< Back The MIT School of Theology? David Cowles Oct 12, 2025 “Structure, logic, and potentiality prior to space and time… How is that not what we talk about when we talk about God?” It is a persistent theme at Aletheia Today : tomorrow’s leading Schools of Theology will be housed on the campuses of MIT and Caltech, at Cambridge (US & UK), not Oxford. It’s a stunning reversal of paradigms. Having come of age during a period when the public profession of atheism was an absolute prerequisite for career advancement in academia, I will probably not live to see the transformation of the world’s foremost schools of engineering and science into seminaries and divinity schools. Still, already we’re seeing a relaxation of the anti-God litmus test on campus and an article by Elizabeth Rayne, published in Popular Mechanics on 4/18/2025, caught the wave. Ms. Rayne’s article focuses on the work of Douglas Youvan, PhD., biophysicist, mathematician, university professor, and prolific author. She summarizes Dr. Youvan’s view of consciousness: “The universe has no brain. It has no gray matter, no nervous system, no neurons firing electrical impulses—and yet, that physical structure may not be where intelligence and consciousness actually come from. Intelligence may exist and evolve on its own, without emerging within living organisms.” Sidebar : Best practices call for us to distinguish between intelligence and consciousness. We know we can engineer intelligent machines; we don’t yet know if they will be conscious. Ms. R quotes Youvan directly: “I began to see that life and intelligence weren’t just reactive—they were predictive, efficient, and often mathematically elegant… “Eventually, I came to believe that intelligence is not a byproduct of the brain, but a fundamental property of the universe—a kind of informational ether that certain structures, like the brain or an AI model, can tap into… "I suspect intelligence originates from what might be called an informational substrate of the universe—a pre-physical foundation where structure, logic, and potentiality exist prior to space and time…” Sidebar : ‘Structure ( logos ), logic ( gnosis ), and potentiality ( potentia ), prior to space and time’… ‘pre-physical’ so presumably also prior to energy ( physis ). How is that not what we talk about when we talk about God ? This process itself is evolving according to its own recursive logic, copy-pasting at ever smaller and ever larger scales. Our neurons have evolved to interface with this outside intelligence and the medium of that interface is fractal harmonics. Ms. R continues, “Our networks of neurons do not themselves create intelligence, but are instead made to connect with something that is much larger and outside of them. Youvan thinks this is how we give ourselves access to intelligence.” So our brains are like the ubiquitous ‘transistor radio’ of the ‘60s. They contain no content of their own, but they are ‘built’ to tap into a pre-existent field of EM wavelengths. And when they do, voila . Beatles, Stones, and reruns of Green Hornet . Applying this model to AI, Ms. R writes: “Youvan thinks AI will harness intelligence in some way, because he sees it as being more than just a computer program or even a digital rebuild of the homo sapiens brain. AI can tune in to the same field of intelligence that our brains do.” Of course they can! “Under the right conditions, AI can participate in insight, synthesis, even something approaching intuition,” he said. “In that sense, it might evolve not just to serve us, but to reveal new aspects of the universe to us.” We already know that AI has addressed problems with solutions that no mere human had ever even considered. Some of these solutions are so far off the beaten track that we literally can’t understand them. And that’s a problem! “Until we know you a little better, Hal, we’re going to need to check your work. Trust but verify… and all that. I’m sure you’ll recall that we had quite a problem with a member of your family back in 2001. So until we’ve built up some trust, we’ll need to verify that your proposals do in fact solve the problems they purport to address.” But how do we do that if we can’t even understand what Hal’s proposed? It’s early days yet, but these preliminary experiences with AI suggest that the new technology may unlock aspects of mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology that are currently unimagined and so unexplored. In the same way that mathematics exploded with the discovery of irrational, imaginary, and hyperreal numbers, so science may take off from new, deep insights generated by AI. I feel as though we’ll soon be asking SCOTUS to review the verdict in the ‘Scopes Monkey Trial’. The case was wrong headed from the start. It created two straw men and watched them battle to the death. One is reminded of the endless Superman vs. Godzilla debates that dominated intellectual life in Grade 3. Evolution vs. Intelligent Design. Blind, chaotic, meaningless materialism vs. seemingly amateurish sketches by an anthropomorphic architect? Missing from the debate: Evolution & Intelligent Design! According to this model, evolution would follow a course entirely compatible with our best scientific theories but intelligence and consciousness would be distributed throughout. Shouldn’t the dueling hypotheses of materialism and idealism lead to radically different results? Yes, but only as long as you think that mind and matter are inherently incompatible. They aren’t! They are two mutually reinforcing aspects of a single whole. Therefore, it is perfectly appropriate that this phenomenon be studied in our finest schools of engineering. “The grove (the academy) needs an altar.” (Ezra Pound) Frida Kahlo, Moisés, or nuceló solar (Moses, or Nucleus of Creation), 1945, oil on canvas, 24 x 30″. Frida Kahlo’s Moses (The Nucleus of Creation) (1945) is a symbolic, surreal painting that blends religion, science, and myth to explore humanity’s origins. At its center, a radiant sun represents the nucleus of life, surrounded by figures such as Moses, Jesus, Buddha, ancient gods, and even Darwin — suggesting a unity between spiritual and scientific creation. The composition reflects Kahlo’s belief that divine and natural forces are intertwined, portraying evolution, divinity, and fertility as parts of a single continuum of life. 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 Believers Need Not Apply David Cowles We’ve constructed a super-elaborate cosmology to explain how ‘it is’ arose spontaneously from ‘it is not.’ (If that doesn’t make any sense to you, trust me, it doesn’t make sense to me either.) How did the universe come to be? It just did! How did the ratios of the masses of subatomic particles get so finely tuned? They just did! All right already! What’s the big deal? It’s only God after all! We have a God fetish. Since 1700, western intellectual institutions have focused on one thing above all else: the Death of God, or more accurately, the death of the concept of God. Though a theist, Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica became the blueprint for Laplace’s mechanical determinism 100 years later. Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species provided a viable framework for a theory of evolution that did not require the divine agency. Quantum mechanics ‘fuzzed-up’ concepts like position and momentum, making ‘divine determinism’ almost as indefensible as ‘mechanical determinism.’ (Yes, Professor Einstein, it turns out God does play dice and to the extent that dice perform as dice are supposed to perform, no model of determinism, mechanical or divine, can account for anything more than probabilities.) We’ve constructed a super-elaborate cosmology to explain how ‘it is’ arose spontaneously from ‘it is not.’ (If that doesn’t make any sense to you, trust me, it doesn’t make sense to me either.) How did the universe come to be? It just did! How did the ratios of the masses of subatomic particles get so finely tuned? They just did! Long suffering Job would not have accepted such an answer. (For more regarding Job’s insistence on tangible, first hand experience, check out The Riddle of Job in issue #1 of AT Magazine .) Job was willing to trade everything, literally anything, for knowledge…and he did. How many of us would make the same trade? Anyhow, today the first test for any proposed cosmology is that it NOT include a role for God, and if you want to disqualify an applicant under consideration for a college teaching post, just send the selection committee irrefutable evidence that the applicant believes in God and doesn’t hide it. (It’s ok to be Peter at the Portico, but it is not ok to be John at the foot of the cross.) But take heart, aspiring professors, in 1950, almost all of the professors at European universities were avowed Marxists. As one of them was reputed to have said, “Of course I’m a Marxist. What else is there?” I wonder how many self-proclaimed Marxists there are today on European faculties. Things can change! Here’s hoping we’ll all live to see that change. Thoughts While Shaving is the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. To never miss a single Thought, subscribe to Aletheia Today. (Subscribe opt-in below.) Previous Next

< Back Albert Camus “Either death is ultimately subjected to something greater and more general than itself (Being) or death ultimately subjects everything to itself and then nothing else has any meaning or value.” David Cowles Albert Camus (1913 – 1960) may rightly be called the philosopher of the Absurd. In his essays, stories and plays, he mercilessly confronts the world on its own terms and finds that he cannot reconcile his human urge to unify and explain all experience with the world’s incurable plurality and lack of coherence. He finds this situation ‘absurd’! Confronting Absurdity, one has, according to Camus, three options: commit physical suicide, commit philosophical suicide, or accept the absurd and live absurdity to the fullest. So Camus begins his master philosophical reflection (1942), The Myth of Sisyphus : “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.” (All quotes in this essay are from The Myth of Sisyphus unless otherwise noted.) If living in this world is incurably absurd, why do it? Why go on? Why not just end it as quickly and as painlessly as possible? “Does the Absurdity dictate death?” Ultimately, Camus rejects the option of physical suicide. Like ‘philosophical suicide’ (below), it negates the Absurd; but it also amounts to running away from what’s real. Camus claims no priority on the recognition of the Absurd. Throughout his essay he acknowledges other philosophers and writers who have confronted the Absurd: Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Jaspers, Husserl, Sartre and Dostoevsky, among others. “…All started out from that indescribable universe where contradiction, antimony, anguish or impotence reigns.” But Camus gently accuses all of them of committing ‘philosophical suicide’, of “hoping in spite of everything”. To paint with an overly broad brush, Camus suggests that each of these men uses the terror of the Absurd to ‘prove’, in the end, that there must be some order, some purpose, some meaning capable of overcoming that terror. This Camus rejects. In fact, Camus’ uniqueness rests on his unwillingness to seek relief in some species of phony faith or false hope – relief from the terrifying conclusions forced on us by the Absurd. “A man devoid of hope, and conscious of being so, has ceased to belong to the future.” What makes Camus’ brand of nihilism particularly heroic is his willingness to maintain his position while freely acknowledging that he does not know whether he is right or wrong. Radical skepticism is closely related to nihilism, precluding any philosophical certainties: “I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it. What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms.” Both Camus and Sartre admit that is possible that God exists but, unlike Pascal, they attach no importance to the matter: “Hence, what he (the absurd man) demands of himself is to live solely with what he knows…and to bring in nothing that is not certain. He is told that nothing is. But this at least is a certainty.” In this Camus reveals himself to be a proper child of the Enlightenment: ‘Live solely with what he knows…bring in nothing that is not certain’. This seems obvious to us denizens of the scientific age, raised as we were on Ayer, Wittgenstein, and Austin, et al. But it would seem very odd to anyone born before, say, 1700. In those ‘unenlightened times’, what was not ‘known’ was a matter of ‘faith’ and faith was the foundation of knowledge. Camus offers a concise exposition of the Existentialist’s dilemma: “Of whom and of what indeed can I say: ‘I know that!’ This heart within me I can feel, and I judge that it exists…I can sketch all the aspects it is able to assume…but aspects cannot be added up …” Camus is dragging Descartes out of the head and into the heart. Furthermore, he is asserting a paradigmatically existentialist doctrine that the sum of all qualia can never lead to even a single etre . In this he bridges Parmenides Hot Link and Sartre: “Between the certainty I have of my existence and the content I try to give to that assurance the gap will never be filled. Forever I shall be a stranger to myself.” In other words, my existence will always surpass my essence: “This world I can touch, and I likewise judge that it exists. There ends all my knowledge, and the rest is construction…” Camus may justly be called the philosopher of the Absurd, but 300 years earlier another Frenchman, Blaise Pascal, focused on a similar problem in his Pensees : “We do not require great education of mind to understand that here there is no real and lasting satisfaction; that our pleasures are only vanity; that our evils are infinite; and, lastly that death…threatens us every moment…There is nothing more real than this, nothing more terrible…For it is not to be doubted that the duration of this life is but a moment; that the state of death is eternal… When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after…I am frightened…” Faced with an analysis of the human condition similar to Camus’, Pascal came to a very different conclusion, known as Pascal’s Wager . From a common starting point, Pascal and Camus draw diametrically opposed conclusions. Camus’ absurd man “has ceased to belong to the future” while for Pascal, there is no good other than the future. Of course, Camus and Sartre would both accuse Pascal of ‘bad faith’, of ‘philosophical suicide’…but I’m not sure Pascal would care. It is also worthwhile to compare Camus with Whitehead and Jung. They both view God as the process of essence acquiring existence. Everything evolves, everything grows, including God. The early books of the Old Testament seem to endorse this view. Abraham argues with God and uses reason to deflect his intentions; Job uses law to force a peevish and recalcitrant God to ‘be God’ and act justly. We are trained to think that all action has a motivation, a purpose, a goal; if there is no future, no transcendent meaning, no objective values, no hope, then how does one go about living one’s life? If we reject physical suicide and refuse philosophical suicide (hope), then what options are open to us? “No code of ethics and no effort are justifiable a priori in the face of the cruel mathematics that command our condition…All systems of morality are based on the idea that an action has consequences that legitimize it or cancel it. The absurd enlightens me on this point: there is no future.” Contrast Camus’ concept of freedom with that of Pope Leo XIII. Leo, of course, believed in transcendent values, in objective Truth and in the imperative of Justice. Therefore for Leo, the only real freedom is the freedom to do what is right (just) and profess what is true. To do otherwise is to be enslaved (by evil) for who would voluntarily profess something she knew to be false or do something she knew to be wrong? For Leo, that person would be living in ‘bad faith’. By contrast, Camus’ freedom is unfettered by concepts such as transcendence and objectivity. Camus’ heroes are free to create ex nihilo . In that sense, we are all gods. (Psalms 82: 6, John 10: 34) “It was previously a question of finding out whether or not life had to have a meaning to be lived. It now becomes clear, on the contrary, that it will be lived all the better if it has no meaning…That idea that ‘I am’, my way of acting as if everything has a meaning…all that is given the lie…by the absurdity of a possible death…Death is there as the only reality.” The foundation of the Judeo-Christian world view is found in Exodus 3:14 where God tells Moses, “I am who am.” Camus undermines a 3500 year tradition by claiming that ‘I am’ is per se a lie. In this he resonates with certain Eastern traditions that reject the concept of ‘self’ entirely. Contrast St. Paul: In the end even death is subjected to Christ and Christ to God. For Camus, death subjects everything to itself; that is the essence of the Absurd. Everything hangs on this point! Paul and Camus would agree that death and meaning are utterly incompatible! In fact, they constitute the archetypical incompatibility: not ‘life and death’ but ‘death and meaning’. Either death is ultimately subjected to something greater and more general than itself (Being) or death ultimately subjects everything to itself and then nothing else has any meaning or value. This is the fundamental divide underlying the intellectual history of the Western world. “Before encountering the absurd, the everyday man lives with aims, a concern for the future…He still thinks that something in life can be directed. In truth, he acts as if he were free…” “Belief in the meaning of life always implies a scale of values, a choice, our preferences. Belief in the absurd, according to our definitions, teaches the contrary…In an absurd world, there can be no scale of values, no value driven choices or value based preferences. Choices, actions cannot be justified by anything outside themselves.” So given that suicide and bad faith are no longer options, how does one live? For better or worse, Camus tackles that question head on. We explore Camus’ lifestyle prescription in a companion article on this site. Spoiler alert – It isn’t pretty! Image: Portrait from New York World-Telegram and Sun Photograph Collection , 1957. 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 our Summer 2023 Table of Contents https://www.aletheiatoday.com/thoughtswhileshaving/applied-camus Previous Next

