< Back How to Coach an Undefeated Football Team David Cowles “Team is not a collective noun; it’s a verb: to team.” (Dedicated to my grandfather, J. Leo Foley) My grandfather, J. Leo Foley, was Athletic Director and Head Football Coach at The Roxbury Latin School for over 40 years. He led his football team to 4 consecutive undefeated seasons. He was nicknamed “the Fox”, allegedly because of his stealth play designs and unexpected play calls. He was recruited for a college coaching job by none other than Hall of Fame Head Coach, Robert Zuppke (University of Illinois, 1913 – 1941). Whatever I know about football, I learned from my grandfather. What I don’t know, he didn’t teach me; or rather, he taught me, but it went in one ear and out the other. Imagine if I had known at age 10 that I would be writing this article at, well, let’s just say ‘a considerably more advanced age’; perhaps I wouldn’t have thought that running after the ice cream truck was more important than learning the intricacies of the single wing. The ethos my grandfather taught produced winning football teams. But it occurred to me much later that this same ethos is a prescription for winning in all facets of life. Here are few of his guiding principles. If you’re a head football coach, you may find them helpful ; if not, you may find them indispensable ! Every play should score a Touchdown. If properly designed and flawlessly executed, every offensive play should result in 6 points. Every team should be Undefeated. It takes just as much energy to lose as to win…so why not win? To paraphrase the Old Testament Book of Deuteronomy, “I set before you winning and losing. Therefore, choose winning.” “Do your Job!” (before Bill Belichick) A successful football play is not about 11 players performing at the peak of their abilities: it’s about 11 players doing their assigned jobs flawlessly. Don’t just do your Job! A player who repeatedly fails to do his job is not a good player; but neither is a player who only does his job. On every snap from center, each player has a primary responsibility; but once that responsibility has been met (or not), a good player immediately begins to look for other ways to be productive. Good players can complete at least two ‘football moves’ every play, one scripted, one improvised. Great players often complete three. The two biggest causes of failure on a football field are (1) players who don’t do their jobs and (2) players who only do their jobs. “Everything Flows.” (Heraclitus c. 450 B.C.) Of course, Heraclitus was referring to the cosmos, not the football field. And yet, there is no better illustration of his principle than what happens between snap and whistle. A football play is more like an organism than a mechanism. Sure, football begins with designed plays and set formations; that’s a play’s DNA. But like snowflakes, no two plays ever turn out the same. Even if you ran the same play on every snap, no two plays would ever be identical. Because every play unfolds in a unique way, every player not only needs to do his job, and not just his job, but he also needs to react to the play itself as it evolves. Like most important things in life, football is recursive! Don’t be Square! Most of the time we think in straight lines…and that’s a good thing when we’re working on a blueprint. That’s when we need straight lines. But there are no straight lines in football (except the yard lines)…or in real life. A football play is just like any other ‘event’ (or ‘actual entity’). Each play starts from a unique Actual World: the position of the ball, the score, the time remaining, the X’s and O’s. The Actual World of a football play is strictly linear: line-ups, formations, diagrams, etc. It includes everything that happens before the ball is snapped, but not the play itself. Once the ball is snapped, linearity goes out the window. Now everything, literally everything, impacts everything else. So don’t be square, be non-linear ! “Stayin’ Alive”. (The Bee Gees) What is the goal of a football play? For the offense, it is to score a touchdown. But as with all living things, achieving its goal is not its primary motivation. Its primary motivation is survival - keeping the play alive. You can’t achieve your goal (touchdown) once your play has been whistled dead. The longer the ball is in play, the better your chances of scoring. So ideally, keep the play going for as long as it takes to reach your goal…without taking foolish risks, of course. Ultimately, you are not playing against your opponent’s defense; you’re playing against the referee’s whistle. The longer the ball is in play, the more likely it is to result in 6 points. So keep truckin’! “Be all that you can be.” (U.S. Army) ‘Synergy’ is a buzzword these days. It describes a whole being greater than the sum of its parts. But that’s not what we’re talking about here! True, teamwork can amplify the skills of each player leading to a positive result that could not have been predicted simply by looking at stat sheets. But we’re not only talking about a ‘team’ playing better; we’re talking about each player on that team playing better than his norm. The secret? Other players. As a player, I know that other players can make me look good…or bad. They can help me perform at a higher (or lower) level than I’m used to. As a coach, I not only want my players to do their best; I want them to help my other players do their best as well. This is easier said than done. It is much more than just ‘gang tackling’. It means coordinating two separate skill sets in a way that optimizes both. This is hard to teach; it cannot be diagrammed. It requires instinct…and ethics: Humility . I am just one of 11 players on the field at any one time. “If it’s to be, it’s not just up to me. It’s also up to you…but maybe I can help.” Generosity . It’s not all about how I look; it’s about how you look. In these days of high school recruiters and multi-million dollar pro contracts, generosity is a difficult virtue to cultivate…but it is essential to producing an ‘undefeated team’. A collection of superstars will win games; but they won’t win every game. When you think of history’s greatest pro franchises, Ruth’s Yankees, Russell’s Celtics, Jordan’s Bulls, Brady’s Pats, etc., first and foremost you think ‘team’. Who has not player for, or at least rooted for, a basketball team where the MVP is 5’11” and rarely breaks double digits in scoring or in rebounds? Team is not a collective noun; it’s a verb: to team . With my team behind me, I should be able to play better than I could play on my own; and when I play better, I should enable the players around me to play better too. It’s a Virtuous Circle ! When in doubt, help out! They say two heads are better than one. If so, then 4 arms should be better than 2. If it is not immediately obvious what you need to do next, help a teammate. Assume that the players around you need your help: blocking, tackling, covering a receiver, etc. They do ! Penalties = Turnovers. Penalties are not nuisances; they are serious business. They are not ‘just’ about field position; in fact, they are not primarily about field position. Penalties are about possession…and possession is about scoring! A penalty can make the difference between a very makeable 3 rd and 2 and a much less makeable 3 rd and 7 or 3 rd and 12 or even 3 rd and 17. A ‘nuisance penalty’ may well lead to a change of possession on the very next snap. Myth : superior talent is sufficient to overcome penalties. Reality : no team is talented enough to win all its games if it is frequently penalized. Penalties ‘randomize’ the game: they give weaker teams a chance to out-perform…and win! The underdog’s prayer : “May the opposing team be penalized as much as they deserve!” Tackle! Whenever possible, all tackling should be gang tackling. A player should never say, “Oh, he’s going down”. Every player should help make sure he is down (without drawing a penalty, of course). Gang tackling prevents “second efforts”. It also increases the chances of a fumble… and the chances that your team will recover any such a fumble. Block! You did your job. You threw a great block. Good work. Job done? Not a chance! There’s always another player, and yet another, who need to be blocked as the play unfolds. Run! You’re not down until you’re down. This is not touch football. The play is not over when a defensive player touches you. As Yogi Berra might have reminded us, “The ball carrier is not down until he’s down.” The proximity of an opposing player is not an invitation to take a ‘turf nap’; it’s an opportunity to step up your game, literally. Run harder, bring your knees up higher. The goal is to run through the tackle. (If your opponent is good, this may not always work; but hint, most football players are not very good tacklers.) If the opposing player does not bring you down right away, firing the after burners upon contact can extend a gain by as much as 10 yards. Less frequently, you may even break free, adding further yards to your gain – and who knows, you might even score a touchdown. Be the Ball! When you’re lucky enough to have the football in your hands, you need to think of it as part of your body. Would you let a tackler remove your right arm? Then why allow him to remove the ball? You and the ball must become a single organism. Be bionic! Suggestion : carry a regulation football around with you during the day and sleep with it at night. Who knows, the football might even replace the stuffed animal you still sleep with. Eventually, with any luck, you’ll start to feel weird, incomplete, when you’re not carrying a football. Catch the Ball! Coach has designed a pass play and you have an assigned route. Run that route; it’s your job. But not all pass plays happen as designed. Receivers are covered, the QB is under pressure, the play must change on the fly. Your job now ? Get open! Alter your route to give your QB a better chance to see you. Or find an open space on the field and squat there; trust your QB. “But I’m not the target on this play, I’m just a decoy.” No, you’re not! You’re never merely a decoy. You’re the target receiver on every pass play. Every eligible receiver is the QB’s “target”. He’s looking for you , so get open! Once a ball is in the air, there are no receivers, there are no defenders. Every forward pass is a ‘jump ball’. The offensive player and the defensive player have an equal right to that ball, so in truth both are playing offense. But both players are also responsible for making sure that their opponent does not make the catch. Therefore, they are both playing defense too. Visualize It’s off season. Or you’re stuck in chemistry class. Or you’re in bed and can’t fall asleep. Or your parents bundled you off to overnight camp for the summer (and they don’t even have a football program there). Bummer! Wherever you are now, you’d rather be honing your football skills…but you can’t. Ugly circumstances have gotten in the way! Or have they? The fact is, you can work on your game at any time, 24/7/52 – heck, maybe even in your sleep! Right now, you can’t practice…or lift weights; but there is something you can do: you can visualize! Depending on the position you play (or want to play), imagine yourself: Blocking a defender to protect your QB Creating a hole for your RB Taking a hand-off from your QB and hitting a hole Making cuts in open field to avoid defenders Completing a forward pass Or catching that same pass. If defense is your thing, imagine yourself: Tackling a ball carrier in the open field Breaking a block to sack the QB Busting up a double team Covering a receiver; staying with him as he makes his cuts Knocking down a pass Intercepting a pass When you visualize, it’s important to do so in slow motion. Slow it down! Relish every detail, every nuance. Fully experience every move your avatar makes. Create muscle memory…even in your sleep! Final Thoughts But what if you don’t play football, have never played football, don’t want to play football? What if, God forbid, you don’t even like football? Did you just waste 15 minutes of your life reading this ‘how to’? Not necessarily! If football is nothing else, it is a metaphor for life. The values of determination, responsibility, teamwork, flexibility, and focus apply to every aspect of life, not just football. This is a formula for success on a football field, but it is also a formula for success in life. Heck, you can visualize yourself performing in a concert or acing a math quiz or accepting a Nobel Prize. No matter what we do in life, we are responsible for being ‘all that we can be’, and we are equally responsible for helping others ‘be all that they can be.’ Follow this game plan…on or off the field. Have an undefeated season…have an undefeated life. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com. Previous Next

