a valid and consistent TOE, but it is only one of many possible TOEs. Can you come up with an objection to our thesis that does not fall under one of the objections listed above. If so, please let us know. If not, then I respond as follows. (1) It is true that our Cosmology does not let you predict the outcome of next year’s Super Bowl; nor tell us why the sky is blue. But it does answer every question that matters: How is it that what is is? Why is it that what is ( Dasein ) what it is ( Wassein )? What will what is come to be? (2) If our ‘translation’ doesn’t work for you, suggest one that does. How do you understand the cosmological assumptions implicit in Paul’s Christology? Feel free to sketch out an alternative cosmology that is more consistent with Paul’s Christology. (3) With all due respect, show me! (4) Surprise: This objection may be valid …or not! Of course, there are indefinitely many possible TOEs, but will the others stand up to a deep structural analysis? Or will it turn out that any successful TOEs must be mappable onto Paul’s Christology? 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

Healthcare is a problem and not just in the US. Everywhere cost and quality battle; everywhere both are losing. But as in so many other things, the US is the bell cow. Aletheia Today is the magazine for believers in God and science. Process philosophy, scripture study, and critical essays bring science and faith together. AI First Healthcare June 1, 2026 Issue Healthcare is a problem and not just in the US. Everywhere cost and quality battle; everywhere both are losing. But as in so many other things, the US is the bell cow. Healthcare has been an issue in the US since the mid-60’s and it has perhaps been issue #1 over the last 40 years. Today, it consumes almost 20% of our GDP but 30% of that cost is spent on treatment that is not appropriate for the patient’s actual condition – that’s 6% of GDP lost…not to mention the human cost. We’ve tried provider networks, we’ve tried managed care, we’ve tried consumerism, we’ve tried wellness – nothing works! Surprised? We know that government control, price fixing, supply rationing, and demand management never work…ever, anywhere, for almost anything. So why should healthcare be any different? What does work, almost always, almost everywhere, for almost anything? Technology. Why not give it a go? Lord knows we’re tried everything else. Now don’t get me wrong. Doctors know a lot; they know how to do a lot of things. But the system is structured so that this knowledge rarely benefits the typical patient during a typical interaction. ‘Patient management’ takes the place of genuine care. We have the technology to transform healthcare…we just need the will to deploy it and we will begin to build that will only once we stop moving furniture. Healthcare & The Titanic “We have the technology to transform healthcare…we just need the will to deploy it and we will begin to build that will only once we stop moving furniture.” Can AI Save Healthcare? “What was once a healing art has become physiological engineering… the healthcare system treats me as if I were a cheap knock-off of the 6 million dollar man.” My PCP Should Be a BOT “Dr. Bot would handle patient in-take, conduct the initial interview…order appropriate tests, and offer a preliminary diagnosis…” Who's Afraid of an HMO? “HMOs dumbed down quality and erected formidable barriers to care… (so) why would anyone want to bring them back?” My MD Should Be a Bot “AI is 4 times better at diagnosing complex medical conditions than MDs. This…could be the death knell for the traditional practice of medicine.” 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 Jubilee 2025 David Cowles Jun 27, 2024 “Every 50 years we get a collective do-over! Golfers will recognize this as ‘Taking a Mulligan.’” I don’t care what you say, we’re in a pickle! We have been entrusted with a body of knowledge that is profoundly revolutionary, politically intolerable, and contrary to 500 years of so-called ‘accumulated wisdom’ (1500 – 2000 CE). We dare not proclaim this knowledge openly, so we speak in vague, euphemistic terms so as not to offend anyone’s secular sensibilities . For example, we’ve reduced Eucharist from ‘Transubstantiation’ to an ‘Expression of God’s Love ’. So when I read this recent Vatican press release announcing that 2025 would be a Jubilee Year, I was not in the least surprised: “VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- In the Hebrew Scriptures, God commanded his people to observe a Jubilee as a time to restore their relationships with God, with other people and with the land. Especially since St. John Paul II proclaimed the Holy Year 2000, part of the Catholic Church's Jubilee efforts to repair those relationships has included working for the forgiveness or just restructuring of the foreign debt of the world's poorest countries.” There is no more radical idea in all of social philosophy than the concept of Jubilee , yet somehow the Church has managed to boil it down to an NPR-like segment on ‘debt restructuring’. According to Torah , every 7th day is a Sabbath, every 7th year is a Sabbatical Year, and immediately after the 7th Sabbatical Year…Jubilee! That’s some build-up