“…When your identity is indefinitely plastic, when events are no longer ‘orientable’, when relations are neither transitive nor commutative, that’s Love…actually.” < Back Love Actually David Cowles Dec 1, 2023 “…When your identity is indefinitely plastic, when events are no longer ‘orientable’, when relations are neither transitive nor commutative, that’s Love…actually.” This article is not about Hugh Grant’s movie of the same name, but it was triggered by something I read recently, suggesting that Grant’s movie is now considered a ‘Christmas Classic’, alongside Elf , The Santa Claus , and It’s a Wonderful Life . “I love you” is perhaps the most famous phrase in all of human speech. But what does it mean? I love many things: my family, a bottle of fine wine, seared foie gras, and visits to London, to name just a few. “I love” tells you something about my emotional state…but that’s all. Surely, this is not what we mean when we talk about Love ! Love in its true sense is not just an emotion. It is something real, tangible, and fundamental. Anaximander, the grandfather of Western philosophy, is quoted as saying that the phenomenon of Presence (Being itself) arises when two potential relata “give each other reck,” i.e., let each other self-actualize, ‘be all that they can be’. (U.S. Army) The existentialist Jewish philosopher, Martin Buber, followed suit: “In the beginning is the relation,” and according to St. Paul, only three things endure ”and the greatest of these is Love”. But how do we model a phenomenon that supposedly “makes the world go round” and “makes time stand still”? I propose that Love (capital L) occurs when and only when the following four propositions are simultaneously true: (1) I love you; (2) you love me; (3) I feel loved by you; and (4) you feel loved by me. Only when all four of these conditions are met can we properly speak of Love. When I say I ‘love’ a bottle of wine (or any Tom, Dick, or Harriet for that matter), I have no idea if (1) they know I love them, (2) they feel my love for them, (3) they love me, or (4) they know I feel their love for me. So when I say, “I Love you ”, I’m saying something totally different. I’m no longer talking about an emotional state; now I’m talking about an ‘actual entity’, an objective matter of fact. Love is real! For “I Love you” to be more than just an emotional ejaculation, I must recognize you as my ontological equal, “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh,” because to love means to recognize yourself in the other (“love your neighbor as yourself”). (Note: the term “ontological equal” will remain undefined. ‘Equal’ does not necessarily mean ‘identical’. ‘Congruent’ may be closer, but you get to define your own circle of ontological congruence. Is your pet inside the circle? How about your PA Bot? And what about your neighbor who’s let his home go to wrack and ruin and who sits every day, even in winter, bare-chested on his front lawn, guzzling beer at 10 o'clock in the morning? (Not so much?) The account of Love found in Genesis is relevant to our inquiry: “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body.” I am incomplete; something is missing, and I discover what is missing in me in you. For Love to be more than a state of mind, for it to constitute an ‘actual entity’, I must not only love you, but you must also love me. For you to love me, you must recognize me as your ontological equal. You must see yourself in me, and you must feel that I complete you and make you whole, just as I see myself in you and feel that you complete me and make me whole. If this is not the case, then any ontological reciprocity I seem to experience is a mirage. In that case, were I looking at you, I would not see myself in and through you; I would just see my own sterile reflection. I would be Narcissus. Unrequited love is not nothing, but it’s not what we’re talking about here today. Love denotes Relation and so it is not enough for me to love you and/or for you to love me. These two states of affairs are entirely independent of one another; they are like ships passing in the night. To rise to the level of an ‘actual entity’, Love must be experienced by you and by me. Love requires not only that I love you and that you love me, but also that I feel loved by you and you by me. When I feel loved by you, I feel you in me. You may love me, but if I do not feel that love, for whatever reason, then we are not talking about Love. Let’s rephrase our four requisite propositions (above) in light of these further reflections: (1) I see myself in and through you; (2) You see yourself in and through me; (3) I feel you in me; (4) You feel me in you. Of course, I am using “see” and “feel” metaphorically. I don’t need the sense of sight to see myself in you, nor do I need the sense of touch to feel you in me. “Seeing” is how we incorporate the transcendent, while “feeling” is how we recognize the immanent. So to rephrase yet again: (1) You transcend me; (2) I transcend you; (3) You are immanent in me; (4) I am immanent in you. And so Love is a paradox. Quelle suprise ! Where else do we find such a paradox? In the Christian doctrine of Incarnation, of course! If Love is Incarnation, then every instance of Love is the Second Coming of Christ. One of the many peculiar features of our newly discovered ontological landscape is that wholes reside in each of their parts, Relations resides in their Relata. Our Love resides in each of us. These are the necessary and sufficient conditions for Love. The transcendent must be immanent, and the immanent transcendent. When I love you, and you love me, and when I feel you, your love, in me and you feel me, my love, in you, we discover together that the I’s we thought we were are, in fact, only fragments of who we truly are. Like shards of pottery that thought themselves complete, albeit strangely rough-edged, we now find our true identities as sections of a beautiful, smooth, and curvaceous vase. The things we thought of as ‘subjects’, building blocks of our world, turn out not to be ‘actual entities’ after all: the foundational building blocks of Universe are not subjects (or objects) but dynamic relations. “I seem to be a verb.” (R. Buckminster Fuller) Love is Relation, and therefore, always personal and binary, but never exclusive. We may, in fact, love many people, even simultaneously. In response to the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself, Jesus was asked, “And who is my neighbor?” He responded with the story of the Good Samaritan. The point of that story is that every ontological equal is my neighbor, and therefore, in some sense, myself. Potentially and ideally, Love may exist between me and every ontological equal I encounter. In the world we seem ( doxa ) to live in, identity is mercilessly conserved, events are drearily orientable, and relations are both transitive and commutative. ‘Bora boring’. But when your identity is indefinitely plastic, when events are no longer ‘orientable’, when relations are neither transitive nor commutative, that’s Love…actually. Returning to the analogy of pottery shards, every shard is unique, but any two shards can relate and so constitute a whole. In the Language of Legos, we are all Master Builders. The ‘real world’ is a world of exuberant joy and boundless creativity. It turns out that the solitary unit I thought I was is not who I am at all. There is no I, no self, in isolation from ‘other’, i.e., apart from Relation. I am the pure potentiality underlying every actuality . (Sartre) Can we take this reflection further? Love is the paradigmatic and defining human experience; it reveals our true identity. But why should we be content to regard this as a ‘species-specific’ phenomenon? Why shouldn’t Love constitute the cornerstone of all-encompassing ontology? Of course, that would require us to generalize the dynamics we have been discussing so that they apply to the full spectrum of ‘actual entities’ in our world. Returning to our four original propositions, note that they contained no explicit requirement that the subjects be human. The only requirement was that they be ontological equals and that they have the capacity to enter into dynamic relationships…i.e., that they be part of what we call ‘the World’. Relata and Relation never collapse into a single, undifferentiated entity. Relation remains incurably dynamic; with each of its Relata, Relation forms an irreducible Trinty, the substructure of every event. So Love turns out to be both Incarnation (the whole resides in each of its parts) and Trinity. The universe is plural and, at a minimum, three, and so Love does make the world go round, and it does stop time. Love, actually, is the substructure of the World! David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Return to Yuletide 2023 Share Previous Next Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Click here. 