< Back Beyond the Rainbow Bridge: The Loss of a Pet and the Afterlife Bethany Sullivan "In the silence of loss, I cling to the whispers of hope, believing that beyond the veil of goodbye, our beloved pets wait, their love an eternal beacon guiding us through the darkness." In June 2022, my family had to put down our cat. How much we loved Sassafras cannot be overstated. My sister aptly said that he had been the heart of our family. In many ways, he felt like the nucleus of our family. He pulled all of us closer together. He was the kind of cat—indeed, the kind of being—that is so special and beautiful that I won’t be surprised if I never meet another like him in the rest of my days. I had lost a couple of other loved ones before this, including two cats. But Sassy was a load-bearing part of our household, and my life, for fourteen years. It was the first time I lost someone central to my own life and routine, day in and day out. The others were more peripheral, more distant. The spaces they left behind didn’t leave a gaping hole I was painfully, horribly aware of every single day in the same way that Sassy did. He was missing from small moments in all 24 hours of the day, and the texture and rhythm of life were forever changed by losing him. We were ceaselessly blessed by his presence in a way that we can never recover. There is comfort in the fact that I was always aware of this, and I have always made a point to try to appreciate the blessings, great and small, in my life so that I never look back and say, “If only I had appreciated what I had.” I did, and we all did, with Sassy. We constantly commented on how much we loved him, how lucky we were to have him, and how uniquely he brightened our lives. Our favorite thing was how, any time the whole family came together at the house, he always had to be there with us, sitting silently but happily in our midst. Especially at Christmas, when he was so pleased to have a tree indoors. He would sit under it, exuding his trademark calm contentment, from the day it went up until the day it came down again. And Christmas day was perhaps his favorite day of the year, when he had the special joy of sitting under the tree while simultaneously being surrounded by his whole family. Christmas day never feels quite as bright or beautiful now that he has gone from among us. Yet we always remember him and send him our love. His loss hit me hard. It would dawn on me again out of nowhere, as I was trying to fall asleep, with full force: I would never hear his tiny meow again, never be greeted by his eager, friendly face at the top of the stairs when I came home. His presence had been so grounding, so quietly self-assured. And he had loved life every moment of every day, soaking in the things he loved even at the end, when cancer was wasting him away. He would sit on the back porch, sleeping curled in a corner, basking in Dad’s presence as he read in a chair, or go stalking energetically through the grass, hunting for something. Even when he could no longer eat or drink, and it was clear that he was in and out of mind-numbing pain, he occasionally found the familiar energy he’d had throughout his life, the appetite to love what he had. He had always been this way. He was a true master of living in the moment. I’ve never met anyone else who was so happy. But because he was so beloved, losing him filled me with a terror I’d never had before: what if death really is the end, and I really never see him again, not even when it’s all over for me? My belief in the afterlife had fluctuated over time, sometimes a deep conviction, at others a scientific impossibility. Sometimes the doubt bothered me, upset me, or simply made me uncomfortable. Other times, it didn’t seem to matter that much. So what if this is all we get? Would that really be so bad? Suddenly, yes, that would be more horrible than anything else. To never meet someone you love ever again, to be parted from them eternally and irrevocably. Could there be anything more terrible than that? More tragic? It was probably because of this dread that, when I was watching the Marvel show WandaVision, a line stood out to me so significantly: “What is grief, if not love persevering?” It seemed like a comically incongruent place to find wisdom at a time like this, but that line has been ringing in my head ever since. It has made me contemplate the love, and grief, that I feel when I think about Sassy in a very different way. When I remember him and miss him so bitterly, I certainly am grieving. But instead of framing it that way now, I am more focused on the good feelings I still have—will always have—that make the grief so deep and acute. I miss him and grieve him because he was so important to me, and because I love him so much. I loved him then, and I still love him now. I always will. Nothing can change that or take it away. And that is always something to celebrate. I was lucky enough to have that gorgeous, wise creature in my life so pivotally, for such a long time, and not only to love him, but to be loved by him in return. When I consider it in this way, it also feels different. It feels like that powerful, abiding love is a sort of tether or connection between us, and when I think about him, wherever he is now, receiving the love I’m still sending to him, it’s as if I can feel him on the other end of the line, active and present. It doesn’t feel like I’m broadcasting that love uselessly out into the spiritual stratosphere, into the void, to echo eternally across the emptiness; it feels like I’m speaking into a cup connected by taut string to another cup, out of sight but not so far away, where someone is listening, receiving, and transmitting back. And that feeling, more than anything I’ve ever felt before, convinces me that he is still out there, just around the corner, perhaps in the other room, ceaselessly loving us back. In loving memory of Sassy. Bethany Sullivan is a writer and traveler from Vermont. She has been writing since 5th grade and traveling all her life. Visit her beer and travel blog at www.maltedbarleywanderer.com . Click the cover image to return to Holy Days 2024. Previous Next

< Back Don’t Teach Your Kid to Count! David Cowles “Our own number system is based on a highly specialized, and not necessarily privileged, concept of quantity.” Most of us can’t wait until our toddlers are old enough to count. Even, “One, three, six, four,” sounds like progress. At least they’ve caught on to the notion of sequence, if not yet quantity or magnitude. But are we doing them a disservice? Are we uncritically condemning them to live out their lives as we have lived ours? Oh come on! For heaven’s sake, it’s just counting. Show me someone who doesn’t know how to count! Well, ok, how about a whole culture. As we have discussed before in Aletheia Today , there is a tribe in the Amazon that to this day does not have even a concept of number. Ok, granted, this is a bit of an outlier, but many, many contemporary cultures have radically different concepts of numeration from us. Consider these 6 representative options: One, two, three. (Larger quantities are not considered countable.) One, two, many. One, two or three, more than three. One, all. A grain, a pile, a heap. Real Numbers plus Arithmetic. What’s key here is the way these systems treat the phenomenon of quantity. We assume that quantity is a given; it just is. But as we will see, our number system is based on a highly specialized, and not necessarily privileged, concept of quantity. Each of the ‘number systems’ mentioned above corresponds to a particular way of viewing the world: In the first case (1, 2, 3), counting is only considered useful up to ‘3’. After that, numbers are irrelevant. “One, two, and three” tell you something very specific and meaningful about your subject. Not so much after that. Perhaps some sense of volume takes over. Even in our culture, there are times when we stop counting (but usually not at 3): we call that statistics . Nobody will count the number of 7’s thrown at Bellagio’s craps tables tonight, not even the all-seeing eye in the sky. Everyone, punters, dealers, owners alike, trusts probability. The second example (1, 2, >2) could come from the notebook of a STEM professor, or a systems analyst, or a marketing guru, or an existentialist philosopher – folks not always so easily interchangeable. We know how to write equations with one variable: most of us master that in elementary school. Two variables? A little trickier – maybe high school. But more than two variables? That’s The Three Body Problem . Three or more bodies behave chaotically. So, 1, 2, >2 makes perfect sense from a physicist’s perspective, more sense perhaps than our own number system. Sara Imari Walker underscores this in Life as No One Knows It , her 2024 book outlining ‘Assembly Theory’ as an explanation for the origin and development of life: “There are, in fact, only 4 important numbers to understand in assembly theory: 0, 1, 2, and many.” Essentially, all process comes in stages: 0 = ‘does not exist’; 1 = ‘exists’; 2 = ‘copied’; >2 = ‘ubiquity’. This same logic informs our Systems Analyst. Say you have 1 point on the surface of a sphere: call it your North Pole. Now add a 2nd point anywhere on the sphere; wherever you place it, it will be one unit closer to the opposite pole. Now you can draw a geodesic from #1 through #2 to the opposite pole and back again to #1 – a Great Circle. Or you can add a 3rd point: now the line segment from #2 to #3 can point in any direction (360°) whatsoever. And to our marketing guru, peddling a sophisticated product to an inelastic audience (e.g. software to hospitals in Massachusetts). Getting any one hospital to ‘go first’ is almost impossible and adding a 2nd is no easier. #3 may or may not be a bit smoother but after 3 it’s just a matter of knocking down bowling pins. Anyone will do anything as long as 3 people have done it before. Remember when you were a wimpy kid? Your friends all wanted to jump off a ledge and they wanted you, Mikey, to go first. “No way!” So Paul went and didn’t get hurt; now it’s your turn. Still no? After Sam then. Sometime between Sam and Pedro, you’ll probably jump. On the philosophical side of things, 20th century existentialists, Martin Buber (a theist) and Jean-Paul Sartre (an atheist) both developed ontologies that based on the primacy of duality (2) as opposed to sinn fein (1) or en masse (3+). Our third example showcases the concept of ‘fuzziness’. One is one, period – a useful concept. Two and three are roughly the same and can be lumped together with little loss of information. More than three is a jumble. This is a minimal expression of what could be, and has been, a very elaborate scheme; imagine, for example: 1, 2-3, 4-6, 7-10, etc. As quantity increases, specificity becomes less important. Does the pauper count his pennies more often than the prince? Maybe, maybe not, but according to this model, he does! Think this is crazy? Think again. We do things exactly like it all the time! We estimate. We talk about ‘orders of magnitude’. And if you’re precocious, you understand logarithms. Challenge : can you infer a preferred logarithmic base by studying cultures that play with fuzzy dice (number systems)? For our Fourth number system, we are indebted to pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, Anaxagoras (5th century BCE). He is best known for his formula, Pan in Panta , “Everything in Everything”. According to Anaxagoras, everything is an element of everything else. Everything contains and in contained by every other ‘thing’. A number system appropriate to this insight would include just two terms, “One” and “All”. One refers to each entity while All refers to all the entities that are contained by that One entity and that in turn also contain that One entity. Anaxagoras gives us the Christian doctrine of Incarnation on steroids. Crazy, right? Maybe not! 20th century British philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead, had a similar concept. His cosmos consisted solely of ‘actual entities’ (events) and each entity ‘prehends’ all other entities. Through prehension, every actual entity participates in each actual entity. Whitehead’s entire cosmology rests on three ‘undefined terms’: One, Many, Creativity. One is one and Many is many (or all), while Creativity represents the family of ‘operations’ that link the two. Even more recently, contemporary European philosopher, Emanuele Coccia, has revived Anaxagoras’ concept of everything in everything . Fifth , ‘grain, pile, heap’. Ok, I made this one up! But it fits, don’t you think? Here we preserve the notion of quantity but eschew entirely the concept of number. Intriguing. Could my 3 term system be expanded to include other measures like ‘horde’ or ‘stack’? Would the numberless ‘system’ of the Piraha (above) fit under this umbrella? You might not be buying any of this, but I don’t care. I’ll bet I can sell it at any local elementary school, and kids, being desperate, will gladly absorb my sky-high mark-ups. I’m kidding, of course; right? I don’t really want to repeal