for ‘ a time to restore relationships’. If you have a sense that the real story somehow got buried, you’re right! Let’s compare what Torah actually has to say about this so-called ‘time to restore relationships’: “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) In other words, every 50 years we get a collective do-over ! Golfers will recognize this as Taking a Mulligan . Assuming Normal Life Expectancy (even by 1st century standards), each person will get at least one such do-over during their lifetime. To be clear, at Jubilee all of society’s productive assets (Marx’s ‘means of production’) are redistributed, equally, among all eligible residents. Personal property, including hearth and home, is exempt. Still, this is a long way from merely restoring relationships . The Church is frankly afraid to proclaim Jubilee in its full, Biblical sense…and understandably so! The first Card Carrying Christian, Member #1 , was nearly thrown off a cliff by a crowd of his neighbors on the very first day of his public ministry. Why? He proclaimed a Jubilee…beginning ‘this day’, i.e. immediately. Imagine you went to church some Sunday. As you’re sitting in your pew, perched smugly secure atop your ‘retirement nest egg’, you suddenly learn that your 401k has just been emptied out. The $1,000,000 that you saved, with the help of your employer and the tax code, has been confiscated. But not to worry. In return, you’ll receive an equal share of all of society’s aggregate productive property…how does $50,000 sound? Fortunately, you’re not the sort of person who would throw a prophet off a parapet…or are you? Jesus was bold; we’d expect nothing less from a Messiah. But even Jesus learned the lessons of realpolitik . After the disastrous launch of Christ 1.0 at Capernaum, it was all parables, pithy maxims, and portents of the Apocalypse. Then as now, the end of the World is a much safer subject than the redistribution of wealth! Millennia later, when JP II proclaimed the Year 2000 a Jubilee, I doubt he was worried about being thrown off a cliff. The very idea of such a thing is straight out of Monty Python : “The chief finance ministers of the G7 nations have broken into the Papal residence and kidnapped John Paul.” Not happening! This is the 3rd millennium; we take our politics and our religion seriously…but not that seriously! Even so, Pope Francis is taking no chances. He created an ecclesiastical version of Where’s Waldo . The challenge: Find the concept of Jubilee hidden in the Church’s current teachings. I understand that Leviticus can be challenging. I’m not opposed to reinterpreting the ‘letter of the law’ in order to preserve its ‘spirit’. It’s absolutely necessary and Aletheia Today attempted just such a ‘contemporary adaptation’ of the Jubilee concept in an earlier post . But our proposal went a lot further than mere ‘debt restructuring’. The cross-cultural application of ethical norms is tricky. A rubric from BCE may mean something entirely different if applied literally in a 3rd millennium setting. On the other hand, ‘interpretation’ can be code for ‘indoctrination’. The need to reinterpret an anachronistic norm can be a perfect opportunity for the introduction of heterodox ideology unsupported by Scripture. Discern. Even some non-believers sense the presence of Spirit in Biblical texts. That Spirit is in just as much demand when it comes to interpreting those texts. The goal of course is to preserve as much as possible of the original instruction, avoiding: (1) the temptation to let 21st century ideology hijack 1st century text, and (2) the temptation to water down the revolutionary implications of the original, hoping to make it more palatable to contemporary intellectual and ethical tastes. The way forward for the beleaguered Church is not some watered down compromise with secular modernity. After all, without the printing press, the internet or social media, a 1st century theological movement overthrew the late great Roman Empire. Ideas do have power! That is the revolutionary spirit that the Church needs to rediscover today…and no better place to start than by rethinking plans for Jubilee 2025. 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 Competing Cosmologies David Cowles Mar 7, 2023 “Cosmic phenomena may best be understood by overlaying several incompatible but complementary models.” The Spring Issue (3/1/23) of Aletheia Today Magazine (ATM) included two articles: Two Faced God , an article on the cross-cultural notion of God as ‘Time Binder’, and Legos and Bells , an article on the cutting edge, non-local cosmology embedded in The Lego Movie . Both articles explored alternative ways of imagining the deep structure of Cosmos. We’ve all been brought up to believe that the Earth is a sphere, suspended in a space ‘full’ of stars, planets, moons and other celestial debris. Fits the data! Makes sense! But this model’s success need not come at the expense of complementary alternatives. We are told that folks used to understand the Earth as a flat surface resting comfortably under a dome (the firmament), in much the same way as a poached fish might be served in a pretentiously expensive restaurant. We have been led to believe that the divergence of these two models