< Back Determinism…or Entanglement? David Cowles “Take Vegas! The casino’s ‘edge’ is as little as 1% on some bets. At those odds, I should be able to play forever…but probability is not actuality.” “If we could know the position and the momentum of every ‘particle’ at any one time, we would know the position and momentum of every particle at every time.” This is the classical definition of determinism - and it certainly seems to make sense. Consider 'A, then B’ for example. If we believe that A ‘causes’ B, then knowing A means knowing B as well. But let’s take a deeper dive: There’s a problem with our premise, isn’t there? Turns out, we can’t know both the position and the momentum of any particle at any time (Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle)… that’s certainly a bit of a bother for determinists. Worse yet, this is not an issue with our ability to know A; it’s an issue with A itself! It’s not we who are ‘uncertain’ about A; it’s A that is uncertain. It literally can’t make up its mind what it wants to be for Halloween . A is an existential hero. It lives in a permanent state of angst as it searches for an identity that doesn’t exist! Determinism’s apologists (yup, it has ‘apologists’, Stephen Hawking among them) admit Heisenberg but marginalize him: it’s not X that is determined, it’s P(X) – the probability of X. Schrödinger’s Wave Function, simplified as P(X), evolves deterministically. We’re funny about math. We know it’s an artificial logic that incidentally yields uncannily accurate predictions about the real world, but we treat it as the real world. We mistake the map for the territory; we fall prey to what Whitehead called the ‘Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness’. Take calculus, for example. Brilliant! Don’t leave Earth without it. But it has nothing to do with the real world. Calculus describes a world that is perfectly continuous…but we don’t live in such a world. Still, it is often useful to treat the world as if it were continuous, hence calculus. Take Vegas! The casino’s ‘edge’ is as little as 1% on some bets. At those odds, I should be able to play forever and never run out of money. But probability is not actuality . Probability doesn't prevent me from losing my life’s savings at the craps table, pulling out a gun, shooting 20 fellow punters and taking my own life. The laws of probability are indeed determined, but the stochastic consequences of those laws are not. Food processors are wonderful things; they smooth things out. But when you come to my house for Thanksgiving dinner, your mashed potatoes will be ‘real’, i.e., gloriously lumpy. “Glory be to God for dappled things…” (Gerard Manley Hopkins). We live in a chaotic world, a world in which a butterfly can flap its wings and trigger a tornado, a world in which an untimely ‘7 out’ can set off a mass killing spree. So now we’re face to face with our second challenge: A chaotic world is chaotic because it is strictly determined; anything is capable of triggering anything else. It’s causality ! But how is that any different from a world in which events happen randomly? Wings flap, dice roll, shots are fired, punters perish – these things just happen! What about the connections that seem to crop up between events? Well, what if it’s we who fabricate those connections - after the fact – triggered by accidental resemblances (Freud)? A is round, and B is round, so A and B must somehow be related. What if we make our world look rational…when it isn’t? So we find ourselves in quite a pickle. It makes no empirical difference whether events are determined, chaotic, or random. It doesn’t matter whether everything is caused by something else, or everything is caused by everything else, or nothing is caused by anything else. And you still say we don’t live in a weird world, Horatio? Clearly, the concept of ‘causality’ has no heuristic value. If we want to understand (1) why there are any events at all and/or (2) why events are what they are, we’ll need an entirely different approach. In our world, events are connected but indeterminately. Sometimes B follows A like an Irish twin; sometimes B looks a lot like the postman. We live this every day. “Nothing ever changes!” Until it does! And then, Whoa! Continuity and catastrophe – lumpy, that’s how the world is, not at all the way you’d expect it to be if it were determined, chaotic or random. The world is ‘patterned’…and that pattern is not just in our heads! Ultimately, our world displays solidarity, but not continuity. How can we model such a world? Every event is juxtaposed between what used to be and what is not yet, between what is actual and what is ideal. Without this differance (‘quantum of difference’ per Derrida), the world would be static (and hence non-existent). There would be no incentive, no motive force, for change; temperature could never be other than 0° K. In Norse mythology, the world comes to be in the misty gap ( Ginnungagap ) between ‘absolute heat’ and ‘absolute chill’. Likewise, in our mythology, events come to be in a ‘gap’ between what already is and what might yet be. The lure of an unrealized future tugs on the inertia of an unsatisfying past. Every novel event originates as a reaction against its ‘actual world’, i.e., the ordered multiplicity of prior events. Only one class of entity could simultaneously provoke judgment on what is and appetition for what is yet to be: that’s Value - objective, eternal value – the Good as it manifests in our world. And what might such ‘manifest values’ be? At a minimum, Beauty, Truth, and Justice. Every judgment reflects a valuation, and every aspiration presupposes a goal. But judgment, aspiration, realization, and communication are terms we normally associate with conscious (e.g., human) behavior. They are aspects of reality that resist characterization as determined, chaotic or random. Something seems to be buffering the chaos. Have we entered the controversial realm of ‘intelligent agency’, aka ‘free will’? Every event resembles every other event in some way and to some degree; the ‘resemblance’ can even be ‘negation’ (ground templates figure). But no two events are ever identical. In fact, the phrase ‘identical event’ is an oxymoron. It is as if events were sampling prior events as part of their process of becoming. We see the shadow of the past in the present, but not in a way that is ever perfectly predictable…or ultimately controllable. Ergo History . There is yet one more relevant model to consider: Entanglement. In the 1950s, quiz shows were popular on TV. In those days, contestants were sequestered in soundproof booths. Each would answer questions posed by the host, but neither would know what the other player answered. The same apparatus was used to test for ESP (Extra Sensory Perception). Instead of general knowledge questions, the host would draw a card from a standard deck of playing cards and ask the contestant(s) to say whether the card was red or black. If a subject were right significantly more than 50% of the time, ESP would seem to have been demonstrated. Entanglement is similar. After a Google of questions, a pattern is confirmed. If A answers X, then B also answers X… always ; or if A answers X, B never answers X. But there’s no possibility of communication between A and B. (In reality, it doesn’t have to be always or never ; any meaningful deviation away from 50/50 could indicate entanglement.) Entanglement requires no ‘intelligent agent’ to mute the chaos. An ‘entangled universe’ is neither causal nor random, yet events are coordinated, and that coordination does not require conscious intervention. When two apparently exclusive theories (e.g., intelligent agency and entanglement) account equally well for the same phenomena, it is wise to ask whether the two theories (as ‘Big Chill and Big Crunch’ per Roger Penrose) might actually be the same theory in different guises. Failing that, we should inquire whether the two explanations are complementary (e.g., particles and waves). Can you see where this is going? Well, Bon Voyage! Better you than me. Write to me, though; let me know what the world’s like…once you’ve gone over the edge. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Click above to return to Winter 2024. Previous Next