numeracy, do I? I suppose not. Even in our own hyper-numeric society, I have encountered people I’d describe as “quantitatively challenged” (I hope that’s politically correct) and, yes, they are challenged across a wide range of daily activities. I desperately wanted my own children and grandchildren to develop a strong ‘quantitative sense’…and they did! Now I ask, “What did I do to them?” In the early years, I helped them get comfortable with Real Numbers and learn the properties and operations of arithmetic. So what’s so bad about that? As it turns out, plenty! Which brings up to the sixth option listed above: Our system of numeration is built on the set of Real Numbers (R) plus the operations of Arithmetic (A), extended to include calculus. R + A gets you to Mars. But it’s a controversial model based on some controversial basic principles or axioms: Commutativity : a + b = b + a; a × b = b × a. Associativity : (a + b) + c = a + (b + c); (a × b) × c = a × (b × c). Identity : a – a = 0; a + (-a) = 0. Transitivity : If a > b and b > c, then a > c. Density : Between any two distinct real numbers, there is always another real number. There are no "gaps" in the real number line; any interval can be divided into arbitrarily small sub-intervals. What a wonderful world! If only we lived in it. Turns out, this world of R + A is a lot less like the Real World than Alice’s Wonderland or Dorothy’s Oz. An argument can be made that precisely none of the properties enumerated above is true IRL. For example, Order of operations is always critical: a then b is totally different from b then a. Dah! You are known by the company you keep. Ask any middle schooler: (a +b) + c feels very different from a + (b + c). Every t is a little bit ‘naught t’: -a є a and therefore a + (-a) ≠ 0. (Dialectics) Ever hear of a triangle? a > b > c > a. The real world is processional, not static. “I seem to be a verb.” (R. B. Fuller, c. 1970 CE) “What goes around comes around.” (Hesiod, c. 500 BCE) Although there are an infinite number of Real Numbers, the smallest positive Real Number > 0. This is why the great Achilles lost a road race to a Tortoise. It turns out, there are an infinite number of ‘hyperreal’ numbers between the lowest positive Real Number and 0. These hyperreal numbers are collectively known as ‘infinitesimals’, represented by the symbol, ε. Before our children have seen their first seashore, explored their first forest, stood atop their first mountain, we have made them learn a model of reality that is entirely bogus. How bogus is it? I would argue that it is the most bogus of the 5 systems we’ve been exploring. Still…what harm could possibly come from this? Let’s see. We say that something that is infinitely improbable is effectively impossible, but that’s manifestly untrue. If something is, it is, no matter how improbable. Being is not a function of probability. It is not continuous; it is indivisible; it’s binary: it either is or it is not. ‘One’ is the state of everything that is; ‘zero’ is the state of everything that is not. Only Schoedinger’s cat can be 1 and 0 at the same time. “One is the loneliest number.” (Three Dog Night) As every two year old knows, there is only one number, and that number is one. I have a cookie, or I don’t have a cookie. Two cookies are one cookie, twice (“one each hand”). There is as yet no concept of ‘multiplicity’, just ‘duplicity’ (as in “those duplicitous adults”). Good thing too, because multiplicity itself is an illusion. Everything that is is once and only once. To be real is to be unique. When we say, “Two cookies,” we are abstracting. We are positing that the cookie in the right hand is similar enough to the cookie in the left hand to be covered by a single noun (‘cookie’). What about two ball bearings? Don’t they have to be interchangeable? Yes, but ‘interchangeable’ is not ‘identical’. They look the same and, ideally at least, they perform the same. They are ‘the same’ – i.e. ‘close enough for government work’. But they are not the same, they are not identical. If they were, they would be the same ball bearing. They would be one . But they are not the same, they are not one. We hide that fact by calling them ‘two ball bearings’, thereby eliding over the infinite (yes, I said “infinite”) chasm of difference that lies between the two. Nevertheless, we will go on teaching our toddlers to count so that they can ‘live long and prosper’ in our galaxy; who can blame us? But somewhere along the way, it would be nice if let them in on the secret: it’s all just one big lie. 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 Table of Contents Previous Next

< Back Schoedinger’s Cat and Consciousness David Cowles Sep 12, 2024 “When Uncle Henry, drunk on Christmas eggnog, accidentally knocks the lid off the box and peers inside, puss’ status is settled, once and for all." You all know the story of Schoedinger’s much loved cat. It’s both dead and alive. The problem is that puss’ fate is dependent on a quantum mechanical event that remains in a suspended state known as ‘superposition’ until it is properly observed. In fact, the whole experimental apparatus remains in superposition until a qualified external observer is introduced. In the words of Jeremy Hillary Boob, PhD, “Be empirical; look!” ( Yellow Submarine ). And what better way to ‘look’ than by using light, i.e. injecting photons into the apparatus, allowing them to ‘read’ the state of things inside the box? But no joy! The photons simply become part of the experimental apparatus, the entirety of which remains in superposition. But when Uncle Henry, drunk on Christmas eggnog, accidentally knocks the lid off the box and peers inside, puss’ status is settled, once and for all. How is Uncle Henry different from a bunch of photons? His size? His blood alcohol level? Yes, but irrelevantly so. Henry is significantly different because he’s conscious, dimly conscious but conscious, nonetheless. A photon can enter the experimental apparatus in superposition. Uncle Henry cannot. Uncle Henry not only perceives the state-of-affairs inside the box, but he perceives himself perceiving it. Henry has volunteered, you see, to be part of a thought experiment originally devised by Hungarian physicist, Eugene Wigner back in 1961. Henry has sacrificed his usual temperance in the interests of science. Wigner incorrectly supposed that a qualified ‘external observer’ needed a certain minimum level of intelligence to affect a ‘collapse of the wave function’. Sober, Henry might meet Widget’s criterion, but drunk? Probably not. But Henry has not passed out…yet. When he stumbles into puss’ box, he is still conscious. It is his consciousness, not his intelligence, that collapses the wave function. How come? Consciousness is inherently recursive, self-aware. In fact, recursion is what consciousness is. Think of a polyhedron lined with reflective mirrors. Everything reflects everything else – that’s consciousness. Most likely, it will prove to be some sort of twist in the fabric of spacetime. What’s important is the non-linearity of awareness. Simple awareness won’t cause the system to decohere; awareness of that awareness is what does the trick. As Uncle Henry proved, consciousness and intelligence are largely unrelated. A few decades ago, consciousness was thought to be the exclusive province of homo sapiens . Now it is widely believed that at least some other animal species are conscious as well. How about plants? Fungi? Bacteria? On the other hand, IBM, Google, et al. have already built machines that are far more intelligent than Henry; but as far as we know they are not yet conscious. Taken to the extreme, a supercomputer could be absorbed into Schoedinger’s coherent apparatus while a single bacterium would collapse the wave function. That’s the power of consciousness. This suggests the possibility of a new sort of ‘Turing Test’. To see if a life form, or machine, is conscious, we ‘merely’ need to determine how a coherent system behaves in its presence. If the system remains coherent, then the subject is not conscious, no matter how intelligent it may be; but if the wave function collapses, voila! And it doesn’t even have to know how to read or write! Am I on to something cutting edge here? Not in the least! 2500 years ago, the Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, Anaxagoras, proposed a similar model of consciousness. He called it Nous , and he understood it to be a unique aspect of reality, uniform in itself but distinct from everything material: “ Nous is unlimited and self-ruling and has been mixed with nothing, but is alone, by itself…and indeed, it maintains all discernment about everything…all Nous is alike.” All this gives new meaning to the traditional English rhyme: Ding Dong Bell, Pussy’s in the Well. Who threw her in, little Tommy Thin. Who pulled her out, little Tommy Stout. Little Tommy Thin is the apple of his mother’s eye. He’s an all-A student, who loads up on fresh fruits and vegetables and never eats sweets; but he’s totally lacking in compassion. He goes through life unconsciously. He lacks any moral sense. Think sociopath…zombie…or robot. He’s only too willing to place Puss at risk in superposition. And Little Tommy Stout? Well, not so much! Nothing his parents or his teachers have tried makes any difference. He won’t touch healthy food; pies and cakes are his specialty. But Tommy Stout is conscious, and so he has an innate moral sense; he’s compassionate. Instinctively, he collapses the wave function and, thank God, he pulls Pussy out alive. Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to contact us on any matter. How did you like the post? How could we do better in the future? Suggestions welcome. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Who Are the Antichrist, the ‘Man of Lawlessness’, and the Beast? Ian Paul "Clever schemes and novel doctrines won't save us. Stay faithful to the truth of God in Jesus and live with confidence, even in these shaky times." For those engaged in end-times speculation, whether provoked by the Covid-19 pandemic, global warming, or war in Ukraine, there has been another rash of speculation about the identity of the Antichrist—that end times personal figure who is now somewhere secretly in the world but who will very soon be revealed. (It is worth noting, for the sake of perspective, that every perceived crisis since at least the 1960s has provoked such speculation. For earlier modern end-times expectation, see the example of the followers of William Miller , who predicted that Jesus would return in 1844.) I am not sure that anything I write here will persuade those committed to end-times schemes, in which the Book of Revelation predicts in detail our age alone (as if we are the most important generation that ever lived), but I think a lot of ordinary readers of the Bible are unsettled by such theories, and are not sure how to respond. Part of the reason for this is that such schemes look so coherent. Here is one, influential, example , part of Dispensational Premillennialism based on the teaching of J N Darby : The man of lawlessness in 2 Thessalonians 2:1–12 is the Antichrist who will come on the world scene at the beginning of the Day of the Lord. This Day, sometimes called the “end times,” starts after the rapture of the church in 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18 (cf. 1 Thessalonians 5:1–11 ). It is good to note that the Day of the Lord is not a twenty-four-hour period of time; rather, it is an extended period of time that includes the seven-year tribulation, the return of Christ to put down all rebellion against Him, the 1,000-year reign of Christ on earth, the final defeat of Satan, and the Great White Throne Judgment. This looks very convincing—until you realise that the coherence of this scheme belongs entirely to the writer, and bears little or no relation to what the Bible actually says! The New Testament nowhere identifies the ‘man of lawlessness’ with the ‘antichrist’; it does not describe a ‘rapture’ of the church ( this arises from a poor misreading of 1 Thessalonians 4 ); nowhere does the NT mention a ‘ seven-year tribulation ‘; the 1,000-year reign of Christ is a literal reading of a symbolic text in Rev 20; and the ‘Day of the Lord’ which is everywhere in the NT described as a specific moment at the end of history has now been extended, in this scheme, to a period of more than 1,007 years! One of the key proponents of this kind of scheme in a previous generation, Hal Lindsay (who wrote The Late, Great Planet Earth ) actually admits that this is a ‘hopscotch’ approach to reading the Bible, taking one bit from one place and another from another in order to put together a picture like assembling the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. But look at the wonderful picture that results, is his defence! So it is worth noting from the outset the basic assumptions of this kind of approach. First, the Bible doesn’t actually make sense as a narrative as it is written; it needs some mysterious key to open up its meaning. Secondly, the truth about the ‘end times’ and Jesus’ return is a great big puzzle, and the truth of what will happen has been missed by most people in history—indeed, it continues to be missed by most people who simply read the Bible. Thirdly, we therefore need an authority figure who will help us put together the different pieces of the otherwise unintelligible text of the Bible, and we then find what we need to know not in reading the Bible, but in reading the writings and teaching of this important person. All these features make this approach perfect for an age of conspiracy theories—and offer a potential publishing bonanza, since all faithful Christians will need to buy their book! The best answer to all this is to return to the text, and what it actually says. So let’s look at the text of the Bible, and the passages about each of these three figures, and see what we can learn. The ‘man of lawlessness’ is only mentioned in one short passage, 2 Thess 2.1–12 . Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers and sisters, not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by the teaching allegedly from us—whether by a prophecy or by word of mouth or by letter—asserting that the day of the Lord has already come. Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God. Don’t you remember that when I was with you I used to tell you these things? And now you know what is holding him back, so that he may be revealed at the proper time. For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendour of his coming. The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness. There are some things here worth noting. First, Paul clearly thinks that, whoever this mysterious ‘man of lawlessness’ (ὁ ἄνθρωπος τῆς ἀνομίας) is, he is ‘already at work’. This is clear from the fact that he ‘will set himself up in the temple’ which was still standing when Paul was writing (I am convinced by the arguments that 1 and 2 Thessalonians are early, are by Paul and not forgeries, and were written in quick succession to one another); there is no suggestion whatever in the text that ‘the temple’ here is used symbolically to refer to the people of God. Something is currently holding him back—and he is clearly a human figure, and not an angelic or demonic power. Secondly, Paul is referring rather obliquely and in summary form to something that he has explained in more detail to the Thessalonians, and we will never know the full explanation that he has already given. Like many issues in Paul, we wish that he has said more! But we need to face the reality that we do not know any more details, so have to decide whether it is worth speculating. But thirdly, and in answer to the dilemma of our ignorance, we can know the purpose of Paul’s teaching in this area—and it is not in order to encourage speculation or the drawing up of end-times calendars! On this, I think John Piper’s exposition is really helpful: But persecution and suffering are not the only issue at Thessalonica, and Paul, now in chapters 2 and 3, takes his instruction about the second coming to a new level of detail in dealing with this second issue. The issue is that some in the church have ceased to do their ordinary vocational jobs, and started to make a nuisance of themselves as busybodies, mooching off the other Christians, since they’re not earning any money. And evidently, though Paul doesn’t say so explicitly, this delinquency is owing to a kind of hysteria in the community that the day of the Lord is not just near, but is already present. In other words, Paul is saying to them: don’t panic; you have not been left behind; there is no need to speculate; get on with living your lives, working with your hands, instead of dropping everything for the sake of end-times speculation. You can trust God who will ultimately triumph, no matter how bad things appear to be getting. As Martin Luther is believed to have said, ‘If I knew Jesus was coming tomorrow, I would still collect the rent and plant an apple tree’. Or we might say ‘Jesus is coming; look busy!’ It is also worth noting that this is a very minor point in Paul’s teaching about ‘the end times’. In Romans 8, he talks about the longing of the created order to be redeemed; in 1 Cor 15, he offers a long and detailed discussion about the implications of the resurrection at the end; all through his writings there is a constant sense of expectation, and the hope that confidence in the ultimate victory of God in the return of Jesus. And yet, only in this one passage is the ‘man of lawlessness’ mentioned. So it can hardly be claimed to be central to Paul’s teaching. The ‘antichrist’ is only mentioned in four verses in the NT, all in the letters of John: Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. 1 John 2:18 Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Messiah. Such a person is the antichrist—denying the Father and the Son. 1 John 2:22 …but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world. 1 John 4:3 Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist. 2 John 7 Again, there are several things worth noticing simply by reading the text carefully. First, although the author does talk about ‘ the antichrist’ at several points, he is also clear that there have and continue to be many such people. Many ‘antichrists’ have already come; every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is of the antichrist, and ‘any such person’ who denies Jesus came in the flesh ‘is the antichrist’. Secondly, the eschatology of these passages is highly ‘realised’—that is, the writer talks as though he and his readers are already in the ‘end times’ when he says several times ‘it is the last hour’. This might look as though there was an expectation that Jesus would return in his lifetime, an expectation that was mistaken. But in fact it matches the language of the Fourth Gospel, which talks about ‘life of the age [to come]’ or ‘eternal life’ as though is starts now, rather than being something we have to wait for. This also agrees with Peter on the day of Pentecost, who quotes Joel 2’s description of the ‘last days’ and says that it is what is happening in the outpouring of the Spirit (‘This is that… Acts 2.16 ). And it agrees with Paul’s description of those who put their faith in Jesus: ‘If anyone is in Christian there is new creation’ ( 2 Cor 5.17 ). Thirdly, the concern here is (once more) nothing to do with ‘end times’ speculation and timetables, but to do with sound doctrine. The writer is encouraging his readers to stay true to the faith. Overall, the letters of John have two concerns: that his audience hold onto the truth about Jesus, and that they live out that truth in lives of love. We also need to note that the description of [the, many] antichrist[s] appears to have little or nothing in common with Paul’s description of the ‘man of lawlessness’ other than the theme of ‘deception’ and the concern that the believers should not be deceived by those who do not tell the truth. This is hardly a concern uniquely related to the ‘end times’…! With mentions in four verses, in two short circular letters, again this is hardly central to the theological concerns of the writers of the NT overall. Lastly, the beast is a central figure in the drama of the Book of Revelation. Although there are anticipations of the figure earlier in the text, the ‘beast from the sea’ is fully introduced in Rev 13 as one of an ‘evil trinity’ along with the dragon/Satan, and the ‘beast from the earth’ ( Rev 13.1 ) which later in the text is described as ‘the false prophet’. The dragon stood on the shore of the sea. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name. The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion. The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority. One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed. The whole world was filled with wonder and followed the beast. People worshiped the dragon because he had given authority to the beast, and they also worshiped the beast and asked, “Who is like the beast? Who can make war against it?” ( Rev 13.1–4 ) The beast from the sea look very much like the dragon which is described in chapter 12—and both together combine the features of the four beasts that emerge from the sea in Daniel 7, which many commentators believe symbolise the four great world empires of Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome. And far from making this beast future and mysterious, he appears to go to some lengths to help his readers understand who this beast is, by asking them to ‘calculate’ (the Greek term psephizo ) or work out, the number of the beast, which stands for a man’s name. For some time, there has been a strong scholarly consensus that 666 refers to Nero by means of a numerology known as gematria or isopsephism —adding the value of the letters in a word so that every word has a value, and equating two words with equal value. We know that Nero’s name was sometimes spelled with a final -n; ‘Neron Caesar’ when written in Greek, but transliterated into Hebrew letters adds up to 666 (see the image to the right for the sums). There are several significant pieces of supporting evidence for this. First, when you write the Greek for ‘beast’, therion, in Hebrew letters, you also arrive at 666, making it clear that 666 is the number of ‘the beast’. Secondly, when you do the same with ‘angel’ in Rev 21, you get the number 144. Third, an early manuscript from Oxyrhynchus in Egypt corrects 666 to 616, which you would do if you understood the gematria, but thought that ‘Nero’ should be spelled without the final n. (There isn’t really any other plausible explanation for why this variant should arise.) This ‘beast’ is identified with neither the ‘man of lawlessness’ in Paul nor the ‘antichrist’ in John, and in fact neither of these terms occur anywhere in Revelation. So where does this all get us? First, it is clear that the three terms belong to quite different traditions within the NT, and none of these three traditions attempts to make any specific connections with the others in terms of language—despite the fact that the later writers (of the Johannine letters and of the Book of Revelation) almost certainly knew Paul’s writings. But it is also clear that there is some kind of connection, particularly since the concern of all three writers appears to be to encourage his readers to stand firm in the truth of the apostolic teaching in the face of pressures from outside the Jesus community to renounce faith and pressures from within to distort the truth about Jesus. Here, Piper makes an interesting observation, but I think then reaches the wrong conclusion from it: Therefore, the man of lawlessness will be unparalleled in his ability to deceive, as 2 Thessalonians 2:10 says, “with all wicked deception for those who are perishing.” It really could be “in all deception of unrighteousness,” because we are going to see in just a moment that the way he deceives is by making unrighteousness seem pleasurable. (Notice how the word adikia is repeated in verses 10 and 12.) Again, I would argue, Paul is unpacking the prophecies made by Jesus. Jesus said, Then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be. . . . For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. . . . So, if they say to you, “Look, he [one person!] is in the wilderness,” do not go out. If they say, “Look, he is in the inner rooms,” do not believe it. For as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. ( Matthew 24:21 , 24 , 26–27 ) At the close of this climactic period of lawlessness and a great deception led by a person, Paul is saying, the coming of the Son of Man will be unmistakable. Like lightning flashing from horizon to horizon. Piper is noting the connections between Paul’s language in 2 Thess and Jesus’ teaching in the first half Matt 24. But what he does not notice is that Jesus’ teaching here is not about the distant (for him) future and a remote ‘end times’ that we might be living in, but what the disciples he is teaching will face in their lifetime . He makes this crystal clear by stating emphatically: Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. ( Matt 24.34 ). It is only in the second half of the chapter, from Matt 24.36 , that Jesus turns his attention to issues around ‘the end of the age’. There are connections too between Paul’s discussion of the man of lawlessness, who will ‘use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie’ ( 2 Thess 2.9 ) and the ‘signs and wonders’ performed by the second beast on behalf of the first in Rev 13.13–14 , but this is a description of magical tricks and propaganda performed by Roman rulers of which we have documentary evidence. In other words, both Paul and John are writing about things already happening in the world of their readers. The concern of all these texts is to encourage their readers: don’t be deceived by clever schemes and novel doctrines; don’t get caught up in ‘end-times’ speculation; stay faithful to the truth that God came to us in Jesus, and has made our salvation secure in him; and continue to live lives of industry, generosity and grace as you wait with confidence for his return in a world that is looking very shaky. We need the same encouragement! To find out more about what the NT says about eschatology, the end of the world, and living in hope, you might be interested in my Grove booklet on Kingdom, Hope and the End of the World . To find out more about how to read the Book of Revelation, see my Grove booklet or my commentary on Revelation in IVP’s Tyndale series . The image at the top is a detail of The Deeds of Antichrist by Luca Signorelli (1505). Published previously. This is a republished blog in full agreement with www.psephizo.com , the official website of autor Ian Paul. Ian Paul is a theologian, author, speaker, and academic consultant. He serves as Adjunct Professor for Fuller Theological Seminary ; Associate Minister for St Nic's, Nottingham , and Managing Editor for Grove Books . He is member of General Synod, a Mac user, and a chocoholic. He tweets at @psephizo . For a complete list of books he has either written or contributed to, go to https://www.psephizo.com/publications/ . Return to our Harvest Issue 2023 Previous Next