is a fundamental ‘event’ in the intellectual history of the West. It isn’t! On the contrary, cosmic phenomena may best be understood by overlaying several incompatible but complementary models. In Two Faced Gods , for example, we explored the idea that the heavens and the earth may simply be alternate orientations on a single, non-orientable surface (a Möbius strip). Sidebar : This is apparently Dante’s dominant cosmological model. He presents Paradiso and Inferno as opposite orientations in a continuous but non-orientable Universe. This model turns the Lord’s Prayer (“on earth as it is in heaven”) into a cosmological fact. It also accounts for the alleged ‘sympathy’ of terrestrial and astral events ( aka Astrology). Elaborations of this model include the idea of West World, Aran, Finisterre . When Columbus sailed west, he undoubtedly expected to find India; but what did the Vikings expect when they made the crossing many centuries earlier? Probably not India, maybe not even Newfoundland, perhaps the dwellings of the gods, possibly that point on the horizon when heaven and earth meet. Did they expect to sail into the sky? “Look, Ma, there’s daddy, right next to Orion.” We can’t say for sure. Space is time and time is space: ‘that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know’. So, if you can’t afford to buy a ticket to Orion, or even to Newfoundland, no problem. You can just wait for the sun to set. According to William Butler Yeats, ‘on a clear day you can see forever’. Anyone can! Prince or pauper, you can experience the marriage of heaven and earth, thanks in no small measure to the seemingly endless subarctic twilights. Analogy : The Incarnation took place once and for all at a single place and time. BTW, that terrestrial event had its own celestial counterpart: the Star of Bethlehem. Even more importantly, the Incarnation reoccurs every day in the celebration of the Eucharist. As a result, everyone may experience the Incarnation regardless of their location in spacetime…or their financial means. A disturbing variation of the ‘flat earth’ model is the one most often attributed to the ancients, i.e. the idea that Earth has edges: “Eric, don’t wander too far from home or monsters will get you. And don’t sail too close to the edge, or you might fall off!” What parent, ancient or modern, has not occasionally resorted to exaggerated rhetoric to warn a cherished offspring about the dangers afoot in the wide, wide world? Bottom line : we can’t be sure whether educated adults ever actually believed that the world had edges; but we may assume that Eric’s mom’s final instructions to her explorer son went unheeded. Fast-forward to the 3 rd millennium CE. Just when you thought the world had no more use for ‘flat earth’ cosmologies, along comes The Lego Group (Denmark), urging ‘kids (ages 8 to 14)’ to create their own universes…on a finite flat surface (i.e., with edges). No idea is so bad that it can’t be resurrected , including the idea of an earth with edges. Also, no idea is so bad that it can’t be redeemed , and The Lego Movie (2014) does just that. Emmet, the hero of the movie, takes it for granted that his world is suspended in oblivion. He never questions the danger of stepping off the edge. But did I mention that Emmet is a hero? And what is courage but the determination to do what’s right even when there is no hope for a positive outcome? So Emmet risks almost certain annihilation to accomplish his ‘cosmic mission’, i.e., to save the world. However, much to Emmet’s surprise, and ours, Legoland turns out not to be surrounded by oblivion but by a higher dimensional universe populated by large carbon-based organisms (the monsters of mythology?… aka people). The cosmology of Lego Land is indeed flat, but it is both ‘non-orientable’ and ‘entangled’. Events that occur in Legoland are correlated with separate events that occur in the higher dimensional universe that embeds it. As we discussed in Legos and Bells , Legoland and its higher dimensional counterpart constitute neither one world nor two. They constitute 1.4 (the square root of 2) worlds. Thus, they are neither total independent of one another (two worlds) nor total dependent on one another (one world). In the words of John Bell (1964), they are entangled . The fullest possible understanding of reality will not be achieved using any one model, but may be more closely approached with an overlay of multiple complementary models. The Standard Model of Cosmology must be supplemented by non-orientability and by entanglement. 