< 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

< Back Nobility David Cowles November 18, 2021 “Nothing is noble which it is noble to despise. Wealth, honors…absolute power…these no sensible man would count as blessings since…it is nobler to despise (them) than to admire (them).” (Longinus, 3rd century A.D.) For better or worse, we don’t talk a lot about ‘nobility’ today, but the virtue of nobility is one of those virtues that is strongly correlated with the concept of the Good. If you can imagine yourself condemning a particular ‘accident’ (above) as ignoble, then you are not yet dealing with true nobility. Like the Good…or Being itself…true nobility is among those qualities that have no antonym. “Nothing is noble which it is noble to despise. Wealth, honors…absolute power…these no sensible man would count as blessings since…it is nobler to despise (them) than to admire (them).” (Longinus, 3rd century A.D.) For better or worse, we don’t talk a lot about ‘nobility’ today, but the virtue of nobility is one of those virtues that is strongly correlated with the concept of the Good. If you can imagine yourself condemning a particular ‘accident’ (above) as ignoble, then you are not yet dealing with true nobility. Like the Good…or Being itself…true nobility is among those qualities that have no antonym. 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 Imagination Please Fr. Timothy Joyce, OSB, STL "One way helpful in recovering the wonder of childhood and a simpler life, is to become more creative, imaginative, wonder-filled people again." A very young woman and man are gazing down on their newborn child. Their faces are full of awe and wonder, full of delight and total satisfaction. This is the picture I recently saw, two young parents and their child. Is this the image of the child that Jesus holds up as a sign of the kingdom of heaven? I love gazing into the eyes of a newborn baby – there is the depth of eternity in their eyes. They seem to still remember from where they came. It is before the competitiveness, the insecurity to prove oneself and the constant need to be reassured set in. It is also before the child is swept into the consumeristic world of the need to identify oneself by acquiring more and bigger things, things outside of them and outside relationships. A child can play in a sandbox, can use empty boxes to build a new world. Their world is simple. Why do our worlds become so complicated? We seem to lose our contentment with the world God has given us – the beauty and wonder of nature, the value of good friends, the ability to share what we have with brothers, sisters and all those in need? We turn a world of plenty into a world of scarcity. Jesus, in the gospels, keep directing us to seek another, a simpler way. Today’s culture puts all the reliance on oneself to find meaning alone. The way of faith puts one’s faith, confidence, trust, in a force and energy beyond us which we find together. We call this power beyond us the Divine. One way helpful in recovering the wonder of childhood and a simpler life, is to become more creative, imaginative, wonder-filled people again. There are two ways that I follow. The first is to get back into harmony with nature; we are not here on earth to dominate, control and amass all creation but to be in union with creation, with each other, with myself, and with God. And we can begin with all of creation which teaches us so much. I love the words of Job to his accusers and I can hear these words addressed to all of us. “Ask the beasts and they will teach you; the birds of the air and they will tell you; ask the plants of the earth and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you. Who among these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In God’s hand is the life every living thing, and the breath of ever Being.” (Book of Job12:7-10). Our culture is really out of sync with such a belief. Rather, we are taught the ways of greed, accumulation, consumerism, build bigger and better than my neighbor. Our imagination can show us another way. Yes, we can talk with animals; yes they have feeling; yes they can teach us many things. The Celtic Saints give many examples of oneness with the created world. The second area that abets simplification and imagination is how we use the great gift of our mind. The liberal arts curricular are dying. Some lament the “dumbing of America.” Many young people seek jobs with computers. This is fine but machines can give us facts; they do not help us to think and imagine. Years ago, the great Rabbi Joshua Abraham Heschel counseled all of us to be reading two books at a time – one serious and the other, a playful, imaginative book, a novel. Our right brain can atrophy when it is not fed with novels, poetry, music, games, sport, dancing, art and architecture. Jesus said that unless we become like little children, we shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. We need a child’s playfulness, its sense of awe and wonder. Smart phones and other devices can support our growth in knowledge but they also can inhibit the growth of the Imagination. Reading the Bible needs imagination as the texts are full of stories, myths, poetry and Old Testament types. In monastic lectio divina this is formative reading in contrast to ordinary informative reading such as a text book or newspaper. All this also applies to our life of worship in churches and synagogues. Is it little wonder that many are bored with public worship? They give it up or choose their own spiritual path based on what appeals to them. People need beauty to uplift us. So much of church art, music and decorum is retrograde European. Native peoples often have more lively worship with authentic indigenous art and music. Maybe it starts with the fact that we had become accustomed to quiet and passive worship. But music is not a frill for worship; it is an essential part of it. The biblical religions all pray the psalms which are meant to be sung. Reading the Bible needs imagination as the texts are full of stories, myths, poetry and Old Testament types. In monastic lectio divina this is formative reading in contrast to ordinary informative reading such as a text book or newspaper. Good sculpture, art, color, and bodily expression are also all part of a more imaginative approach to religion. Along with paying attention to what we read and look at, there is always need for silence in our daily lives. Only with a habit of silence can we really listen to the deeper sounds of life, of reality, of God. There is so much to learn, so much that is there to inspire us. Smart phones have their place but not as you are walking in a park or sitting still. We have eyes to see, and ears to hear, and noses to smell, and everything to touch but we have to be still and listen to it all. In a train station or airport or just walking in the city, I behold the great variety of people: how they move, talk, exude joy or fatigue. So much of wonder before me. I echo Louie Armstrong’s song, “What a Wonderful World.” Have you learned any of this on your own and chosen to live more imaginably and creatively? You can let us know at joycet@glastonburyabbey.org Please note that I do not speak on behalf of Glastonbury Abbey, the Archdiocese of Boston or the Catholic Church, though I hope my faith is in harmony with all these. Any error in judgment should be credited to me and not anyone else. Republished with minimal edits and permission rom glastonburyabbey.org . Fr. Timothy Joyce, OSB, STL continues his regular blog, “ Monastic Scribe ”, where he reflects on "what I may have learned from all these years and what I am still trying to learn." Fr. Timothy notes, “I do not speak on behalf of Glastonbury Abbey, the Archdiocese of Boston or the Catholic Church, though I hope my faith is in harmony with all these. Any error in judgment should be credited to me and not anyone else.” purpose and devotion. 