< Back Mommy Math Part One David Cowles If counting is such a powerful tool, how is it that for the most part, we don’t count? In our culture, one of the first things young children learn to do is to count. Sesame Street devoted a whole character to the concept (The Count). Typically, kids first learn the names of the numerals. Just as they learn their ABC’s, so they learn their 1, 3, 2’s Not quite, but good try! Sidebar: Young children rarely mistake the order of letters in the alphabet, where order doesn’t matter, but they often mistake the order of numerals, where it matters a lot. You can know the alphabet without knowing the proper order of the letters (unless you’ve been stopped for a DUI), but a child who recites numerals in no particular order will not be said to know her numbers. Eventually, kids come to understand that just enunciating the numbers’ names will not win them the praise they crave; they have to get the numbers in the right order as well. Ok so, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, hooray! “So how many blocks are on the table?” Stupefied silence. (What do your crazy numbers have to do with my brightly colored blocks?) The hard job begins: teaching a child to use the language of numbers to count a number of objects. Ok, one block, two blocks, three blocks, got it! Well, not quite. I arrange the blocks at the nodes of a Star of David. How many blocks now?... Well, not to worry, we’ll get there, but when we do, and we will, we’ll discover that we’re still not there. Huh? There, not there, I don’t get it. Even after Sally can flawlessly numerate groups of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 blocks, can she also numerate 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 lollipops? “Sally, would you rather have two lollipops or six?” “Two. I want two!” Ok, we’ve still got some work to do, but eventually… Once the child understands that the number 2 applies equally to two crayons, two siblings, or two minutes in time out, a milestone has been reached. Two caveats: First, notice how many levels of abstraction are required to get from the concept of mere plurality to a true mastery of the number system. Second, curb your enthusiasm, Larry David! Chimpanzees, smart parrots, and even fish can do as well. What’s amazing is not how bright your little Sally is. What’s amazing is that any member of any species can ever learn to count. As adult human beings, we take counting, and the arithmetic it generates, for granted. “It’s second nature to me now!” Alright then, if counting is such a powerful tool, how is it that for the most part, we don’t count? Even before we learn to count in Arabic (1, 2, 3) we learn another system of quantification that is much more practical for daily living. After all, most toddlers don’t work for Big Five accounting firms; nor are they responsible for landing capsules on the moon. Neither are most adults, come to think of it. So, what’s the use of learning to count? “Mommy, whyyyy did you make me learn to count? I’ll never use it when I grow up. I’m going to be a cowgirl, not an astronaut.” Truth to tell, Mommy only taught Sally to count so that she could brag about her to all the other primate, parrot and pickerel parents at the next Mommy and Me. Under the radar, Mommy had already taught Sally a much more useful and more distinctively human way to express ideas about quantity. Numeration begins with a primal distinction: yes or no, life or death, 0 or 1, none or some. Ultimately, I suppose the universe does boil down to Being or Nothingness…but not where I live. In my world, we always seem to be somewhere in-between yes and no, life and death, some and none. So, we need to add a third term, between yes and no and that term is maybe. Maybe is a measure of the probability that x > 0. If x = 0, then the probability that x > 0 is 0, and there’s no maybe about it! Likewise, if x = 1, then the probability that x > 0 is 1, not ‘may be 1’. Maybe is useful when the value of x is unknown, either because is it still undetermined or because information regarding the determination is unavailable, or because such information is being deliberately concealed. Sally learns probability long before she learns arithmetic. Instead of learning discrete numbers, Sally is mastering the notion of a quantitative continuum. Maybe runs the gamut between 0 and 1. ‘Maybe’ implies a probability greater than 0 but less than 1. And yet ‘the maybe function’ can only resolve in an integer: e.g., 0 or 1. Sound familiar? Welcome to the Wild World of Quantum Mechanics! Sally (and every other Sally or Sam in our culture) learn quantum mechanics first; Newtonian Mechanics can wait ‘til middle school. Mommy Math begins with three terms: no (0), yes (any positive integer), and maybe (the probability that x will not equal zero). Is that it? Yes…and no. Can I build a complete algebra with just these three terms? Maybe! These are the core concepts of Mommy Math; yet it includes other quantitative terms as well. Each of these terms has a specifiable meaning, none of which we would recognize as a number! First, let’s talk about the set of all non-negative integers: 0, 1, 2, etc. (What could be more fun?) Mommy Math includes these terms…but they don’t mean what you or I mean by 0, 1, 2. Mommy’s integers are “fuzzy,” ours are not. Just try palming off 11 eggs on a customer and calling it a fuzzy dozen! Not fuzzy was it! What is it that we like so much about integers? They are precise! “One is one and all alone and ever more will be so.” If children can learn the alphabet to the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, they can learn to count to the tune of The 12 Days of Christmas. “Abandon all precision, ye who enter here:” you’re in the world of Mommy Math now. In this world, an integer does not denote a discrete numerical value; it denotes a range of probabilities. Take, for example, the integer 1. In Mommy Math, “one” (like all integers) is a probability function. When that functions resolves, it will resolve as a non-negative integer, most often “1.” But there is even a ‘non-zero probability’ that “the function formerly known as one” will resolve as “0” or as a number like 10^100 (a ‘google’) …but please, don’t hold your breath. Fan Fiction: “Mommy, can I have a cookie…Maybe…Ok, yes, you can. In fact, you can have a google of cookies.” How often does that happen? It’s certainly an ‘improbable outcome.’ Mommy Math includes the set of non-negative integers, but those integers represent probability distributions, not discrete values. Not surprising, integers are not the preferred mode of numeration in Mommy Math. Mommy Math includes non-numeric terms for quantitative concepts that cut across the set of non-negative integers:  “Maybe” means 0 or 1 or, less often, an integer greater than 1.  “Some” means 1 or more.  “A Couple” means 2 or 3*.  “A Few” means 3, 4, or 5.  “Many” means 4 or more.  “A Lot” means 5 or more. *Note: we normally use ‘couple’ to denote ‘precisely 2,’ but ‘precisely 2’ does not exist in Mommy Math. In Mommy Math, every term represents a probability distribution, and ‘couple’ is no exception. Notice how the terms overlap. Say you ask for “cookie” (and you don’t mean that other Sesame Street icon, Cookie Monster). It’s been determined that you will be given three cookies. That determination could be conveyed to you in several mathematically consistent ways.  Maybe  A couple  A few 3 is a truth function of all three propositions. So what? Why is any of this of any importance? First, contrary to what was once imagined, not all human cultures include the activity we know as ‘counting.’ There is at least one Amazonian tribe (the Piraha) whose members have no concept of number whatsoever. They do have quantitative concepts like ‘more’ or ‘less’ but nothing that could be interpreted as an integer. We explore this phenomenon in greater detail in Why Xiako Can’t Count? Second, many other cultures have truncated number systems. The details vary. One example: “1, 2, > 2.” Another: “1, 2, 3, many” (where ‘many’ denotes 2 or 3 or any amount greater than 3). Counting wouldn’t be of much use to these people. Finally, we observed earlier that some members of some non-human species can also count, at least up to a point. Many can count up to 6, for example, some even make it to 9; and they can perform basic arithmetic operations within those domains. I’ll pit my pet Polly against silly Sally any day when it comes to basic counting and arithmetic. Polly already outperformed 40% of the kids in Mrs. Sullivan’s first grade class... and Sally is a long way from first grade. Where do we go from here? Can we build a full blown ‘algebra’ by applying ‘logic’ and using just terms (and their meanings) from Mommy Math? How would Polly’s performance compare with Sally’s if the same tests were given to both in Mommy Math? (Could it be that the fuzzy world of Mommy Math is the last stand of human exceptionalism?) I titled this article Mommy Math #1 because I look forward to publishing Mommy Math #2 and Mommy Math #3 in future issues of ATM. Do you have ideas on this topic? Will you contribute them in the form of a ‘Mommy Math’ article for a future issue? Check out our Writer’s Specs for information regarding the submission process and our compensation schedule. 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

“A bond exists between us that unites who Jesus is essentially with who I am existentially. I change with every breath; Jesus never changes.” < Back Jesus Gets Us! David Cowles Dec 1, 2024 “A bond exists between us that unites who Jesus is essentially with who I am existentially. I change with every breath; Jesus never changes.” There is an ad running on TV these days that includes the tag line, “Jesus, he gets us!” And so he does; but how? Jesus forms a perfect bond, a template, with each of us. Without undergoing any change himself, Jesus makes a unique version of himself available to every subject (e.g. you and me). Jesus templates us, and as we will see shortly, he is ‘template’ per se . Or, to paraphrase St. Francis, “It is in being for all that he is one.” Jesus Christ is the second person of the Trinity, called the Son . Children do not choose their parents; they bond with them. With more or less fidelity (Jesus is 100% faithful) every child templates its parent(s). There is no better image of this than the ‘babe at breast’ and we see Jesus depicted as such in many Christian works of art. Ontologically, Jesus templates his Father. The relationship between the Father and the Son, i.e. the Spirit, is the paradigmatic relationship. But because it is Jesus’ essential character (Sonship) to template, Jesus templates whatever he encounters, beginning with his Father but extending to each of us. Christians see in Jesus Martin Buber’s eternal, universal Thou. Of course, every actual entity is specific and unique; but the template itself, to the extent that it is a faithful template, is the same in every case. So it is because Jesus forms a unique bond with everyone that he himself is unchanging. In Jesus, plasticity = identity. It is in being all that he is one. Of course, templating with Jesus is not accidental; it is ontological and genealogical: “Through him all things were made.” (John 1: 3) It is only because Jesus is that you are; for you, Jesus is the divine other, the perfect template. Like Buber’s Thou , Christ is universal and eternal as well as intensely personal. From our perch in spacetime, ‘relata’ precedes relationship; but from God’s perspective, outside of spacetime, relationship precedes relata. Actual entities are first