“We confuse a person’s right to express a hairbrained idea with the notion that that idea should be taken seriously.” < Back Is There ‘True Religion’? David Cowles Apr 1, 2025 “We confuse a person’s right to express a hairbrained idea with the notion that that idea should be taken seriously.” Ecumenicism, say that 10 times, has been the reigning value in Western theology since WWII. We are so proud of our newly discovered religious tolerance that we want to assure everyone that their ideas are heard and recognized as valid, at least for them . We are living in an unprecedented era of moral relativism and hyper-subjectivism, often expressed as, “If you believe it, it’s true for you.” We misunderstand free speech – we confuse a person’s right to express a hairbrained idea with the notion that that idea should be taken seriously. But this is not all bad. We should allow ourselves to consider ideas that lie outside our comfort zone. Before we reject a person’s train of thought, we should be sure we understand it fully, not just in the context of its language, but in the context of the speaker’s background and life experience. In short, we need to deconstruct! “Are we sure we know what Sarah means by that ?” Truth is neither relative nor subjective…but meaning is. Now, if you’re getting the idea that I’m some sort of ‘woke relativist’, disabuse yourself…or prepare to be very, very disappointed. I believe in objective truth! But I also believe that there are multiple pathways to that truth. On the other hand, not all apparent ‘pathways’ are equally productive. Some meander endlessly; others are circular; many end in cruel cul-de-sacs, the narcissism of self-reflection. Every idea is not equally valid, and all roads do not lead to Rome. Bitter medicine for intellectually pampered millennials! In matters of religion, this 20th century Relativism expresses itself as Syncretism , the belief that all religions teach the same Truth, just expressing it in different languages and in different cultural contexts. But in my narrow minded view, a religion that practices child sacrifice is always inferior to a religion that abolishes it. That is not to say that we should ignore the heterodox beliefs of others. Far from it! The creeds and rituals of our various religions do overlap and when they do, their varied perspectives can enrich our understanding of the whole. Where religions truly share common ground, we should celebrate; but when they don’t, we should not shy away from identifying error and proclaiming truth . Syncretism is based on the notion that human beings were spiritually bereft prior to the emergence of religious beliefs and practices. From that Base Zero , every development in the history of religion is seen as an improvement, at least vis-à-vis the state of nature. Animism is an advance on naïve materialism, paganism on animism, and the so-called Religions of the Book represent an advance on paganism. The rich and varied spiritual traditions of the East need to be included in this matrix as well…and so on. Bottom line: Anything is better than nothing. This view is challenged by a number of pre-Reformation Christian theologians, including that Doctor of the Faith, Thomas Aquinas. However, it is nowhere better expressed than in the writings of Fra Savanarolla (d. 1498), the misunderstood and much maligned Florentine preacher who performed his intellectual acrobatics on the razor’s edge of the looming Renaissance: All (true) religion must proceed either from natural reason, from supernatural light (grace), or from the union of the two. “All religions founded by men…are based on…the true principles of human reason. “Christianity…since it is in no wise opposed to that which is natural, can have come from none but God. Thus it can be condemned by no other religion…for truth must be ever in harmony with truth and whatever arises from natural or supernatural light must proceed from God…” According to Savanarolla, True Religion, in his case Christianity, cannot contradict Natural Law as revealed through observation and experimentation; it can only enhance it. True Religion, by definition, is Natural Law plus . Judaism is built around a similar concept. God’s law is given twice, once in the created world and then again in the five Books of Moses, elaborated via the other books of the Old Testament (History, Prophesy, and Wisdom). Mystical Judaism labels Nature ‘Oral Torah’ and the Pentateuch ‘Written Torah’. Christianity adds a third source of Truth, ‘Spoken Torah’, i.e. Jesus the Christ, the Word ( logos ), his life and teachings as recorded by the evangelists and elaborated by the Church. Savonarola inverted the traditional pyramid. For this Dominican friar, Heresy is the lowest level of human intellectual endeavor; it exists solely and entirely as a refutation of what’s true. Heresy is the absence of Truth just as Evil is the absence of Good. As such, it conflicts not only with the truth of Judeo-Christianity (Revelation) but also with the truth of Science (Natural Law). According to Christian sociology, the heretic is one who has unrestricted access to the Truth of Nature and the Truth of Revelation and yet willfully rejects both in favor of doctrines that contradict God’s ‘words’ and conflict with Nature’s ‘laws’. One cannot be a heretic out of ignorance. The title Heretic is reserved for those who choose to go through life with ‘eyes wide shut’. In this model of Truth, Science is not at the base of the pyramid; it is just one rung from the apex. Therefore, every sincere religion is located higher on the pyramid than heresy. Only Religion, to the extent that it is true, ranks above Nature and even so conflicts with nothing revealed about the world by Science. Religion is the star (or angel) on an already well decorated tree. Truth is neither relative nor subjective. Sorry, Pilate! Truth just is. It’s how things are. It’s what it’s like to be Being, it’s what it is to be God. Along with Beauty and Justice, Truth comes as close as we can come to characterizing God. All religions, to the extent that they are not self-consciously heretical, contribute toward our understanding of that Truth. Our materialist buddies are right. We have to follow the Science. We have to respect the natural world, for its intrinsic worth and because it is a coded missive, an urgent owl , sent by God for us to read. Judeo-Christianity cannot, by definition, conflict with Natural Law ( aka Science). Because it incorporates all three sources of Wisdom (Natural Law, Written Torah, Logos ) it includes the Truth as it manifests in all our religious traditions. It is the metric by which all metaphysical speculation may be appreciated…and none of it judged, save naked heresy, the contradiction of Truth. To plumb the depths of all three Torahs is the work of 1,000 lifetimes. Fortunately, St. Paul left us a Cliffs Notes version. Embedded in his Letter to the Colossians Hot Link (the congregation at Colossae, east of Ephesus in Asia Minor) we find this very short, very old Christological Hymn (1: 15-20), possibly the earliest liturgical Christology extant today. Yet it constitutes a complete cosmology. Prepare to be astounded: "He (Christ) is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation , for in him all things were created… through him and for him. He is before all things and in him all things hold together … He is the beginning, the first-born from the dead . For in him all the fullness was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things for him…" Can you feel these early faith finders wrestling with the limitations of our techno-skewed Indo-European languages? Yet they have managed to deliver a magnificently non-linear model of reality. In my view, all religious beliefs may be considered ‘constructive’ to the extent that they (1) address these same existential questions at similar depth and (2) state nothing inconsistent with this model. Let’s try to shed some light on this text, knowing that we can never match (or improve on) the original: God is insensible, but the sensible image of God (e.g. Christ) is immanent in the created world. Creation (e.g. Genesis and/or Big Bang) is the moment of minimal entropy (maximal order). Of course, Christ is that maximal order, the ordering principle ( logos ), as well as order itself. Christ is universal and eternal, the origin and the destiny of whatever is (or was or will be). Therefore, Christ conditions everything that comes to be, and because all things (events) share the same common origin (Christ) and destiny (Christ), all things hold together; and because Christ is also the locus of all events (above), all things hold together in him . Death is the moment of maximal entropy, minimal order; you can’t be any deader than dead! Whatever emerges out of maximal entropy must (by definition) manifest an incremental increase in order ; whatever stands out against a state of maximal entropy (death) manifests Christ. Christ is not just the sensible image of an insensible God; Christ is God. ("In him all the fulness was pleased to dwell.") Entropy in the spatiotemporal world steadily increases due to conflict. Outside of spacetime (i.e. in Christ), reconciliation (through Christ) transmutes (for Christ) order-eroding conflicts into order-enriching contrasts, i.e. harmony. Today, academia is engaged in a search of TOE – a Theory of Everything. Needless to say, this search is not taking place in the context of Christian theology. However, it would be good to keep in mind that any modern day cosmology claiming to be a successful TOE must at a minimum meet the criteria cited by Paul 2000 years ago in Colossians . It must account for the diversity of entities (events) amid the solidarity of the Universe and the solidarity of a Universe that consists solely of diverse entities (events). It must explain how and why entities (events) emerge in the first place. It must model entities as unique, holistic events and Universe as a nexus of co-modifying entities. It must explain how things that decay may yet endure. It must allow entities (events) that seem to become and perish in spacetime to be eternal. It must explain how conflict can be resolved into contrast and contrast into harmony. It must account for the Reign of God, Peace. Why not? A TOE after all is just another religion by another name, a sister (cosmology) from a different mister (science). Why should it not be held to the same Truth standard? All valid religious precepts, including the propositions of Science, reinforce one another. Residual conflict, at this level, is a symptom of error. Image: Raphael. The School of Athens. 1509–1511. Fresco, 500 cm × 770 cm (200 in × 300 in). Apostolic Palace, Vatican Museums, Vatican City. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Share Previous Next 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 Science and the Yellow Submarine Part I Yellow Submarine is much more than just a delivery vehicle for the Beatles’ 1960s musical repertoire. The film addresses important ontological and cosmological issues, and it offers some truly remarkable scientific insights in the process. David Cowles Science & the Yellow Submarine – Part I The Beatles’ iconic 1968 film, Yellow Submarine , is more than meets the eye. Not that eye…or ear…is ever wanting for stimulation in this psychedelic romp. Far from it! But Yellow Submarine is much more than just a delivery vehicle for the Beatles’ 1960s musical repertoire. The film addresses important ontological and cosmological issues, and it offers some truly remarkable scientific insights in the process. Whether the creators of Yellow Submarine intended to raise these issues and offer these insights is a moot point. Every great work of art transcends the intentions of its creator(s). Res ipsa loquitur (“the thing speaks for itself”). Nor is it uncommon for artists’ intuitive insights to precede the scientific discoveries that support them. Picasso was painting in a Cubist style before Einstein conceived General Relativity. Yellow Submarine is the story of a journey from Liverpool, England to a magical realm called Pepperland. But to get to Pepperland, you don’t travel through spacetime; you travel perpendicular to it. (Who knew?) I am reminded of Harry Potter boarding the train to Hogwarts on track 9¾. Just like Alice in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass , the more we travel, the more we stay right where we are. We travel to the ends of the earth. We travel on business, we travel for vacation, and sometimes we travel just for fun (or at least we used to), but somehow we always end up in Liverpool. To travel to someplace other than where we are now, like Harry Potter, we have to travel ‘between the snowflakes,’ so to speak. Our voyage (in this essay) will take us through a series of ‘seas’ (or branes) that lie parallel to one another (ontologically parallel, that is) and in turn lie parallel to both Liverpool and Pepperland. Each brane is a self-contained manifold with its own mode of extension and its own physical laws, populated with its own characteristic entities. These branes are what 20th century British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead called, ‘Cosmic Epochs.’ (More Whitehead to come.) Together , these branes, the ‘seas’ plus Liverpool and Pepperland, constitute a ‘universe,’ or perhaps better, a ‘multiverse.’ The film breaks ‘the real world’ into primary categories (time, space, matter, thought, etc.). Then it explores each category, illustrating the full range of potential configurations and finally demonstrating how we can mix and match content from these branes to generate a multiplicity of unique universes. Yellow Submarine is a cosmogenic cookbook! When I was a kid, we had books and pamphlets on things like, “How to tie a square knot.” Yellow Submarine is a video on “How to build a universe.” How cool is that ! Our journey begins at a building in Liverpool aptly named “The Pier.” The Pier is a long corridor with a series of doors running along both sides. Open a door, and you catch a glimpse of some sort of ‘event.’ The event may be familiar or utterly fantastic. It may reflect ‘real life,’ or it may be a scene from a movie (e.g., King Kong ). It’s as if all our ontological categories were shaken up and poured out onto a coffee table like dice. “Yahtzee!” To make matters worse, whenever your attention is distracted, the corridor spontaneously fills with all manner of fantastic creatures, some of whom we will meet again…in the Sea of Monsters! ( Science & the Yellow Submarine – Part II , AT Magazine , Issue #2, 9/1/22) As predicted by Quantum Field Theory, things on the Pier behave much differently when they are being observed than when they are not. Early on, we learn that the linear self-consistency we all take for granted is just a function of self-imposed censorship. Ringo sees his world as continuous, complete, logical, almost necessary, while we see that he is just selecting self-consistent experiences out of a much broader, non-linear array of potential events. We build our own lives! Years ago, before GPS and Google Maps, AAA produced something called a Trip-Tic. Essentially, a Trip-Tic is a map with a line drawn across it, showing the traveler’s recommended route. We live along that route. Yellow Submarine , on the other hand, explores the entire field (i.e., the whole map). We invent-by-selection the world of space and time, matter and energy, object and action, that we know as ‘Liverpool.’ Not that these things aren’t real; they most certainly are! But they are just one expression of a reality that is much more varied, one aspect of an enormously complex reality. Traveling perpendicular to spacetime allows us to see the world from the inside out. Now we’re seeing the ‘underside’ of the oriental rug. We learn how a gaggle of seemingly random ‘knots’ can produce a gorgeous pattern on the obverse side of things. Now, we’re able to deconstruct the universe, revealing the constituent layers that lie “beneath the sea” of everyday experience. In 1966, Hugh Everett published his “Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.” In this essay, he argued that everything that can happen does happen…in some universe. The Beatles present a somewhat similar idea, albeit graphically, in Yellow Submarine . But the Beatles do not suggest, as Everett did, that the universe bifurcates at every decision point; in the Beatles’ model, all possible events co-exist in a single, albeit ‘thicker,’ universe. If each ‘Everett universe’ has N dimensions, the single ‘Beatles universe’ has N+1 dimensions. We could spend some time further exploring the implications of this last sentence, but too late, it’s time to set sail. (Saved by the boat whistle!) First stop, the Sea of Time: “What time is it? …It’s time for time! …Look, the hands are slowing down…Maybe time’s gone on strike.” Here, time flows at a variable rate…and it flows backwards as well as forwards. In Liverpool, time flows in only one direction and at only one ‘speed,’ but in Pepperland… “It’s time for time.” In fact, the Sea of Time is the ‘womb’ of all possible versions of time; it is ‘the mother of all time,’ literally and figuratively. In 1992, Alan Lightman wrote Einstein’s Dreams , a ‘novel’ that explores what it would be like to live in various alternative spacetimes. In Lightman’s novel, spacetime itself is the main character, the book’s ‘hero.’ Yellow Submarine does something similar in the medium of film. “I don’t want to alarm you, but the years are going backwards. If we slip back through time at this rate, we’ll all disappear up out of our own existence,” warns the sub’s newly commissioned admiral, Young Fred, who’s come to Liverpool from Pepperland searching for “heeelp” for his beleaguered homeland. To ‘disappear up out of our own existence’ seems very different from what people usually mean by ‘dying.’ We consider death to be the terminus of a living thread. We don’t normally think of dying as annulling the very existence of that thread. But if time is reversible (even just theoretically), then existence can be erased…retroactively! If existence can be erased, even if it is not erased, in what sense can it claim to be or ever to have been? If my existence is not a settled matter of fact, if it can be modified, or even annulled, after the fact, then at best it’s a ‘virtual existence.’ For if a world can self-annihilate, it will (Everett) and it will self-annihilate retroactively, as well as proactively. If Being can be annihilated, then it isn’t really ‘being’ at all, is it? When something ceases to be, without recourse to some fixed (permanent) reference point beyond itself, it ceases to have ever been. Without reference to some ‘transcendent point’ outside spacetime, it is inevitable that all possible worlds will self-annihilate; and if all possible worlds are doomed to self-annihilation, then no world can ever possibly exist. (Whatever can ‘not-be,’ is not now, is not ever: it cannot be!) Yellow Submarine begins as a ‘secular’ (flat, democratic) ontology with no transcendent reference point to act as a lifeline; but it quickly proves that no consistent secular ontology is possible. Being, as we shall see, turns out to be incurably hierarchical (i.e., value driven)! So, it turns out that we can go back and forth in time as much as we like, but we can’t go back and forth in time and still exist. Bummer! John is undaunted. “Can’t we do something to the clock? …move the hands forward, see what happens.” In other words, if you don’t like the way time’s going, change the way you measure it: adjust the clocks! When Yellow Submarine was created, it was already known that how you measure a quantum event influences the outcome of that event. It was not yet imagined, however, that time itself might be nothing but the metric (clock) we use to measure it. Roger Penrose was among the first to propose this surprising theory in Cycles of Time (2010); but the idea pre-dated Penrose by decades…in Yellow Submarine . Applying John’s insight, our intrepid crew succeeds in reversing the direction of time (again), saving the crew from annihilation…for now. I am reminded of Wilhelm Reich: Treat the symptoms, and that alone will cure the underlying cause. But, as always, there are unintended consequences: “Funny…a submarine remarkably like our own…There’s someone in it…And they’re waving…wave back.” Citing Einstein, John suggests “that yonder submarine is ourselves…going backwards…in time.” Outrageously, Yellow Submarine proposes that time is, in fact, a function of the clocks that measure it, not the other way around as we have mistakenly supposed. Surprisingly, many 21st century cosmologists would agree! John’s adjustment saved the crew from ‘retroactive non-existence,’ but it exposed them to the alternative risk of ‘impending doom.’ What a world! Now, the crew finds itself growing older, but at a similarly alarming rate! Conventional wisdom distinguishes dying from ‘disappearing up out of our own existence,’ but Yellow Submarine conducts a ‘thought experiment’ in the Sea of Time, showing that this distinction is not valid after all. Conventional wisdom is wrong again, as usual. Never-existing and ceasing-to-exist turn out to be mirror images of one another. If ever I will not be, then I never was! These days, talk of ‘life after death’ is frowned upon by our intellectual elites. So instead, people say things like, “Well, at least I lived my life, nobody can take that away from me!” But in fact, they can take it away from you, they will, and they have done. Ceasing to be turns out to be the same thing as never having been at all. Better yet, ceasing to be turns out to be never having been at all. Like the ‘Midgard Serpent’ in Norse Mythology, Being is an ouroboros : it is capable of consuming itself, tail first. (We’ll talk more about this strange topology in Science & the Yellow Submarine - Part II in the Fall Issue of AT Magazine , 9/1/22.) Time, according to Yellow Submarine , is like a loom shunting back and forth between past and future. Temporal reality is like Penelope’s textile in Homer’s Odyssey . Penelope weaves during the day, but unravels her weaving every night so that she never has to produce a finished product. We are all, each of us, Penelope! (“I am Spartacus!”) We linger in the ‘zone’ of the cosmic loom for as long as we can, knowing that eventually there will either be a finished textile, or no textile at all. ‘Same difference’ as we used to say as kids, the rough equivalent of ‘whatever’ in today’s parlance. Bottom line, either way, finished textile or no textile at all, Penelope is doomed and doomed to the exact same fate either way. We saw (above) that ‘ceasing to be’ is the same as ‘never having been.’ Likewise, a finished textile is the same as no textile at all. Again, reality is an ouroboros : the head is connected to the tail. (We’ll talk more about this when we discuss ‘non-orientable topologies’ in Science & the Yellow Submarine - Part II .) She (we) cannot avoid that fate; we can only try to postpone it by staying in the ‘zone’ for as long as possible. According to this model, without some reference point beyond itself (i.e., without ‘transcendence’), any possible world will self-annihilate; and if all possible worlds are doomed to self-annihilation, then no world can ever actually exist. If we can cease to be, then we are not now, never were, and never will be. Mortality is the poison pill sitting at the bottom of the Great Well of Being. But on the other hand, if we are , if we truly are , then we can never cease to be! But that ‘true being’ can only be conferred on us by participation in that which is eternal. In the 5th century BC, the Greek philosopher Parmenides, in his epic poem, On Nature , drew a similar conclusion: “…How could what-is be in the future, and how could it come to be? For if it came to be, it is not…Thus coming to be is extinguished and perishing not to be heard of. What-is is ungenerated and imperishable.” Whitehead (above) said that Western Philosophy is nothing but a collection of footnotes on Plato’s Timaeus ; I would go further and say that Western Philosophy is nothing but footnotes on Parmenides’ On Nature . Parmenides understood that if ‘existence’ were dependent on the caprice of time, there wouldn’t be any ‘existence’ at all. We mistakenly view time as ‘the cradle of becoming and perishing.’ It is not that! Time is entropy. In the words of the Bhagavad Gita , time is “death, the destroyer of worlds.” You do not need to travel backwards in time to see that the notion of real existence in a purely temporal continuum is fiction. Since death is the mirror image of never-having-been-born, true acceptance of the reality of birth and death is sufficient to disprove the reality of life. Life and death are not ‘opposites’ as we have supposed; they are entirely ‘incompatibles.’ ‘To be or not to be’ is not a choice, but a sentence! But there’s just one problem with all this. Life is real! We know that it is because we’re living it, experiencing it right now. Cogito ergo est . So, reductio ad absurdum , we are left with only one possible conclusion: it is death (non-being) that must not be real, and thankfully, that fits nicely into the cosmologies of Parmenides, Whitehead…and the Beatles. (Otherwise, I’d have nothing to write about.) Yet, I can and do witness the deaths of others. True, I cannot experience those deaths directly, nor will I ever experience my own death, but they seem real enough. So, what gives? As usual, Yellow Submarine has the answer. The film opens with the line, “Once upon a time or maybe twice…” Things only happen ‘once upon a time’ in spacetime . ‘Uniqueness’ is a defining characteristic of ‘event’ (so no two events can ever be the same). If they could be the same, they wouldn’t be events at all. As we shall see in Part II of this essay (9/1/22), there is a cosmological barrier that works to enforce the uniqueness rule. We might call it ‘the Ringo Starr Exclusion Principle’ (in honor of Pauli’s Exclusion Principle). Everything that happens in time happens only once because time is linear; every unique event will come to occupy a unique position on the timeline. But something is still missing! But what? O yeah, assuming that the timeline is continuous and infinitely divisible, we’re missing a ‘Present.’ We have signed on to a spacetime that does not include a real ‘Present.’ Brilliant! It’s as if we bought a used car ‘as is,’ but neglected to check to see if it had an engine. This would seem to be the cosmological equivalent of ‘painting yourself into a corner.’ But, as we shall see, we have a way out. At best, the present is an infinitesimal point of zero duration, a mathematical fiction. From the perspective of this point, everything that happens, happens either in the past or in the future. But nothing happens in the past or in the future! Everything that happens must happen in the Present, or it couldn’t happen at all. ‘To happen’ is to be present, and to be present is to be happen’n. “What’s happen’n’?’” Therefore, nothing that happens, happens in spacetime. All happening must take place in the universal and eternal Present, which is outside of time. Here, it is possible to get confused, so let’s take a moment to sort this out. There is no ‘space,’ no interval, between the past and the future; there is no space on the timeline for an event to occur. So, everything that happens must happen outside spacetime, i.e., in the a-temporal (i.e., eternal) Present. However, when something happens (in the present), that event enters cosmic history as something ‘past;’ only now does it earn a spot on the timeline! From the point of view of someone inside time , it looks as though being is the continuous conversion of the indefinite future into the settled past. This continuous conversion process is what misleads us into thinking that the past somehow determines (causes) the future. And why not? It sure looks like causation, but of course, it isn’t. Inside time, a happening is experienced as the instantaneous conversion of future to past. ‘Happening’ per se , is what converts that indeterminate future into the decided past. So, what can we say? (1) everything that happens, happens in the Present; (2) we live in a cosmic epoch where spacetime includes no Present; (3) therefore, nothing happens, nothing ever has happened, and nothing ever can happen; we live in an immaculately sterile universe. Except, of course, we don’t! We live in a universe teeming with events. So, what are we missing? It turns out there is a Present after all…you just won’t find it on any timeline. The Present is a-temporal (eternal). So, in a sense everything that happens does happen ‘twice’ – once inside time, once outside. All experience is bipolar: it’s the experience of something outside itself (i.e., things in its past or future), but it is also its experience of itself (i.e., the Present). Experience inherits from the past and projects into the future (third person), but experience also necessarily injects an element of novelty (first person) into every event. This ‘novelty’ is what we mean when we talk about the event’s ‘unique Present.’ From the perspective of first person experience, there is no such thing as ‘death,’ and of course, ultimately, first person experience is all there really is. Third-person phenomena are real only insofar as they have the potential to enter into first person experiences (per Alfred North Whitehead). Roger Penrose argues ( Cycles of Time ) that Big Bang and Big Freeze are one and the same event. The Poetic Eda of Norse Mythology and Penrose’s Cycles of Time , both tell the same tale, the tale of a Universe capable of consuming itself tail first: an ourobos ! (Yes, I do like this word, and I do plan to keep using it; sorry!) Understood this way, all existence is potential and virtual, never actual. About all one can say about such a world is that it is not now, never was, and never will be! Once again, we turn to Parmenides for help. As I understand him, everything that exists, exists in two modes: once in the mode of Doxa (seeming), once in the mode of Aletheia (truth). Doxa corresponds to the spatio-temporal world, while Aletheia is its eternal correlate. Doxa is the world of past and future, the world of perpetual becoming and perishing. Doxa is World in the third person. In the language of twentieth century existentialist theologian Martin Buber, Doxa is the realm of ‘I – it’ relationships. Aletheia , on the other hand, is the changeless world of the eternal Present. It is the world ‘conserved;’ it is the world ‘conserving.’ It is the eternal aspect of every spacetime event. Aletheia is World in the first person, and it is the realm of Buber’s ‘I – Thou’ relationships. About all one can say about such a world is that it is - without qualification! Like the Sea of Time (and all the other ‘seas’ we’re about to meet), Liverpool and Pepperland are part of a network of ‘branes;’ that network ultimately comes to be what we call ‘Universe.’ In Liverpool, spacetime is ‘flat.’ In the ‘Sea of Time’ on the other hand, time itself is plastic. In Liverpool, spacetime masquerades as the backdrop against which events occur. In the Sea of Time, on the other hand, ‘time’ is center stage; it’s ‘in the spot’ so to speak. It is not a medium in which events occur or a ground on which subjects create figures. It is the subject…it is the figure. “It’s time for time!” Alfred North Whitehead, cited above, believed that the phenomenon of ‘extension’ per se was universal. However, he believed that the particular way in which extension expressed itself could vary from ‘cosmic epoch’ to ‘cosmic epoch.’ The system of branes (or ‘seas’) that connects Liverpool and Pepperland potentially contains all possible modes of extension. The notion of ‘branes’ as an explanation of cosmic phenomena was not fully articulated until Lisa Randall’s Warped Passages (2005); yet, this idea pre-existed in Yellow Submarine (1968). Fortunately, the voyage through this Scylla and Charybdis, suddenly ends. The submarine passes out of the Sea of Time into a new sea and its crew members return to their ‘normal,’ Liverpulian ages. We’ve only just begun! In Science & the Yellow Submarine – Part II , we encounter new seas, new creatures, new cosmological challenges until we arrive at long last in Pepperland. In the Beatles’ pwn words, “There are rough seas ahead!”… Join us! Image: A scene from “Yellow Submarine.” Credit: Subafilms David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com. Share Previous Next

< Back The Ark of the Covenant David Cowles Feb 9, 2023 “You want me to believe that your God is invisible, that he lives in an empty box…and you want me to worship that box?” The Ark of the Covenant, along with the Tabernacle that housed it, has an important role in the history, identity, and spirituality of the Jewish people. Its construction was mandated by God in the Torah … and God was not stingy with his advice. In fact, he gave his artisans explicit instructions re its shape, size, contents, and adornment. Why so many details? According to Torah scholar, Rashi (11 th Century CE), the Tabernacle and the Ark were constructed in direct counterpoise to the infamous Golden Calf. The state of theology in the Middle East in the 2 nd millennium BCE was deplorable. Almost without exception, conceptions of God were rooted in the material world: idols, nature nymphs, heavenly bodies with their myriad motions and constellations. The Golden Calf is emblematic of this theology. In the Middle Ages, this theological method would have been called the via positiva : affirmative propositions about God: “God is…” Ancient Middle Eastern theology was the handmaiden of the state . It was a self-conscious function of religion to support social hierarchies, reinforce cultural mores, and promote public order, aka the State. Pre-Mosaic theology was inherently reactionary; unlike Judeo-Christianity, it was indeed an ‘opiate of the people’. Marx was right; he just came along three millennia too late! Is there a reciprocal relationship between idolatry and tyranny? Watch this space for future updates. Fortunately, Moses stepped up and filled in for the tardy Karl. In the Book of Exodus , Moshe and YHWH plot, organize, and carry out a political, cultural and theological revolution, the scope of which would have made Lenin and Mao drool. According to author Katia Bolotin , Moses succeeded in imbuing the people with a unity of purpose…without the social fiction of a State. “He transformed them into a united workforce of willing individuals. How was this achieved? By respecting and valuing each person’s contribution, Moses demonstrated that everyone mattered. He impressed upon the people the greatness of their collective mission...” In other words, who needs a Stinkin’ State when you’ve got Moses…and YHWH…and a fallen world to redeem. In fact, it all started with a new conception of Divinity: “I am who am” (or “I will be what I will be”). God cannot be identified, compared, or even symbolized by anything material. The new religion was iconoclastic and therefore a true liberation theology . “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in their own eyes.” (Judges 21: 25) In addition to the via positiva (above), the Middle Ages recognized another theological method called the via negativa . Unlike its self-assured cousin, the via negativa consists of negative propositions about God. God is defined by what he is not. Like Michelangelo, the ‘negative’ theologian chisels away at an undifferentiated block of marble until a hidden image appears (‘a negative’). Neti, neti – God’s not this, God’s not that. Today, it is generally accepted that we can only learn about God by analogy (Thomas Aquinas), by negation (Nicholas of Cusa), or perhaps by personal experience. In 1200 BCE, I rented an apartment in Bethlehem overlooking a schoolyard. Canaanite and Jewish children played side-by-side; it was wonderful. On the first day of the new school year, I happened to be sitting at an open window and I heard an interesting conversation between two 3 rd graders: “My daddy can beat up your daddy.” “Well, my God can smite your god.” “Ok, show me your God.” “I can’t.” “Why not? I can show you mine . He’s huge and scary and made of gold and covered with jewels. Why can’t you show me yours?” “I just can’t, that’s all; but I can tell you stories about my God and the amazing things he did for our people long ago; or I can show you the Ark of the Covenant where God’s special presence lives.” “Now you’re talking! Let’s go see that. Then we’ll see your God.” “Well, no, even if I could lift the lid, which I can’t, there’s really nothing to see inside. Just some souvenirs of the time my people spent in Egypt and Sinai: manna, a flowering staff, and some stone tablets we picked up in the desert.” “So, where is your God? You said that his special presence was in the Ark. Why can’t I see him then? Is he wearing an invisibility cloak?” “No, no one can see him because he’s nowhere…and everywhere…all at once; he’s here right here now as a matter of fact. We just can’t see him.” “So, let me get this straight: you want me to believe that your God is invisible, that he lives in an empty box (kind of like Oscar); you want me to believe that your nowhere God can ‘smite’ my golden god ; and you want me to worship that box?” It was probably too much to hope that a third-grader would be able to explain that the Ark was a ‘sanctified space’ through which God’s presence was manifest to his people. We do not worship ‘the box’ per se ; we worship its emptiness. Folks used to seeing their god as figure find it hard to see our God as ground. So, as you can probably guess, things did not go well from here. “What are you, a wise guy? I was hoping we could be friends, but now I see that I’ll just have to beat you up instead. Sorry.” Of course, we no longer have the physical Ark. But Katia Bolotin (above) suggests we recreate the Ark in our own lives: Make every gathering a place (a space) where God’s presence can dwell. Build communities, not through constraint but through the discovery of common purpose. Not bad advice coming from the second millennium…BCE! 