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< Back Ectaban David Cowles Ecbatan may share the seven-ringed pattern of the solar system, but Paradise shares the seven-ringed pattern of Ecbatan! “Great bulk, huge mass, thesaurus; Ecbatan, the clock ticks and fades out. The bride awaiting the god’s touch; Ecbatan, city of patterned streets; again the vision:” – Ezra Pound, Canto V Is it possible to present a fully formed Eschatology in just four lines of verse? After all, great works like Revelation require half a thousand verses to tell their tale. But surprisingly, the answer is, “Yes!” And we’ll see that Ezra Pound has done it (above)…once we unpack all the allusions and references contained in those four lines. Ecbatan (‘Ecbatana’) is an ancient city on the Silk Road, located in modern-day Iran. It was the capital city of the Empire of the Medes. In Canto LXXIV, Pound refers to Ecbatan as “the city of Dioce,” the first ruler of the Medes. It is at least remotely possible that this is also the city that the authors of Genesis attributed to Cain and his sons when Cain became a ‘wanderer’ and ‘settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden’ and ‘became the founder of a city’. But what makes Ecbatan so important is not primarily its great age, nor its role in history and mythology; what makes Ecbatan important is its layout. It is the apex of City Planning. Ecbatan consists of seven concentric rings, demarcated by walls. Moving inward, each wall is higher than the next and each a different color. The penultimate wall is silver, the final wall gold, and within that wall, the palace. Inside these walls run those “patterned streets.” The seven rings of Ecbatan call to mind the seven rings of the then known solar system. In Canto LXXIV, the first of the so-called Pisan Cantos, Pound confirms that association when he sets forth in a single line his entire cosmo-political platform: “To build the city of Dioce whose terraces are the colour of stars.” Ezra Pound’s Cantos are at least ab initio modeled after the 100 cantos that form Dante’s Divine Comedy. To understand Pound’s project, it is essential to understand Dante’s. Unlike Pound, Dante is the hero of his own epic. His ‘odyssey’ begins “in the middle of the journey of our life…within a dark wood where the straightway was lost.” He is then conducted by a series of ‘guides’ through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and finally Heaven (Paradiso). Along the way, Dante encounters persons from early Renaissance Italy, the classical world, salvation history, and the Church. Their life stories supply the stuff of his epic. Pound, likewise, weaves cultural and historical events on an eschatological loom. But compared to Dante, Pound casts a much, much wider net. There is hardly a region of the globe or a period of history that does not contribute content to Pound’s epic. While Dante tells the story of ‘Earth as it is in Heaven,’ Pound tells the story of ‘Heaven as it is on Earth.’ For Dante, the seven rings of the solar system were patterned after the seven rings of Paradise; but Pound turns that relationship upside down…and inside out: Ecbatan may share the seven-ringed pattern of the solar system, but Paradise shares the seven-ringed pattern of Ecbatan! If Ecbatan is ‘Enoch,’ the city of Cain, that would make Cain the world’s first urban planner. But even if there is no such association, being the first ‘founder of a city’ makes Cain responsible for developing and introducing the technology that would ultimately have made Ecbatan possible. Either way, Ecbatan (like all cities) traces back to Cain. The theological implications of this are enormous. In Genesis, Cain is presented as committing the first great sin in historical time (i.e., post-Eden). How fitting then, from the perspective of Judeo-Christian eschatology, that Cain be responsible, directly or indirectly, for building a post-historical Eden, Ecbatan! Ecbatan is the Judeo-Christian message of salvation in a nutshell. God does not just passively forgive the sinner; God empowers the sinner to become a co-creator of Paradise. We partner with God in the redemption of the world, and we are led in this venture by Jesus, aka the Christ, our Redeemer. This is the essence of the theological virtue of hope: not only that our sins will be wiped away, but also that our lives will be redeemed. With Job, we affirm, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that he will at last stand forth upon the dust…(and) I will see God.” (Job 19: 25 – 26) In this context, it is useful to compare Cantos to another great work of literature, the New Testament Book of Revelation. Paul tells us that only three things will last: faith, hope, and love. Literature is full of books about faith and love, but hope sometimes gets short-shrift. What it lacks in quantity, it makes up in quality; hope is the central theme of three of Western civilization’s greatest works: the Book of Revelation, The Divine Comedy, and the Cantos of Ezra Pound. The Judeo-Christian tradition (including Dante) understands God as “the creator of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible” (Nicene Creed). Pound joins Alfred North Whitehead, perhaps Carl Jung, and a very few others in reversing that process. For these visionaries, the world in some sense ‘creates God;’ or, at least, there is a mutually creative relationship between the two! Ecbatan of the Cantos is Pound’s version of Dante’s Paradise. It is not a model for Paradise, it IS Paradise. There are no ‘models’ in Pound! The concept of a model necessarily introduces the notion of an ontological hierarchy (“the map is not the territory”). Pound rejects that idea categorically. In Cantos the mythological, the historical, the fictional, the experiential, the theological and the eschatological share a common ontological status. Anthropologists report that many aboriginal societies do not distinguish what happens in history from what happens in dreams or in spiritual experiences. (Read “Speaking Piraha” for reference.) Like Pound, they are ontological democrats! Of course, Ecbatan is Paradise seen from an eschatological perspective. Pity the lowly camel driver resting on the star-colored terraces of the Median capital, not understanding that he is living in Paradise; pity the frenzied investment banker racing across Manhattan in a cab, still not understanding. Christians are fond of saying, “Repent and hear the Good News!” Perhaps we might rephrase, “Read Pound and live the Good News!” Of course, Ecbatan is a once and future city, a once and future Paradise. Throughout Cantos, Pound rhymes the historical Ecbatan with other cities; for example, Wagadu, capital of the Ghanian Empire, four times rebuilt. The message is clear and consistent: Ecbatan is not just a place, it is a mission. Ultimately, we all share a common eschatological imperative, “To build the city of Dioce…” (Not ‘rebuild’ but ‘build!’) The city of Dioce (the Kingdom of Heaven) is only built once, for all time and eternity. Pound’s ‘Paradiso’ begins in earnest with the first Pisan Canto (Canto LXXIV). We now see Canto V (above) as the Cliff’s Notes version of Pound’s later cantos. Note that the map (Canto V) precedes the territory (Canto LXXIV & ff). But is it the case, stated above, that four lines from Canto V constitute a complete and fully developed eschatology? To make that case, we’ll need to unpack each line, beginning with: “Great bulk, huge mass, thesaurus.” Parmenides, the first Western philosopher to leave extant a significant body of work, presented reality under two aspects: the aspect of Truth (Aletheia) and the aspect of Appearance (Doxa). These two complementary, but mutually exclusive aspects are both required in order to build a viable model of reality. Aletheia is Parmenides’ Eschaton; Doxa, his history. Parmenides describes Aletheia as follows: “It is not divisible…but it is full of what is…it is not lacking but if it were, it would lack everything…It is completed from every direction like the bulk of a well-rounded sphere, everywhere from the center equally matched…equal to itself from every direction.” The mini-Paradiso found in Canto V immediately links Pound to the philosophical tradition of Parmenides. Like Aletheia, Ecbatan is massive and symmetrical. Parmenides says that Aletheia lacks nothing because, if it lacked anything, it would lack everything. The same may be said of Ecbatan; above all else, it is complete! But while Aletheia is changeless, things according to the “way of appearance” (Doxa) “come to be and perish, be and not be, shift place and exchange bright color” (aka attributes). This behavior is at the root of all the dissonance and conflict in our everyday experience, but that conflict is the raw material of contrast, which is the source of all intensity. In the ‘Doxa fragments’ of On Nature, Parmenides dwells on the role that “naming” plays in shattering the homogeneity of ‘Truth’ into the seemingly endless variety of ‘Appearances.’ For example: “Thus, according to belief, these things were born and now are, and hereafter, having grown from this, they will come to an end. And for each of these did men establish a distinctive name.” Certain African and Australasian cultures believe that the process of naming (Namo) can actually make things come to be. Pound cites the story of “Wanjina” (Wondjina) whose father sewed up his mouth because he was ‘making too many things’. Parmenides would agree wholeheartedly. The “thrusting forth” of things that “come to be” (Fragment 11) is either caused by or chronicled by the development of the dictionary. The size of a dictionary is a good measure of the immersion of its readers in Doxa. Hence, thesaurus! Thesaurus is the antonym of dictionary. A dictionary records distinctions; a thesaurus, on the other hand, resolves those distinctions by finding common ground. On the one hand, dictionary smashes the crystal vase of Aletheia against the rocks of English Empiricism and American Pragmatism, reducing it to so many shards of glass (Doxa). Thesaurus, on the other hand, painstakingly matches those shards with one another until the vase is whole again (Aletheia). But the reconstructed vase is not quite the same as the original vase. While the shape and volume are still the same, and while the vase can still hold water, now you can see the outline of each and every shard that makes it up. The new vase is vastly more beautiful and interesting…and much, much more valuable; it is the product of negentropy. Reality requires both Aletheia and Doxa to optimize coherence and maximize intensity. Compare this with the creation narrative in Genesis. Words play an important role in God’s creative process: “Let there be light…God called the light ‘day’ and the darkness he called ‘night’…God called the dome ‘sky’…God called the dry land ‘earth,’ and the basin of water he called ‘sea’.” Creation is the process of distinction; it is the living dictionary. Salvation reverses that process; it is a way of harmonizing apparent conflicts into mere contrasts. Salvation is the living thesaurus. “Ecbatan, the clock ticks and fades out” In Paradise there is no time; everything is atemporal (eternal). When the clock ticks for the final time, it fades out and eternity begins. Ecbatan, city of patterned streets, is that ‘final tick;’ it is the membrane between history and eternity. The pattern of its streets and terraces replaces the historical flow of events. A vertical architecture replaces a horizontal flow. Ecbatan is proof that process is not dependent on time. When we speak of Ecbatan, we are not just talking about an historical city or some ‘kingdom (to) come;’ Ecbatan is what it is, what there is, all there is, now and forever. Process is bi-directional. On one axis, process is change (Heraclitus), growth, evolution; on the other, process is harmonization (Whitehead), pattern building. Today, we rely heavily on clocks to help us get where we’re supposed to be, when we were supposed to be there. But when I was growing up, kids didn’t always have ready access to clocks (or watches). No matter, you were still expected to be home on time. So, without thinking about it, we built our own clocks: the progress of the sun in the sky, the changing colors on the horizon, the ‘gas man’ (sic) lighting the streetlamps every afternoon, the corporeal sense of time passing. For all the hours we spent each week in church, we were nothing but a bunch of pagans. These organic clocks worked just as well as any Timex, often better. Through all this, it never occurred to us that time might be nothing other than the clocks (natural or man-made) that we use to measure it. We took it for granted that time was something objective, that it formed the background of all things, that events occur in time. In recent years, however, cosmologists have suggested that this might not be the case. Roger Penrose, for example, suggests that when we are no longer able to construct a ‘clock’ to measure time, time will cease to exist. Others have suggested that objective time is nothing other than an abstraction from the variable organic ‘durations’ of events superimposed on one another. Pound predates Penrose by decades. Yet, he uses Penrose’s imagery. When the last clock ticks its last tick, time folds into eternity. “The bride awaiting the god’s touch; Ecbatan…” This evokes the image of Mary being touched by the Holy Spirit at the moment of Incarnation and of the Church as the “Bride of Christ”. Ecbatan is Mater Dei (mother of God); Ecbatan is Church. Ecbatan is the physical substructure of Paradise. Over and over again, Pound writes, “Le Paradis n’est pas artificiel.” It must be physical and historical…it’s Mary’s womb, Christ’s Church, Ecbatan. While no Marxist, Pound wholeheartedly embraced materialism. “City of patterned streets; again, the vision:” The ‘vision’ Pound refers to is Dante’s vision in Canto XXXIII, the final canto, of his Paradiso: “O abounding grace by which I dared to fix my look on the eternal light so long that I spent all my sight upon it. In its depth I saw that it contained, bound by love in one volume that which is scattered in leaves through the universe, substances and accidents and their relations as it were fused together in such a way that what I tell of is a simple light.” Dante rejects the Heraclitan model of continuous process. In Dante’s vision, all of the events, entities and aspects of the world are organized as “leaves.” Pound’s Cantos recapitulate Dante’s vision using Pound’s own seemingly inexhaustible treasure trove. Cantos consists entirely of such ‘leaves,’ ‘fused together’ into ‘a simple light.’ Rare among authors, Pound avoids the temptation to add personal commentary, emotional shading, ‘mere ideas,’ spin; instead, he literally lets the thing speak for itself (ipse loquitur). In the visual arts, the 19th century saw objects dissolve into impressions. Starting with Cezanne, progressing through the Cubists and culminating in Surrealism and Dada, the 20th century reversed that process. It focused on the thing itself, releasing the object from its utilitarian context and allowing it to tell its own story. Pound performed a parallel function in the literary arena. Ideally, to read the Cantos would be to have the ‘vision,’ Dante’s vision. Both Dante and Pound fixed their looks on the eternal light and saw that it contained that which is scattered in leaves; both Dante and Pound attempt to bind these leaves “by love in one volume…in such a way that what I tell of is a simple light”. Pound confirms: “I have tried to write Paradise.” (Canto CXX) To write Paradise, to ‘create’ light, to build the City of Dioce, that’s everyone’s highest calling. But it is the nature of the human condition that no one will ever succeed, at least not completely. It is for God alone to create light (fiat lux), to build Paradise, but that does not mean that we are not all called to do everything we can do in pursuit of that elusive goal. Like Cain, we contribute what we can to the Eschaton, and we humbly beg forgiveness for what we fail to do. In this context, Canto CXX is worth reproducing in its entirety: I have tried to write Paradise Do not move Let the wind speak That is Paradise Let the Gods forgive what I have made Let those I love try to forgive what I have made. Illustration taken from Buckingham, J.S. (1829). Travels in Assyria, Media and Persia . Page 159. London. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com. Previous Next

< Back Do People Change? David Cowles Jun 1, 2026 “You are exactly the same today as you were at birth and as you will be at death…(but) you must change in order to remain the same.” A favorite topic among barroom philosophers begins with the question, “Does anyone ever really change?” Obviously, the question has ramifications: forgiveness vs. revenge, rehabilitation vs. incarceration, free will vs. fate. The beautiful thing about propositions put forward at the outset of barroom debates is that all sides of the argument are always right. There is a sense in which no one ever changes, a sense in which everyone is changing all the time, and a sense in which people (most but not necessarily all) change stochastically according to some sort of internal biological clock. My goal is to unravel these threads and, BTW, if I do so to your satisfaction, the next round’s on you, ok? No one ever changes : You are aware of the World, and you are aware of yourself being aware of the World. As a result, you experience the World stereoscopically, and the differance (Derrida) is consciousness. You are that consciousness . No matter how violently and relentlessly the world (including your body) changes around you, you do not change. You observe and qua observer, you are exactly the same today as you were at birth (or before) and as you will be at death (or after). You are Menelaus ( Odyssey ), unwavering and unchanging, holding on tight to the shape shifting Proteus. You are Stephen Dedalus ( Ulysses ) on Sandymount Strand, rationalizing the shifting forms assumed by primal matter, Aristotle’s pure potentia . Like the center point of a rotating sphere, you are at rest while everything literally spins around you. The World consists of qualia and it is in a state of constant flux. This is Parmenides’ Doxa (appearances), the realm of change. Here is where color, form, and affect reside. This is the World, Sartre’s en soi , but this is not you. Relative to en soi you are neant (nothingness, negation); you are pour soi . You are an avatar of Parmenides’ Aletheia (truth), the realm of permanence: “…what-is is ungenerated and imperishable…whole, single-limbed, steadfast, and complete; nor was it once, nor will it be, since it is, now, all together, one, continuous…Thus coming-to-be is extinguished and perishing not to be heard of.” Being in the realm of Aletheia , you are simple, you have no parts, you have no qualities, and, of course, you undergo no change. Everyone changes continuously : You template the World, you reflect the World, and the World is constantly