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 Leo XIV Redux David Cowles “I’m now seeing ‘Leo’ as an extension of Francis’ pontificate, made more concretely relevant and imbued with new vigor.” Leo XIV from Chitown USA became Pope on May 8, 2025. However, 2025 was a Jubilee Year proclaimed by Leo’s processor, Pope Francis. Therefore, the theological ‘tone’ of 2025 remained ‘Franciscan’. To celebrate the end of the Jubilee Year and to begin to make his own mark on the Church, Leo convened a Consistory of Cardinals on January 7, 2026. Hoping for something new and refreshing from this pope, I was initially disappointed to learn that Leo directed the cardinals to reread Francis’ signature Encyclical, Evangelii Gaudium (EG, 11/24/2013) in preparation. Until I read it! Turns out, EG is full of exactly those ideas and perspectives that are vital to the Church’s future. I’m now seeing ‘Leo’ as an extension of Francis’ pontificate, made more concretely relevant and imbued with new vigor. Let’s browse: “The great danger in today’s world, pervaded as it is by consumerism, is the desolation and anguish born of a complacent yet covetous heart, the feverish pursuit of frivolous pleasures, and a blunted conscience.” Arguably, with slight adjustment, this sentence could be applied to any culture at any time in human history. It is a restatement of the human condition. However, this particular formulation calls special attention to the ‘wages’ of consumerism: i.e. desolation and anguish, complacency and greed, a blunted conscience. In other words…us, as we are today! “Getting and spending we lay waste our powers.” (Wordsworth) “Whenever our interior life becomes caught up in its own interests and concerns, there is no longer room for others…and the desire to do good fades…” Here Leo is reinforcing a fundamental connection between ‘ethics’ and ‘the other’. Jesus, quoting Leviticus (19: 18), said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” And he added, on this ‘hang all of the Law and the Prophets’. We become aware of others as we become aware of our ethical obligations toward them. In an ideal world, we don’t abuse our pets. We don’t abuse them, not because it’s against the law, and not because we just read an article on animal consciousness. We take care of our pets because we love them and love is the source and manifestation of all ethics. We do good because we love others and we express that love by caring for them. Usually, we recognize ‘the other’ most clearly in human beings. But that is not always the case. Just as in AA, where ‘anything’ can be your ‘higher power’ (not just God), so in ethics ‘anything’ can be your other : a pet, a tree, a mountain, Nature ( Gaia ), Cosmos …even God. For that reason the Great Commandment (above) also says, “Love God with your whole heart, etc.” True solipsists, however, acknowledge no ethics; knowing no ‘other’, they are bound by nothing. They are Dostoevsky (“God is dead…everything is permitted”) on steroids. “Goodness always tends to spread. Every authentic experience of truth and goodness seeks by its very nature to grow within us, and any person who has experienced a profound liberation becomes more sensitive to the needs of others…If we wish to lead a dignified and fulfilling life, we have to reach out to others and seek their good.” Question : What Fortune 100 company just awarded its 2026 advertising contract to the firm of Augustine, Aquinas, and Leo (XIII)? Answer : UAL (United Airlines). Winning Slogan : “Good leads the way.” Sidebar : When theology is no longer mainstream, the mainstream becomes theological. Truth will be heard! Every undertaking of every intentional agent is motivated by that agent’s pursuit of Good as she understands it. Whatever we set out to do, no matter how distorted and perverse the result, we are initially motivated by the universal thirst for Good. We can discover the ‘good’ via the ‘other’ but we can also discover the other via the good. Ethical awareness makes us sensitive to the existence and needs of others. Whenever we seek another’s ‘good’, especially when it is in preference to our own selfish interests, we manifest love, the essence of all ethics. We will not begin to treat bots with respect because we discover they are conscious; we will discover that bots are conscious when we begin to treat them with respect. Among other things, Christianity is a revival of the original boy band, Anaximander & the Pre-Socratics. According to the lead vocalist (6th century BCE), Being is Relationship. I come to be as I facilitate the coming to be of another. I am able to realize my good only by enabling others to realize theirs. There is no ‘self’ in ‘selfish’: selfishness is an oxymoron! (No, Billy, that doesn’t mean it’s ok to call selfish people, ‘morons’.) “I am selfish” means “I am not. I do not exist!” There are no rocks, there are no islands, only fields and flows. EG brings together two absolutely core principles of Christianity: First, Good is the natural order of things; it spreads, it grows within us and it overflows into the lives of others. Second, we discover ourselves in others, specifically in the granting of reck . (Anaximander) As a Baby Boomer I was a card carrying member of the “Who am I?” movement, dedicated to “Finding myself.” Drove my father nuts; he knew who he was…or so he said. But he didn’t know enough to calm my restless mind. He didn’t know that to find myself, I merely needed to find ‘another’ and grant them reck . Sounds like Francis, and now Leo, nailed this! Positivists tend to dismiss Ethics as a ‘pseudo-science’ – hypotheses with no verifiable consequences. Not so! Christian ethics do have real world, behavioral implications. For example, Pope Francis (EG) quoted Thoman Aquinas: “…Mercy is the greatest of the virtues, since all the others revolve around it and, more than this, it makes up for their deficiencies.” What theologians call ‘mercy’, secular