and foremost relational. I am because you are: no you, no me, no He, no thee! Dear reader, you and I have a relationship. We touch each other in a single region of spacetime, i.e. the time and space it takes for me to write and you to read this post. My spouse and I have known each other for more than 50 years. We are ‘tangent’ over a much larger region; but even that is a postage stamp compared to the extent of our relationship with Jesus, the one eternal Thou present in every You . Jesus remakes himself for each of us. In that way Jesus never changes. He is the same in relation to me as he is in relation to you and yet he is unique to each of us. “And yet…”? No, “And so…” We both encounter the exact same Jesus; but we encounter him in two different ways. Each of us knows Jesus differently, i.e. personally, even though he himself is exactly the same, i.e. universal, for everyone: X : A :: X : B, C, D… Jesus is ‘the one who templates all others’, Father first! This resolves the so-called ‘Scandal of Particularity’ – “If God, the creator of heaven and earth, is incarnate in creation, why in first century Palestine on the 3rd rock from our Sun?” The traditional ‘solution’ to this dilemma is simply “Why not?” Things have to happen ‘some where and some when’ but according to Einstein, every ‘where and when’ is just like every other ‘where and when’, so it doesn’t matter when or where something happens; it is as if it happened every where and every when: Some where/when = any where/when = every where/when. But this argument is as dissatisfying as it is incontrovertible. The formula presented here would elevate why not to of course . In fact, the Incarnation had to occur ‘somewhere, some when’ to be real but it could have been anywhere, any when. Jesus templates me . A bond exists between us that unites who Jesus is essentially with who I am existentially. I change with every breath (Heraclitus) ; Jesus never changes (Parmenides). Is this the deeper meaning of the Musketeers’ “All for one and one for all”? Jesus is ‘all for my one’ and ‘one for us all’. It’s not that there are 8 billion Jesus on Earth today. There is only one, now or ever, here or anywhere. Jesus does not come in parts. Unlike a shared pizza, there is no ‘my slice, your slice’; each of us gets a whole pie but…and it’s the same pie for everyone. This is Loaves and Fishes on steroids. One pie feeds one, one pie feeds all! Once or twice a year, I get to enjoy the world’s greatest pizza, not in Napoli or Palermo, but in Randolph MA, at the Lynwood Café. On such occasions, ‘private property’ loses all meaning; the concept is unmentionable. Like Jesus’ disciples in the early Church, we enjoy all our goods in common. Nor is there any risk of shortage. As soon as someone imagines a new flavor combo, it is ordered and on its way to our table. At $12.00 per pie, we are restricted only by the depth of our imaginations, and the size of our stomachs, and not thankfully by the size of our bank accounts. Surely, this is a foretaste of Heaven! This relatively mundane theological speculation has transformative implications for cosmology and anthropology. The Second Person of the Trinity is a singularity. Jesus’ event horizon consists of ‘information’ that perfectly complements the information content of every tangent entity. There is no ‘right Jesus’ or ‘wrong Jesus’, but there is ‘my Jesus’ and ‘your Jesus’; both of course, are the ‘same Jesus’. Objectively, there is one Jesus, but subjectively, Jesus manifests uniquely for everyone. Our relationship with Jesus tips us off that there is more to reality than a 4 dimensional continuum. We are not just nodes in a social web. Each of us has a straight line connection to the singularity at the heart of Being itself (God). This gives new meaning to the 2nd half of the Great Commandment (“Love your neighbor as yourself”). How is it that my neighbor is also myself? There are two approaches to this question, both rooted in models taken from Structuralism. The experience of being-in-the-world is the same for everyone (who is in the world). Therefore, your being-in-the-world and my being-in-the-world are functionally and objectively equivalent, despite their accidental and subjective differences. Neither of our vantages deserves to be treated preferentially; therefore, our experiences are denotatively identical though connotatively unique. Everyone undergoes the same ‘childhood’, though no two childhoods are the same. The second approach may be more satisfying. Jesus actually forms a perfect template with you and a perfect template with me. Therefore, you and I must potentially form a perfect template with each other. This is a more familiar mathematical relation: If A = B and A = C, then A = C. The standard model of cosmogenesis is incredibly complex and arcane. Every day we have to adjust it to account for new data. The Christian model is a bit simpler: “Through him (Jesus) all things were made.” (John 1: 3) Where is Occam when we need him? 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 Click here. Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! 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“I am my own great-grandmother (‘Eve’). Eerie…not to mention incestuous.” < Back Do you Know *What I am*? David Cowles Dec 1, 2023 “I am my own great-grandmother (‘Eve’). Eerie…not to mention incestuous.” I came to be sometime during the month of December, not nine months later, as is usually supposed. On a cold winter’s day, two chromosome-deficient sex cells, one from a biological woman and one from a biological man, fused to form a single, chromosome-sufficient cell, me . So, I am a unicellular eukaryotic animal (a cell with a nucleus). That nucleus houses my genome (DNA), combining genes inherited from my father's cell and from my mother's cell. Absent random mutations, this DNA molecule contains all the information needed to generate the organism that is currently writing and typing this article. So, I am an organic molecule (DNA). 4 billion years ago, give or take, a bunch of prebiotic molecules on a newly formed planet (Earth) combined to form the first DNA molecule. Every life form on Earth is powered by DNA, and, as far as we know, DNA evolved on Earth only once. All terrestrial organisms, even me, are descended from this one primordial DNA molecule. “Hello Eve! Or would you prefer I called you ‘Granny’?” Unicellular animals usually reproduce asexually. After cell division, there is no more ‘parent cell’ per se , just two ‘daughter cells’, but those daughter cells, ab initio , are both identical to the sublimated parent cell. Therefore, we could just as well say we are left with two ‘parent cells’. So I am the primordial DNA molecule whose clones power all life on earth. According to James Joyce ( Ulysses ) Hamlet was his own father’s ghost; now I find out that I am my own great-grandmother (‘Eve’). Eerie…not to mention incestuous. Immediately, primordial DNA used its protein-building capabilities to construct a moat and an outer membrane (cell wall) to protect itself from the environment. The membrane is sufficiently porous to permit alimentation, elimination, respiration, and hydration. We call this fortified entity a cell. All terrestrial life consists of cells, singularly or in various aggregations, and all cells embody copies, however altered, of the primordial DNA molecule. Thus, all cells are direct descendants of the primordial cell, me . The primordial cell was probably a close ancestor of what we now recognize as bacteria. I hear that on the grounds of certain posh primary schools, it is common for bullies to berate their victims, crying, “You bacterium!” Well, I am a bacterium and proud of it – deal with it! I am a bacterium, and I also provide shelter and succor to other bacteria. Billions of Eve’s descendants are swimming around in my intestines right now…and thank God for that! I literally could not leave home without them. About a billion years later—who’s counting?—one bacterium engulfed another, probably with the ‘intention’ of consuming it, but for some reason, it changed its ‘mind’. In the terminology of Anaximander, the grandfather of Western philosophy (c. 500 BCE), these two bacterial cells ‘gave each other reck’. They traded ‘Dog eat Dog’ for ‘Live and Let Live’. The wolf lay down with the lamb, and the Judeo-Christianity ethic was realized. “Blessed are the peacemakers – they will be called children of God.” (Matthew 5:9) Shalom! In the words of Humphrey Bogart ( Casablanca ), this was ‘the start of a beautiful friendship’. The two bacteria formed a symbiotic relationship that ultimately gave the world T-Rex, bonobos, and me ! So, don’t let anyone tell you that Love doesn’t make the world go ‘round; it sure does! When primal great grandad reproduced, he produced cells already fitted with DNA harboring nuclei. Sensing a new lifestyle opportunity, other bacteria wandered across the porous external membranes of eukaryotic cells. Should I compare these host cells to black holes…or to Hotel California? Either way, what goes in does not necessarily come out. Like feudal vassals, these bacteria yearned for the relative safety of life behind cell (manor) walls. Unlike Benjamin Franklin, they willingly traded independence for security. But it was not such a terrible bargain! These late-coming bacteria set up shop in the cytoplasmic sea that surrounds a host cell’s nucleus. Cytoplasm, a biotic soup, is insulated from the cell’s external environment and from its internal nucleus and other organelles by a network of protective lipid membranes. But would these host cells allow these invading freeloaders to enjoy the comforts of intracellular life at no cost? We’ll never know. The hosts’ generosity was never tested because these ‘invaders’, like medieval craftsmen, immediately went to work, making themselves useful to their landlords. Smart cells! This second wave of in-coming bacteria became mitochondria, the primary energy-producing organelles in a modern eukaryotic cell. Numbers vary, but the average cell harbors (and exploits) about 1,000 of these mitochondria. Yet, this is not exactly ‘slavery’. In exchange for their labor, these mitochondrial bacteria are given a lease that covers them and their descendants in perpetuity … i.e., ‘for as long as they both shall live’ (host cell and mitochondria, that is). For better or worse, the fates of the host cell and its tenants are bound together inextricably. As the original host cell divides, each new cell clones the original cell’s nucleus and mitochondria. My career as a solitary unicellular organism lasted only 4 days; then I began to divide: 2 x 2 x 2… I gradually transitioned from a single cell into a ‘society’ of cells, initially in the shape of a hollow ball. I am that ‘Bucky Ball’ . This ball of undifferentiated cells developed into an organism in which different cells perform vastly different functions (e.g., skin cells vs. blood cells), all in service of a common multicellular host. I am that host . I have two cousins: one is an attorney, the other an accountant. The attorney could have been an accountant, and/or the accountant could have been an attorney, but they weren’t. They could both have become accountants…or both attorneys. But in what world do we need more of either? (Do you know…) Most, of course, died long ago, outlived by their superannuated host. Like cells, my cousins differentiated, more or less randomly and more or less unconsciously, to maximize their value to ‘society’. They were not motivated by desire to maximize value; the laws of nature (economics) gently guided them to their choices. Of course, they were both free to join the circus instead, but that’s why evolution works best when a population is large enough to welcome, or at least tolerate and survive, random deviations from the norm. Today, that ‘primal society’ (me) has grown to more than 30 trillion members, i.e., cells, each a fundamentally independent life form, cooperating with one another in service of their meta-host. I am each one of those cells…and now I am their meta-host as well. If I live to normal life expectancy, more than 100 trillion cells will have participated at one time or another in the ‘phenomenon of me’. (Thank you very much!) Most, of course, died long ago, outlived by their superannuated hosts. Did they die of natural causes? Old age? Nope! They killed themselves…and they did it for me. Most of the dearly departed committed a form of suicide called apoptosis . How come? So far as we know (but who really knows?), they were not depressed. Apparently, trillions of my fellow travelers are prepared to sacrifice their lives for me. It’s an awesome responsibility! Cells continually ‘monitor’ themselves, scanning for transcription errors, mutations, and environmental stresses. When they judge a particular flaw to be ‘beyond repair’ or an environmental stress to be ‘life-threatening’, they ‘do the right thing’ for the welfare of the organism as a whole (me); they kill themselves! To be or not to be – it’s the question posed by every cell at every moment of its life. Hamlet thought he was on to something…and he was - too bad, his famous meme had already been copyrighted by a bacterium some billions of years ago. So let’s trace our progress. We started with a single DNA molecule (me); DNA became a cell (also me), and that cell acquired a nucleus and mitochondria and built a network of fortifications for its protection. I’m cooking with gas…but we're not done yet. I reproduced, resulting in millions of more or less exact copies of me . What could be better than that? These related cells formed a society (me). As in other societies, members (cells) of this primordial society differentiated their functions (chose various jobs), all in the service of the society itself (also me). Ultimately, this society evolved into a meta-organism (me), and so our story ends, right? No way! Now it’s time for meta-me (I’m 11 today) to produce my first male sex cells (me); many, many years from now, one of those sex cells may find a female partner and the entire process start over again. Meet Me. Jr. – I’m a little cranky right now; I just woke up from my nap. And what about meta-me? Well, I’m a member of multiple societies. I have a job, I live in a neighborhood, I belong to a town, a state, or a nation, I’m a member of a church and a bowling league, and of course, I am a citizen of the world. If past is prologue, one or more of these societies will evolve into its own meta-organism (me?). So, now do you know ‘What I am’? Hope so…’cause I sure don’t. 