in a state of flux ( Doxa , above). Therefore, you must constantly change to adapt to the ceaseless change around you. In homage to the great Johnnie Cochrane, “If it is not new, it is not you!” This change is neither arbitrary nor voluntary; it is homeostatic, it is necessary for survival. You seek stability and so you must continually adjust to changes around you. You must change if you are to remain the same. Most people change stochastically : This is where our model represents an advance over Parmenides and Sartre and pretty much anyone in between. To understand this third option, we need to visit our cousin, the butterfly . A butterfly begins life as a caterpillar. Once the caterpillar has grown sufficiently, it forms a protective casing around itself called a chrysalis where the caterpillar's body proceeds to dissolve into a biological soup. The interior of the chrysalis becomes a cellular slurry, the raw material for an entirely fresh organism with new structures such as wings, antennae, compound eyes, etc. Imagine a piece of unassembled DIY furniture from IKEA (it’s easy if you try) with two schematics directing its assembly – two, because the pieces in this kit can be assembled in 2 totally different ways resulting in two entirely different pieces of furniture. It’s the ultimate application of Transformers technology. At an appropriate time, our personalities dissolve into a soup, just like a caterpillar’s DNA, and then reassemble according to an entirely different schematic, just like a butterfly. Like butterflies, you retain pre-metamorphic memories but otherwise, you are an entirely new entity. Most people experience metamorphosis 3 times in life, once at the onset of puberty (11 – 13), again upon the full realization of adulthood (21 – 30), and one last time at the beginning of ‘seniority’ (55 – 80). Parents often reflect that living with their teenaged offspring is like living with strangers in their house; been there…on both sides of that see-saw! The adults think they are speaking metaphorically but in fact, their observation is true, literally. On the other hand, many retirees succeed in so reinventing themselves that they wonder how they ever found the time, energy, or frankly the ‘stomach’ to work for 40+ years. It is said that there are no second acts in America; on the contrary, every life has a second act, or at least the opportunity for one, as well as a prologue. Our lives seem to follow Homer’s trajectory ( Odyssey ). Our ‘minority’ follows the structure of the Telemachia and serves as the Prologue in our life’s drama. At first, Telemachus is powerless against his mother’s suitors; later, with the help of a mentor, he begins to resist and develops a strategy to overthrow the interlopers. At the end (Act II), Odysseus is reunited with his home, Ithaca, but on entirely new terms. This is not so surprising! Both Homer ( Odyssey ) and Joyce ( Ulysses ) intended to tell ‘the story of everyone’ through their respective epics. And they did! We are all Dedalus, we are all Bloom, we are all Telemachus, we are all Odysseus. Our lives unfold in three acts: a Prologue, then Act I Proper (our adult life), followed by a usually much shorter Act II (our seniority). So no matter what side you took in this barroom brawl, you have the satisfaction of knowing you were right…and I have the satisfaction of a quaffing a cold one on you. Slainte! 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 Give us your honest opinion, please. David Cowles Sep 15, 2022 Give us your honest opinion, please. Thank you for subscribing to Aletheia Today and Thoughts While Shaving. We’re thrilled to share our insights and opinions with you. In order to continue to serve you best, we kindly ask that you take a minute to provide us with your feedback. By answering these brief questions, you'll help us improve and better serve you. Thanks again, David Cowles, Editor-in Chief Enter the survey here. 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 Comedy of Job David Cowles “Failure to appreciate the comic elements in Job has resulted in an almost universal misreading of the text.” Comedy? I’ve heard the Book of Job described as tragedy, wisdom, and history, but never as comedy. How can the loss of one’s family, property, health, and social standing possibly be funny? Talk about ‘dark humor;’ but trust me (or don’t), it’s hilarious! The banter between Job and his so-called ‘comforters,’ even between Job and God, is as funny as any modern sitcom–no, funnier. The best way to show this would be to recast the epic poem as a stage or screen play. But where are Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Ionesco, and Beckett when we need them? Absent a master’s touch, would you at least let me point out some of the funniest snippets of the epic? This is not a sterile exercise in literary criticism. Failure to appreciate the comic elements in Job has resulted in an almost universal misreading of the text. As we shall see, proper recognition of the comic element sets things right. The Book of Job consists of 42 chapters, 40 of which contain a magnificent epic poem, every bit the equal of Homer’s diptych. The poem is nestled between a prose Prologue and a very brief prose Epilogue. For various reasons, we will focus only on the poem itself (95% of the total text). That said, I will also ignore the 6 chapters devoted to the input of a younger comforter, Elihu. These chapters are of dubious provenance and sit inert in the middle of the text. They contribute nothing to the discussion and neither Job nor God, nor the other comforters even refer to them. The epic proper begins with Job lamenting the day of his birth. Nothing funny about this. But Job has the added misfortune of being surrounded by (false) friends, three so-called ‘comforters’, cold comfort indeed! Eliphaz speaks first. Like a pre-pubescent boy in a schoolyard, Eliphaz responds to Job’s genuine suffering and heartfelt reflection with a taunt: “It is you who have fortified the trembling, and limp arms, you have strengthened. The stumbling would your words raise up, and buckling knees would you stiffen.” Eliphaz is, of course, being facetious. He applies to Job attributes usually reserved for God. “But now that (calamity) has come to you, you cannot (bear it). It touches you yourself and you are shaken…Call out now! Does anyone answer you? ... Rather, I would seek out El (God), before Elohim (also ‘God’) I would lodge my complaint.” 21 st Century translation: “If you don’t like the way God’s treated you, sue him.” Eliphaz is urging Job to do what he himself wouldn’t dream of doing: “Let’s see if I can goad Job into doing something so stupid that God will punish him even more! How much fun would that be!” But as we shall see (much later), Job turns the tables on Eliphaz and the other comforters. He does sue God…and he wins. Eliphaz and the other comforters are properly chastised and shamed. The story of Job has a happy ending, but the road to that climax is long and tortured; and in any event, I’m getting way ahead of myself. For now, Job must be content to banter back: “Thus have you now become naught (to me); you see a terrifying sight (me) and you are seized with fear.” Like most bullies, Eliphaz’ behavior is grounded in his own insecurity…and Job knows that. Foolishly, Job continues. Does he really think we can get through to these bullies? Now a second comforter, Bildad, joins the circle of torment: “(How long) will the words of your mouth be a massive wind? …(Suffering) is the fate of all who reject El.” Of course, this is ironic, since Job alone ‘knows’ El and keeps his commandments. But what miscreant doesn’t love it when a goody-two-shoes (Job) gets his comeuppance, even when it is undeserved. Job pretty much ignores Bildad’s noise; he is still mulling over Eliphaz’s suggestion: “If one wanted to press charges against him, not once in a thousand (times) would he respond…Even in the right, I would get no response…I do not trust that he would hear my complaint…and who can convene such a legal proceeding?” As with anyone in Job’s predicament, there is an inevitable undercurrent of despair: “The earth is handed over to the wicked. He covers the eyes of its judges; if not he, then who? …I will be found guilty, so why should I strive in vain.” Now a third comforter, Zophar, joins in, “A hollow man (Job) will be filled with intelligence when a wild ass is born to a human.” In other words, when pigs fly, Job! Here, Job loses his famous patience! There’s no reasoning with these taunters. He decides to call them out, “Truly you are people of intelligence and with you, wisdom will die! …Rather ask Behemoth (hippo) and it will instruct you, or the fowl of the sky – and it will tell you. Or converse with the earth…and the fish of the sea.” Job challenges the over-intellectualized theology of his tormentors. He suggests they return to basics. In the immortal words of John, Paul, George and Ringo ( Yellow Submarine ), “Be empirical, look!” Like