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< Back Mark’s Marks of Authenticity David Cowles “There is no single work more important than the Gospel of Mark…the Intellectual History of the West hangs on it, so its authenticity is of paramount importance.” How reliable is a 2,000-year-old text? How do we know if the author had any knowledge of his (sic) subject matter? How do we know the book was composed with benevolent intent? Do we know why the book was written in the first place or who it was written for? Now I’m going to say something completely outrageous but then, we’re not afraid of a little hyperbole here at Aletheia Today , are we? Brace yourself: “In all of Western literature, there is no single work more important than the Gospel of Mark .” It’s relatively short and not especially poetic, but the Intellectual History of the West hangs on it, so its authenticity is of paramount importance. How so? The Gospel of Mark tells the story of a guy called Jesus and his adventures in and around a place called Galilee. The story is both spell binding and hair raising. If true, it’s a life changer. But what does it mean to say that a story like this is…or is not…. true ? The journey from text (I see it) to faith (I believe it) is a multi-step process fraught with cultural, linguistic and philosophical minefields. But I think we must begin with authenticity : Whatever else Mark may be, is it ‘authentic’? Is it what it says it is? For example, if it purported to be an academic history but was in fact a work of fiction, it would not pass the test of authenticity. Of course, fiction can be perfectly authentic, so long as it doesn’t pretend to be something else. Much of what we think we know about Jesus comes from Mark. That seems strange. Mark is the shortest of the 4 canonical gospels and it’s one of 27 books in the New Testament, all of which relate in one way or another to the life of Jesus. Then, beyond the New Testament, there are dozens of apocryphal texts concerning Jesus and there are a few references to him from non-Christian sources (e.g. Josephus). And yet, it all really comes down to Mark . Matthew and Luke , important as they are, are early exercises in ‘historical revisionism’. They are examples of a literary genre, popular since 200 BCE, which tries to make ‘difficult texts’ less difficult, i.e. more palatable to casual readers and more relevant to ‘contemporary’ concerns. Sound familiar? 90% of Mark is reproduced in Matthew; 60% in Luke. Both authors add extensive, overlapping quotations from a second, unknown source, sometimes called ‘Q’. Q may have existed merely as an oral tradition. Were it in print today, it would probably be titled something like, “The Sayings of Jesus of Nazareth, called the Christ”. In addition to Mark and Q, Matthew and Luke draw from their own sources (e.g. the Magi in Matthew, the infancy narratives in Luke). More importantly though, the three synoptic gospels are written for three distinct constituencies. Luke endeavors to make The Jesus Story attractive to his Hellenic audience. Matthew , on the other hand, seems aimed at the Jewish population in Palestine and the Diaspora. The author goes to great lengths to show Jesus as the fulfillment of Old Testament ‘prophesies’ regarding the Messiah. Most significantly, Matthew and Luke sanitize Mark. They attempt to make ‘the hard teachings’ and the ‘rustic wisdom’ more attractive to more urbane and educated audiences. There are dozens of examples; here’s just one: In the Garden of Gethsemane, immediately following the Last Supper, Jesus is at prayer when he is set upon by Judas, the temple guard, and Roman soldiers. One of Jesus’ followers, apparently Peter, reaches for a sword and cuts off the ear of the High Priest’s servant. (Mark 14: 43 – 50) Mark is happy to leave the story there; but Matthew, Luke, and even John take pains to situate the event in a context more acceptable to the casual reader. In Matthew and John Jesus tells the disciple to ‘sheath his sword’; Luke (a physician) goes further and shows Jesus healing the servant’s wound. It's an exegetical rule of thumb: whatever is ‘difficult’ in Mark is mollified in Matthew and Luke. And what of John? While John contains details of Jesus’ life, some paralleling the synoptic gospels, others unique to John, the gospel itself is not primarily biographical. It is better read as Systematic Theology, illustrated with events from the life of Christ. So, if Matthew was written for Jews and Luke for Greeks, who was Mark’s intended audience? Christians . Mark does not set out to prove that Jesus is the Messiah; he assumes it. Mark’s audience already has faith; they want details to supplement that faith and Mark does not disappoint: “This is real, guys!” Regardless of your religious convictions (or lack thereof), you might agree with me that Jesus of Nazareth is the most important person in all of human history. An extraordinary claim. Out of 100 billion, one. And concerning this man, we have just one primary biographical source? It’s crucial then that we know to what extent its version of events is authentic. Fortunately, we have a lot to work with. As every parent knows, a well-rehearsed narrative is the surest sign that a miscreant’s story lacks authenticity. Mark is anything but rehearsed. It’s as much ‘notes’ as it is narrative. It is as if one of Jesus’ followers kept a diary. Testimony to Mark ’s authenticity is the need Matthew and Luke felt to ‘clean up’ the text. Sometimes, raw data can be too hot to handle; it needs to be ‘spun’. Welcome to Mark , the unspun! Mark’s story lacks any pretense of grandiosity. Compare Mark’s opening verse, “Here begins the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,” to Matthew’s genealogy, Luke’s history, and John’s cosmology. While the later gospels were meant to persuade unbelievers, Mark takes the reader’s faith for granted. There is no need to ‘situate the story in context’. History has already provided that context and it is well known to Mark’s intended audience. For Mark, there’s nothing to prove and the lack of something to prove is one mark of the gospel’s authenticity. Were Mark to deviate significantly from events as they occurred, the effect would be disastrous. Most of Mark’s readers already knew the Jesus Story, at least in outline. Had Mark contradicted oral history, the text would have been ignored, rather than copied and elaborated as it was. The Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and even John testify to the fact that Mark was considered canonical (authentic) by the 1st century church. Your 10-year-old has just come in the door, 20 minutes after curfew. He can’t wait to explain all the reasons for his transgression. “This happened, then this happened, then…” Welcome to Mark’s world! The ‘narrative style’ is staccato, it races breathlessly along to its maddeningly ambiguous conclusion . Matthew, Luke and John present Jesus as a pretty cool customer , as Larry David might say. Not so, Mark. His Jesus is everyman (sic). The reader is in Jesus’ shoes the whole way: “That’s exactly what I would have done.” Incorrectly, the later Gospels may be read as presenting Jesus as half-God, half-man. Not Mark! Mark’s Jesus is wholly man…and therefore wholly God. Biographies, whether of heroes or villains, tend to present their subjects as ‘serious dudes’. Otherwise, who’d buy a single copy? Nobody wants to pay good money to read about some ‘fool’. The total lack of such pretense in Mark is one of the preeminent signs of its authenticity. Consider Jesus’ calling of the apostles. After calling Andrew, Peter, James, John and Matthew, Jesus “…went up into the hill-country and called the men he wanted; and they went and joined him.” In other words, he formed a gang. Immediately afterwards, “...He entered a house and once more such a crowd collected around them that they had no chance to eat. When his family heard of this, they set out to take charge of him; for people were saying he was out of his mind.” Hardly a good look for the savior of the world! But a deprecatory detail like this is strong evidence for the authenticity of the narrative. Who would make up something like that? It’s demeaning and embarrassing…so what would be the point? Of course, it could be intended to throw some 21st century journalist off her scent. But that assumes that the author of Mark had somehow intuited the principles of modern literary criticism – unlikely. The other evangelists paint a picture of Jesus as a peace loving peripatetic, roaming freely through Galilee and Judea, proclaiming the end of the exiting world order. It is a challenge to reconcile such a libertarian image with what we know of Palestine c. 30 CE. Let’s set the triangular stage. On one side, the two Herods, Pontius Pilate, and the Roman military. On another side, the Sadducees (Priests), the Pharisees, and the Doctors of Law (Scribes). On a third side, Jewish nationalists, the Zealots, the Essenes, Barrabas, etc. And in the middle of it all, an oasis, Jesus and his followers. This is a hard scenario to accept, and commentators have been struggling with it for 2 millennia. But Mark poses no such difficulty. Mark is clear. Jesus is a fugitive and a heretic – a fugitive from the Roman political order, a heretic from the Jewish religious order. Jesus is an insurrectionist and a blasphemer…a toxic cocktail. Mark presents Jesus as a ‘man on the run’…often in hiding. He is forever swearing folks to secrecy and then retreating from cities to hillside villages, eventually leaving Galilee altogether for Lebanon, the Golan, the Greek cities (Decapolis), and the East Bank of the Jordan. Regarding Jesus’s time in Lebanon, Mark writes, “…He left that place (Galilee) and went into the territory of Tyre. He found a house to stay in, and he would have liked to remain unrecognized, but that was impossible…On his return journey from Tyrian territory he went by way of Sidon (a roundabout route), through the territory of the Decapolis, to the Sea of Galilee (south-east shore).” Commentators have struggled to explain this route: it’s so circuitous! Exactly! (They just don’t get it. Jesus didn’t have AAA to plan his itinerary.) There is no mention of Jesus’ disciples in this section of the text. Given that he was hoping to remain anonymous, it is unlikely that he was accompanied by more than a few fellow-travelers…if any. This raises another question: Why did Mark bother to include this episode? It does nothing to advance the narrative. But if Jesus went AWOL for a time, Mark would have needed to account for that absence, as if he were an employment agent accounting for that troublesome 6-month hiatus in your CV. In any event, there is no false heroism in this account, and these are not the actions of someone who has something to prove. Nor are the stories those of an author trying to persuade a skeptical audience. We have Matthew and Luke for that! Mark’s text is clearly aimed at folks who’d ‘lived through the 60s’…and were in a position to call out any major omissions or inaccuracies. According to