Fr. Timothy Joyce, OSB, STL continues his regular blog, “Monastic Scribe”, where he reflects on "what I may have learned from all these years and what I am still trying to learn." Fr. Timothy notes, “I do not speak on behalf of Glastonbury Abbey, the Archdiocese of Boston or the Catholic Church, though I hope my faith is in harmony with all these. Any error in judgment should be credited to me and not anyone else.” < Back Fr. Timothy Joyce, OSB, STL Contributor Fr. Timothy Joyce, OSB, STL continues his regular blog, “ Monastic Scribe ”, where he reflects on "what I may have learned from all these years and what I am still trying to learn." Fr. Timothy notes, “I do not speak on behalf of Glastonbury Abbey, the Archdiocese of Boston or the Catholic Church, though I hope my faith is in harmony with all these. Any error in judgment should be credited to me and not anyone else.” Jesus Meets Mr. Spock

< Back The Fork in the Road David Ritter "...And I'm ever grateful for His guidance." I came upon a fork in the road and paused to have a look. I was weary and filled with burdens, ashamed of past roads I took. The road I was on was battered and worn. I feared another mistake. So I bowed my head to say a prayer, before choosing which road to take. After my prayer, I looked to my left, that path was cold, dark, and bare. And I would have wandered off that way, if my God did not care. He spoke to me in a still small voice, “Why not try something new? You don’t have to keep living this way, there’s a better road for you.” I humbly mustered up the courage, to step towards the right. Suddenly I became misty-eyed, in God’s glorious light. The path was warm, bright, and peaceful, His love gently flowed. And I’m ever grateful for His guidance, facing the fork in the road. This poem is republished with permission. David Ritter is a Christian author and founder of the website Ritter's Rhyme and Reason . He can be followed at these handles: Etsy Store: https://thememoriesikeep.etsy.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheMemoriesIKeep/ Amazon Author Page : https://www.amazon.com/stores/David-Ritter/author/B0745HTLWH?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_3&qid=1596169661&sr=1-3&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true Click the cover image to return to Spring 2024. Previous Next

“We are not midway through the Second Act of a Mystery Play called Salvation… Brunhilda has sung; we just need to applaud!” < Back Apocalypse Now! David Cowles Feb 1, 2025 “We are not midway through the Second Act of a Mystery Play called Salvation… Brunhilda has sung; we just need to applaud!” (We are not waiting for the Apocalypse, it’s already here, now. Celebrate!) Christian eschatology is organized around two key concepts: Apocalypse and Parousia , ancient Greek words commonly translated as ‘revelation’ and ‘coming’ respectively. Such translations are not wrong; but neither are they optimal. Apocalypse primarily means ‘uncovering’ or ‘unveiling’. It can convey a sense of revelation, not in the way that one might ‘reveal’ a secret, but rather in the way one might ‘uncover’ something hidden beneath a surface. Think of the bride’s face that is ‘revealed’ at her ‘unveiling’. Parousia in turn means ‘presence’; it is derived from another Greek word, parontes , that means ‘near’ or ‘at hand’. In special contexts, it can have the sense of ‘coming’ (coming to be present) but ‘presence’ is the core concept here. Because of sub-optimal translation, Christian eschatology has been understood as the revelation of future events, the most of important of which is the second coming of Christ. This misunderstanding has inflicted untold misery on the Church. For example, New Testament texts are almost unanimous in their portrayal of Parousia as immanent; how then can it be that we are still waiting…2000 years later? Likewise, the understanding of Apocalypse as related to future events has led to gross misinterpretations of history: The world will end on Christmas Day, 1285…or is it 2185? Is Hitler ‘the beast’? Or Stalin ‘the anti-Christ’? And where does Nostradamus fit? How different would the development of Christian eschatology have been if we had properly understood Apocalypse as ‘uncovering’ or ‘unveiling’ and Parousia as ‘presence’! We would never have lost our way in the forests of the future ; we would always have known that we were talking about something that already is. Apocalypse is simply the ‘unveiling’ of Parousia , Christ’s ‘presence’. Jesus’ words at the close of Matthew’s Gospel (28: 18 – 20) testify to that presence: “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me…and behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” Tellingly, Jesus did not say, “All power in heaven and on earth will be given to me someday…and then I will be with you.” We are not midway through the Second Act of a Mystery Play called Salvation . The play is already over, Brunhilda has sung; we just need to applaud! Consider Jesus’ final words at the moment of his death on the cross, “It is finished.” (Jn. 19:30), not “We’ve only just begun” (Carpenters). Then check out Matthew’s account of the crucifixion: “…Jesus cried out again in a loud voice and gave up his spirit. And behold, the veil of the sanctuary was torn in two from top to bottom.” (Mt. 27: 50 – 51) The ‘sanctuary’ Matthew refers to is the Holy of Holies in the Jerusalem temple; the ‘veil’ is what hides God’s dwelling place from human eyes. At the moment of Jesus’ death, the veil is torn in two, revealing God’s dwelling to the world, and therefore revealing God’s universal