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 The Seven Pillars of Wisdom David Cowles “Kabbalah kept the pre-Socratic tradition alive until it could be born anew in the Age of Aquarius.” According to the ancient Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah, the Universe is ‘built’ on scaffolding that consists of 10 nodes (‘vertices’) connected by 22 paths (‘edges’). Identifying these nodes using our modern languages is a challenge and not every commentator agrees on how best to translate each term. Here’s one approach: While the terminology can vary slightly between traditions the order of these nodes is invariable…and significant. The first three are predominantly conceptual and sit like a cornice (crown) atop the other, more physical, seven (body). These 10 nodes (called Sefirot ) are interconnected by a network of 22 pathways: 3 horizontal, 7 vertical and 12 diagonal – 3, 7, 12, three numbers with outsized importance in Judeo-Christian culture, theology, and spirituality. Kabbalah maps virtually every aspect of lived experience onto these 10 Sefirot and their 22 connecting pathways (e.g. there are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet). Parts of the body, hours of the day, days of the week, months of the year, angels, patriarchs, etc. all map onto Kabbalah’s universal logos . For example, in terms of the human body, Keter is the head (cerebellum), Tiferet the heart, Yesod the procreative organs, and Malkhut the progeny, i.e. our ‘footprints in the sand’. Fully explicating this system is literally the work of a lifetime. In this article, we will focus on the 7 verticals, the so-called Seven Pillars of Wisdom (T. E. Lawrence). These 7 are grouped into 3 ‘columns’ corresponding, roughly, to the feminine (3), the masculine (3), and the divine (4) aspects of reality. The central column links God and the World: Godhead ( Keter ) through Beauty ( Tiferet ) and Foundation ( Yesod ) to Kingdom ( Malkhut )…and back again. Keter represents the purely conceptual aspect of Universe, Malkhut the purely physical. Tiferet (Beauty) and Yesod (Sexuality) refer to the procreative process that unites the two. Unlike Manhattan, Kabbalah has no one-way streets. Influences trickle down from Godhead, through Beauty and Foundation, into the World just as they bubble up from the World to Godhead. Remember the days when coffee ‘percolated’? Water at the base of the pot turned to steam at the top which trickled down through the grounds and left a delicious liquid residue on the bottom. The Tree of Life is modeled on a similar concept of process. On the right side are the ‘masculine’ Sefirot : Wisdom ( Chokmah ), Love ( Chesed ), and Victory ( Netzach ); on the left side, the ‘feminine’: Understanding ( Binah ), Strength ( Gevurah ), and Splendor ( Hod ). Such gender based characterizations may offend our contemporary sensibilities, but it is important to understand this terminology in the context of the ancient and medieval sociologies from which it rose. It is also essential to understand that Kabbalah means neither of these gender designations literally. Gender is just one of the parameters it uses in building its map. We wouldn’t call French a sexist language just because it has gender specific articles (e.g. le and la ), would we? Kabbalah’s apparent hierarchical structure is also misleading. Panta Ra (Heraclitus): “ Everything flows” … both ways. What trickles down bubbles up and vice versa. Likewise, the apparent crystallization of process into self-contained Sefirot belies the more complex structure of Kabbalah. Pan in Panti (Anaxagoras): Everything in everything. Each Sefirah ‘contains’ or ‘reflects’ (think Leibniz’ Monads) the other 9, but each Sefirah predominately showcases one particular aspect of the life process. So, Victory is in Understanding, Strength is a component of Love, etc. And of course, Keter (Godhead) and Malkut (World) are in all as all are in them. Understanding how each Sefirah contains the other Serifot is an important part of mystical practice. A 20th century philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead, developed a cosmology consistent with Kabbalah. His ‘center column’ linked the Primordial (conceptual) Nature of God ( Keter ) and the Consequent (physical) Nature ( Malkhut ) through a series of ‘actual entities’ (events) that exhibit both the conceptual (Beauty) and the physical (Foundation) aspects of the divine nature ( Keter ). Once again, with Whitehead as with Kabbalah, it is essential to note that influences flow both ways, down from Keter to Malkhut , up from Malkhut to Keter . Actual entities , the stuff of the Universe, originate in the contrast (the gap, Ginnungagap in Norse Mythology) between conceptual values and physical realities. Actual entities inject divine values (e.g. beauty) into material reality and release physical reality into the mind of God. Whitehead’s analogous term for Yesod is ‘Superject’ and for Malkhut , ‘Objective Immortality’ (our ‘footprints in the sand’). The procreative function (understood broadly) is jointly motivated by the conceptual appreciation of beauty and the physical recognition of need (desire). So our three central column ‘pillars of wisdom’ connect conceptual values (Keter) with appreciation (Beauty), appreciation with procreation (Foundation), and procreation with immortality (Malkhut). Our remaining four ‘pillars’ connect the 3 masculine Sefirot and the 3 feminine Serot . These connections are somewhat less intuitive. For example, Wisdom ( Chokmah ) links with Love ( Chesed ) which links with Victory ( Netzach ), while Understanding ( Binah ) links with Strength ( Gevurah ) which links with Splendor ( Hod ). These are what Whitehead would call ‘subjective forms’, i.e. ways in which the core process (above) might be experienced in different contexts. To understand this, we need to dig deep into the ancient/medieval mindset. The feminine side is the more easily understood. Binah is the womb; it is in Binah (Understanding) that Wisdom gains application to the World. Strength and Splendor are two traits readily associated with the so-called ‘feminine ideal’; all together these Sefirot work to support the central procreative process. The rationale for the masculine side of things is more obscure (surprise, surprise). Today at least, nobody would reasonably claim that masculinity enjoys a special connection to Wisdom or Love or Victory (Achievement)…no one who hoped to live beyond sunset that is. I think it is more helpful to understand the gender terms as placeholders for the active and passive aspects of events. Strictly speaking, there are no active/passive relationships in Kabbalah. Everything takes place in the Middle Voice . As we say above, all process is reciprocal. However, the right and left ‘wings’ could be understood as the ‘active’ and ‘passive’ aspects of events that occur in the central column (between Godhead and the World). The medieval system of Kabbalah bridges the gap between 5th century BCE pre-Socratic philosophy (Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, et al.) and 20th century CE Process Philosophy (Whitehead). While the West was mesmerized by Plato, Aristotle, Descartes and Kant, Kabbalah kept the pre-Socratic tradition alive until it could be born anew in the Age of Aquarius as Relativity, Holography, Quantum Mechanics, and Entanglement. 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 ress, Literary Journal Spring 2023. Return to Harvest 2024 Previous Next

< Back Friedrich Nietzsche “Value-based judgments assume a transcendent point of view and sooner or later, that way of thinking leads to God-talk and any such talk is strictly verboten.” David Cowles In the course of Western philosophy, one occasionally encounters a thinker whose work is so original that it is a stretch to locate it within any specific school or tradition. I have 3 such thinkers in mind (but of course there are others): Nicholas of Cusa (c. 1450), Friedrich Nietzsche (c. 1885), and Ludwig Wittgenstein (c. 1940) – three gentlemen with different backgrounds, writing in different epochs, utter a common admonition, best expressed by Wittgenstein: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” These are the meaning police . 20 th century Analytic Philosophy rejected most of the Western philosophical tradition as being ‘meaningless nonsense’. Wittgenstein softened this assessment, relabeling it “ important nonsense”, but nonsense nonetheless. Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas? All nonsense, most of the time. Oh philosophers, how painful it must be to learn that you’ve spent your lives studying the equivalent of Edward Lear literature! It’s so, but take heart, what may be ‘nonsense’ is at least ‘important nonsense’, and that modification makes all the difference. After all, the same could be said of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerti – ‘nuff said! People have successfully poked holes in Cusa, Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, but no one to my knowledge has successfully prosecuted a full-frontal assault on any one of them. Nor are they ever likely to. Their core positions are congruent with one another…and for my money, at least, virtually incontestable! Have you heard this one yet? A 15 th century priest, a 19 th century atheist, and a 20 th century academic walked into a bar… and they spent all afternoon together, drinking, laughing, and sharing ideas. From their relatively solitary perches, these three non-conformists are part of what I call ‘the conscience of Western philosophy’. They impose standards that every philosophical system should have to meet in order to be taken seriously. Think of them and their ilk as the ‘Greek chorus’ that accompanies Intellectual History. But like other such choruses, their warnings often go unheeded. “How dare you require my Truth to be meaningful!” So, moderns that we are, we ignore the warnings of conscience and go right ahead doing whatever it is that we wanted to do, or think, in the first place. We’ll talk nonsense if we want to, when we want to, and as much as we want to, and you can’t do anything to stop us! So there! Nicholas of Cusa instructs us that the most we can say about God is… absolutely nothing. Any declarative statement about God merely takes us deeper into error. The highest number on Cusa’s Truth Scale is zero. Wittgenstein instructs us that the most we can say about Metaphysics is… absolutely nothing. But we’re here to talk about Nietzsche! Nietzsche instructs us that the most we can say about Ethics is… (no surprise twist here) absolutely nothing. Value-based judgments assume a transcendent point of view, and sooner or later, that way of thinking leads to God-talk and any such talk is strictly verboten, but let Nietzsche speak for himself: “What alone can our teaching be? – That no one gives a human