Mark, Jesus only entered Judea once, on his final, Quixotic Million Man March on Jerusalem. Jesus knew the likely outcome (divine omniscience not required). But his disciples were growing restless, and the noose around him was tightening. Jesus reasoned that it was now or never. So, “they were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, Jesus leading the way; and the disciples were filled with awe and those behind them with fear.” (Mark 10: 32) They approached Jerusalem by way of Jericho and set up base came in Bethany; then Jesus entered the city. After a ‘royal welcome’ replete with palms and Hosannas! Jesus headed for the temple precincts, perhaps anticipating a penultimate confrontation. He “…went into the temple where he looked at the whole scene; but, as it was now late, he went out to Bethany with the Twelve.” In other words, he arrived at his ultimate destination, ready to rumble, and found it virtually deserted. Everyone had gone home. Treason and blasphemy notwithstanding, the High Priest was not going to miss his dinner. So, Jesus heads back to the safety of his ‘stronghold’, Bethany, as he did every evening prior to the Last Supper. Next day, Jesus did not oversleep. Returning to the temple precincts, he threw out the moneychangers, tipping over their tables, and not allowing anyone to carry so much as a container through the temple. One is reminded of a modern sports event. From here on, Mark tells the story of Christ’s Passion in terms broadly consistent with the other gospel accounts. Two points worth mentioning: (1) Mark offers the clearest, most unequivocal version of Jesus’ initiation of Eucharist; he leaves no doubt that this is Jesus’ Body and Blood. (2) Mark reprises YHWH in Exodus (3: 14): “I AM,” reinforcing Christ’s divinity. Because Mark was so scrupulous in his telling of events in Jesus’ life, we are inclined to grant him some credibility on these larger, theological issues. “One who is faithful in small matters will also be faithful in larger ones”. (Luke 16: 10) In one of his parables, Jesus uses the analogy of a mustard seed: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds find shelter in its branches.” (Matthew 13: 31 – 32) In the Intellectual History of the West, the Gospel of Mark is just such a mustard seed…and we are they who live in its branches. 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 . purpose and devotion. Return to our 2024 Beach Read Previous Next

< Back Be Yourself David Cowles May 30, 2024 “It’s an odd idea, don’t you think? I need to make an effort to find out who I am and then more effort to be the self I’ve found myself to be?” “Just be yourself!” Has anyone ever said that, or words to that effect, to you? How many million times! In the 1960’s, we were all on a trek to find ourselves . Now, we’re being told, everywhere we go by everyone we encounter, to be ourselves . It’s an odd idea, don’t you think? I need to make an effort to find out who I am and then more effort to be the self I’ve found myself to be? Say that 10 times after a few pops ! “I’m finding myself,” I told my father, explaining why I was living in a garret apartment, working part-time, minimum wage jobs, after graduating from an Ivy League college. What was I really doing, I wonder. Where is this elusive ‘self’, anyway? Across the sea, in the sky? Do I need to take drugs to find it? Or enter an ashram? Did I have it once and then lost it somewhere along the way? Or is it hidden at birth, like the afikomen at Passover, for us to seek and find later? What would it be like to ‘find’ myself, anyway? Would I (or someone) kill the fatted calf? Or would I even notice that I’d been found ? How would life be different? And what exactly is it that’s been found? I am pure subject. I am the writer/director of my own play, the composer/conductor of my own symphony. My ‘self’, on the other hand, consists of the actors and musicians I’ve placed ‘under contract’. But my actors and musicians are not me. They did not write the play or compose the symphony. Theirs is not to understand, theirs is just to be the band. So let’s see, what have I been given to work with here? Fortunately, a lot’s been laid out in a simple, if elaborate, code called DNA. (it’s like the score…or the screenplay…for my life.) I am the product of a single DNA molecule and DNA never blinks; it does its thing, over and over and over again, until it doesn’t. Yes, I am that! But the score is not the symphony nor the script. What happens once the ink is dry makes all the difference. Accordingly, my ‘self’ is also the product of my experiences and the process of my socialization. Memory, even simple conditioning, contributes to my ‘social DNA’ – that’s where I store values inculcated by my parents, information taught by my socializers, and expectations ingested from my culture. I wrote a sentence once. If I wrote it before 1950, it was mostly a reflection of the trauma we euphemistically call ‘childhood’; if I wrote it after 1950, it was a product of my race, my gender, my economic class, and my social status. Either way, according to Jacques Derrida, only 3% of what I write is actually written by me; the other 97% is written by others through me. We are all expert copyists in a vast medieval scriptorium. So what do I find when I find myself? Well, I find the experiences I remember, the responses I’ve reduced to reflexes, and the memes I’ve been taught by elders and peers. I also find traces of race, gender, fortune, and social status. In other words, I find the collective other ; I find nothing I can reliably call me . This ‘self’ is really an anti-self. I am pure subject. The self I’ve found is pure object. To be myself is to heed society’s siren call, to give up my dreadful subjectivity for the safety of objectivity: a home with 4 walls, a more or less steady income, a daily routine, well defined social structures (“I’m your father!”), etc. Wally (Wallace Shawn) described what it’s like to be yourself in the cult classic, My Dinner with Andre : “I’m just trying to survive – you know? I mean, I’m trying to earn a living. I’m trying to pay my rent and my bills. I mean, I live my life…I have a list of errands and responsibilities that I keep in a notebook, and I enjoy going through my list and carrying out the responsibilities and doing the errands and then crossing them off the list.” One might accuse Wally of measuring out his ‘life in coffee spoons’ (Eliot), but Wally has ‘found himself’ and he is more than content just to ‘be himself’. He has willingly allowed his subjectivity to identify with his objectivity. Andre (Andre Gregory), on the other hand, is a classic ‘Rebel without a Cause’. His identity is iconoclasm and the first icon to go is Wally’s version of ‘self’: “We’re all bored. But has it ever occurred to you, Wally, that the process which creates this boredom…may very well be a self-perpetuating unconscious form of brainwashing created by a world totalitarian government…that somebody who’s bored is asleep? And somebody who’s asleep will not say no?” If Wally is channeling Voltaire (“…we must tend our own garden”), Andre is channeling Sartre (“I am not what I am and I am what I am not”). If the fabric of the World is woven on a loom that shunts between stability and novelty, Wally opts for the former, Andre the latter. Of course, IRL things are not this simple. No one entirely eschews objectivity, and no one can eliminate all traces of subjectivity. But here’s a clue: You’re never more subjective than you were at the moment of your birth and you’re never more objective than you’ll be at the ‘hour of your death’. Death is the final absorption of subjectivity into objectivity; with that in mind, you may wish to heed the advice of Dylan Thomas: “Do not go gentle into that good night! Rage, rage, against the dying of the light”… or not! Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. 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< Back Why I Can't Beat a Monkey David Cowles Nov 12, 2025 “So much for all the hours I ‘wasted’ watching games, live and on rerun! I would have been better off wading through a swamp...” A millennium ago, when I was still in my 20s, I was so impressed with my ability to pick football winners (NFL & College) that I fantasized about forming a closed-end mutual fund that would allow me to invest Danny DeVito’s money (and other people’s) with my local bookie…or, eventually, with an authorized Vegas sportsbook through my Nevada subsidiary. But as with most concerns of my 20 something self, I got distracted and only just woke up, 40+ years later, to ask, “What ever happened to…?” Not that I regret my 40 years in the Wilderness! Far from it. During that time I helped raise a full roster of kind and creative children and grands and I helped guide well over 100,000 people through the vicissitudes of the American healthcare system, enabling them to receive higher quality care for less out-of-pocket cost. (Park your cynicism at the curb: it is possible to do something positive.) But in the process, I lost touch with many of my adolescent dreams including my plan to eliminate injustice on a global scale and my plan to bankrupt the Vegas’ casinos via my insightful handicapping. A few years ago, sports gambling was legalized in my home state; the timing was fortuitous: it coincided with my retirement. At this point, I won’t be investing anyone else’s money but there’s no reason I can’t make a little bit for myself and my family, right? So, so wrong! Let’s set the stage. The simplest way to bet on football is to bet on the winners of individual games. The Vegas sportsbooks set ‘the point spread’ - all I need to do is pick the winners. Now, without knowing a single thing about football, you or I should be able to break even (minus the house vigorish, of course). If I pick teams at random it stands to reason that I should be right half the time. Case in point: My aunt Mabel from Missouri loves a flutter, but sports is not her thing; so she bets on teams with birds in their names (e.g. the Baltimore Ravens ). She should win approximately 50% of her wagers…and she does. The laws of probability stand! Therefore, you can evaluate my football acumen by comparing my win-loss percentage with the 50% standard established by ornithologists like Mabel. Would you pay me for my expertise if I could show you a 3 rd party audited track record of, say, 55% wins? Ok, how about 60%? How about 75…or 40? 