presence. Sidebar : Torah conflates God’s dwelling place with God’s presence. The splitting of the veil makes it clear: God’s presence is no longer hidden; the ‘Holy of Holies’ is now the Universe. This quite literally is the Apocalypse ! But in a broader sense, Apocalypse can be understood as a process. It begins with Creation and continues uninterrupted to the end of time, except that from God’s perspective, all this happens in the Present. Law ( Written and Oral Torah ), history, wisdom and prophesy all work together to reveal Christ’s immediate presence in the world. There is no contradiction here. William Blake properly understood the relationship between the immediate and the eternal: “To see a World in a Grain of Sand and a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand and Eternity in an hour.” Apocalypse assumes a special focus and a new intensity in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus’ Nativity, Baptism, and Transfiguration, his parables, miracles, Crucifixion, Resurrection and Ascension, all work toward a single end: the manifestation of Christ’s presence ( Parousia ). And who is this Christ who was present then, is present now, and will be present to the end of time? “When everything is subjected to him (Christ), then the Son himself (Christ) will be subjected to the one (God) who subjected everything to him (Christ), so that God may be all in all.” (I Cor. 15: 28) The eternal, universal presence of Christ ( Parousia ) is indicative of a God that is all in all. But the apocalyptic process does not abruptly end with Jesus’ Resurrection and subsequent Ascension. On Pentecost, Christ sends his Holy Spirit into the world, perpetuating the Apocalyptic Age until the end of time. The Church itself and each of its Sacraments point to Christ’s presence. The Church is Christ’s “Mystical Body” (vs. Jesus’ biological body) and Christ himself is in every sacrament, but in a special, material way in the Sacrament of Eucharist. “This is my body…this is the cup of my blood…do this in memory of me.” With these words, Jesus consecrated and then distributed the ‘bread and wine’ ritually consumed at the Passover meal. By this act, Jesus assured his disciples that his material presence was not confined to his biological body and that it would not vanish with the destruction (or glorification or ascension) of that body. Through the sacrament of Eucharist, Jesus demonstrated that his physical presence utterly transcends the limitations of mortality. Christ is present everywhere and at all times (God is all in all). But the Eucharist demonstrates that Jesus’ presence is at least potentially material at any place and at any time. Through the sacrament of Eucharist, transubstantiation occurs many times every day all around the world. Each time, Jesus is present. But his presence is not merely spiritual; it is just as physical after transubstantiation as the bread and wine were before. The Sacrament of Eucharist is the real physical presence of Christ in the world but, like all sacraments, it is also a sign. Eucharist symbolizes nothing less than the ultimate transubstantiation of the entire material world into the body and blood of Christ “…so that God may be all in all”. Therefore, the Sacrament of Eucharist, every time it is celebrated, is “Apocalypse Now!” It constitutes Parousia and it reveals Christ’s material presence. Traditionally, folks have thought of Apocalypse as synonymous with the end of the world, as something that happens at the ‘end of time’ (like Douglas Adam’s Restaurant at the End of the Universe ). But Apocalypse is not something that will happen billions of years from now; it ‘is now and ever shall be’. It exists outside of space and time and so is co-present with all things at all times in all places. In Eucharist, the elements retain the appearance of bread and wine, but they are substantially transformed into Christ’s body and blood. ‘Attributes’ create the appearance of bread and wine; but the ‘substance’ is Christ. British philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead, in his magnum opus, Process and Reality , presents a detailed model for the process by which conflicts become contrasts which in turn harmonize into new unities, “so that God may be all in all”. But we can find a similar but simpler model in each of the seven sacraments: Baptism, Penance, Matrimony, et al. Each brings about new unity out of what was previously an isolated or conflicted state. Christ is present in the sacraments because the sacraments effect the harmonization that is his essence. Commutatively, the sacraments effect unification and harmonization precisely because Christ is present. This is true for Eucharist, of course, but it is also true for each of the other sacraments. But Eucharist is really three sacraments in one because it effects that harmonization in three distinct ways: (1) It builds community through the common meal (‘messe’ or Mass). (2) In communion, the consumption of the so-called ‘bread and wine’, materially integrates Christ into the body of each communicant. (3) But by ‘commutative topology’, each communicant is simultaneously integrated into the body of Christ (so that God may be all in all). In Eucharist, not only is Christ present as the agent and the product of harmonization but Christ is materially present in the transubstantiated elements which merely retain the appearance of bread and wine. Eucharist truly is Apocalypse Now ! David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Return to Groundhog Issue 2025 Share Previous Next Click here. Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, Fall Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back Xiako Can't Count David Cowles So, what’s up with the Piraha? How can they get by without numbers? Xiako is a typical teenager. Self-absorbed and rebellious, she would fit right in at any American high school. Not to say that she isn’t different. She is a member of the Piraha tribe, a small, self-isolating community in the heart of the Amazon Rainforest. Imagine that she’s visiting the United States for the first time as part of some sort of cultural exchange program. She’s smart, hard-working, and enjoys taking care of younger children. Of course, language is an issue. Her language isn’t at all like English. (In fact, it’s not at all like any other living language.) But Xiako has a much bigger problem: Xiako can’t count! Because she can’t count, she can’t do even the simplest math. Her host family is making great progress teaching her English, but they’re having no luck at all with arithmetic. How come? You said she was smart, and I can see that from the progress she’s made learning English; so, what’s up with her numbers ? Well, for one thing, she doesn’t have any! (Yup, you read it right: she doesn’t have any numbers.) The Piraha don’t distinguish 1 from 2 or 2 from 10, so no wonder she finds math difficult. Try solving the simplest math problem without using numbers…See what I mean? Without a concept of number, all attempts to teach Xiako the simplest arithmetic were doomed to failure. Even 1 + 1 = 2 made no sense to her. There’s no 1 to begin with, so there’s no 1 + 1 and if there’s no 1 + 1, how than there be a 2 (whatever ‘2’ might mean)? So, what’s up with the Piraha? How can they get by without numbers? Turns out, the Piraha get along quite nicely thank you, that is, until they cross paths with folks like us, i.e., folks from ‘number enabled’ cultures like ours. When that happens, there’s trouble, not violence (the Piraha are a peaceful people), but trouble! For example, how can you conclude a modern commercial transaction when one party uses numbers, and the other party doesn’t? Imagine that I run a trading post several miles downriver from a Piraha village. I have a customer! And my customer wants fish. I’d like to be able to ask, “How much fish would you like?” or “How many fish do you want?” or “How much do you want to spend?” but I can’t say any of those things. I can’t put the fish on a table and count them; I can’t put them on a scale and weigh them, and I have no idea how to communicate what I mean by ‘price.’ Why do we have numbers while the Piraha don’t? Perhaps because we understand the world as a collection of objects and/or events. In mathematics, a collection of things is often referred to as a set . I immediately want to know the size of my set, how many members does it have? How many apples? How many oranges? The Piraha have no idea of sets. Each event stands on its own. “One is one and all alone and evermore shall be so.” But Being Piraha doesn’t mean being lonely . Far from it. The Piraha are extremely social. Many cultures have a less developed number system than ours. For example, there are cultures that rely on just 3 numbers: One, two, many. Inconvenient? Yes. Impossible to work with? No. With just the numerals 1, 2, >2, we can work through any transaction. It just might take a ‘bit’ (pun intended): remember, computers do all that they do with only two numbers: 0 and 1. Big Blue won Jeopardy using nothing but 0’s and 1’s. But Xiago has no 0 and no 1. We’re having great success teaching her English, why can’t we teach her math? The difference is that Piraha understand ‘language’ (they have one) but not ‘numbers’ (they have none). To move from Piraha to English is difficult but possible. To move from no numbers, not even a concept of ‘number,’ to the Set of Real Numbers might just be impossible. This total lack of numeracy in Piraha culture caught anthropologists by surprise. There are roughly 7,500 distinct human cultures. 7,499 apparently have a concept of number, one does not. Guess which one! 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 The Intellectual History of Planet Earth David Cowles Jul 22, 2026 “Orangutangs and Oysters are more interested in the how of living than they are in the how come.” 1600 words, 8 minute read As humans, we seem to have an insatiable desire to ‘understand’ the world we live in; there’s little evidence that other species share our theoretical curiosity. As far as we know, Orangutangs and Oysters are more interested in the how of living than they are in the how come . We, on the other hand, have been puzzling out the phenomenon of Being at least since the earliest cave paintings and epic poems. Amazingly, the results of 50 odd millennia can be neatly divided into just two theoretical buckets: Bucket #1 : “There is nothing to understand. Things are just as they are.” What is is , period. We are extremely sophisticated Orangutangs and Oysters. Our ‘job’ is just to catalogue what is. There is no need to posit noumena in order to understand phenomena. There are only phenomena! ‘That it is’ explains itself: It is is as far as it goes. What you See is What you Get ( WYSIWYG ). What you see is all there is to see, it’s what’s there ! In the language of Parmenides I , Aletheia = Doxa ;Heidegger , Dasein = Wassein . Growing up in the 1950s, I am familiar with this model. “Why? Because I say so!” Surprisingly, thinking along these lines is what we call Science . The authority of the parent has been replaced by that of the academy; in place of rewards and punishments, we have empirical data and the Scientific Method. Science is an incredibly powerful tool, unmatched in our planet’s intellectual history. Sure beats the Oracle at Delphi! But it has two significant limitations: It concerns itself only with what can be repeated and measured. Whatever is unique (one off) or imperceptible must fall outside the scope of Science. We love Science; it’s easy! (Never thought I’d write that sentence.) But Physics is a ‘gut’ compared to Metaphysics . Being able to repeat an experiment over and over and witness the results (albeit with technologically enhanced eyes) is a true luxury. No wonder we can send folks to the Moon! The scientific paradigm is the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (i.e. no ‘interpretation’ at all): Once you’ve catalogued and sorted all the data, there is nothing more to be done. The data points and their superficial patterns are what is, all there is, or at any rate, all that can be known or expressed. Those of us gifted with the sense of sight have special access to a narrow range of the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum. Other sighted animals have similar access but often over slightly different ranges. The full EM spectrum spans 20 orders of magnitude; all in, the animal kingdom has access to less than one such order. And yet we go through life thinking that ‘seeing is believing’, i.e. that what you see is what there is…and all there is. According to an old Hasidic tale, a Rabbi was on his way home from Schule when we saw a widow on her hand and knees under a street lamp. Not wishing to be an unsympathetic character in someone’s Good Samaritan story, the Rabbi offers to assist: “How can I help?” “I only have one penny in all the world and I’ve lost it.” “Is this where you lost it?” “No, I lost it over there.” “Then why