Heidegger and others, the Job-poet calls for a theology rooted in phenomenology, i.e., personal experience. “I would rather speak to Shaddai (another name for God); it is an argument with El I desire. But you, you are smearers of lies, false physicians, all of you. If only you would keep silent – that would be wisdom for you !” Well said, Job, but unfortunately these bullies don’t get the message. They never do! Eliphaz jumps back in: “Does ‘a sage’ utter such windy speech and fill his belly with an east wind?” To which Job answers, “Futile comforters are you all. Is there no end to (your own) windy speech?” Throughout Job’s dialogue with the comforters and later with God, the interlocutors throw each other’s words back and forth. They repeat others’ words but put them in different contexts that give them different meaning. ‘Wind/windy’ is a good example. Job is the first to use the word, “Do you regard (my) words as just wind?” A classic victim’s mistake! A modern-day Maimonides needs to publish A Guide for the Bullied . Item #1 : Don’t give your tormentors anything they can use against you. Job flunks Victimology 101. “Do you regard my words as just wind?” is translated by the tormentors as “My words are just wind!” Wind is wonderful for word play; its various meanings run up and down the semantic register. Job is into the game now: “Futile comforters are you all: is there no end to windy speech?” On one hand, “windy speech” could mean, facetiously, “spirit inspired”…or it could refer to a disorganized and meaningless blast of air. It could apply to a verbose orator, but it can also refer to a certain noisy and often smelly bodily excretion, aka a fart! After a second lame attack from Bildad, Job goes on offense . In the most famous lines in the entire poem, he succinctly summarizes his theology and warns Bildad of impending doom: “I know that my Redeemer lives, and he will testify on earth. From behind my skin I look out, while in the flesh I’ll see Eloah (God). Something I myself will view - what my eyes, not a stranger’s, will see…you (Bildad) had better fear the sword…you had better beware of demons.” Job is digging himself into an ever deepening pit. There may be no recovering from this; Job may need to change schools. Now Zophar joins the circle of torment, but Job cuts him short: “After I speak, you may (continue to) mock yourself ” (i.e., blather on). Yet, Job uses his tirade against Zophar to score a major point: “Should I not lose patience over evil?” The comforters are apologists for evil; they excuse God for that which is evident to their senses. Here, Job throws down the gauntlet: Evil is evil and there’s no excusing it, period! In other words, even God must be good. Today, people debate “Good without God?” Job asks a much more interesting question: “God without Good?” From our 21 st century theological perch, it is hard to appreciate how controversial this was at the time. Suffice to say, it only served to further isolate Job as a minority of one. Sidebar : There is a modern analog. In 1964, Presidential nominee, Barry Goldwater, addressed these words to the Republican National Convention: “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice and moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue.” One third of the delegates walked out! Evidently, they too were willing to make peace with slavery and exploitation. Not Job! The Book of Job reads like a textbook of modern political theory: any correspondence between rhetoric and reality is entirely co-incidental. Now Eliphaz jumps back in with a tactic worthy of his 21 st century (CE) heirs. He accuses Job of precisely that crime of which Job is most innocent: exploiting the poor and neglecting their cry. It is a fabrication made from whole cloth, but hey, you can fool some of the people…, right? Like any skilled debater, Job does not give Eliphaz’ nonsense the honor of a reply; he’s already on to other things: “If you would let me know how to find him (God)…I would lay before him my lawsuit.” After a variety of legal maneuvers worthy of OJ’s Dream Team , God answers Job's summons and appears before him in a whirlwind. From the outset, God is contemptuous of his opponent and his remarks are dripping with sarcasm: “Who is this who obscures good counsel, (using) words without knowledge? ...I will ask you, and you will let me know…Tell me – if you truly know wisdom.” From here on, God’s speech consists primarily of a game of Have you Ever , punctuated with a few Double Dog Dares from A Christmas Story . He challenges Job to compare CVs with him: “Have you ever in your days summoned daybreak…Have you ever reached the sources of the Sea? ...Tell - if you know all of this. On what path dwells the light? ...You must know, for you were born then, your number of days is so many.” God is furious; he cannot contain his anger at Job’s effrontery. His words are venom tipped arrows. But notice what God does not do! He does not ‘smite Job with the jaw bone of an ass’ nor does he withdraw from the legal proceeding itself. Job is unfazed. Like Moses and Elijah, Job has anticipated God’s bluster and knows he must remain impassive if he is to get through it. Think Menelaus holding on tight to the shape-shifting Proteus. Eventually, God runs out of steam, “Should Eloah answer an accuser?” After all the ink and tears that have been spilled over this, now God questions whether he should even have responded to Job in the first place: “Maybe I should have taken the fifth…or drank a fifth.” Too late now, God, that horse is long since out of that barn. God’s rhetorical question creates an opportunity for Job to get a word in edgewise, finally, and Job makes good, but laconic, use of the opportunity: “Lacking respect, how can I answer you? My hand I place over my mouth. I have spoken once, and I will not repeat – Twice, and I will no more.” For millennia critics have taken Job’s words as an apology; how could they? At the most, this is the unfelt, sarcastically toned apology of a teenager. At the very most! Ask yourself, “Who’s disrespecting whom?” Either Job has disrespected God, and so forfeited the right to answer him, or God has disrespected Job, and forfeited the right to hear Job’s answer. In the first instance, Job’s words must be understood facetiously; in the second instance, as sarcasm. Job has apparently ‘rested’ his case. God now has one last chance to make a convincing argument. Wisely, he chooses a different tack: “Will you go so far as to breach my justice? Accuse me of wrong so that you are in the right? If you’ve an arm (as strong as) El’s…crush the wicked where they stand…Then I myself will praise you.” In other words, “Just do it!” Enough with the rhetoric, Job, if you can do better, go ahead; I won’t stand in your way and the whole world is anxious to see what you can accomplish. Bill Clinton is famous for saying, “It’s the economy, stupid.” In other words, stay on message. Job is famous for saying something like, “It’s justice, stupid,” and sticking to it. He must not, and he will not fall prey to God’s distractions. God closes with the tired reminiscence of an old man regaling the rest of his nursing home gang with tales of his past exploits: “I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker.” (Eliot) God spends his last 13 verses lionizing his creatures, Behemoth and Leviathan. One can imagine him thinking, “Yes, they are fierce, but at least they don’t talk back like you, Job.” God’s final stanza is nothing but sad, “He (Leviathan) has no match on earth, who is made as fearless as he. All that is haughty he’s got in his view; over beasts of all kinds he is king.” Job has previously stated something akin to the swami’s famous line in the Beatles’ movie, Help : “I will say no more!” But like the swami, he will say more. He cannot resist ‘the last word,’ and on that ‘word’ rests the whole meaning of Job, the foundation of Judeo-Christian theology: “I have known you are able to do all; that you cannot be blocked from any scheme. (God’s defense is not responsive to Job’s complaint.) Who is this revealing counsel without knowledge? (God.) Truly, I have spoken without comprehending - wonders beyond me that I do not know. ‘Hear now and I will speak! I will ask you, and you will help me know’ (not) . As a hearing by ear I have heard you, and now my eye has seen you. That is why I am fed up; I take pity on ‘dust and ashes’ (human beings).” Doesn’t it make you just want to reach out and slap him (Job that is, not God)? Oh, to be back in the 1950s! Any reader who has ever parented a teenager can put herself in God’s shoes, and any superannuated child can sympathize with Job. It’s the age-old battle of the generations, played out on the grandest of all scales. How can anyone have missed this? How come almost everyone has missed it? Answer: the incredible power of popular superstition. “God cannot be wrong, not even in an allegorical fable because he is God. What need have we of evidence…or even legal reasoning?” Theology 101 should begin with the Book of Job…and with the much older story of Job. It is a searing indictment of top-down theological reasoning. As Heidegger said, genuine philosophy (and by extension theology) must begin at the level of first person experience. We need to take ourselves more seriously…and less! We need to see the humor behind our entire endeavor. We need to eschew Sartre’s Spirit of Seriousness . God laughs at our efforts to understand him, but I hear that laughter as good-humored (not like that of Job’s comforters). We need to take a page from God’s book: lighten-up and know that I am God. **Calling all playwrights! Do you wish you’d written Waiting for Godot ? Or even Hamilton ? Now’s your chance to write a play that will leave these two triumphs in the dust. Your Comedy of Job will keep the Broadway lights on for what will seem like forever.” ** David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Return to our Summer 2023 Table of Contents Previous Next