40%? In my three years as a professional gambler I have never come close to duplicating, much less exceeding, my twitcher aunt’s track record. Why did I waste money on Lions, Bengals and Bears when I could have been betting on Cardinals and Falcons? So much for all the hours I ‘wasted’ watching games, live and on rerun! I would have been better off wading through a swamp with a pair of binoculars around my neck. But why? How is it possible that I cannot at least duplicate the results of a ‘monkey’ (sorry, Auntie) who picks winners randomly? Here’s where I went wrong. I assumed I was pitting my expertise against that of professional handicappers who are paid 7 figure salaries for their insight. I’m oddly OK with that…but that’s not what’s happening. I am trying to outsmart something much more powerful than mere expertise. I am going up against the collective wisdom of the gambling universe. (As we learned from the Soviet era, centralized intelligence, no matter how prodigious, can never beat distributed wisdom, no matter how inefficient. This is why models of God as a personal ‘Central Intelligence Agency’ are inherently flawed.) Here's how it works IRL. A game is posted with certain preliminary odds set by the illuminati . Immediately those odds shift as punters around the world weigh in. Assuming no unexpected mid-week developments (e.g. injuries, trades) the so-called ‘line’ will quickly settle on a consensus figure, reflecting the collective wisdom. Now along comes yours truly shopping for a bargain, a mismatch, an anomaly. I see an attractive proposition: The Buffalo Bills are 3 point favorites against the New York Giants. No way! Buffalo is a much better team; they should be favored by at least a touchdown. Let me lock it in before the line changes. Presto, bet made. I can’t believe my good fortune. This proposition is simply too good to be true. Aye, there’s the rub. It is too good to be true. There’s some relevant factor I’ve not considered (snow is in the forecast or somebody has the flu): the big money gamblers know something I don’t. I am smart enough to detect the anomaly but not smart enough to figure out what it is I’m not seeing. But it gets worse. The line on Buffalo has just dropped from 3 points to 2 and I’m still locked in at 3. Maybe I should place a second bet, taking advantage of the extra point. In any event, I should have a 50% chance of winning, like Mabel, right? Wrong again! As the odds drop on Buffalo, the probability that Buffalo will ‘cover the spread’ (i.e. win by more than 3, or even 2, points) is now much less than 50%. How so? No matter how much the odds drop, there will always be punters like me who think they’ve found a bargain. While all the smart money is moving to New York (as usual?), me and my lot are doubling down on the Bills. No matter how much the line shifts, the real shift in probability is even greater. Game day! By kickoff time, the game is rated a toss-up, no points. I should be afraid, very afraid, but at this point I’m all-in on Buffalo. So I place a third bet on the Bills, order Door Dash, and sit back to watch my ship come in. Like a Nantucket widow on her walk, I’m about to have a very long wait. No ship! The Giants win the game outright, of course. Everyone says, “It’s the upset of the week…” but that’s cold comfort; I lose all three of my bets. So, I called my aunt to commiserate. But no ‘joy’ there; she bet on the Eagles and the Seahawks and broke even. Of course she did. Mabel may not know football but she does know her birds. And me? My so-called ‘knowledge’ of the game did me in, proving once again that “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” (Alexander Pope) And so I lose to monkeys…not occasionally but steadily, week after week, over 3 long seasons. What to do now? Stop betting on football, of course! Or…watch the lines move and bet on teams that are moving up rather than down the ladder. Look for bargains…and then bet against them. Assume that ‘knowing’ whatever it is I think I know is knowing less than nothing. Sidebar : There’s a school of philosophy ( Nicholas of Cusa et al.) that claims that all knowledge (e.g. re God) is ‘negative knowledge’. The closer we can get to “I know nothing”, the closer we are to the truth. Now that I know nothing , I’m ready to make some serious ‘bread’ and leave Auntie in a pile of feathers. (Note: no actual birds were harmed in the process.) Wish me luck; perhaps I’ll let you know how it goes. Perhaps. *** Edvard Munch’s By the Roulette Table (1892) captures the tense allure of gambling, where shadowed figures lean toward fate’s spin under dim light. The scene reflects Munch’s fascination with human anxiety and the fragile line between chance and despair. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? 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< Back Future Past, Past Future David Cowles Oct 19, 2023 “When we experience past events via memory, it is much like watching a B-movie in which each of us, naturally, is our own star.” We take it for granted that the past is different from the future, but Newtonian physics says otherwise. According to that model, past and future are symmetrical segments of the timeline, bracketing the infinitesimal point known somewhat bizarrely as ‘the present’ (‘bizarre’ because ‘the present’, by definition, has no ‘presence’, i.e., it has zero duration). But this is not how we experience the world. To our pre-scientific eyes, the past is radically different from the future. For one thing, past events are thought to be immutable, while future events are nothing if not mutable. Past events ‘feel’ different from future events. The past feels heavy, it presses on your chest, it compromises your ability to breathe, it’s enough to make Houdini claustrophobic. Except it usually doesn’t feel that way at all. When we experience past events via memory, it is much like watching a B-movie in which each of us, naturally, is our own star. Come to think of it, it’s much the same as what we experience when we imagine future events. Memory and imagination, two faces of one phenomenon! You may object here if you wish, “Imagination is mutable, and memory isn’t.” Really? Repeated studies have shown (I won’t make my AI Bot retrieve them) that our memories are ‘flexible’ – meaning that they often diverge massively from ‘objective records’ of the events themselves – much like our ‘dreams and dreads’ of the future. But you might say, “The memory of a past event is not the same thing as the past event itself.” This time, you’d be right! Nor is an imagined future event the same thing as the event itself. Memory and imagination, if not clones, are at least kissing cousins. Events themselves are another species of res vera altogether. Experiment : Recall a somewhat unpleasant event from your childhood. Perhaps, it’s a Saturday in June. All week long, you’ve suffered in a stiflingly hot classroom, sustained (barely) by your expectation of spending today at the beach with family and friends. Instead, it’s raining cats and dogs, and you’re stuck inside the house for the entire day with no one to play with and nothing to do. An unpleasant memory to be sure. If this didn’t happen to you, you can still imagine what it must have felt like. Memory and imagination, flip sides, one coin. ( Note : This must have happened before 1,000 channel cable TV, smartphones, and PlayStation. Today, children have no painful experiences, do they?) Now imagine that you’re actually 8 years old again and have to relive that awful day, moment by moment, without the benefit of your current ‘adult’ perspective. Hours sitting at the window, lonely, bored, clinging to the ever newly frustrated hope that the skies might yet clear. OMG! Can you even breathe? A memory, a dream, a night at the opera – different phenomena, cut from the same cloth. Actual experience on the other hand…that’s a horse of an entirely different color; in fact, it’s not a horse at all, it’s more of a T-Rex. Fantasy (past or future) is made palatable by the knowledge or expectation that we will survive it; real life comes with no such guarantee. At its core, every agony derives its horror from the fear that we might not be able to bear it. Then what? Memory and imagination are like the event horizon (surface) of a black hole; they are two-dimensional projections of a higher dimensional whole. Experience is the black hole itself, including the inevitable singularity (death) with its constant tug; by contrast, the surface is finite but has no singularity and no boundary. How is it that fantasy differs from reality? Memory and imagination are experience, outside-in. You’ve trudged through the garden, and now you’re standing ankle-deep in potting soil, staring through the window, into the well-lit ‘living room’ of someone’s life. Perhaps you witness a child being tortured, and you feel sympathy…from your detached perspective. Experience is a bit different. Now you are in the living room, and you are the child being tortured. You feel nothing but agony and panic. This is experience, inside-out; it’s not the same thing as fantasy…not at all. What’s different is that ‘you are there’ in one case and not in the other. And who R U? In this context, you are the reflective self, aware of itself, aware of its world, and aware of itself being aware of its world. U R the Wicked Queen’s sentient mirror from Snow White . Just like mirrors in a carnival Fun House, you add another dimension to reality; you add depth. Like any mirror, you will in your time reflect many images…but you will remain the same. You are mirror! You harbor no images per se ; that is what makes it possible for you to reflect every image, no matter how gruesome. Per Parmenides (c. 450 BCE), the father of Western philosophy, you are unchanging Aletheia , perpetually reflecting the ever-changing kaleidoscope of Doxa . So what makes you so special? Nothing! You’re not special. Reflexivity is a hardwired feature of reality; it’s part of the topology. It is an indispensable aspect of everything that is. In fact, it is what makes ‘it is’ be. How we experience this reflexivity is another matter. Human neural networks have evolved in such a way that we can be perpetually conscious of events in our world. How other entities, organic or inorganic, tap into reflexivity is a subject for another day. Keep the conversation going! 