philosophers call ‘reck’ – the sublimation of apparent self-interest to the interests of the other. Love is the manifestation of Good and Mercy is the manifestation of Love. Just as ‘trespass’ (anti-reck) is the paradigm of sin (Lord’s Prayer) so ‘mercy’ is the paradigm of virtue (EG, also the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the merciful.”). While creedal documents play a critical role in the history of the Church, faith is not a collection of propositions. Faith is always interpersonal, it is always the fruit of an encounter with another (person, pet, or Prime Mover). “…Beyond the range of clear reasons and arguments… We need to remember that all religious teaching ultimately has to be reflected in the teacher’s way of life, which awakens the assent of the heart by its nearness, love and witness. “I invite all Christians, everywhere, at this very moment, to a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ, or at least an openness to letting him encounter them…” We do not ‘encounter others’. We let down our defenses so others can encounter us…and so we can reciprocate. Francis goes on to point out the primacy of faith over formula: “I dream of a ‘missionary option’, that is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation. “The deposit of the faith is one thing... the way it is expressed is another…we hold fast to a formulation while failing to convey its substance. This is the greatest danger. Let us never forget that the expression of truth can take different forms. The renewal of these forms of expression becomes necessary for the sake of transmitting to the people of today the Gospel message in its unchanging meaning.” “At the same time, today’s vast and rapid cultural changes demand that we constantly seek ways of expressing unchanging truths in a language which brings out their abiding newness.” Here Francis appropriates an essential insight from modern linguistics: There is a fundamental displacement between word and object. A specific verbal formula, originally intended to denote a specific object or state-of-affairs, will gradually, over time, come to denote something entirely different. May I borrow an analogy from Cultural Astronomy … whatever that is. The earth’s axis wobbles 360° over a period of approximately 26,000 years. Today we are said to be in the Age of Pisces because the axis is in Pisces at the time of the vernal equinox. But according to Broadway ( Hair ), “This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.” Well, sort of. Actually, the Age of Aquarius begins c. 2150 when the axis will begin to denote the eponymously named constellation. At that point our verbal formula becomes neither word nor object but idol , a misplacement of concreteness (Whitehead). When we recite ‘rite words in rote order’ (Joyce) we practice idolatry. Therefore, if the Church is to remain true to its vocation, it must allow the unforced, organic evolution of new ways to express old truths. “Pastoral ministry in a missionary style is not obsessed with the disjointed transmission of a multitude of doctrines to be insistently imposed.” We see then that the task of evangelization operates within the limits of language and of circumstances. It constantly seeks to communicate more effectively the truth of the Gospel in a specific context. “Reading the Scriptures also makes it clear that the Gospel is not merely about our personal relationship with God. Nor should our loving response to God be seen simply as an accumulation of small personal gestures to individuals in need, a kind of ‘charity à la carte’, or a series of acts aimed solely at easing our conscience. The Gospel is about the kingdom of God (cf. Lk 4:43); it is about loving God who reigns in our world.” To the extent that God reigns, Satan doesn’t and Caesar governs within guard rails set by Divine Will . The Church’s mission is not the conversion of individuals, important as that may be, but the transformation of Society. We cannot expect to transform the whole merely by transforming its parts; we must transform both the parts and the whole. If Leo XIV can remain focused on just these points (the ubiquity of Good, the centrality of the Other, and the sovereignty of God), everything else will take care of itself, his pontificate will be a great success… and the ongoing process of rescuing the World from the Abyss of the so-called Enlightenment will continue apace. *** The Triumph of the Church (c. 1625) by Peter Paul Rubens is an allegorical Baroque painting that celebrates the victory and authority of the Catholic Church , personified as a triumphant Church figure riding a chariot above vanquished heresy and discord. 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.