< Back The Gospel of Luke David Cowles Feb 28, 2022 In the Gospel of Luke, a lawyer questions Jesus: “And who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29) The question resonates through all eras and across all cultures. Our mental apparatus is tuned to notice differences among otherwise similar entities; we find it much harder to pick out similarities. Intelligence tests given to children often ask them to distinguish differences: e.g., which of these shapes is not like the others? The same tests given to adults (e.g., MCAT and LSAT) are more likely to ask them to find similarities (i.e., analogies). In the Gospel of Luke, a lawyer questions Jesus: “And who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29) The question resonates through all eras and across all cultures. Our mental apparatus is tuned to notice differences among otherwise similar entities; we find it much harder to pick out similarities. Intelligence tests given to children often ask them to distinguish differences: e.g., which of these shapes is not like the others? The same tests given to adults (e.g., MCAT and LSAT) are more likely to ask them to find similarities (i.e., analogies). Human beings classify. It is how we organize (and therefore understand) the external world. The story of creation in Genesis produces a classification matrix: light vs. dark, earth vs. sky, water vs. dry land, humans vs. other animals, etc. Sigmund Freud explored this phenomenon in Totem and Taboo; anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss traced the origins of social order to totemic classifications. Animal, vegetable or mineral? Red, green or blue? White, black or brown? Sometimes the ability to classify is crucial to survival (friend or foe?). But the ‘classification habit’ (like most habits) can put us in a straight-jacket. This is especially so when our classifications are hierarchical. Now we are not only saying that y is ‘different’ from x, but we’re saying that y is ‘better’ than x! When differences of ‘kind’ become differences of ‘worth’, we are on a very slippery slope. Of course, there are perfectly valid value differences: e.g., Billie Jean King vs. Bobby Riggs (I date myself), but when we equate differences with gradations of worth, things do not go well for us. Consider color. Some of us have a ‘favorite’ color but few of us would say that one color is intrinsically ‘better’ than another. We imagine the color spectrum horizontally. But when we apply the same logic to racial differences, for example, we sometimes get a very different result. In the minds of many, white, black and brown are imagined vertically, not horizontally. The classification problem goes beyond race. It extends to our view of humans vs. other primates, primates vs. other mammals, mammals vs. other animals, animals vs. plants, plants vs. inanimate objects. So, who is my neighbor? My family, my village, my tribe, my nation? What about our pets? What about the buffalo and the deer that fed generations of Native Americans? What about the forests that are the lungs of our planet? What about alien life forms on other planets? What about inanimate objects (celestial and terrestrial)? In so-called Eastern religions, it is common to find the concept of ‘sacred creation’, i.e., the notion that everything that is shares the same ontological structure and status and therefor qualifies as “my neighbor”. The Judeo-Christian tradition in the West is grounded on the same idea: everything that is, to the extent that it is, is a participation in the Goodness and Being of God (Augustine, et al.). However, the classification habit dies hard. To some extent, Gnosticism is to blame. For some reason Westerners have tended to gravitate toward vertical classification systems that contrast the material world (evil) with the spiritual world (good). 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 Thrown by Heidegger “Of course, I have no name, no face, no identity; I belong nowhere.” David Cowles It’s September 4, 1947, and an amniotic ocean has just disgorged a living organism that I will eventually come to call “me.” Waves of time and space have thrown me, naked, choking, almost drowned, onto a desolate ‘beach’ (it’s not Maui). I am dazed and confused and utterly helpless. Immediately, I learn that I am not alone; there are other organisms on this ‘beach’ as well. At first, awareness of the others terrifies me, but very quickly I learn that, for the most part, these organisms mean me no harm. In fact, some of them actually seem to be taking care of me. Job One , obviously, is survival. Even a newborn baby knows that much! Apparently, for now at least, I must depend for that survival on the kindness of others . That said, I must make sure that those ‘others’ continue to care for me. I must do everything in my power to hold their attention and to strengthen our bond. In short, I must be cute. Survival strategy in place, it’s time for Job Two : achieving and maintaining a general sense of wellbeing. This requires an overarching sense of security (above) and the discovery of a lifestyle that more or less consistently delivers an acceptable ratio of pleasure to pain. I’m not yet six months old, but I’m already hard at work on Job Two. When adults say that a baby is learning to comfort itself, that’s me working on Job Two. With Job Two comes my first intuition that we are not just Skinner Boxes and that our world is governed neither by stimulus-response (physiology) nor by cause-and-effect (physics). There’s something more going on…but what? The alternating waves of pain and pleasure I’ve experienced since birth are perhaps not the final word, and as part of Job One, I’ve already learned some techniques for managing pain and enhancing pleasure. Job Two stimulates the first dim awareness of something beyond just survival and pleasure: other, less obvious threads, connecting events. To achieve a general sense of wellbeing, I must travel deep into the lair of the others . Time then for Job Three : “Get a job!” At 18 months of age? You bet. I already intuit that ‘cute’ is not going to get me through. If I am to survive long term, post-cute, I need to find a way to fit into others’ lives and enhance them. I want to rebuild my relationships on a more reciprocal foundation. This is the role of roles ! From birth, I prepare a face to meet the faces that I meet (Eliot). #1 – ‘cute face’; but that only takes me so far. I quickly learn that I need different faces for different people and different contexts. Potentially, at least, I can be a unique someone for each someone I meet. But as I age arithmetically, my circle of interlocutors grows geometrically, and my database of social interactions grows exponentially. I can no longer afford to prepare a face de nuevo for every face I meet. “There will be time, there will be time”(Eliot) …until there isn’t. It’s a dilemma, a dilemma society resolves with something called roles . On paper, I am a unique person every time I interact with another. But IRL, many of these unique personae overlap, sometimes massively. They have elements in common. When that commonality reaches a certain level, a Gestalt occurs, and suddenly, I’m lumping those personae together into roles . A pile has become a heap; a stand of trees has become a forest. A role is a set of personae , generalized to cover a range of contexts and a myriad of interlocutors. It is the calcification of habit. Encouraged by our socio-economic system, the average person is playing a half-dozen different roles during any one time period. Here are a few of the overlapping roles I got to ‘try out’ as a child: Cute Baby Curious Toddler Performer on-Demand Friend Good Kid Playmate Student Junior Athlete As I’ve aged, I’ve added a host of new roles to my repertoire: Student Athlete Political Activist Seeker Employee Employer Customer Salesperson Spouse Parent Homme d’affaires Bon Vivant Grandparent Retiree Writer So yes, I need roles. Roles are levers; they allow me to manipulate the world, to navigate it. They are octagonal keys that fit perfectly into octagonal locks. Roles are massive data compressors; they allow me to convert a welter of raw experience into small, repeatable, and scalable snippets of code. Just as importantly, if I’m honest, my roles allow me brief and shallow respites from the sheer terror of being alive. They give me an instant sense of Identity and Belonging . I have a place now in that giant Calder mobile that is the world. I make a difference in that world; it would be different without me. I imagine it would be very different. Like Atlas, I have the weight of the world, quite literally, on my shoulders. I am one of the ‘charms’ that keeps the mobile du monde balanced. Whatever this is, we’re all in this together. Knowing I’m not alone gives me another unwarranted but still very welcome sense of relief. I have an identity at last; finally, I belong. I am no longer a piece of beach litter, crumpled up and thrown away thoughtlessly onto sand. I am ‘someone’, a tapestry woven from my roles! Yet, at the end of the day, when the bedroom is darkened and the ceiling looms lid-like above me, I know I am lying to myself…and you. I am not ‘Cute Baby’, I am not ‘Student Athlete’, I am not ‘Writer.’ Of course, I do baby-like, student-like, athlete-like, and writer-like things, but I am none of these personae. Dilemma : I am pretending to be someone (i.e. a nexus of roles)…and I seem to be getting away with it. My act is convincing. The others recognize me as one of their own, and as someone with something unique to contribute. Accordingly, life is a little less terrifying now; in fact, it is sometimes even fun . So take the win! The flip side of security is complacency. The ‘win’ is bad faith . By taking it, I officially give up my quest to figure out ‘what the hell’s going on here’; but if I reject it, I am doomed to live out my life alone, as an ontological exile. Well, the choice is easy, isn’t it? “I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; am an attendant lord, one who will do well to swell a progress…” (Eliot) I have to get by after all – pay the mortgage, pick up the kids from school, take the family to the Isle of Wight for a summer holiday. I don’t have time for nonsense. I’m ok being Atlas, holding up the world, but not Jesus, saving the world; I’m too frightened. But for a tortured few, the trade-off itself, the bad faith , is more than they can bear. I’m thinking Socrates, Nietzsche, and of course, Jesus himself…but not me. I put on my roles each day as a police officer puts on her uniform. We both know that we are not what our uniforms denote. But wearing those uniforms sure helps us get through our day. Plus, if an identity isn’t working for me, no problem, I’ll just try on another one instead! I can keep trying on uniforms until I get it right. The process is what society calls, “Finding yourself.” The trouble is, it never comes right. It’s not that you’re not this role or that role, it is that you aren’t any role; you are not a role at all! Oh, life would be a heck of a lot easier if we could just be the people that we’re pretending to be. Imagine that! We are like human babies raised by wolves. We don’t fully realize that we are not in fact wolves. It’s going to be a rude awakening when we find out…if we ever do. Caveat Lector : If you prefer to think of yourself as a full-fledged member of the wolf pack, then stop reading this article now…and thanks for visiting. For the rest of you, personae and roles are props we adopt to help us get through life. Unfortunately, most of us come to believe that we are those props. My mask becomes my face. Even so, the reward for believing is just too great to pass up: ‘a temporary but pervasive sense of wellbeing’! Sound familiar? Perhaps it is Identity that is the opiate of masses. But again, I take the win! I trade truth for peace. I’m pretending to be some pretty interesting people, after all. If only I could actually be one of them! But I know I can’t. All the booze, drugs, and sex in the world can’t make me forget for more than a few minutes at a time that I am not any of the people I pretend to be. Philosophers say that the purpose of life is personal happiness . I sure hope they’re wrong because I can never be ‘happy’! Not that I’m unhappy; I’m certainly not miserable. These ‘states of mind’ just aren’t in my repertoire. They’re not ontologically compatible with who I am. My avatars are happy, or not, but not me. I feel my avatar being happy, but I quickly catch myself. I remember that I am not the one who is happy. I realize that I am watching the equivalent of a ‘movie’ of myself being happy. Speaking of movies, I’m watching Gone with the Wind . I’m heavily invested in the characters. I let myself feel their joy and their pain. Then I recall that nothing’s actually happening…except me eating popcorn. I am watching images ‘painted’ on celluloid and then projected onto a giant screen in front of me. The images are of Civil War Tara . The story is drawn from history but the characters, the plot and the dialog are 100% invented by the author, Margaret Mitchell, who knew neither the Civil War nor me. Nothing that’s happening on the screen has anything to do with me or with anyone who lived during the War for that matter. The relationship we have with characters from fiction is very similar to the relationship we have with our avatars, ‘characters from our own fiction.’ We yearn to belong to a larger social group: family, community, country, congregation, union, pub team, Man U fan club, etc., and avatars get us in the door. They are like the fake ID I had in college. And we covet specific identities within those groups – not so much personally chosen identities, rather sub-roles we can comfortably step into to support in an identifiable way the overall ‘mission’ of the group. If I cannot invent my own identity, I am not above going with a store bought costume. Bottom line : everybody wants you to know their name! ( Cheers ) Nobody wants to be anonymous. When you call me by name, you testify to the fact that I have an identity and that I belong in this world. What a (superficial) relief! But of course, I have no name, no face, no identity; I belong nowhere. My mother said it best, “Be somebody!” Worst advice she ever gave me! Sorry, Mom, somebody is precisely what I can never be. In the idiom of Jean-Paul Sartre, I am not who I am, and I am who I am not. This sense of disjunction accompanies every experience we have. You are none of the people you’re trying to be. You’ll never be a wolf, no matter how much you wish you were. You’ll never be your parents’ child, you’ll never be your spouse’s spouse, you’ll never be your children’s parent. I am sitting in a Paris café, sipping Beaujolais Nouveau, watching the world pass by. What could be better? Surely, now I am happy. Well, in fact, no! Not that wine sipping isn’t good; it is. It’s just that I am not that café-sitting wine sipper; I am watching that café-sitter and I wish him well, but he’s not me. I am not sipping wine; I am watching myself sip wine. I am experiencing the wine-sipping through the prism of my thoughts: “How marvelous to be sipping wine in Paris! I must introduce X to this experience. If only it was a little less breezy! I wonder how this year’s vintage compares with last. I must make plans to come again next year at this same time. I wonder if they’ll come a time when I can’t come to Paris anymore. If only the waiter hadn’t put a pea underneath my seat cushion.” I don’t know who I am, but I do know I am not the one sipping wine, but I can’t let on. Sharing my angst would be like donning a dunce cap…or worse, like being an artist. Now I’ve discovered my ‘role of roles’, my uber-role : it’s reinforcing the roles of others. “Isn’t this marvelous?” I offer the table next to me, as I shoot a selfie to a few friends back in the States. Everybody needs to know, “This is a good as it gets!” And it is…for café-sitting wine-sippers. Imagine yourself at a table next to mine. You hear me singing the praises of Paris wine sipping. Of course, you’re having your own disjunctive experience which you dare not own up to. Hearing me only alienates you further from your actuality. “What’s wrong with me,” you think, “that I cannot enjoy this experience the way the guy next to me is experiencing it?” (Pretending to experience it, that is.) We are all part of a global enterprise to build the World Wide Wrinkle , a membrane that separates all of us from ourselves, a distortion on the edge of Being that prevents us from ever seeing what’s below the surface. No matter what experiences the universe cooks up for me, I won’t experience any of them directly. I will experience myself watching myself having those experiences. My avatar experiences; I watch! I’m not unhappy; it’s just that I’m not the sort of thing that can be happy. I’m not the sort of thing that has experiences. I am the sort of thing that watches someone (myself?) having experiences. I am not a noun; I am not a verb (apologies to Buckminster Fuller). Syntactically, I am some sort of ‘reflexive particle’, an indicator that the proposition in question is recursive. But in truth, I am not any ‘part of speech’; I am the phenomenon of recursion itself. “It recurs; therefore, I am.” Unfortunately, it took me decades to discover this. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Return to our Summer 2023 Table of Contents Previous Next