being his qualities: not God, not society, not his parents or ancestors, not he himself…The fatality of his nature cannot be disentangled from the fatality of all that which has been and will be…it is absurd to want to hand over his nature to some purpose or other. We invented the concept ‘purpose’: in reality, purpose is lacking… “One is necessary, one is a piece of fate, one belongs to the whole, one is in the whole – there exists nothing which could judge, measure, compare, condemn our being, for that would be to judge, measure, compare, condemn the whole… But nothing exists apart from the whole!” ( Twilight of the Idols ) In this work, one of his last and written in the final year of his sanity (1888), Nietzsche ventures a summation of the views he articulated over the previous 16 years. In contrast to dualism, determinism, and materialism, Nietzsche offers a refreshing ontology based on the concept of “the whole”. In that sense, he anticipates by 50 years Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism and by 100 years the New Age concept of Gaia . All values are qualities, but not all qualities are values. According to Augustine et al., all qualities are good . To the extent that anything is not good, it is just deficient in some good quality. Criminals are not ‘bad’, they are just ‘insufficiently good’. All qualities are good, but most are not normative. To the extent that a quality is normative, it is a value . Take painting, for example. Red and blue are qualities. They are not normative; the artist may use either freely. Beauty is the operative value …and it is normative. The artist must strive for ‘beauty’ however she conceives it. Color is a choice (quality); beauty is a norm (value)! As Picasso once famously said, “If I don’t have red, I use blue;” the results speak for themselves. The Old Testament Book of Job , one of the earliest examples of philosophical literature in the West, is a 40 chapter exposition (in dramatic form) of the concept of values . In Job , values are normative…even for God! But not for Nietzsche! In fact, the very concept of ‘norms’ has fared badly over the most recent 150 years. Norm appears to conflict with Will and like two-year-olds the world over, we are all about our Will . The notion of ‘norms’ is incompatible with a ‘flat universe’ (speaking ontologically, not cosmologically). That’s a problem for us because a ‘flat universe’ is virtually synonymous with a ‘democratic universe’, and we are in love with the idea (if not the reality) of democracy . Norms only have a home in hierarchical universes, and we hate hierarchies of any sort: nobility, aristocracy, clergy, bureaucracy, umpires, one-percenters…you name it. But A can only be normative for B if A exists apart from B; otherwise, A is just part of the structure of B (i.e., not a value, not a norm). So, we can honor Cusa by remaining silent about God and we can honor Wittgenstein by remaining silent about Metaphysics. No problem, I’m more interested in football anyway! But to honor Nietzsche, we would need to remain silent about values…and that proves to be very difficult, if not impossible. Take Albert Camus , an important 20 th century author, for example. Camus begins his master philosophical reflection (1942), The Myth of Sisyphus , with a blistering attack on the concept of normative values. He is paying proper homage to Nietzsche; but then, about halfway through, he veers off: “I cannot conceive that a skeptical metaphysics can be joined to an ethics of renunciation…” He rejects the free choice of mystics the world over (Taoists and Dominicans alike) who prefer a contemplative life to the hurly burly of the daily grind. But what gives Camus the right to reject anything? Effectively, he is imposing his own normative values: “…What counts is not the best living but the most living…value judgments are discarded…A man’s rule of conduct and his scale of values have no meaning except through the quantity and variety of experiences he has been in a position to accumulate…” Jaw dropping! Value judgments are discarded…unless they have to do with the quantity and variety of experiences. In place of the traditional values of Beauty, Truth and Justice, Camus substitutes Quantity and Variety. Quantity may be the new quality, but as a ‘value’ it is still normative. The 2 nd half of Sisyphus provides a litany of lifestyles that Camus judges to be consistent with a recognition of the Absurdity of Existence. Working backwards, who made Camus the arbiter of consistency ? On what does he base his assessments if not on transcendental values? Otherwise, we’re just dealing with his neurotic prejudices and bourgeoisie tastes. Sisyphus would then be reduced to a psychological monograph rather than a true work of philosophy. And who made Quantity and Variety normative, or what makes them so? According to Nietzsche, the source of such norms, like any norms, if they are real and truly normative (not just options), must be transcendent. Somehow, Camus misses, or ignores, this. Much as I admire Camus, and enjoy reading his work, it is clear to me that he is the very paradigm of Sartre’s bad faith . Camus himself sums it all up spectacularly: “For on the one hand, the absurd teaches that all experiences are unimportant, and on the other it urges toward the greatest quantity of experiences.” Really? Someone wrote this? Do you ever suffer from insomnia? I find sometimes a good, heartfelt belly laugh helps me relax. So next time you’re tossing about, imagine Nietzsche’s reaction had he been able to read The Myth of Sisyphus. At first, he would have been ‘all puffed up’ – well, as puffed up as Nietzsche could ever get. “How gratifying to see that my work has had such an impact,” he might have thought. And then…OMG! (I can’t stop laughing just thinking about it. The expression on his face! Priceless.) Nor is Camus an outlier. It seems that bad faith runs in the community of philosophers. The French Existentialist Camus sells out Nietzsche; but at the other end of the ideological see-saw, A.J. Ayer, the English Logical Positivist, follows the exact same trek. First, he denies the reality of transcendental values and then he proposes his own such values, e.g. kindness . We appreciate kindness because we accept the reality of transcendental values, but what makes kindness normative for Ayer and his lot? Who says it’s better to be kind than not? Not everyone! Think Machiavelli, Sorel, even Stalin. So, what makes it so, Professor Ayer? So we honor Cusa and Wittgenstein and Nietzsche, but then we systematically ignore them. Our attitude toward ‘the conscience of Western philosophy’ is similar to the attitude of many professed Christians toward the teachings of the Church. For you, good; for me, not so much! 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 Beach Read 2023 Table of Contents Previous Next

< Back AI and the Quest for Humanity’s Answers Josef Flintlock, AT responses by Editor-in-Chief David Cowles "AI will virtually obliterate the barrier between what can be known and what is known." The dawn of the artificial intelligence era has cast a spotlight on the tantalizing prospect of discovering answers to humanity's most profound questions. As ChatGPT and other AI technologies advance, the question arises: will these digital marvels truly hold the keys to unlocking the mysteries that have puzzled philosophers, scientists, and thinkers for centuries? AT : It is unlikely that AI will move the border separating what can be known from what is fundamentally unknowable. But AI will virtually obliterate the barrier between what can be known and what is known. This essay embarks on a journey through the realms of knowledge, humor, and philosophy to explore whether ChatGPT and AI are destined to become the ultimate oracles of wisdom. In a world where Google knows our favorite pizza toppings before we do, the allure of ChatGPT having the answer to every question is both mesmerizing and hilarious. AT : The centuries old mystical doctrine of Kabbalah distinguishes Understanding (Binah) from Wisdom (Hokhmah). Understanding shades over into knowledge (Malkhut) so I expect AI to vastly expand our understanding of most everything; whether it will demonstrate or confer wisdom is something else again. However, even in the age of AI, the notion that these digital entities will hold all answers is akin to believing that wearing a cape will make us superheroes. AT : What would make us superheroes? The complexity of human inquiries, infused with nuance, context, and cultural intricacies, presents a challenge that even the most advanced algorithms struggle to master. AT : True today, but the attraction of AI is the possibility that it will eventually be able to mimic humans’ capacity for nuance and that it will adequately integrate context and cultural norms into its process. While AI might provide extensive data-driven insights, it remains an evolving tool rather than a universal panacea. The Dance of Subjectivity and Philosophy Imagine asking an AI to resolve the age-old question: "What is the meaning of life?" ChatGPT might earnestly reply with an eloquent response, citing philosophical treatises and scientific theories. However, the beauty of this query lies in its subjectivity—a concept that AI struggles to encapsulate. AT : If AI is to fulfill its promise, it must be able to mimic human subjectivity. Pre-AI, algorithms are objects. The challenge for AI is to behave in a way that convinces us that it is its own subject. (Turing Test) Re the meaning of life, it’s true, I wouldn’t expect much from today’s AI. But then again, how well has Non-artificial Intelligence (NI) done with this question? The multifaceted nature of existence, tinged with personal experiences, emotions, and interpretations, evades AI's binary world. AT : Is there a world that is not at some level binary ? A motion picture is made up of static frames. Could the same not be true of every apparently continuous phenomenon? Calculus was supposed to have proven the ‘reality of continuity’; in fact, it only provided us with a tool that allows us to ‘treat’ stochastic phenomena as though they were continuous. In this dance between the objective and the subjective, humans stand as the choreographers, utilizing AI as a partner to enhance the performance but never completely define it. The Comedy of Errors In a whimsical twist, the comedic potential of AI attempting to provide definitive answers to humanity's grand questions cannot be overlooked. Picture an AI offering advice on matters of the heart or rendering artistic critiques—it's like asking a potato to compose a symphony. AT : I have no doubt that AI could do a better job for the lovelorn than either Dear Abbie or Anne Landers! Whether AI can recognize and/or create Beauty is an open question addressed elsewhere in this issue. Hot Link And in defense of our much maligned spuds, please don’t overlook the Lyonnaise Polonaise . The inherent limitations and occasional misunderstandings of AI can lead to responses that are hilariously off the mark. AT : Yup, “Kids say the Darndest Things” (Art Linkletter) That’s how we learn…and how AI will learn too. While AI's missteps are a source of amusement, they also emphasize the uniqueness of human cognition and the importance of embracing imperfection. AT : Perfection is a myth (at least in spatiotemporal systems) and unhelpful as a measure of value. An element of ambiguity is what makes the strongest algorithms what they are (‘fuzzy’) – and that’s how our minds work as well…especially after a night spent drinking ‘adult beverages’. The Uncharted Seas of Discovery As technology progresses, AI's role in uncovering insights cannot be denied. AI's capacity to sift through vast amounts of data and identify patterns has contributed to scientific breakthroughs and innovative discoveries. AT : Our brains have been curated by natural selection for over a half a billion years; as a result we are pattern generation and pattern recognition machines. That said, AI will soon blow past us…if it hasn’t already. Patterning has conferred enormous selective advantage on all sentient life forms and AI will take this to a whole new level. Some contemporary cosmologies understand the Universe as nothing other than a hierarchy of patterns: e.g., fractals, holograms, The Matrix . Yet, the act of seeking answers extends beyond factual information—it encompasses the exhilarating pursuit of knowledge, characterized by curiosity, experimentation, and the thrill of the unknown. In this regard, ChatGPT and AI can act as guiding stars, offering directions in a limitless universe of exploration. The notion of ChatGPT and AI possessing all the answers to humanity's greatest questions tantalizes us with visions of a digital sage with boundless wisdom. AT : Is there nothing new under the sun? How about the Oracle at Delphi? Hal 9000? However, this vision is a blend of comedy and philosophy, highlighting the intricate interplay between AI's capabilities and the uncharted depths of human inquiry. As we navigate the landscape of knowledge, we find that while AI augments our journey, the thrill of discovery lies not in having all the answers but in the pursuit of questions that lead us to new horizons of understanding. AT : AI can save us from the tedium of data determination and interpretation (Binah, Understanding); will it free us up to focus on the meta-patterns (Hokhmah, Wisdom), the meaning of it all. So, let us welcome AI as a companion on this profound expedition, embracing the laughter, the wisdom, and the mysteries that lie ahead. A connoisseur of both AI technology and the intricacies of human inquiry, Josef’s writing seeks to bridge the realms of science and philosophy in a way that both informs and entertains. When not penning essays, you can find him lost in a book or simply enjoying the laughter that accompanies life's absurdities. He has written for Honeywell, Medium, and Elephant Journal. 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 AI Issue Table of Contents Previous Next