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< Back R U Orientable? David Cowles Apr 18, 2024 This is why I was never a track star in high school; I was the only kid running on a non-orientable race course.” Do you believe the Earth is round? “Round? Why? Does it look round to you?” Even before Socrates, philosophers and scientists debated the shape of our planet. There are many theoretical reasons to think that the Earth might be round ish . Against this, however, is the evidence of naive sense perception: it looks flat! I can drive from Boston to Seattle without ever having to consider the overall curvature of the federal highway system. Even if it isn’t flat, it might as well be. Yet, you probably answered my opening question with a full-throated “Yes!” Most of us are convinced that the theoretical arguments for the roundness of our planet override the immediate testimony of our eyes. For the most part, the debate has moved from the shape of the planet to the shape of the U niverse; but on this later question, the jury is ‘still out’. I won’t go into all the open issues; I’m only interested in one: Is the Universe orientable…or not? When I first started contemplating this problem, the textbooks were unanimous: the Universe is orientable, period. This is a big claim since the presence of a single embedded non-orientable topological feature (e.g. a Mobius Strip) is enough to make the entire Universe non-orientable. So it doesn’t matter how the Universe looks from (N – 1) perspectives; we need to know how it looks from the Nth perspective. There are precedents. 400 years ago, the Universe looked Newtonian; we accepted the ‘fact’ (sic) that Newton had captured the ultimate order of things. 300 years later, the work-a-day Universe still looked Newtonian, but by then we had learned to look further and deeper. In the process, we discovered that the Universe was not ultimately Newtonian after all. It still looked Newtonian at most scales, but now we knew it wasn't—it was Relativistic. Newton’s model turns out to be just a very useful approximation of Einstein’s. But we’re not done. Now we are struggling to fit Einstein’s Relativity into an even broader conceptual framework that includes Quantum Mechanics and Non-Locality. It’s a work in progress. Again, on most scales, the Universe looks relativistic, but now we know that ultimately, it can’t be. Which brings us to the matter of topology. Imagine an extra-long cash register receipt like the one the cashier at Target handed you the day after you got last year’s tax refund. Yeah, like that! Stretch it out. It’s bounded on 4 edges, and it’s two-sided. Your receipt is like an episode of Stranger Things . If you live on the obverse side, you have no knowledge of the reverse, and vice versa. You can write a short story on one side and draw a landscape on the other. You can even join the two ends together to form a corral or ring. Obverse/reverse becomes inside/outside; still, the twain can’t meet. Now instead, twist your paper (receipt) 180° and then join the ends together. What a difference a twist makes! Now there’s no inside/outside. In fact, there are no sides at all; your 4-bounded register tape just became 2-bounded. God sure had some fun creating this universe! But is this your world? Well, your world is twisted (in more ways than one), and it can seem a bit one sided , at least according to some contemporary news channels, but we need to dig much deeper. Place a triangle pointing up (˄) on the Mobius strip and slide it 360° along the tape until you get back where you started. Easy-peasy! Except it’s not. You have not restored its initial position. Something’s happened to your triangle; now it’s pointing down (˅). What goes around still comes around, but it comes around upside down. Objection : If you continue to slide your triangle along the Mobius strip, it will eventually come back right side up. Answer : Exactly! Every 360° spin around the ‘strip’ reverses your orientation; the point is that you no longer live in a world with 360° symmetry. This non-orientable space exhibits 720° symmetry. So, is ‘orientable cosmology’ the contemporary analog of Newtonian physics? Are there reasons for thinking that the Universe might not be orientable after all? First, massive elementary particles (e.g. quarks, electrons) have non-integer spins – which means that they exhibit symmetry other than 360°, e.g. 720°. As with our Mobius Strip, it takes two laps around the track for these buggers to go from the start to the finish line upright. This is why I was never a track star in high school; I was the only kid running on a non-orientable race course. Also, in one- and two-dimensional systems, it has been shown that the properties of some particles simply express the topology of their space. For example, electrons can have fractional charges (e.g., 1/3 or 1/5 rather than 1), and these quantities are derived directly from topology. While particles in orientable space can sometimes be teased into ‘exotic states’, those states exist naturally in non-orientable spaces. Riddle : How is Particle Physics like the Dick Tracy movie? Answer : They both call their villains things like ‘Full Face’ (360° Photon), ‘Two Face’ (180° Graviton), and ‘Half Face’ (720° Fermion). Riddle : How is the Standard Model of Particle Physics like Roman Mythology? Answer : They both have a two faced God ( Graviton, Janus ) in their Parthenon. The idea that the stuff of Universe is a function of its underlying topology is not new. Plato advanced the idea in his Timaeus as did R. Buckminster Fuller in Synergetics . There’s a lot more to explore here but as a bartender once said to me, “Sir, are you orientable?” 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.