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. 4. Aletheia Today Magazine (ATM) will be devoting its entire fall issue (released 9/1/23) to artificial intelligence (AI). What are the philosophical, theological, cultural and even spiritual implications of AI powered world? If you’d like to contribute to the AI Issue, click 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 Lottery “The state lottery is just about the only financial vehicle that offers some folks a realistic opportunity to materially impact their economic circumstances.” David Cowles We all love to gamble, most of us anyway; but why? If we know the rules of the games, we know that we are unlikely to walk away a winner; and unless we have a problem, most of us gamble for the fun of it. When we go to Vegas, we don’t expect to come home with life changing riches – casino limits make that a virtual impossibility. If we’re smart, we expect to come home slightly poorer than when we left. We gamble because we enjoy the games themselves. Plus, it is an undeniable thrill to “beat the house”, even if only to a modest extent and for a short period of time. Bottom line : for most of us, gambling is not a financial planning strategy. Or is it? 60 million Americans play state lotteries every year. In states that have lotteries (44) the average adult invests more than $300/year in numbers, scratch cards and other proposition bets. While it can be fun at first to scratch a card looking for winning numbers, after a while it can get tiresome. Yet we still do it. Why? Simple, we do it to get rich! “Whoa, I thought you just said that you couldn’t get rich gambling.” That’s right, I did say that, and it’s true…in casinos! Lotteries are a completely different kettle of fish. Here’s how they work: In the better games, approximately two-thirds of the proceeds go back to the players as ‘winnings’ while the state retains the other one-third to cover costs associated with the games and to fund budget items like education, transportation, or healthcare. Of the portion that goes to the players, about half is distributed in ‘small’ prizes after each draw; the remainder goes to fund the ever accumulating Jackpot. Take Jackpot heavy Powerball. One third of the proceeds go to fund the Jackpot; if no one claims the Jackpot on the first draw, that unclaimed amount rolls over to the next draw. In any sequence of draws the Jackpot begins at around $20 million, not a bad haul. But if no one wins, the Jackpot will at least double on the next draw. There is no theoretical limit to how high the Jackpot can get but we know it can at least reach $2 billion IRL (100x the Draw #1 prize). Many politicians and economists have noted that lower income people spend a higher percentage of their assets on state lottery tickets than do higher income folks. Of course they do! High earners are able to save money systematically; they have the option to participate in HSAs, IRAs, 401(k)s and other tax advantaged accumulation vehicles. They can even “play the market” and pick the next Amazon. A dollar invested in the DJIA 15 years ago is worth $10 today. $1 invested in Apple on the same day is now worth $100. Beats any savings account I’ve ever had! (Of course, you have to know what to buy and when to buy it; but we enjoy thinking we can outsmart the experts…and occasionally we do…just as we occasionally beat the house in Vegas...or win the Lottery.) Unfortunately, though, many Americans do not have ready access to equity markets. So here’s the fundamental question: does playing a ‘good’ state lottery constitute a viable financial planning strategy for someone of modest means? The answer, surprisingly, is yes! The state lottery is just about the only financial vehicle that offers certain folks a realistic opportunity to materially impact their economic circumstances. What’s the magic? A state lottery takes a little from the many and delivers a lot to the few. Sounds like the worst form of ‘robber baron capitalism’, doesn’t it? And it is! Except you are the robber baron. Where’s Bernie Sanders when you need him? But wait! The ‘few’ in this case are ‘selected’ randomly. You don’t need to be rich to win the lottery. You don’t need to have attended a posh prep school; you don’t even need an Ivy League education. Nor do you need to be born a genius…or work 60 hours a week. The lottery is a way, often virtually the only way, for many ordinary Janes and Jims to change their circumstances. Here are questions you will not be asked by a licensed lottery agent: Where did you go to school? What is your race, religion, gender preference or sexual orientation? Are you living in the United States legally? Have you ever been convicted of a felony…or been in prison? What’s your credit score? Still not convinced! Scared off by the 300,000,000 to 1 quoted odds? Perhaps you should be, but let’s dig deeper into the economics of investing your life savings in Lottery tickets: If you buy one ticket, you have one chance in 300 million of winning the Jackpot on the next draw. But depending on where you are in the cycle, that winning ticket could be worth anywhere from $20,000,000 to $2,000,000,000, a swing of 100x. Obviously, buying tickets is a better deal when the payout is $2 billion than when it is $20 million. But I promised to break it down. You bet $2.00. $0.67 of that goes to the state to fund various public services, $0.66 cents is returned to the players after each draw in the form of ‘small prizes’ and 66 cents goes to fund the ‘progressive’ Jackpot. So how much did you invest? Not $2 because 66 cents is returned to the players after each draw. So at the most, your net investment is $1.34. But that assumes you attribute no value to the various public programs that the Lottery supports. If you believe those funds are spent efficiently and that you share proportionately in the benefits of those programs, then your net investment is only 66 cents. But let’s not get carried away. Let’s use the most conservative figure: $1.34. Now that $1.34 could win you as much as $2 billion…except it doesn’t. That advertised $2 billion payout is spread over 20+ years. If you elect a lump sum, which you will, the payout is more like $1 billion…still enough to pay the rent and have some left over for a vacation to Jamaica. So the return on my $1.34 investment is about 750 million to 1. But the odds of my winning are 300 million to 1. So my return is $2.50 per $1.00 invested. Not many fund managers can match that sort of return. In fact, by the time the advertised payout is $800 million, the state’s advantage has disappeared entirely. Beyond $800 million, you’re playing with the house’s money. Arguably, it is the paradigmatic example of ‘doing well by doing good’. I buy a lottery ticket every week…but I never win. Bummer! But some of the money I lose comes back to me, and others, in the form of lower taxes and/or enhanced public services. Additional funds come back to the players in the form of small prizes. Or maybe I do win, maybe I even win big! Then money well spent, I’d say. According to American political folklore, we ninety-nine percenters are supposed to spend our days wringing our hands, stomping our feet, resenting the one-percent. For the most part, we don’t do that! More often, we take whatever steps we can to improve our economic lot; one of those steps may be the judicious purchase of state lottery tickets. 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 Spring 2023 Table of Contents Previous Next

< Back Veni, Vidi, Vici David Cowles Aug 23, 2022 Who’s the hero now, Julius Caesar…or you? Last week we met the Piraha , a tribe located in the Amazon Rainforest. We saw how different their language is from ours, and we explored how that language influences the way they experience the World. We will spend some time with the Piraha in upoming issues of TWS and ATM. We study cultures like the Piraha to help us see our own cultural influences more clearly. Knowing the Piraha’s view of the world is shaped by their language will help us understand how our language shapes (or distorts?) our own world view. We know about the Piraha because of the work of several anthropologists who lived with the Piraha for years at a time. Like all contemporary anthropologists, these pioneers paid close attention to Star Fleet’s Prime Directive . Those of us who were once children will recognize it instantly: “Look but don’t touch!” In other words, do not disrupt the culture you’re studying…any more than absolutely necessary. Most of us have never visited the Amazon and probably never will. Still, there are opportunities for us to learn how culture, especially language, influences our perception of the World. If you’re over the age of 60, you probably learned some Latin somewhere along the way. If so, you may have started your classical career with Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars . The Latin is relatively easy – as easy as any Latin can be! And the swashbuckling tale of Caesar’s military campaigns is supposed to appeal to tween and teenage boys. For those of us exposed to Latin, it was our ‘first contact’ with a civilization other