“Yellow Submarine did for the Divine Comedy what West Side Story did for Romeo & Juliet!” < Back Dante and the Yellow Submarine David Cowles Aug 9, 2026 “Yellow Submarine did for the Divine Comedy what West Side Story did for Romeo & Juliet!” 2250 words, 10 minute read “In the middle of life’s journey I discovered myself in a dark wood, the straightway lost. Ah, how hard a thing it is to tell of that wood, savage and harsh and dense…So bitter is it that death is hardly more.” (Dante, Inferno ) “Liverpool can be a lonely place on a Saturday night… and this is only Thursday morning.” (Ringo Starr, Yellow Submarine ) 650 years after Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy , a rock and roll band from England retraced the poet’s journey. In 1968, they released a modern, ostensibly secular version of Dante’s epic. Yellow Submarine ( YS ) did for the Divine Comedy ( DC ) what West Side Story did for Romeo & Juliet …but I very much doubt the Beatles had any idea what they’d accomplished! Still, the resonance between these two works is unmistakable. Dante lived in the theocratic Middle Ages while the Beatles rose to prominence in the hyper-secular ‘60’s. Apparently, “the fundamental things (do) apply as time goes by” ( Casablanca ). Fittingly, YS opens with a Beatles favorite, Eleanor Rigby . It is hard to imagine a song better suited to accompany Dante’s evening in the woods, or Ringo’s morning in Liverpool, or the Beatles’ outline for Yellow Submarine : “Father McKenzie, writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear. No one comes near… Eleanor Rigby died in the church and was buried along with her name. Nobody came…No one was saved.” Clearly, we are not to expect a full throated defense of Judeo-Christianity. But Eleanor Rigby does prepare us for what’s ahead. As we shall see, it describes the actual World, not only as it is but as it must be…if ‘what you see is what you get’ ( WYSIWYG ), and if it’s all you get, i.e. if the World has no transcendent dimension. As children of the Enlightenment, we are required to believe that the Universe contains all the information necessary to understand it. Prior to 1500 CE, folks would have found such a claim ludicrous – nothing happens without the guidance or intervention of God or gods - but we are not allowed even a snicker. Dante, for example, described the entire Universe in terms of three ‘transcendent’ realities: Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. If someone wrote Divine Comedy today, they wouldn’t be able to find a publisher. Even the Christian press would shy away. We just don’t talk or think this way anymore. So the Beatles, intentionally or not, set out to retell Dante’s story without the ‘religious baggage’. The happy result is Yellow Submarine . Dante’s journey begins when he meets the Roman poet Virgil who offers to be his guide through Hell: “Thou must take another road if thou wouldst escape from this savage place.” Meanwhile, back in Liverpool, Ringo meets his own ‘spirit guide’, Young Fred. Virgil takes Dante, not through Tuscany but on a path perpendicular to spacetime itself – a path normally traveled only by the dearly departed. Fred does the same for Ringo and his pals. We are familiar with the Egyptian and Tibetan Books of the Dead , the Jewish Kadish and the Christian Last Rites . These are texts read aloud at the time of a person’s death. The purpose is to facilitate the transition from mortality to eternity, to orient the pilgrim on a path perpendicular to spacetime. While neither recited nor screened bed side, DC and YS should both be considered part of our multicultural funerary tradition. Like their forebears, both offer detailed images of the stages connecting the angst of Liverpool/Florence with the joys of Pepperland/Paradise. “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,” reads the sign posted above Hell’s Gate. The souls in Hell no longer have the capacity for change. They cannot repent and they cannot influence events in the spatiotemporal world. They are defined now by their sins, and they are compelled to live out those sins eternally. Where there’s life there’s hope (Ecclesiastes 9: 3 - 5) and here there is neither. Dante’s Hell is a spiral; all roads, all rungs, lead to Satan. It is a perverse version of Robert Frost’s Two Roads . As Dante and Virgil descend lower and lower in a narrowing gyre, Hell starts to ‘freeze over’, quite literally. At bottom, they encounter Satan, encased in ice; here is the nadir of all being, a metaphor for Absolute Zero, a foretaste of the cosmic ‘heat death’ that awaits us all at the end of time. Back in England (1968), the Beatles are preparing to embark on their own magically mystical tour. Pepperland has succumbed to an invasion of “Blue Meanies”. Its idyllic tranquility shattered, its population “bonked” into a zombie-like state of suspended animation, Pepperland itself is laid waste. The once rainbow infested countryside has turned monochrome gray (as in the Grail legend, The Waste Land – Eliot). Just as Paradise was lost but later regained (per Dante & Milton), so Pepperland has been captured and must now be liberated. To that end, Young Fred, recently appointed Lord Admiral of the Pepperland Fleet (which consists of a single mothballed sub), has just escaped and is on his way to Liverpool in search of HELP! And who’d have guessed? He finds the Fab Four. The path to Pepperland runs through a series of “seas” (or branes) that challenge every preconception our travelers have regarding the nature of reality. The first three seas deconstruct the phenomenal world into its basic elements: Time, Space, and ‘Stuff’ (i.e. Matter/Energy/Life). Each of these Seas in turn undergoes its own particular deconstruction. First, the Sea of Time. Our time, Liverpool time, appears to flow only one way (from past to future) and at a steady rate (c). But our time is merely an abstraction. It is one slice off a loaf. Liverpool time is a vector (a ray); real time, Pepper time, is a spiral. Real time flows at a variable rate and backwards as well as forwards. But as the Beatles soon discover, real time is problematic. If time is reversible, then whatever exists can be erased, retroactively. And if any World can self-annihilate, it must self-annihilate, it will self-annihilate, and it already has self-annihilated, ab initio . Being and not-being are incompatible; it either is or it is not! ( Parmenides ). To sustain its existence, i.e. to exist, a world must be anchored to some objective, transcendent reference point. The universe is recursive and, as we shall see (below) will inevitably consume itself unless tethered. So Yellow Submarine begins as a wholly secular ontology but ultimately proves that no such ontology is workable. The second sea, the Sea of Science, does for space what its predecessor did for time . As with time (clocks), human representations of space (Cartesian grids, Platonic solids) determine what space is . Here we learn that dimensionality itself is optional and flexible - not essential and substructural . The third sea, the Sea of Monsters, deconstructs the material world including the phenomenon of life itself. It shows that what we consider ‘variety’ in our world is, in fact, a very limited and highly selective subset of all the structures and qualities that spacetime could support…and, according to the Beatles, does support. YS anticipates Stephen Gould’s Wonderful Life . In the Sea of Monsters, all possible ‘life’ forms flourish: “Let 1,000 flowers bloom” (Mao). Shape, so sharp in the Sea of Science, is now indefinitely mutable, and boundaries separating the organic from the mechanical have dissolved. This third sea is aptly named. All the creatures are ‘monsters’, not because of how they look or how they are made but because of how they behave (like some children I’ve known – not mine of course…or yours). Without exception, like souls in Dante’s Hell, they are continuously involved in activities that are destructive to themselves and to others. Their natures are hard-wired, and (unlike AI) they lack the capacity to overcome their programming. They are outside the ‘state of grace’. Among the various monsters in this sea, one stands out: the Vacuum Monster (VM), the mother of all monsters. Its nature is to suck into oblivion whatever it encounters. In the ‘monstrous sea’ humanoid creatures threaten other creatures, but VM threatens everything, including the universe itself. It is the personification of recursion, and… VM is the personification of entropy: the ‘Evil One’ in the Lord’s Prayer (Deliver us from Evil ). First, it annihilates ‘the other’, i.e. it sucks up all the other monsters. Then, seeing that there are no more monsters to suck, it sucks up spacetime, and then, at last, itself, tail first, like an ouroboros, “into oblivion…or even further ”. Etre (being) + VM = Neant (nothing). YS proves that such ‘being’ is impossible: “It is not!” (Parmenides) But Descartes gets in the way with his famous, “Ergo sum!” I am, and therefore not-being is not possible. YS is a reductio ad absurdum for the secular model of onology. The eschatology of the Sea of Monsters, and of Dante’s Inferno, is the eschatology of St. Paul, turned upside down: “Then comes the end when he (Christ) hands over the kingdom to God the Father…so that God may be all in all.” (1 Cor. 15: 20 – 28) VM hands the kingdom over to ‘Satan’ so that everything may be nothing at all. (Pause for a moment of silent reflection.) Yes, our lads have reached the nadir of being, an empty state which the Beatles appropriately call, “Nowhere Land”. This would seem to be the end, but do not despair: as it turns out, “my end is my beginning.” (Mary Tudor) But first we have one last loose end. The Beatles have dealt with Space and Time, Matter and Energy, and Life itself; and now…Mind! Welcome to the Foothills of the Headlands , the land of disembodied thoughts. Its inhabitants want to help the Beatles on their journey, but they can’t. Shorn of physicality (above), their ideas persist but have no agency, no force. “Wishing doesn’t make it so!” But I promised you a new beginning! Ok, put on some coffee because here’s where things get interesting! Our next stop is the legendary Sea of Holes, the realm of ‘negative space’. Here, the usual relation of figure/ground is reversed . The holes are now the figure. Just as something has become nothing ( Nowhere Land ), now nothing becomes something, something so concrete that Ringo is able to ‘pick up a hole’, put it in his