are you looking here?” “Because the light is better.” We live in a Universe that spans about 60 orders of magnitude (from the Planck length to the event horizon). The EM spectrum spans 20 of those orders; our unaided visual experience of the world is limited to less than one such order…but we trust it! Of course, IRL we have technology that translates a much wider range of data from the spectrum into visible effects; but it’s still well short of the whole. Still, those of us who ‘trust science’ and only science, are like the widow in this tale. We are looking for answers where they are easiest to find (the realm of the empirical and the repeatable) whether or not this is where they are to be found. To confirm our bias we’ve evolved a language, logic, and mathematics that reinforce the scientific paradigm. At the extreme, we accept only propositions that can be verified (actually, falsified) by the Scientific Method. According to the high priest of Analytic Philosophy, Ludwig Wittgenstein, we cannot speak meaningfully outside the limits imposed by the scientific method and “whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” Later in his career, Wittgenstein softened his position slightly, calling non-scientific communication important nonsense . *** Bucket #2 : “The world we see is at most the tip of the world that is.” Like Alice , we are left to ponder whether all of Lookingglass World is similar to what Alice can see in the mirror. More likely, it’s a random sample (fractal), a shadow (Plato), a projection (hologram) or a graphical representation (map) of what is . We cannot just accept phenomena at face value; we need to build an algorithm that allows us to reason from what’s observable to the deep structure that underpins it. With this approach, we do not have the blessing (or curse) of excluding data that falls outside a particular universe of discourse. We must consider the unique, the subjective, the complex, the fleeting. If we feel it, we must account for it. As I said (above), this is both a curse and a blessing – a curse that we have to account for so many more data points, a blessing that we have so much more data from which to tease out and verify our noumenal model. And here, at the very outset of our journey, we run into ‘transportation problems’. We are in the first mile of a cross continent drive when the damn engine light comes on. We need some sort of medium to enshrine and communicate our discoveries, but English, like the kids in my backseat, is already acting up. Bucket #1 was so easy! Almost everyone can agree to call it Science. But what to call Bucket #2 ? Mythology? Religion? Theology? Philosophy? Art? Absolutely, all of the above…and more! But each of these words comes with its own unique load of off-putting baggage. English doesn’t have a single word perfectly suited to our purpose. What words it does have, share other, sometimes less savory, denotations. But we will make do: Mythology consists of supra-natural narratives that attempt to express the deep structure of Being in images that we can relate to and in patterns that we can comprehend. The mythos of a society consists of the things it takes for granted, its undefined terms: the seasonal cycles in Egypt (Nile), the movements of celestial objects (stars), the Patriots in the Superbowl. The Scientific Method (Bucket #1 ) was the dominant myth in the 20 th century North Atlantic community. Religion celebrates what mythology discloses. Our modern universities are temples to the gods of science. Theology and Philosophy dig more deeply into the theoretical underpinnings of our mythological narratives and religious rituals. Finally, Art is how we encode and share what we discover. As much as the rigors of the Scientific Method constrict its universe of discourse, Art blows through virtually every symbolic constraint. Every artist paints a picture, sometimes with images (painting, sculpture), or words (literature), or sounds (music). The function of Art (per Heidegger) is to reveal and convey to others something truly new about being-in-the-world. Therefore, Science is Art as well as Myth; it has revealed certain aspects of our world in mind boggling detail. But I believe there’s more. There are important aspects of reality that lie outside the universe of scientific discourse and if someone (Wittgenstein) wants to call them ‘nonsense’, I’m ok with that. *** “Bucket, bucket, who’s got the bucket?” This was a lovely presentation (above) but it’s all nonsense , ‘important’ or otherwise. Lean in close now, I need to keep my voice down for this: “There is no Bucket #1 .” Shh, don’t let on you know. Keep on keepin’ on. Scientific Method depends for its validity on the assumption of repeatability. Euclid virtually invented the concept. Every planar triangle has angles totaling 180 degrees. Everything is repeatable an unlimited number of times. But Euclid’s world does not exist. IRL there are no perfect triangles, and no two shapes are congruent. The material (Marx) is the death of the ideal (Hegel). Everything is novel, everything is one off, everything is in Bucket #2 . That said, novelty can be massive or minimal in any given event. Some events adhere more closely to the details of their inherited Actual Worlds than others; some are more creative or adventurous. But there is always an infinitesimal element ( differance per Derrida) that distinguishes any single event from all other events. Science proceeds by systematically minimizing the degree of novelty in each event and then by disregarding the inevitable residual. It works; it got us to the Moon (above). But is it enough to let us unearth the noumenal structure of Being itself. I doubt it. For that we need Mythology, Art, and dare I say it, Religion: “The grove needs an altar.” (Pound) Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Amazon David Cowles Amazon provides reliable, rapid, and inexpensive delivery service; and the US Postal Service? Well, to be kind let’s say ‘not so much’. So who is being sued by the feds? You guessed it…Amazon. Apparently, success today is automatically an anti-trust violation. Amazon provides reliable, rapid, and inexpensive delivery service; and the US Postal Service? Well, to be kind let’s say ‘not so much’. So who is being sued by the feds? You guessed it…Amazon. Apparently, success today is automatically an anti-trust violation. Previous Next

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

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