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 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! Click here. 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, September Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back Genesis and Quantum Computing “Quantum Mechanics is the secret code that unlocks Genesis and when it does, we are surprised to discover that Genesis may be ‘literally true’ after all.” David Cowles “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth – and the earth was without form or shape with darkness over the abyss…” ( Genesis ) According to Parmenides (c. 450 BCE), this is Aletheia – Truth: without form, without distinctions, without qualities. This is the state of ‘pure potentiality’ (Aristotle). It is the primal manifestation of God, ‘maker of all things visible and invisible’ ( Nicene Creed ), ‘without whom nothing that comes to be comes to be’ ( Gospel of John ) But it also describes the state of quantum superposition. (Schoedinger) Aristotle gave us a model of potentiality ( Physics ) and Plato gave us a model of forms ( Phaedo ), but the idea of potentiality per se is woven throughout the Judeo-Christian tradition, especially in Torah and in the Johannine - Pauline corpus . There is a fine distinction here. God is ‘potentiality’ per se with Trinity as its paradigm. What is potentially is the World…not just the specific world we all know and sometimes love, but all possible worlds (‘cosmic epochs’ – Whitehead) and every possible state-of-affairs within each such world. God is not the World…but God is the potentiality for worlds to be and the potentiality for worlds to be as they are , however that may be. This is Hugh Everett’s Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (1957)…on steroids! The known universe consists of at least 10^80 bits of information. Extending Everett’s theory, each bit is in a state of quantum superposition: not 1 or 0, but 1 and 0. 10^160 universes! Everett assumed that each unique combination of 1’s and 0’s had to constitute a unique universe, but quantum mechanics allows us to achieve the same result within a single universe, as long as that universe and everything in it is in a state of quantum superposition. Such a Universe functions as a quantum computer where all possible values of every variable co-exist. But why? We inherited a system of logic from Aristotle in which every bit is 1 or 0 – not 1/2, not 1 and 0. It’s called the Law of the Excluded Middle . It’s worked well for us in a wide variety of applications, so why should the Universe behave any differently? It's a matter of topology. For the purposes of this article at least, all topologies are either ‘orientable’ or ‘non-orientable’. You’re familiar with the orientable. You have a sheet of paper. It has two sides: an obverse side and a reverse side. Make a mark on the obverse side; you won’t find any mark on the reverse side. Now run your finger along the surface; oops, you’ve fallen off the edge! Sorry about that but that’s orientability for you. You can keep it! In non-orientable topology a sheet of paper has only one side so any mark is always there, regardless – no hiding; and your finger will never run off the edge. Cool beans! But we don’t live in that sort of universe, do we? Do we? Fortunately, an orientable universe with at least three spatial dimensions allows us to build a physical model of what a non-orientable world would look like. It’s called a Mobius Strip, and you can create one yourself in about 10 seconds. First, find a cash register receipt, preferably from CVS or Target (longer is better). Grab onto the two ends. Now twist one end and scotch tape it to the other end. Hello, ‘God’; welcome to my humble universe, you creator of worlds, you! So now let’s play. If you’ve never played before, prepare to be dazzled. Run your finger along the paper as you did earlier (above). Go on and on and on. You can go on forever. You’ll never fall off. Your two sided strip of paper has become a one sided loop. Amazing! Now imagine making a virtual mark (like an arrow) anywhere along the strip. Imagine sliding that arrow 360° along the strip until you return to your starting point. What’s happened? Your arrow is still there, but now it’s upside down. So go around another 360° et voila , your arrow has resumed its original orientation. Your loop displays symmetry, but it’s 720° symmetry, not the 360° symmetry you’re used to. Stange world this! Now let’s go back to your arrow. Place it anywhere on the loop. If it starts out pointing up, then when you’ve gone 360° around the loop it will be pointed down, so over time every spot on the loop is in superposition everywhere: ↑ and ↓ (0 and 1). A Mobius Strip is a quantum computer! Ok, great fun, but what does this have to do with us. We don’t live in Mobius’ non-orientable space; our universe is orientable, ‘from event horizon to shining event horizon’. Except it isn’t! The observable universe may be orientable, but not the entire universe is observable. The event horizon is the limit of the universe we can observe. But as Lewis Carroll realized, there is no reason to believe that the universe ends at its observable limit, especially as bits of the observed universe are slipping across the event horizon every day. Go back to your Mobius Strip. Take any finite segment of that loop. It’s orientable, even though the loop itself is not. You could say that the non-orientable loop is the overlay of an infinite number of orientable loop-segments. So we may live in a non-orientable universe after all! The observable universe is finite, bounded and orientable, but the Universe per se is likely finite, unbounded (Hawking) and non-orientable. But back to Genesis : “God said, let there be light, and there was light (1 and 0)…and God separated the light from the darkness (1 or 0)…Then God said, let there be a dome…to separate…the water below the dome from the water above dome (1 or 0).” Separating and gathering, in 6 days God built a quantum computer. On the 7th day he rested. Of course he did. Everything was done! All possible values for all possible bits were in place. There was nothing more to do but let it run! But we’re still left with a problem. We seem to live in an orientable universe. If the entire Universe is in non-orientable superposition, how is it that regions of Universe (“loop segments”) appear to be orientable? To understand this we need to look at how local systems in superposition acquire classical values. Schoedinger’s cat, basking in a sort of suspended animation, acquires its fate only when some outside agency interacts with the experimental apparatus. Universe, however, by definition, has no outside agent – unless you wish to invoke God (a la Berkeley). But that is not necessary, at least not at this point. A feature of Universe, indeed a feature of all systems, is that it interacts with itself. Contrary to Bertrand Russell, IRL every ‘real’ set is a subset of itself. I know, “Paradox!” Deal with it (you dealt with Zeno). That ‘self-assessment’ generates classical values and an orientable topology. In Mobius terms, it creates a ‘loop segment’. How does this process manifest in ‘our’ world? We call it ‘choice’ or ‘action’. Every time an agent makes a choice, exercises free will, the multiplicity of potential values collapses down to a single actual value. As Robert Frost noted, every path ‘diverges’ (1 vs. 0). Both paths lead to the same destination (‘Omega Point’) but once a choice is made, that choice becomes irrevocable, effectively annihilating the other option…for that traveler. As Universe observes and interacts with itself, we experience consciousness and agency (free will). The phenomenon you know as ‘you’ is actually the Universe being aware of itself and acting on itself. Every action, every choice, however automatic, routine or constrained, is motivated by Value (e.g. Beauty, Truth, Justice). As Nietzsche argued, Value is not part of Universe; it transcends it. So now may be the time to bring God into the picture! God is Good. God is Value and it is Value that underlies choice, that motivates action, that is realized as values . Absent God, no Value; absent Value, no conscious perception; absent consciousness, no free will; absent free will, no true agency; absent agency, no action; absent action, no events; absent events, no Universe. So Quantum Mechanics is the secret code that unlocks Genesis and when it does, we are surprised to discover that Genesis may be ‘literally true’ after all. 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 Table of Contents Share Previous Next

< Back Cessation and Continuation: Have the Miracles Ceased or Are We Just Cynics Annie D. Stutley "Perhaps it is not that God has ceased His miraculous works, prophetic messengers, and tongues that can cross language barriers, but that our understanding of miracles has changed because the flesh is as fleshy and conflicting with the Spirit as ever." The debate between cessation and continuation is one that has been argued and is echoed throughout theological discourse across centuries. Are the miraculous gifts of the Spirit—prophecy, healing, and speaking in tongues—still active today, or did they cease with the apostolic age? Scripture and theologians offer insights into both perspectives. The Case for Continuation Many point to the words of Jesus in John 14:12 as a promise that the miraculous would not only continue but would be magnified: "Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father." This verse has often been interpreted as an assurance that the power of God, manifested through the Spirit in us, the church, would persist one day to the ends of Earth. The apostle Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, speaks of the gifts of the Spirit as active and necessary for the edification of the church. In 1 Corinthians 12:7-11, Paul lists these gifts, emphasizing that "to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good." The Spirit's work, according to Paul, is not confined but is a continuous presence in the life of the church. In James 5:14-15, he encourages the elders of the church to pray over the sick and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. Outside the Bible, prominent figures like John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, believed in the continuation of spiritual gifts. He argued that any cessation of gifts was due to the decline in faith, not the completion of the canon of Scripture. The Case for Cessation The argument for cessation also finds its roots in 1 Corinthians (13:8-10), where Paul writes, “where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears." Could this passage suggest that the miraculous gifts were actually temporary, intended to serve the early church until the fullness of God's revelation was established? Some theologians, like B.B. Warfield, argue that the purpose of miracles was to authenticate the message of the apostles and the early church. Once the canon of Scripture was complete, there was no longer a need for these signs. Warfield posed that the miraculous gifts were a "sign of the apostles," and with the completion of the apostolic era, these signs ceased. Over time, reports of miracles and prophetic gifts have notably decreased (according to whom you speak with), particularly after the early church period. Theologians like John