pocket, and save it for a rainy day, which, I assure you, is coming. The topology of the Sea of Holes is non-orientable. There is no consistent sense of direction, no spatial ordering. It’s like an Escher staircase. But if the Sea of Holes (or any brane) is non-orientable, then the entire universe in which it is embedded, including Liverpool and Pepperland, must also be non-orientable, albeit less obviously so. (Earth is round, everywhere, and yet it appears flat from most perspectives.) Dante had his experience of non-orientability on the threshold of Purgatory. “I raised my eyes to see Lucifer as I had left him; but I saw him with his legs pointed upward.” Just as Dante and Virgil turn to leave Hell, Dante looks back and is surprised to see Satan upside down. Without realizing it, our pilgrims have undergone a reversal of orientation…which is a trademark of non-orientable space (Mobius Strips) and the premise of all eschatology. The Sea of Holes leads to Pepperland…but not so fast! You may only enter across an infinitely thin membrane (an event horizon) called the “Sea of Green”… and only one of the holes in the Sea of Holes connects to the Sea of Green…and there are innumerable holes. Fortunately, our Argonauts do find the Sea and so enter Pepperland (Dante’s Paradiso). There’s a lot to unpack here. First, the Sea of Green is a Markov Blanket. It ‘converts’ Liverpudlian into Pepperish (and vice versa). Second, the topology of Pepperland, and therefore of the Universe, is non-Archimedean as well as non-orientable. Liverpool and Pepperland never touch. They are disjoint…until they’re not. The Beatles do not ‘cross the Sea of Green’. Upon reaching it, they find themselves immediately and wholly in Pepperland. Green is not a slice of spacetime; it is a 90° rotation of spacetime, revealing its eternal aspect. Once arrived, the lads quickly “unbonk” the Lord Mayor with “a snatch of a tune” and “ready the land to rebellion”. Now they notice their “uncanny” resemblance to four of Pepperland’s permanent residents, the members of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band . Gradually, they come to realize that they are the Sergeant Pepper Band and Ringo reunites them using the ‘hole in his pocket’ (as I promised) to dissolve the artificial barrier (snow globe) separating the two worlds. The lads are Beatles in spacetime, but Sergeant Pepper in eternity. It is only now that they come to realize that they have been living in Pepperland all along. Their journey was indeed perpendicular to spacetime. They never left Liverpool Pier and it’s still Thursday morning, just as Dorothy never left Kansas and Alice never left her river bank. We all live, and always have all lived, in Paradise: “The glory of him who moves all things… the Love that moves the sun and the other stars…permeates the universe.” (Dante, Paradiso ) David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Click the cover image to return to Holy Days 2024. https://www.aletheiatoday.com/philosophy/r-u-wysiwyg%3F 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

For centuries, many Christians have found support for their faith in the accounts of miracles worked by Jesus, and following Jesus, by various apostles, saints and martyrs. Others, however, have rejected these accounts as ‘impossible’ and therefore ‘unbelievable’ and this judgment has led them to dismiss all accounts of Jesus’ life and teachings as ‘suspect’. Time Crystals Time Crystals ”Would you trade that rock you’re sporting on your finger for a crystal of time? What if I threw in Knicks tickets?” Time Crystals and Creation ”Would you trade that rock you’re sporting on your finger for a crystal of time? What if I threw in Knicks tickets?” Freedom and Time Crystals “Freedom is absolute within the parameters imposed by the topology of the cosmos.” Time Crystals and Pepperland “The Beatles’ Pepperland could have been considered mere fantasy; then along came…Rondeau Time Crystals.” Plato, Socrates and Time Crystals This discovery is an opportunity for us to reassess and reinterpret various cultural classics, including the Beatles’ 1967 film, Yellow Submarine : Readers React What's the buzz about? Our readers' reactions to Aletheia Today... Additional Reading Can't get enough of Aletheia Today's content? Check out the books that inspire our magazine.

< Back Amy Toman Contributor Amy Toman has a B.S. in Early Childhood Education from Central Michigan University. She has been married to her husband for 13 years and they have four living children. Amy spends her days teaching her children, managing her household and writing as often as possible. She delights in engaging conversation and seeing children thrive in their curiosities and abilities. The Fight for Our Children's Hearts Starts at Home

< Back Naomi S. Baron Contributor 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. How ChatGPT Robs Students

< Back At the Beginning of the World: Dinosaurs, Genesis, and the Gift of Science Joe Terrell The Bible isn’t a science textbook. And we shouldn’t expect it to operate as one. When I was ten years old, our church library ordered a book called Dinosaurs and The Bible . I couldn’t have been more excited. Like most ten-year-olds, I was a huge dinosaur nerd. When I grew up, I wanted to be a paleontologist, and I could rattle off the Latin names for all my favorite dinosaurs. The week the book arrived at our church, the pastor told the congregation their children needed to read the book – especially if they were receiving “public school education.” I was, of course, the first in line to borrow it from the church library. The crux of Dinosaurs and the Bible hinged on the idea that since God created everything in six literal days (about 10,000 years ago), dinosaurs and humans definitely co-existed at the same time in history. I devoured the book. It was filled with wild artwork, colorful charts, and scientific explanations of key Biblical passages. However, the more I read Dinosaurs and the Bible , the more uneasy I became. The first red flag was the book’s chapter about Noah’s Ark, which claimed that in order to fit dinosaurs on the ark to save them from the Great Flood, God probably helped Noah by either shrinking the dinosaurs or giving him dinosaur eggs. Okay, weird , I thought. But I can go with it . But it was the book’s final chapter about my favorite dinosaur – the Tyrannosaurus Rex – that finally tipped me over the edge. Deemed the “King of the Dinosaurs,” the T-Rex was a ferocious predator the size of a school bus. But, the book claimed that since pain and death didn’t exist prior to The Fall, the T-Rex was originally designed by God as a plant-eating reptile . The chapter even included an illustration of the T-Rex using its fearsome jaws to crack open and eat watermelons . I distinctly remember closing the book, glancing over to the plastic T-Rex toy on my nightstand, and thinking, There’s no way . I returned the book, disappointed and more than a little confused. But, like most young Christians, I buried my questions and split my scientific worldview in half . On one side, I had Adam and Eve, Noah’s Ark, and the Tower of Babel . And, on the other, I had dinosaurs, cavemen, the Ice Age, and extinction-level asteroid impacts . A secret bargain was struck between my opposing worldviews: they could peacefully coexist as long as they never overlapped . That compromise was easy to maintain in small-town East Texas. In Sunday school (and most of my high school science classes), the “theory” of evolution was regularly ridiculed and dismissed . In college, things got a bit more complicated. My degree track required a couple of science classes, so I signed up for the two easiest courses I could find – Oceanography and Geology. In my science classes, my scientific preconceptions weren’t so much as challenged as they were simultaneously and completely ignored and obliterated . Suddenly, the questions were coming at me faster than my theological framework could handle. For example, If we have fossilized evidence of interactions between Wooly Mammoths and early humans, how come we don’t have the same evidence for people and dinosaurs? If most of the fossil record is a result of a worldwide flood, why are fossils stratified across geological layers that seem to imply distinct periods of ecological diversity? Shouldn’t the bones of dinosaurs, mammals, and humans be all mixed up in the same rock layers? It takes the light from some distant stars hundreds of millions of years to reach Earth. Shouldn’t the universe be at least that old? And, as a Christian, am I supposed to ignore all the pre-human remains and artifacts we’ve uncovered that pre-date human civilization by tens of thousands of years? The two halves of my scientific worldview had finally collided and revealed several irreconcilable differences. Would I trust the infallible Word of God? Or would I backslide into the cold embrace of modern science? Weird Science When it comes to Christianity’s relationship with science and creation, there are three primary points of view (though variations exist within each): Young Earth Creationism : God created life, the universe, and everything in six literal and sequential days. The age of the Earth can be determined by counting and tracing back the genealogies in Genesis. Old Earth (Progressive) Creationism : God created everything in six literal days, but large gaps of time passed between each of the “days.” Evolutionary Creationism : God created everything, but did so through the testable and observable natural laws and processes He designed. One of the most prolific advocates for Young Earth Creationism is the evangelical ministry Answers in Genesis (AiG). Young Earth Creationists spin an alternative view of human history in which the Earth is only 10,000 years old ( a date derived from counting back on the Biblical genealogies found in Genesis ), but the catastrophic effects of the worldwide flood (as depicted in Genesis 7) creates the appearance of an old Earth . At the beginning of my crisis of faith, I was drawn to AiG for their hardline stances and conspiracy-like approach to “secular science.” But the deeper I dove in, the more I struggled. The Young Earth Creationism view appeared to be at odds with every major scientific discovery of the past century in the fields of geology, paleontology, astronomy, genetics, neuroscience, climatology, anthropology, and biology. It was a posture of constant warfare in a conflict that no one else seemed very interested in fighting anymore. In my mind, it was a battle between a middle-school Sunday School teacher who read a couple of articles on Answers in Genesis and a Geology professor with a doctorate and peer-reviewed research. But what if the battle was completely unnecessary? And what if we could stem the flow of casualties — people, like me, who felt as if they had to make an impossible choice? The Genesis Doctrine Since the beginning of time, people have been telling stories about how it all began . In the Babylonian creation story , the god Marduk kills the goddess Tiamat and forms the earth from her corpse. Humankind is later created to serve the gods and take care of the earth. But, humans get too loud and most are wiped out by a giant flood sent by the gods. In Norse Mythology , the All-Father Odin carved the first man and woman from two pieces of driftwood that floated ashore on a beach. He breathed life into the couple and named them Askr and Embla. In the Mayan creation account , the Creator Gods wanted to preserve their image in a new race of lesser beings that would also worship them. They tried making humans out of mud, but they crumbled in the sun. They tried again with wood, but these people had no soul and had to be destroyed by a flood. Finally, they tried with corn – the staple food of the Mayan culture – and it worked. In the Abrahamic religions , God brought the universe into existence and formed mankind from the dust of the Earth. The first human couple is placed in a garden paradise but is tricked by a talking snake into eating a magic fruit from a special tree. Where and when you were born (and how you were raised) determines which of these stories you would view as myths and which one you’d approach as fact. It’s important to remember that