< Back Bethany Sullivan Contributor Bethany Sullivan is a writer and traveler from Vermont. She has been writing since 5th grade and traveling all her life. Visit her beer and travel blog at www.maltedbarleywanderer.com . Beyond the Rainbow Bridge: The Loss of a Pet and the Afterlife

< Back Robert Frost Was Wrong “Waiter, bring me one order of everything on the menu and when I’ve finished, I’ll pay for whatever dish I liked best.” David Cowles Shortly after Niels Bohr produced his quantum model of the atom (1913), Robert Frost wrote (1916) his iconic poem, The Road Not Taken . Apparently a commentary on existential angst and the human condition, Frost’s poem can be read on an entirely different level. It raises questions that haunt the science of Quantum Mechanics (QM) to this day. Of course, that may not have been Frost’s intent; at that time the wide world was just beginning to learn about Relativity. But a poem is a poem is a poem. Once written, it transcends its author and even its milieu. We must meet the text head on, take it on its own terms, regardless of the author’s subjective intent. Bonus : By letting a poem, any poem, speak for itself, we may discover deep connections between consciously intended themes and cosmological intuitions: Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them both about the same. And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood and I – I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. A hundred plus years ago it was popular to think of Universe as if it were a finely tuned Swiss timepiece, wound by God ‘in the beginning’ and left running mechanically ever since. But by 1900, a series of observations and experiments had made this view untenable, eventually leading to the discovery of Quantum Mechanics. QM showed that there is no predetermined course of events, that they are more a matter of probability than causality, and that Universe at its most fundamental level is best understood as a perpetual series of choices. In the realm of philosophy, this insight popped up as the Existentialist doctrine of freedom. Jean Paul Sartre, the high priest of Existentialism, divided Universe into en soi , which was perfectly deterministic, and pour soi , which was perfectly free. He skirted the problem of dualism by defining en soi as etre (being) and pour-soi as neant (nothingness). Le neant functioned as the negation of l’etre and in this way diversity was reconciled with solidarity. Sartre understood that freedom, while absolute, could not be unbounded. For example, one is not free to draw a square circle or fly to Mars just by flapping one’s arms. Facticity (‘the real world’) imposes logical and physical limitations but those limitations are external to the agent and do not in any way limit or qualify that agent’s freedom. Limitations are part of en-soi , never pour-soi . In The Road not Taken , Robert Frost confronts a simple choice between two options (0, 1). He has a destination to reach and there are two roads that will take him there. Facticity excludes any other option: he cannot fly, he cannot tunnel, he cannot crawl 10 miles on his hands and knees through underbrush. If he is to accomplish his ‘project’ (arrive at his destination by end of day), he has only two choices. There are only two roads he can take. Frost’s preferred solution: travel both roads and still be one traveler. But with his imagination still bound by the limitations of classical physics, he rejects that notion as impossible. QM, however, suggests that such a strategy is possible. In fact, most current interpretations of QM assert that this is the only possibility. Given the existence of two paths with identical start and stop points, Frost must travel both. But how? One possibility, supported by the various “double slit” experiments that gave QM its start, suggests that a quantum follows two or more paths simultaneously but does not ‘decide’ which path will be its ‘real’ path until it is reaches its destination and is observed (measured) by an external agent. According to this view, Mr. Frost can indeed “travel both and be one traveler”; in fact, he must. There’s no other way to get where he’s going. But when he finally arrives at his destination, it will appear to all observers (including Frost himself who is now his own observer) that he has come by one path only. His observed arrival collapses the Wave Function. According to this model, Frost can experience both walks and then, at the very end, ‘he’ can ‘decide’ which walk was more satisfying, select that walk, and make that his actual experience, his history. This interpretation has massive real world implications. Imagine, for example, how this might play out in a restaurant. “Waiter, bring me one order of everything on the menu and when I’ve finished, I’ll pay for whatever dish I liked best.” Or what about a lifetime? You follow all courses open to you and then, at the end, you get to choose the one path that gets you the best result. How cool would that be! But this option is not all it’s cracked up to be. First, it isn’t really ‘Frost’ who makes the final decision. That decision is made by the whole experimental apparatus and is more a matter of mathematics (probability) than aesthetics (taste). Second, Frost will have no memory whatsoever of ‘the road not taken’. Similarly, I will have no memory of the dishes I decided not to pay for…or the fun but stupid things I did as a kid. Cruel justice! Hugh Everett’s mid-century “Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics” modifies this picture. According to Everett, every time the Universe confronts a choice it bifurcates, it splits. In one Universe, Choice A is made; in a second Universe, a perfect copy of the first save for this one decision, Choice B is made. According to this view, Mr. Frost must also “travel both”…but he is no longer “one traveler”. According to Everett’s theory, there are now two Frosts, entirely unaware of one another; sadly, they will never meet again. Both Frosts arrive in the same town…but now it is really two different copies of the same town, each existing in its own Universe. Everett’s theory allows Frost only one set of experiences, but he may perhaps be consoled by the thought that an alternate Frost is having the other set of experiences in an alternate universe. Parenthetically, we have proposed a modification of Everett’s model that allows Frost’s many trajectories to intersect – and recombine - ultimately reducing the proliferation of universes that bedevils Everett’s scheme. This model allows the universe to grow but at its current observed rate, not exponentially as with Everett. Note : this solution is dependent on quantum processes being commutative – which goes against current thinking. According to Richard Feynman’s “Sum over Histories” model, Mr. Frost does indeed travel both paths and he remains one traveler. The two experiences merge when he reaches his destination. His memory of the journey is a blend of both histories. It might be more accurate to say that a part of Frost travels one path and another part travels the other path. Feynman’s model does not double the amount of experience Frost enjoys but it does combine experience from both pathways into a single outcome. According to our restaurant metaphor (above), we get to enjoy all the items on the menu…but as samples, or tapas, not as full meals. Now a new interpretation has come along that builds on Feynman. In this thought experiment, known as the Cheshire Cat , quantum data is understood to show that certain properties of the quantum follow one path while the particle itself follows the other. In Alice in Wonderland , the cat’s grin, a property, can appear separately from the cat itself. In the Cheshire Cat experiment, the particle’s spin travels a different route from the rest of the quantum. In The Road not Taken , perhaps Frost’s gait and affect travel one path while body follows the other. Crazy! I know, but it’s Quantum Mechanics. Bottom line: The Road Not Taken is ground breaking…but wrong! Sorry, Mr. Frost, but you can “travel both and be one traveler”. In fact you must, and you will, whether you wish to or not and whether you are aware of it or not. Still, though, GREAT poem! Image: “Observation of a Quantum Cheshire Cat in a Matter-Wave Interferometer Experiment,” by Tobias Denkmayr et al., in Nature Communications , Vol. 5, Article No. 4492; July 29, 2014 David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at dtc@gc3incorporated.com . Return to Harvest 2024 Previous Next