than our own. And, cool beans, since time travel is not a thing yet; we don’t need instruction on how to behave from Captains Kirk and Picard. We already know how to behave in Rome: “Do as the Romans do!” Nonetheless, this early experience of ‘first contact’ will prove valuable when we meet the multiple civilizations running rampant in Andromeda. Instead of learning about our contemporaries, the Piraha, third hand, we can eliminate the ‘middleman’ (sic) when we study the Ancient Romans. We meet them directly through works like Caesar’s. Consider the difference: in Caesar’s Gallic Wars , a Roman tells us, and shows us , how Romans think. In the case of the Piraha, we are dependent on the testimony of anthropologists who are not themselves members of the Piraha community. So, Hail Caesar! But what do we learn from his Gallic Wars ? Utter nonsense! Veni, Vidi, Vici – I came, I saw, I conquered. Even if you don’t know Latin, you may know these three words. Now imagine you’re a hormonal 12-year-old and this is your introduction to how another culture views the world; wow! If you entered adulthood expecting such a ‘Caesarean experience’, you were probably very, very disappointed. According to Caesar, we amble onto life’s stage at will, we assess the situation with clear eyes, and we immediately and confidently take change. Sound familiar? I didn’t think so. Truth is, you didn’t come, you were ‘thrown’; you didn’t ‘see’, you were impressed upon; and you certainly did not ‘conquer’. At best you might be able to say that you were not conquered. Help me out here, classicists! What’s the Latin word for ‘I was not conquered?’ Remember the words of John’s Gospel, “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.” (1: 5) Approaching the world with a ‘Caesarian attitude’ is a recipe for disaster…for you and for the world. The truth is, you were thrown into the world half-blind; you groped your way around in it; and so far at least, it has not destroyed you. So, who’s the hero now, Julius Caesar…or you? Image: Libby, Alexandra. “Julius Caesar” (2017). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue , 3rd ed. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. and Lara Yeager-Crasselt. New York, 2020–. https://theleidencollection.com/artwork/julius-caesar/ (accessed August 23, 2022). Thoughts While Shaving is the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine ( ATM) . To never miss another Thought, choose the subscribe option below. Also, follow us on any one of our social media channels for the latest news from ATM. Thanks for reading! 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 Christian Astrology? David Cowles Mar 27, 2025 “Can anyone be an orthodox Roman Catholic and not believe in astrology?” Can someone be an orthodox Roman Catholic and still believe in astrology? Surprisingly, and controversially, the answer is ‘Yes’, at least according to Marsilio Ficino (d. 1499), philosopher, theologian, priest, and magus (‘magician’, in the tradition of the Magi). Writing in Florence at the climax of the Middle Ages, Ficino was part of a group of late Medieval intellectuals who unwittingly prepared the way for the coming Renaissance by reviving interest in Classical culture and by celebrating the human condition (Humanism). Balancing Greco-Roman wisdom with Judeo-Christian theology proved challenging. Sadly, the great promise of Ficino’s Renaissance was soon hijacked by secular pragmatists; 500 years later, we are still struggling to awaken from our Machiavellian nightmare. At first glance, Classical paganism and Judeo-Christian monotheism would seem strange bedfellows, but Fincino & Co. imagined that a bridge could be found in a shared reverence for Nature. Paganism finds divinity in Nature while Judeo-Christianity grounds Natural Law in the divine. Judaism is particularly clear on this point. God communicates the Law in two ways, through Written Torah, contained in the first five Books of the Judeo-Christian Bible, and through Oral Torah, manifested as the processes of Nature. There are not two Torahs, only one; but that one Torah is expressed in two very different media. Divination in general and astrology in particular play major roles in Classical cosmology. Christianity, for its part, rejects as ‘gnostic heresy’ any suggestion that human affairs are governed by the positions and momenta of celestial bodies. A philosophical rapprochement between the two ideologies would seem impossible; but Ficino found a way forward. The key lies in our understanding of the relationships between Humanity, Nature (‘stars’), and Divinity (God). ‘Lumpen astrology’, the sort found on page 2 of your local ‘rag’, suggests that the stars directly control, or at least influence, our fate. This Ficino rejects. Such ‘astrological determinism’ encroaches on God’s sovereignty, depreciates the role of Justice in the unfolding of events, and compromises our Free Will. Instead Ficino suggests that everything that is reflects the mind of God. That includes both celestial mechanics and human sociology. Since both reflect the mind of God, they may be treated as reflections of each other. So we can use the ‘science of astrology’ to help us decode the panentheistic ‘pattern of divinity’. As such, Ficino’s astrology is an extension of the Mosaic tradition of supplementing the study of Scripture (Written Torah) with the study of Nature (Oral Torah), and vice-versa. Christianity continues this tradition via the all-inclusive doctrine of logos . Specifically, Christ is the logos through whom all things come to be and without whom nothing that comes to be comes to be (John 1: 3). Ficino makes it clear that logos is not a mechanical process divorced from its end product. Rather logos ‘infuses’ its external expressions ( panta ) with its own eponymous pattern. Everything that is, is Imago Dei . To be is to be ‘God- like ’. To the extent that something is , it is (God-like); to the extent that it is not, it is not. Perhaps Ficino’s complex and controversial position on matters astrological is best captured in the title of one of his essays: “Divine law cannot be made by the heavens but may perhaps be indicated by them.” Unfortunately, Ficino’s syncretism did not win the day. In fact, Ficino may be the last great European philosopher to suggest that the study of Nature and the study of Scripture were complementary paths to Wisdom. Rather, the ethos of the Renaissance-Enlightenment called for the study of Nature specifically in order to debunk Revelation. Our insatiable compulsion to rid the world of God hijacked both science and philosophy and held them captive for 400 seemingly interminable years, the true Dark Age of Western civilization. It was not until the 20th century that thinkers would again look to the stars to probe the mind of God. This recovery crystallized in the work of James Joyce. Early in Ulysses (1922), he writes about ‘the signatures of all things I am here to read’. Translation: Nature is an Urgent Owl with a coded message from God! In fact, Joyce’s entire corpus is just that. Joyce maps Homer’s Odyssey , Roman Catholic liturgy, Shakespeare’s Hamlet , et al., onto ‘events’ in Dublin on June 16, 1904. This fractal-rich world reproduces patterns ( logoi ) everywhere, everywhen, across all scales (all 60 orders of magnitude). How then could the events of any day not harmonize with the music of the spheres? While Classical cosmology might be reconciled with Christian theology, Machiavellian ethics (“the end justifies the means”) could not. The grip of our Machiavellian Captivity has recently loosened , but we still see its remnants in the press inflamed pseudo-conflict between Science and Religion. Many of the major issues for contemporary civilization live on the border of science and spirituality. For example, we need science to show us ways to manage climate change, but we need spirituality to motivate us to act. So our initial question might have to be rethought. Instead of asking, “Can someone be an orthodox Roman Catholic and still believe in astrology?”, perhaps we should be asking, “Can anyone be an orthodox Roman Catholic and not believe in astrology?” Image: Van Eyck, Jan. Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and His Wife. 1434, oil on wood, 82.2 × 60 cm. Main Collection, National Gallery, London, NG186. Like Ficino’s astrology, which seeks hidden divine patterns in nature, The Arnolfini Portrait is filled with symbols—each object reflecting deeper theological, philosophical, and even astrological significance. The convex mirror at the center of the painting, reflecting the unseen, echoes the idea that celestial mechanics and human affairs are interconnected reflections of the divine mind. Much like Ficino’s belief in the signatures of all things, van Eyck’s meticulous realism reveals a world where every detail is imbued with meaning, suggesting that nothing in nature (or art) exists by accident. 