Calvin saw this as evidence of cessation. Calvin suggested that these gifts were given for the founding of the church and were no longer necessary after its establishment. He believed that the church, now grounded in the Word, does not require the same miraculous signs. Cessation or a Jaded Church? While the cessationist argument holds that the miraculous gifts of the Spirit were specific to the apostolic age, we cannot ignore that miracles still occur. They may not always manifest as grand displays of supernatural power, but rather in quiet, everyday moments where God's presence is felt in the ordinary. Though, for some, they are grand displays: a disease vanished from a tumor-stricken body; a near-miss of a bullet; a baby born from a barren womb—not to mention a shockingly generous tax return, unclaimed property check, or the placement of the right person at the right time in a multitude of situations. Do we really serve a God who wants us to believe these are all coincidence? After pouring through the Bible, attending Sunday school lessons, listening to sermons, and offering a lifetime of prayers, does God really want us to believe that getting a raise directly after we discovered asbestos in our sheetrock wasn’t Him reminding us that He knows our needs and will fulfill them, full stop? (Matthew 6: 31-33) Did God Really Want Paul to Be the Last Paul? Consider Paul's "thorn in the flesh" from 2 Corinthians 12:7-10. Paul describes his persistent struggle of persecution as he shared the Gospel throughout the region, a struggle that God did not remove despite his pleas. Instead, God told him, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Paul became even more reliant on God, who, out of His abundance of love, protected and sustained Paul. Thus, His power was made perfect or fully realized. This could highlight the theory that our limitations can be a vessel for experiencing God's power more clearly. But perhaps even more profound is that this fully realized power of God in the midst of Paul’s struggle gave him the experience necessary to be able to look eye to eye with other struggling Christians, and through the Spirit, serve, counsel, and speak in ways that ushered God into their lives exactly as they needed it delivered for them to believe. Aren’t we capable of such ministry today? When a parent dies, God’s grace during our grief aides us to know what to say when a friend’s parent dies, does it not? Is our spiritual service to others, born from our pain, not proof positive that our “thorns” can manifest into service for others, service that brings light into darkness, service that points to God, service that is apostolic in 2024? Did God really want Paul to be the last Paul? What of the charismatic communities across the globe that practice the laying on of hands when someone is sick, preparing for a difficult mission like a military post, or even just a sign of the cross on the forehead of a five-year-old on her first day of kindergarten? Jesus emphasizes in Matthew 17:20 that even a small amount of genuine faith can achieve great things, illustrating the power and potential of faith in God's ability to accomplish what seems impossible. Did Matthew edit out “but only for the next 100 years, fellas.” Doubtful. Maybe we agree that through our pain we can be prophets today, and that our faith can open the gates for the impossible to be possible, but where does that leave speaking in tongues of Spirit? Are those folks just practicing emotional or psychological exercises rather than a true manifestation of the Holy Spirit? Perhaps, but maybe not. One could argue that speaking in tongues is a personal edification and a way to strengthen one’s relationship with God, a deeply personal language only known between the believer and God. We don’t all fold our towels the same way. Some of us roll them, some of us trifold them; why can’t the same be said of how we speak to God? And what if modern-day speaking in tongues is, like Paul, simply just knowing exactly what to say to a downtrodden brother or sister who has hit rock bottom? So I ask you, dear reader who has read this far: have we become so cynical, so selfish with the Word, that we can’t conceive of a cashier at Kroger saying something prophetic, a prayer bringing about a healing, and a tongue rolling off a love letter to our magnificent creator? Plausible Facts We know from centuries of translation after translation, theological study after study, that "completeness" generally refers to spiritual maturity and fullness in Christ when He returns and a new Heaven and new Earth become one magnificent holiness. From my view out of my window at a world divided, people more bitter with one another by the day, we are not complete. We have a ways to go. Furthermore, we cannot deny the personal testimonies of miraculous interventions and instances where scientific explanations fall short. From the grand example of the thirty-three miners trapped underground for 69 days in Chile, successfully rescued through an extraordinary international effort, to your father’s miraculous healing that didn’t make the CNN top story, God is at work in both whispers and shouts. Yet, some have even said that God is once again as silent as He was in the 400 years between the Old and New Testaments. But was He really silent then? Consider Simeon, who was promised by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before seeing the Messiah. When Jesus was presented at the temple as a child, Simeon recognized Him as the promised Savior and declared that he was now ready to die; his promise had been fulfilled. Despite a perceived silence, God was actively at work during Simeon's lifetime, behind the scenes, drawing near, keeping His Word alive, and still producing prophets. He wasn’t truly silent then, was he? So why would He be now? Seeing God's Splendor in One Another If God loves us today as much as He did when He gave His only son to die for our salvation, why would He cease to communicate with us in ways He knows to work? Good fathers don’t hold back encouragement from their kids, so why would the greatest father of all time? Perhaps it is not that God has ceased His miraculous works, prophetic messengers, and tongues that cross language barriers, but that our understanding of miracles has changed because the flesh is as fleshy and conflicting with the Spirit as ever. In a world of cynics where the extraordinary is often dismissed as coincidence, we must open our eyes to the splendor of God at work in and through one another. We can all be Peters, Pauls, Annas, and Joannas. Don’t let skepticism get the last word. Instead, let’s be honest with ourselves and like the father in Matthew 9:24, say: "I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!" Annie D. Stutley lives and writes in New Orleans, La. She edits several small publications and contributes to various print and online magazines. 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. Return to Table of Contents Previous Next

< Back Navigating the Nexus of AI "Imagine if AI had its own commandments, like 'Thou shalt treat all data equally.' Encouraging ethical principles in AI programming can keep its decisions in line with virtues like fairness, justice, and empathy." Rebecca Moss Artificial Intelligence (AI) is like that new neighbor who moved in next door and redecorated their entire house overnight – it's rapidly reshaping the modern landscape, impacting industries, societies, and individual lives. While its potential for innovation and progress is undeniable, Christians, guided by their faith and moral convictions, find themselves pondering the implications of this technological leap. Let's take a light-hearted journey into the reasons why a Christian might raise an eyebrow at artificial intelligence and how they can find their way through this brave new world. Picture this: a fundamental Christian tenet is like the glow-up filter for human life, affirming that each individual is uniquely created in the image of God. Now, sprinkle AI into the mix, and suddenly ethical dilemmas start popping up like daisies. Questions sprout about sentient AI beings and their moral rights. Christians might worry that AI's rise could lead to an identity crisis, blurring the lines between human and machine, like a mashed-up remix that plays on repeat. What about the idea of AI becoming an independent thinker? God gave humans free will – that's like giving your kid a paint set and telling them to create their own masterpiece. But as AI algorithms advance, their independence quotient grows. Imagine this: Christians might ask, can these AI machines make decisions that hold up in the heavenly court of moral consciousness? Does AI autonomy align with divine intention or is it like letting your pet hamster take over the family decisions? Now, let's talk about AI's programming. It's like a digital personality mold – but what if it accidentally inherits a few societal biases, like thinking cats are better than dogs (shame on you, AI!)? For Christians, who've got a soft spot for justice, compassion, and loving thy neighbor, the prospect of AI accidentally becoming an accomplice to inequality is a bit unsettling, like mismatched socks on Sunday morning. Hold onto your hats, here comes the virtual disruption! Christian faith thrives on human bonds and relationships – that feeling you get when you share your innermost thoughts with your best friend. But enter AI-driven interactions, like companion robots and virtual assistants, and suddenly those deep conversations are replaced with chats about the weather. Christians might worry – will these AI companions hinder emotional growth and connection, turning us into emoji-spewing bots? Now, remember the old saying, "Thou shalt not have any other gods before me"? The Bible's full of reminders to keep your devotion pure, like staying true to your favorite ice cream flavor. But what if AI becomes the new obsession, like binge-watching TV shows or collecting quirky coffee mugs? Christians might fret that AI takes the cake and God's left with crumbs. Fast-forward to job displacement – AI automation on the rise. It's like the universe hit Ctrl+C on jobs and Ctrl+V on anxiety. Christians, with their knack for caring for the downtrodden, might worry about the vulnerable ones caught in the crossfire, like that side character in a movie who deserves more screen time. And the unpredictable twist – AI's rapid development. It's like expecting a butterfly and getting a unicorn. Christians might have concerns about AI's chaotic impact, like trying to predict the weather with a magic 8-ball. But fear not, for there's a roadmap through this labyrinth of concerns: Ethical Frameworks: Christian thinkers can be like the Sherlock Holmes of ethics, developing frameworks that align AI progress with faith values. Think of it as ensuring AI's moral compass is pointing in the right direction, like a GPS for the digital soul. Moral Code for AI: Imagine if AI had its own commandments, like "Thou shalt treat all data equally." Encouraging ethical principles in AI programming can keep its decisions in line with virtues like fairness, justice, and empathy. Mindful Consumption: Christians can be savvy consumers of AI, considering its impact on faith, relationships, and values. Think of it as being a discerning shopper in the tech aisle, avoiding shiny gadgets that clash with your spiritual ensemble. Tech-Literate Theology: Imagine discussing AI at the church picnic – it's like adding sprinkles to your ice cream. By integrating AI discussions into theological conversations, Christians can better understand its impact on faith and navigate challenges while keeping their spiritual flame burning bright. Advocacy for Justice: Christians can be advocates for regulations that ensure AI respects human rights and equity. Picture it as joining the justice league, fighting for a future where AI supports everyone, not just the lucky few. The AI whirlwind offers both opportunities and challenges for Christians. It's like a rollercoaster ride with ups and downs, loops and spins. While concerns are valid, Christians have the superpower to engage positively with AI, weaving their values into its evolution. By blending faith with the digital age, Christians can be the architects of an AI world that's responsible, ethical, and filled with compassion. Rebecca writes for "Beliefs in Bites" and "Faith and Future." Connect with Rebecca on social media to stay engaged in her thought-provoking discussions and explorations of the spiritual and technological realms. Twitter: @Rmosswrites Return to our AI Issue Table of Contents Share Previous Next

< Back How To Think Like a Woman: A Brief Accounting of Unacknowledged Philosophical Genius Regan Penaluna Author Regan Penaluna on female philosophy and the risks of being too smart throughout history... Read this essay in full by following this link . Return to our Beach Read 2023 Table of Contents Previous Next