the Bible was not written with a twenty-first-century scientific worldview in mind . The idea that the earth is a globe spinning through the cosmos wasn’t on anybody’s radar for most of human history – especially during the late Bronze Age when Genesis was written and compiled by Moses. Instead, ancient Near East Cultures believed the world was a flat disc with waters above and below the earth . The land was held in place above the ocean below by ancient pillars. They had little to no concept of outer space. All celestial bodies – the sun, moon, and stars – resided below the solid dome that kept the ocean above from flooding the earth. Windows or doors in the dome would allow rain to fall and irrigate the land. To our modern ears, this sounds crazy. But, remember, these views were formed by people whose observations were limited by their geography and technology . And you can find the fingerprints of this ancient cosmological view in early Old Testament writings: In Genesis 1:6 – 8 , for example, we read about God creating a “vault” ( the King James Version reads “firmament” ) to separate “the water under the vault from the water above it.” In the Flood story, we’re told the “ springs of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of heaven were opened .” In Job, the main character says God “ shakes the earth from its place, and make its pillars tremble ” and “ walks on the vault of heaven .” Also in Job, God speaks about laying “ the earth’s foundation ” and “ shutting up the sea behind doors .” In multiple Psalms, we read about the earth’s foundations , the ocean above , and the doors of heaven . Of course, all of us read these verses as figurative or metaphorical now , but to an ancient Near East audience, they were references to a literal understanding of the natural world . So, instead of asking, “Is this story factually and scientifically correct?” a wiser and more helpful question would probably be, “ What is this ancient story trying to say? ” The Storyteller God Prior to the invention of reading and writing, tribes would pass their cultural history, myths, and wisdom from generation to generation through storytelling and oral tradition. Therefore, it was very important that these ancient stories were easy to remember and recite . And if you re-read the Genesis account with poetry (rather than science) in mind, a lot of things will start falling into place. Take, for example, the literary structure of Genesis 1: On Day One , God creates the cosmos. On Day Four , God fills the cosmos with stars, the sun, and the moon. On Day Two , God creates the sky and ocean. On Day Five , God fills the sky and ocean with birds and fish. On Day Three , God creates land and vegetation. On Day Six , God fills the land with animals and people. Do you see the pattern? In the first three days, God creates specific habitats . And three days after He creates each habitat, God fulfills its purpose . The lyrical cadence of the creation account in Genesis even includes a chorus (“ and it was good “) and an easy-to-memorize verse structure (the days of the week). Biblical scholar N.T. Wright puts this more eloquently in his book Surprised by Scripture : “The Genesis account is a highly poetic, highly complex narrative ; it’s main thrust has nothing to do with the number of 24-hour periods in which the world was made, and everything to do with the wisdom, goodness, and power of the God who made it. “ In other words, the Bible isn’t a science textbook. And we shouldn’t expect it to operate as one. The early Biblical authors didn’t live and write within a cultural vacuum. Remember, the most important historical event to happen to the Hebrew people was their deliverance from Egyptian slavery by Moses . The Hebrew people spent more than 400 hundred years enslaved in Egypt, and the Egyptian people had their own religious beliefs and mythologies. One of these Egyptian mythologies involved Apep , a large serpent who was known as the “Lord of Chaos” and an “Eater of Souls.” And then there was Wadjet , an Egyptian goddess who took the form of a snake . The Pharoah would wear a symbol of Wadjet on his crown , which indicated divine authority . So, when the Hebrew people listened to a story about the first couple being tricked by a snake, they did not think, “Oh, that’s the Devil!” Instead, they associated it with what they knew – the snake was symbolic of chaos, death, and – most importantly – slavery under the Egyptian Pharoah . Do you see how taking a story literally can actually strip it of its cultural significance and narrative power? (And that’s only one small example). What if focusing on the “How” and “When” of creation is just a textbook example of missing the point ? The Gift of Science Saint Augustine of Hippo was an early Christian philosopher from Africa who lived in the fourth century. He is considered by many to be one of the most influential Western theologians of all time. Like many intellectuals at the time, Augustine believed the world to be flat. However, one of his most famous works is The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, a commentary on the first book of the Bible. In the commentary, Augustine warned Christians against denying future scientific discoveries just because they didn’t line up with their interpretation of Scripture. He wrote “ it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel [non-Christian] to hear a Christian, while interpreting Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics ” and that Christians should “ take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation .” In A Flexible Faith , Bonnie Kristian writes, “Augustine worried that if Christians deny science, non-Christians will not be able to take our faith seriously. He warned against tying our theology too tightly to scientific theories that may become outdated as new discoveries are made .” In other words, Augustine thought that if Christians held onto pre-scientific ideas in the modern era about the natural world, it could literally prevent people from coming to know Christ . And that’s coming from someone who lived in the fourth century and thought the earth was a flat disc! To be honest, I really don’t think it matters much what Christians think about the first few chapters of Genesis (says the guy who just wrote a 3,000-word blog post on the subject). It holds little to no consequence on how we live our day-to-day lives. However, a Young Earth Creationist worldview can pre-package the assumption that science was out to undermine my faith. I thought all of “secular science” was propelled forward by the demonic goal of erasing God and spitting in the face of Christianity. And it led to a completely avoidable crisis of faith . Francis S. Collins – leader of the Human Genome Project and author of The Language of God – writes, “Science’s domain is to explore nature. God’s domain is in the spiritual world , a realm not possible to explore with the tools and language of science. It must be examined with the heart, the mind, and the soul—and the mind must find a way to embrace both realms .” You can have a high view of science and the Bible . We just have to tweak our expectations of each . It’s true that a lot of modern scientists hold atheistic or agnostic worldviews. But could that be a consequence of how Christians negatively portray the scientific community to their children? We need Christians to be at the forefront of quantum mechanics, evolutionary biology, cancer research, ecology, dietary nutrition, space exploration, climatology, and neuropsychology. Science is a gift . Along with art, it allows us the opportunity to become co-creators with God . But it is shackled with a heavy weight of responsibility. With the tools at our disposal, what type of world will we choose to create? Will we use our scientific progress to invent new ways to kill each other, pollute our planet, and exploit our natural resources for our own consumerist gain? Through science, we can heal the sick, feed the hungry, and repair the world. Through faith, we can mend the souls of the broken-hearted and the poor in spirit. United, we can bring light into the darkness – both physical and spiritual. So, let there be light . This is a republish with permission from Joe Terrell and Instrument of Mercy , a progressive Christian blog created and written by Joe Forrest. Featuring in-depth and long-form articles regarding complex and controversial issues about faith, culture, politics, and the church, the goal of Instrument of Mercy is to foster informed and constructive dialogue and encourage radical empathy among citizens of Heaven and Earth. Previous Next

< Back Parshat Emor: Making It All Count Rabbi Jon Kelsen “Counting the Omer – like the shemitah cycle – invites us to believe that each day, week and year is count-worthy, valuable and unique.” One after the other, the days proceed. The slog continues on, with no progress or forward movement in sight. Familiar mistakes are made again. Regrettable habits deepen, and the hours between getting up and lying down start to look all alike. The only thing passing is time itself. This “Groundhog Day” experience of ennui is familiar now to so many. On those gray days and listless years, many of us find ourselves asking: Does this all add up to anything? Do my days, weeks, and years count? The Torah indicates that, indeed, they do. Literally. Parshat Emor consists of two major components: first, laws relevant to the priest (mourning, eating sacred foodstuff) and second, an elaborate discussion of the yearly festival cycle. This includes discussion of the Omer period, bridging Pesach and what we call Shavuot (the feast of weeks), in which we find ourselves today. The Torah commands ( Lev. 23:21 ) that, at the time of the wheat harvest, on the day following the “Shabbat” (i.e. the beginning of the Pesach holiday, according to rabbinic tradition), one is to offer an “Omer” sacrifice in the Temple. Thereafter, we are to count from that day seven full weeks. On the 50th day, a bread offering is made, marking the culmination of a successful harvest. The mitzvah of counting, formulated in the plural, is—according to halakha—a commandment incumbent on each individual to count each of the 49 days (Sefirat ha-Omer). The Talmud ( Menachot 66a ) debates whether one must count individual days or weekly units, at least when the Temple is not standing. Normative practice is to count both days and weeks (e.g. the 8th day, which is one week and one day). So what is the effect of counting the Omer, marking the time between Pesach and Shavuot? In the simplest sense, the mitzvah of counting the Omer functions as an invitation. It invites us to believe–or even try on the belief–that today is count-worthy, valuable and unique. Not only today, as an individual unit of time, but each day taken together becomes combined into a full week, something greater than itself. This week as a whole is also count-worthy–first one week, then two, then three… Ultimately, the seven weeks constitute a larger, complete journey. As the wheat of the beginning of the harvest is transformed into the bread of the Shavuot offering, so too is the raw material of time itself, day after day, transformed into the mitzvah of Sefirat haOmer. The result is nothing less than arrival at the giving of the Torah. The shemitah cycle, too, functions as a ‘seven cycle of weeks’ – meaning, years – culminating in the Jubilee year. In that case, the mitzvah is for the authorities to maintain the count, not the individual. Nonetheless, the invitation remains: Can we believe that the years themselves count? That they build towards something greater? The Torah challenges us all: Each day, each year, focus on believing that it is something worth counting. The rest is commentary. *Republished without edits and with permission from the author and hazon.org. Rabbi Dr. Jon Kelsen is Dean at YCT, where he has previously taught Talmud and Pedagogy. Prior to this, Rabbi Kelsen was Rosh Kollel of the Drisha Kollel as well as an adjunct faculty member at the Pardes Institute. He received ordination from Rabbis Daniel Landes and Zalman Nehemiah Goldberg, and received his doctorate in Education and Jewish Studies at New York University as a Wexner Graduate Fellow. Previous Next