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 Job is My Superhero David Cowles "No one has taken a bigger risk than Job, and no one has faced longer odds; and yet, Job has taken God to court and won!" Where can you find a superhero when you need one? In a Marvel movie perhaps…or a DC comic? You probably wouldn’t think to look in the Bible, and certainly not in the Old Testament. Too bad! The Bible is chock-full of superheroes, especially the Old Testament. I mean, Abraham gives up a cushy upper middle-class lifestyle to become a nomad. Moses organizes a rebellion of Hebrew slaves and leads them on a 40-year trek across the wilderness to a new homeland. You get the picture! My personal favorite is Job. The Book of Job was written a mere 2,500 years ago, but the story itself is probably much older than that. Ok, granted, Job’s not your everyday superhero. In fact, on the surface, he’s anything but. We don’t meet him on a mountain top or at the head of a vast army; we meet him lying in the dust, his skin covered with sores, his family gone, his wealth wiped-out and his reputation in tatters. In those days, if you had a streak of ‘bad luck’ (like Job), people assumed that God was punishing you for sins you’d committed. Proof was not required. If you were suffering, then you must have sinned. Case closed! “What need have we for witnesses?” I am reminded of the judicial system in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Lookingglass : The sentence comes first, then the verdict, then the trail, and last of all, the crime itself. Imagine living like this. In our lives, we all have periods of relatively good fortune… and not-so-good fortune. Imagine your so-called friends ghosting you whenever your luck runs dry. Or imagine suffering their unjust accusations and their cruel taunts on top of your grief, your illness, and your poverty. With friends like these, who needs enemies? Certainly, not Job! When he hits rock bottom, his wife tells him to “curse God and die!” His ‘friends’ gather, supposedly to comfort him, but actually to tease him, to shame him, to blame him for his own suffering. Mrs. Job wants him to give up and die. His so-called ‘comforters’ want him to acknowledge his sins and beg God for forgiveness. But Job has other ideas. He won’t give up, and he won’t plead guilty to crimes he did not commit. He’s a superhero, remember? Job’s idea of God is very different from his friends’. Job’s God is not uncaring or cruel; he is just and merciful. Even more importantly, Job’s God is not above the law. In your catalog of superheroes , who else has the chutzpah to do such a thing? Using an ancient Middle Eastern legal formula, Job summons God, and much to everyone’s surprise (except Job’s) God complies with Job’s summons; he appears. At that time, the cornerstone of the law was God’s covenant with his people. Today we would call such a covenant a contract or even a constitution . God authored the covenant and Job expects him to follow it…and he does. From here on, Job’s comforters sit in stunned silence. What manner of man is this that even God obeys him? But God is not obeying Job. God is simply honoring the terms of the covenant. God is obeying God. Even more fundamentally, God is being God. All the characters in this ancient drama see God as fierce and unpredictable, all except Job! Like Abraham and Moses, Job ‘knows God’. He knows that God cannot behave unjustly because he is Justice. He knows that God cannot stop being God. So to recap, Job summons God and God appears. Is this the happy ending we’ve been hoping for? Not even close! The action’s just beginning, so buckle up! Were you expecting God to appear as a meek little lamb, ready to submit to the will of the court, putty in the hands of the plaintiff (Job)? Then you were wrong! God is furious! He has better things to do with his time than hang out in some District Court, answering Job’s impertinent charges. I mean, there’s a universe to run, for cryin’ out loud! God appears, but he’s not happy about it, not one bit. He addresses the court “out of a whirlwind." It’s undoubtedly an eye-catching performance. I mean, you don’t see that every day, do you? Admit it: you’d probably pause your remote to watch such a spectacle. Who could pass up a chance to walk down memory lane with God, exchanging war stories and listening to his tales of creation? Job could, and he does; he ignores God entirely, but then, Job is a superhero after all. He keeps his eyes fixed firmly on the prize (‘judgment for the plaintiff’). God mounts a spirited defense, “Where were you when I laid earth’s foundations? Have you ever in your days summoned daybreak? Have you ever reached the sources of the Sea and walked on the bottom of the Ocean?” God’s strategy is clear. He will overpower Job. But notice, God’s arguments are off point. They are more a product of frustration than careful legal reasoning. They have nothing to do with justice in general, and even less to do with Job’s particular complaint. God is blurring the line between might and right . Plus, this is not an episode of Law and Order . For one thing, God is both the defendant and the judge. We would never agree to such an arrangement today. We’d call it a ‘conflict of interest’, and for anyone but God, it would be. If you were your own judge, you’d probably find yourself innocent most of the time…ok, all the time. We all would…but not God. He alone can build a true firewall between God-the-Defendant and God-the-Judge. Job ignores God’s bluster. He does not take God’s bait. He won’t be drawn into a school yard game of one-upmanship; he will not show his NFL highlights reel next to God’s. Job hangs tough, “I have spoken once - and I will not repeat. Twice - and I will no more!” Job smells blood. He is going for a directed verdict of not guilty…and he’s going to get it, too - if only he can keep his cool. But not before God takes one last desperate shot: “Can you pull out the Leviathan (a sea monster) with a fishhook? Can you toy with him like a bird? Who has ever confronted him and survived? Even gods live in fear of his majesty; they’re in terror of the ruin he wrecks.” In other words: If you’re not afraid of me, perhaps you’ll be afraid of my creatures. But, of course, God’s threats are empty, and his words fall on deaf ears. Job has the last word: “I am fed up; I take pity on dust and ashes.” Translation: If I can’t get justice, no one can! Today, Job might be held in contempt of court for such a remark; but God lets him slide. Now on to the verdict. The whole cosmos is of one mind: Job will be found liable and further punishment will be imposed. The whole cosmos…that is, except Job. Job knows he will be acquitted. He knew it from the beginning. Job knows God! God moves from the plaintiff’s chair to the judge’s bench. He puts on his legal robes and prepares to rule. But first, he has a word for Job’s fickle friends: “You did not speak about me honestly, as did my servant Job.” And now…the verdict! God finds Job “not guilty” on all charges and restores to Job all that he had lost and more. What makes a hero? The willingness to do what’s right, to defend one’s values and beliefs, despite overwhelming opposition and with no realistic hope of success. Then what is a superhero? A hero who succeeds, who wins out in the end after all. In the entire history of literature, mythology, and religion, no one has taken a bigger risk than Job and no one has faced longer odds; and yet, Job has taken God to court and won! So, Job is my superhero. 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 Existential Psychotherapy David Cowles Jun 13, 2023 “We cannot make our problems go away by wishing. We have to make them go away!” In previous articles, we have explored the roots and branches of today’s mental health crisis , a pandemic that seems impervious both to traditional ‘talk therapy’ and to our trendiest pharmaceuticals. Diagnosis complete, it is time to work on a treatment plan. Serendipitously, such a therapeutic regime already exists, hidden away on dusty shelves in the back room of your university library. Sartre called it Existential Psychoanalysis , Carl Rogers called it Client Centered Therapy , Rollo May, Eric Fromm, and Victor Frankl referred to it as our Search for Meaning . We previously identified three root causes of today’s malaise : the loss of Identity, the lack of Belonging (Isolation), and the loss of Potency (Impotence). But we resisted the temptation to plug up the leaky dike with facile pseudo-solutions. Instead, we bravely noted that, in fact, we have no Identity, we do not Belong, and we are not Potent! Dangerous thinking! But we cannot begin the climb to Paradise until we’ve stared into the proud eyes of Satan as he languishes on the lowest rung of Dante’s Inferno. We cannot make our problems go away by wishing . We have to make them go away ! We cannot expect the world to hand us a ready-made identity as if it were a passport. We cannot expect the cool kids to invite us to sit at their table. We cannot rely on Marvel’s superheroes to fight our battles for us. If only life were that easy! Sadly, contemporary culture encourages us to place our faith in such externals. Our jobs, our friends, our support systems are just so much cotton batten intended to insulate us from the blows of life. Tragically, this strategy does not work! It doesn’t work for two reasons: one historical, the other existential. History first! We live in a time of unprecedented social mobility. Children no longer aspire to their parents’ careers; 40 years and a gold watch just don’t cut it any more. And I so wanted that watch! Friendships are hard won and fleeting in an age of lockdowns and social media; support systems erode in the face of social unrest, political instability, and the explosion of new technologies. It’s a shame we don’t believe in God anymore because the Judeo-Christian tradition fed us amply from all three food groups: Who am I? I am a child of God, created to know, love, and serve him in this world and in the world to come. Where do I belong? Among the community of the faithful now (Church) and in the Kingdom of Heaven later. How do I make a difference? By discerning and obeying the will of God, by partnering with him in the creation and redemption of the world, by building the City of God (Augustine), the City of Dioce (Pound). Ok, cool, now I can get on with my life…except I can’t. Most people today won’t accept these three easy answers to life’s dilemmas. If we can’t look to society for the answers and if the traditional answers are inconsistent with our current metaphysical disposition, where can we turn? Radical idea : how about turning to yourself? You have no identity. Ok, try telling that to a serf in Tsarist Russia. You have the freedom to fashion your own identity. Freedom is your identity! You can be whoever and whatever you want to be (subject to certain objective limitations). Don’t let fear of the unknown paralyze you. You are free to be all that you can be, whatever that might be. “Don’t dream it, be it!” ( Rocky Horror Picture Show ) If Tsarist Russia doesn’t resonate with you, try the Ante-Bellum South. Much blood was shed so that all men and women in the US could be free, free to be whatever they want to be. Don’t flee from that freedom; don’t indenture yourself to anxiety and/or drugs! You don’t belong? So what! Why should you? Invite others to join you. Start your own cool kids’ table. Live a life that others will want to emulate. Jesus did. St. Francis did. Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela, all did…why not you? Lead the way, fellowship will follow. You have the power; you are in control! You act, but nothing changes; you speak, but no one is listening. You are impotent! Ok, forget about global hunger, peace, and climate change. Impact something closer to home. Launch a fund raiser, folks will contribute. Paint your house, neighbors will get the idea, etc. Do one thing; others will follow! Looked at from this perspective: the three I’s (Identity, Isolation, and Impotence) turn out to be just one ‘I’ and that one ‘I’ turns out to be ‘U’! ATM’s Summer Issue (6/1) included an article on Paul’s Letter to Ephesians (2:10) . Let’s quote it here: “For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works that God has prepared in advance that we should live in them.” (2:10) God or no God, Jean-Paul Sartre, who much preferred ‘no God,’ tells us that the world is nothing but a system of obstacles and tools, levies and levers. That said, it stands to reason that there would be many identities we could assume, many groups we could form or join, and many missions we could undertake with respect to that system . We are not called upon to fix the world immediately or by ourselves. Let’s fix just one thing. The options are many and the choice is ours! And that should be a source of joy, not anxiety. Keep the conversation going! 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. 4. Aletheia Today Magazine (ATM) will be devoting its entire fall issue (released 9/1/23) to artificial intelligence (AI). What are the philosophical, theological, cultural and even spiritual implications of AI powered world? If you’d like to contribute to the AI Issue, click 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.

“Following the science, LP assumes that the same act, performed under the same conditions, will always produce the same result…it’s true, precisely 0% of the time!” < Back Logical Positivism David Cowles Dec 1, 2023 “Following the science, LP assumes that the same act, performed under the same conditions, will always produce the same result…it’s true, precisely 0% of the time!” It’s October 2023, and Norwegian novelist and playwright, Jon Fosse, is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. In naming Fosse, the Nobel Committee cited “ his innovative plays and prose, which give voice to the unsayable.” But isn’t that the function of all literature? Of all language even? According to Heidegger, art is what empowers us to see the world in new ways. As a certain poet (Keats) once said, “Beauty is Truth and Truth Beauty.” Language is ‘saying’. If language says it, then it’s said, and therefore obviously was never really ‘unsayable’. When I was in college, Logical Positivism (LP) was the philosophy du jour . It presented a view of the world that was embraced by academic philosophers on both sides of the Atlantic. The justly renowned Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote LP’s Bible ( Tractatus )…before he repudiated it years later in Philosophical Investigations . According to LP, propositions (sentences) have meaning if, and only if, they are subject to ‘falsification’ via the scientific method. Undoubtedly, such propositions do have a special semantic character, but they represent a tiny fraction of the things human beings yearn to say to one another about their lived experience. According to the tenets of LP, propositions that cannot be falsified are just meaningless strings of words. ‘To be’, Hamlet, is to be consequential . There is no being without consequences. If we cannot identify the consequences of an Act, why should we assume that there was an Act in the first place? Where there’s smoke, there isn’t always fire! We are rewriting Descartes: “I am, therefore I am engaged; I am engaged, therefore I am.” In elementary school, we were taught that sentences are meaningful if and only if they link words selected from a culturally shared lexicon according to patterns that conform to a culturally shared syntax. Later in life, we learn that such rules are arbitrary. New words are coming into our language all the time from all sorts of different sources. Also, strings of words can often be meaningful even if they don’t conform perfectly to ‘the rules of grammar’. Only the most conservative critic would argue that James Joyce’s two great novels, Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake , are meaningless, even though the former includes copious neologisms, and the latter is barely recognizable as English. And then there’s ‘poetry’! When a writer uses language ‘poetically’ (in the broadest possible sense of the word), no hard and fast rules apply… ever . The author and the reader come together virtually, of course, and agree on a vocabulary and grammar that are meaningful to them . If you find my writing gibberish, and many do, that’s ok by me, as long as ‘ some of my readers are able to tease some of my meaning out of some of my articles’. (Pseudo-Lincoln) I think most of us would agree that the most of the important propositions we’ve encountered in life would not pass LP’s Turing Test : I love you; thou shalt not kill; this sunset is gorgeous. Superficially, LP might be appealing. After all, if a proposition claims to be true, why shouldn’t it undergo rigorous verification? Why should I pay any attention to assertions that cannot be verified? It’s 2023—we ‘follow the science’ — now! The exclusion of so-called ‘slang’ and ‘poetry’ from the semantic universe is a heavy price to pay for scientific precision, but it is far from LP’s deepest flaw: Propositions refer to events. Every event is unique. If an event were not unique, it would not be an ‘event’. Following the science , LP assumes that the same act, performed under the same conditions, will always produce the same result…that is essence of science, and of course, it’s true, precisely 0% of the time! Repetition is an approximation. An experiment creates ‘information’ only to the extent that the results deviate from expectations. Every event has something in common with every other event, but no event has everything in common with any other event. So, is this the ultimate irony or what? LP is based on the truth criteria of science, which in turn rely entirely on the usually unstated but always false ‘axiom of repeatability’. A little reflection will likely lead you to conclude that it is precisely those ‘excluded propositions’ that embody the real content of our lives. The thrill of contemplating a remarkable sunset is for most of us a more important aspect of life than the satisfaction of calculating the precise boiling point of water. According to LP, ‘meaningful propositions’ are propositions that can ultimately be reduced to algorithms of the form, ‘if x, then y’. Conceivably, every such ‘verifiable proposition’ could be programmed into a relational database and then downloaded onto a mechanical platform (e.g., a computer). While such a result might be beyond our current capabilities, the project itself is certainly conceivable. That would make ‘living life’ a superfluous exercise. At the very moment when we are discovering that reflective consciousness is liberally distributed throughout the biosphere (and possibly beyond), LP comes along and says we don’t need reflective consciousness after all. ‘We don’t need no lived experience.’ (Pseudo-Pink Floyd) We can know everything that there is to know algorithmically. Can you stand another twist? This is beginning to sound like an episode of Big Brother (CBS). In fact, we know that the assumptions underlying LP are falsifiable! For example, LP was supposed to rescue the concept of Truth from the machinations of skeptics and nihilists. LP allowed us to answer Pontius Pilate’s dismissive question, “What is truth?” It’s simply the set of all verifiable propositions (above). The only problem with this is that we know that no algorithm can generate the set of all true propositions (Godel). Far from rescuing Truth, LP is incompatible with it! Likewise, we know that no two events are ever identical; if they were, they would be one event. Sure, events can closely resemble one another, and that may be good enough for government work, but it doesn’t satisfy us philosophically. The soul of the scientific method is repeatability, but no real-world event can ever be repeated. Finally, we increasingly suspect that the fundamental building blocks of Universe are not objects or even events but patterns. Contrary to what we said above, patterns can be congruent. So, have we rescued LP after all? ‘Fraid not! Congruent patterns are not identical patterns. Congruence may be serial or scalar: (1) ‘serial congruence’ refers to identical patterns that have different locations in spacetime; (2) ‘scalar congruence’ refers to patterns that are identical but on different scales. Examples: (1) a box of ball bearings; (2) atom, cell, or solar system. BTW, did you hear the one about the atom, the cell, and the solar system that walked into a bar? The bartender couldn’t tell them apart. That’s scalar congruence. To the extent that Universe displays scalar congruence, we say that it has a ‘holographic structure’ and consists of ‘fractals’. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Return to Yuletide 2023 Share Previous Next Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Click here. Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, September Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue