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< Back Jay Terrell Contributor Joe Terrell is the creator of 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. At the Beginning of the World: Dinosaurs, Genesis, and the Gift of Science

< Back Ayala Emmett Contributor Ayala Emmett Ph.D. is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Rochester. You can read more about her accomplishments and writing credits by following this link . Harriet Tubman Joins Six Women of Courage in the Exodus Story--Passover Part Two

< Back The Frost Diamond David Cowles “God is ‘special’ only to that extent that in God, A and Ω are the same event.” How are prior events linked to subsequent ones? This problem occupied the greatest scientific minds of the 20th century, including Einstein, Schrödinger, Bell…and Robert Frost . Yup, at the same time Einstein was tinkering with Relativity, and Bohr was playing with atoms, Frost was walking through the backwoods of New Hampshire. In The Road Not Taken , Frost offers a de minimus model of irreversible process : “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler, long I stood…Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.” Events are rooted in choice and choice cannot equivocate, nor can it be revoked. Every event expands Universe by one, but such proliferation does not strain solidarity, it strengthens it. In fact, an event can be understood as a quantum of solidarity. Every event marks both a convergence (Ω) of what already is and a divergence (A) of what is coming to be. Frost’s initial position (A) and final destination (Ω) are fixed. Everything in between is TBD. Frost offers a flesh and blood enactment of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. Initially, we know everything there is to know about his location…and nothing about his momentum (direction). But once Frost has chosen a path and begun his journey, we know everything about his momentum and ‘nothing’ about his position. (Any knowledge Frost may have about his geographic location while walking must come from an extraneous source, e.g. other hikers, GPS.) Finally, Frost reaches home; now location is once again secure and momentum is but a memory…at best. Frost is blessed (or cursed) with free will . Free will is ‘will’, it’s not ‘magic’; it can only do what can be done. I cannot use my ‘free will’ to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Frost can only exercise his free will on actual pathways, and in Frost’s minimalist model, there are only 2 paths available to him. So Frost models a quantum of process which I have, less poetically, expressed as a diagram: A ↙ ↘ x x’ ↘ ↙ Ω This model does not consider the possibility that Frost will encounter other forks along his chosen path that do not lead to his desired destination. IRL, things can get crazy quickly: ↘ ↙ A ↙ ↘ x x’ ↙ ↘ ↙ ↘ Ω ↙ ↘ One person’s A is another person’s Ω. In fact every node, even God, is an A and an Ω. God is ‘special’ only to the extent that in God, A and Ω are the same event: “My end is my beginning (Queen Mary), my beginning is my end.” To generalize Frost’s model, I have developed a broader representation of process which I call, appropriately I think, The Frost Diamond : A ↙ ↘ x x ↙ ↘ ↙ ↘ x x x ↙ ↘ ↙ ↘ ↙ ↘ x x x x ↘ ↙ ↘ ↙ ↘ ↙ x x x ↘ ↙ ↘ ↙ x x ↘ ↙ Ω This diagram illustrates a process 6 steps long; but the pattern can expand indefinitely to accommodate any number of steps. The Frost Diamond is the paradigmatic structure of an event , any event. Every event begins as a choice between at least two options. Relative to any proposed destination, there are always at least two pathways. IRL, there are no linear functions; all equations are quadratic or higher order. Therefore, all destinations can be reached by at least two different routes. The choice and execution of a single route, forsaking all others, is what turns mere activity into an event. Being an event is 99% exclusion. The World is a funny place! On the one hand, nothing ever seems to change, and the more things do change, the more they seem to stay the same (to coin a meme). On the other hand, I have no idea whatsoever what tomorrow will bring. Or even this afternoon. We are all always just a micron or millisecond away from an infinitesimally probable, but life altering, catastrophe . What we call living is the ultimate sobriety test. “Walk a straight line between crushing boredom and devastating tragedy…or just hand over your license right now.” No wonder everyone is anxious all the time! Why is the World like this? The 20 th century British philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead hinted at an answer. Any world that is, or ever could be, must include three irreducible but undefinable categories: One, Many, Creativity. The one becomes many and the many becomes one: that’s the creative process. That’s what a ‘world’ is. Father ‘begets’ Son and from them ‘proceeds’ Spirit. Whitehead’s minimum conditions closely track Frost’s Diamond. Every Alpha (A) births two or more divergent pathways which re-converge at an Omega (Ω). For every Alpha, there is at least one Omega. What goes around goes around. That is the solidarity of the Universe. Today, there are two dominant schools of ontology: Classical Determinism (CD) and Quantum Mechanics (specifically, Hugh Everett’s Many Worlds Interpretation, MWI). Neither is remotely satisfying. Determinism brings us back to Shakespeare: “To be or not to be.” And then to Looney Tunes: “That’s all folks!” One and done. It either is…or it is not. If it is, it’s what is, period. Welcome to Hell (but cheer up, it’s an ‘all inclusive’). Many Worlds relieves the boredom, but it comes at the price of Chaos! According to MWI, there is a universe in which I ordered the lasagna at your wedding and another where I ordered the Lamb. Lucky me! Well, not so lucky. I’m Kosher ; I can only know from meat or dairy – I can’t combine the two. Like Frost, I can’t ‘travel both and be one traveler’. Of course, the bifurcation of reality does not stop with restaurant menus. Everything you do creates a node, a bifurcation point…you and every other human being…you and every other organism…you and each one of the 30 trillion independent cells that make up your ‘body’. The World is a funny place! All the popular models are either too loosey-goosey or too frigid-rigid . According to Heraclitus, ‘Everything flows’. Liquid state molecules are ‘oriented’; they are neither wildly chaotic (gas) nor rigidly constrained (solid). Now take another look at the Frost Diamond; yup, it’s a liquid . It flows. Heraclitus, meet Robert Frost! David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Click the cover image to return to Holy Days 2024. 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 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

< Back Everybody Loves Grammar David Cowles “If the physical world isn’t structured according to the rules of grammar, the social world certainly is.” No, not Gramma…and not Kelsey Grammer either; I’m talking about boring ol’ fifth grade Grammar. By the time you were two, you were probably already talking in more or less grammatically correct sentences. By the time you were six, you were probably learning to write. Now that you’re (finally) 10, you’re ready to learn what turns a particular jumble of words into a grammatically correct sentence. First, you’ll learn that a sentence represents (or is) a complete thought; then you’ll learn that all complete thoughts break down into three primary elements (stated or implied). Paradigmatically, a sentence consists of a subject (a noun, an actor, i.e., a person, place, or thing) and a predicate consisting of a verb (action or state of being) and a second noun (an object, direct or otherwise). You’re only one month into Grade Five, and you’ve already swallowed an entire ontology. Congratulations! You are the superhero (or monster) you’ve always imagined yourself to be! You swallowed a cosmos…but ironically, you narrowed your own world in the process. In the language of the schoolyard, your world now consists just of ‘bullies bullying the bullied’. Everything you needed to know about the world you learned in fifth grade. So, buoyed by your working knowledge of grammar, you are now well poised to become a slave owner, a colonial governor, a robber baron, a politician, or a gang leader. You understand the food chain, and you’d rather be near the top than at the bottom. Thank you, Miss Landers. If the physical world isn’t structured according to the rules of grammar, the social world certainly is. Better to be a subject than an object, right (wink)? Still, you’ll probably need to be even older before you think to ask Jane Banks’ question: “ Are the stars gold paper, or are the gold paper stars?” ( Mary Poppins ) In other words, is grammar (paper) the way it is because it reflects the structure of the real world (stars), or do we perceive the world the way we do (stars) because we perceive it through the ‘lens’ of grammar (paper)? Does art (tech) imitate nature or nature art (tech)? Grammar may or may not have anything to teach us about the structure of the cosmos, but it has much to teach us about the nature of an event. “Johnny hit Billy.” Hitting, per se, is an action, but it is not, in itself, an event. An action (hitting) only becomes an element in an event when it ‘acquires’ (designates, manifests, includes) a subject (Johnny) and an object (Billy). In our world, a virtual S-V-O sentence exhibits the minimum level of structural complexity needed to represent an event. While specific elements might be missing from particular sentences, they remain implied by the structure itself. Every event needs to designate, if only virtually, an action (or state of being), its genesis (subject, alpha point) and its terminus (object, omega point). That said, we must be careful not to let the ‘external world’ bleed into the event itself. ‘Genesis’ does not include history, ancestry, or etiology; ‘terminus’ does not include consequences. In “Johnny Hit Billy,” the origin is ‘Johnny’, not the history of Johnny’s relationship with Billy, the ongoing abuse Johnny endures at home, or the fight Johnny had with his sister that morning. None of these is an element in the event itself. At the other end of the barbell, a ‘cryin’ Billy’ is the conclusion of the event, not Billy’s tattling nor his retaliation or revenge. I’ll grant you, it can be difficult sometimes to say just when a given event begins and leaves off, but it’s necessary to be as precise as possible. An event is like Douglas Adams’ Michelin-starred Restaurant at the End of the Universe . Beyond the plate glass (membrane) lies sheer, chaotic multiplicity – a far cry from the order and studied intentionality within. Perhaps unexpectedly, this ontology turns out to be yet another expression of the famous Serenity Prayer . From the perspective of any given event, there is much that cannot be controlled. I cannot change my childhood, nor can I determine my children’s future. But between these two endpoints, there is much that I can and should influence. Order and chaos constitute a continuity, but a massively non-linear continuity. Think Gestalt ! I can only perceive the duality of the image to the extent that I can clearly distinguish figure from ground and ground from figure. Likewise, I need to be aware of the clearly defined border separating holistic events from the chaotic multiplicity that surrounds them. If I fail, I might find myself teaching in the Sociology or Psychology Department at some university. Wisdom, for its part, is the osmotic membrane between serenity and courage; it is the great gatekeeper, regulating the flow of information between the two domains. In our example, the event begins with angry Johnny and ends with crying Billy. It does not include the things that ‘caused’ Johnny to be angry, nor the things it ‘caused’ Billy to do afterward. Ontology requires us to walk a very, very fine line. The slightest wobble is likely to be fatal; there are no safety nets where you’re going! On one hand, we have a tendency to focus on the punch itself, forgetting the fact that there is no punch without Johnny and Billy. On the other hand, we are tempted to swell the event to include details from boys’ pasts, etc. We need supernatural wisdom to let us know when a new event is beginning…and when it’s ended. So maybe grammar wasn’t your favorite subject in elementary school after all. 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< Back BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different Rabbi Dr. Bradley Shavit Artson Land is imbued with holiness, which means that, like God, it is beyond human measures of usefulness or control. As we prepare to close the Book of Leviticus, the Torah’s pinnacle, we are left with a message of responsibility, consequences, and possibilities. God presents us with the benefits of making wise choices and the consequences of choosing poorly. Then the Torah provides for the funding of the sanctuary and its staff: our participation with monetary support, pledges of animals or homes. But when it pivots to pledges of land, the Torah shifts gears entirely. Land, you see, is ours to borrow and to use. But humans presume they can own land. In reality, the land makes its claim on us, and we can either open ourselves to its ground rules, or we risk a rootlessness that leaves us clinging when the next sandstorm swirls. We are, as the book reminds us, “resident strangers ( Leviticus 25:23 )” on earth. The Land precedes us and the land will bury us when we no longer need our bodies. We are dust, and we return to dust ( Genesis 3:19 ). On some deeper level of reality, it is all just dust, earth, soil. Judaism directs our attention to the centrality of earth through the regular rhythms of Shabbat (seven days) Shmita (seven years), and Jubilee (seven Shmita cycles). In this last parasha of Leviticus, we are told that when we think we are selling the land, we are actually letting someone else live on it or use it for a finite duration of time. At the next Jubilee year, the land reverts to its designated, original family of caretakers. Land is inalienable, and we are meant to be too. If one consecrates their land after the jubilee, the priest shall compute the price according to the years that are left until the jubilee year, and its assessment shall be so reduced. And if one who consecrated the land wishes to redeem it, they must add one-fifth to the sum at which it was assessed, and it shall pass back to them. But if they do not redeem the land, and the land is sold to another, it shall no longer be redeemable. When it is released in the jubilee, the land shall be holy to the Lord, as land proscribed; it becomes the priest’s holding ( Leviticus 27:18-21 ). There is a holiness inherent in the land, a quality not subject to human dominion and not vaporized by human standards of utility. It is that holy something extra that means were are residents visiting the land, and its only really owner is God, who is also holy, meaning beyond human measures of usefulness or control. Jubilee comes every 50 years to remind us that the worth of creation is beyond our evaluation and does not emerge from ways we find it beneficial. “Proclaim release to all the inhabitants of the land ( Leviticus 25:11 )” because it is in recognizing that worth and value spill beyond the constraints of practical utility or human benefit that we, too, are released. Our worth and value spill beyond how we can be used too. Published with permission and minimal edits from hazon.org. Rabbi Dr. Bradley Shavit Artson is the Roslyn and Abner Goldstine Dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies and Vice President of American Jewish University. He is also Dean of the Zachariah Frankel College at University of Potsdam, training Conservative/Masorti rabbis for Europe. Previous Next

< Back Time for a New Turing Test “…This modified Turing Test is designed to root out ‘Carbon Privilege’, the unstated but nearly universal assumption that carbon-based life forms are somehow ‘better’ than their silicon siblings.” David Cowles The current shock wave of progress in Artificial Intelligence (AI) has given new energy to the ancient ‘problem of other minds’: How do we know whether other entities have ‘minds’ that function like our own? Originally, the focus was on you ! How can I know whether you are ‘real’ or not? I assume that I am ‘real’; actually, I define what real is! Are you humanoid? You don’t (always) look humanoid. Perhaps you are a robot designed to look human and programmed to behave accordingly; or perhaps you are a zombie: perhaps your behavior is entirely unconscious. Not for any lack of trying, the ‘other minds' problem’ remains an open field of inquiry, but that ‘field’ has recently expanded from the dimensions of a squash court to those of a Canadian football field. Now I am less concerned with you and more concerned with a bevy of other organisms and pseudo-organisms clamoring for protection under the pending Most Favored Species Act, currently held up in the Senate by Rand Paul. Maybe I’ll concede that you are at least sentient…for purposes of this essay only, of course. Big of me, I know! But what about Timmy’s Lassie? Pirates’ Polly? Poe’s Raven? What about the 30 trillion cells that make up my body? Or the trillions of symbiotic bacteria thriving in my gut? And what about all the life forms we’re about to discover on the many ‘ exoearths ’ crammed into our presumably life-teeming universe? Finally, what about our machines? Hal 9000, R2D2, Deep Mind ? Alan Turing, the Enigma-cracker, is credited with developing an eponymous test to determine whether a given ‘machine’ possesses a humanoid mind, e.g., whether it is conscious. Here’s how Turing’s test works: ‘A’, presumably an able-minded human being, is our examiner; ‘B’ is our examinee. Neither can see nor hear the other; they communicate only via a series of written messages passed back and forth between the two. If A cannot distinguish B’s responses from those of a human being, B is judged to be humanoid. What could be more ridiculous! Imagine your favorite TV cop show adopting this format. Detective A has just arrested ‘usual suspect’ B, presumably with probable cause, and charged B with a capital crime. Now, it is up to A to question B and then, based solely on B’s answers, to judge B guilty…or not. No witnesses, no forensics, allowed! A is subject to no oversight and B is entitled to no legal representation; there is no right of appeal. Detention, interrogation, adjudication, and execution often take place on the same day. I doubt that show would last a full season. How often do you think B would walk away scot-free? Why? What’s to stop A from finding B innocent? Well, for one thing, A made the arrest, so we may presume he has a vested interest in the verdict. Plus, A knows B’s record; she must’a dun’it! But isn’t this exactly what happens with a Turing Test? A actively questions B; B answers, passively. We know upfront that A is a carbon-based life form, a human being, unaided in this instance by any mechanical intelligence; B’s ontological status is undetermined. In fact, A knows ab initio that B is suspected of the crime of being ‘artificial’; but can he ‘prove’ it? So, the test is biased by design, but that’s not the half of it. Put yourself in A’s trainers. If B is human and A says ‘machine’, everyone gets a good laugh; but if B is machine and A says ‘human’, A loses his job. In any case, the pressure is on A to find the revelatory flaw in B’s pattern of communication. In the cosmic game of hide and seek, we humans tend to find whatever we’re looking for…whether it is there or not. (“Seek and ye shall find.” – Matthew 7: 7-8) The problem is that we’re all flawed: human or not, carbon or not, we all screw up. Imagine if you were sent to the ‘scrap heap’ every time you said something nonsensical or illogical…like you were when you were a child, for instance. Would any one of us survive a single day? There are two possible versions of this test. In one version, A knows that B is a machine; the only question is whether the machine exhibits humanoid intelligence. In the second version (Searle’s Chinese Room), B could be a machine or a human, or a human pretending to be a machine or a machine pretending to be a human, or a human pretending to be a machine pretending to be a human or a machine pretending to be a human pretending to be a machine, or… Got it? Now, say it back to me, so I can be sure. Translation: it’s a mess! The Turing Test was intended to expand our horizons; instead it demonstrates just how constricted those horizons are…and it reinforces those restrictions. We are conditioned by our modern Indo-European language to reduce the world to nouns (subjects and objects) and verbs (active and passive). Sadly, the Turing Test fits in perfectly with this fallacious model of reality. A is the subject, B is the object, and the test itself is the active voice verb that connects them. As a result, the ‘relationship’ between A and B is a vector; there are no feedback loops. Now imagine the same test designed differently: There are 6 hermetically sealed booths: 3 contain human beings, 3 contain machines. The booths are sorted into the following configuration: H-H, H-M, M-M. Of course, neither the subjects nor the experimenters know which pair is which. In fact, there are neither examiners nor examinees. Each participant (human or not) is charged with identifying the ontological status of its partner. A test ends when all 6 participants have signaled to their controllers that they have reached a conclusion (or when an agreed upon period of time has elapsed). Of course, the test can be rerun as many times as you wish to confirm the results. Compared to the original Turing Test, this modified design is more methodologically sound; it also models more closely real life experience. After all, it is rare that the relationship between two nominal entities can be adequately described by a simple vector. Relationships are feedback loops, and verbs that properly model such relationships are neither active nor passive; they require the largely extinct middle voice ! This modified Turing Test is designed to root out ‘Carbon Privilege’, the unstated but universal assumption that carbon-based life forms are somehow ‘better’ than their silicon siblings. Our new test creates a level playing field. It lets machines evaluate us as we evaluate them based on the same criteria. Who knows, maybe our silicon siblings will discover new and better criteria or procedures. And there is an unintended bonus! The new design will show how machines evaluate each other, for example, how I evaluate you , my precious little bucket of bolts. 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 Harvest Issue 2023 Share Previous Next

< Back Social Dynamics John O'Brien So, the thousands of people out there in America outside the herd are finding each other. “Egregious . Most people think that word means terrible or unheard of, or unforgivable. It has a much more interesting story than that to tell. It means outside the herd. Imagine that - thousands of people outside the herd .” Kurt Vonnegut Glancing at the crowd Dancing eyes keep their secrets No ticket for you. The year was 1969. I was going to the Woodstock Festival. Stopping at gas stations and convenience stores was a startling experience - talk about Social Dynamics! People “with hair down to their knees!“ This proved to be a more exciting experience than Jimi Hendrix walking out on stage at six in the morning. Freedom of expression in America, of all places ! Walking through the door of some other dimension with friendly smiling people was joyful. It may have been ‘69, but the herd was still quite buttoned up and obedient. I remember my brother-in-law asking me if I knew this guy he used to see when he had lunch in Harvard Square… cuz the guy had long hair. So, the thousands of people out there in America outside the herd are finding each other. Some of them for the most awful of reasons, with an underlying reality of the class system entrenched in the USA. But the emotions involved meeting like-minded people is a powerful motivator--see January 6 . (I don’t know if their emotional responses were similar to my joyful one in Woodstock, but emotions are involved.) Shared narratives are within their own groups. The Proud Boys don’t have shared narratives with Antifa. (Has anyone ever seen Antifa?) How could anyone be against an anti-fascist group? I mean, Hemingway would have joined, or at least, given money. Previous Next

< Back How the Saints Taught Me Feminism Meggie Gates "Finding footing in a world that appears to condone worshiping men can be incredibly hard, especially when that world extends past every aspect of your being." Catholicism is, historically, very male centric. The father, the son, and the Holy Spirit leave very little room for a female presence, and growing up, the absence was noted. I looked to male religion teachers sparking conversation over male figureheads in the church and borderline misogynistic history in the Old Testament for answers on where my place was in a religion I actively participated in. For me, women were painted as grateful, servile, or docile. I was left with very little on where my gender fit into the bigger picture. I became enamored with the name Lucy around my seventh birthday. Overtaking every aspect of my life, I could not escape “Lucy,” a name whose origins are unknown in my life. I began looking into legally changing my name and was disappointed when the internet said I couldn’t until I was eighteen. I named every Barbie Lucy, wrote Lucy at the top of every test, and, embarrassingly, I asked all my classmates to call me Lucy. Once, I refused to answer to anything other than Lucy for an entire month. The obsession led me down a path to discover Saint Lucy. During my third grade religion class, we were tasked with making a collage for a saint that included their picture, background, and why we were drawn to them. The picture I found and used of Saint Lucy solidified my awe of her, a photo of Lucy looking to the heavens with wavy blonde hair falling behind her shoulders. It was only fate that I, a fellow blonde-haired comrade, would not only find a saint I looked up to because of her name, but also her looks. I convinced myself we looked alike and put her photo on my locker for every student to see, not realizing how much this woman would come to mean to me. Years down the line, when I was old enough to understand, her backstory sold me on the powerful place women had in Church history. Born in 283 AD to noble descent, Lucy, also called St. Lucia, vowed her virginity to God alongside promising her dowry to the poor. After news of Lucy distributing jewels and patrimony to the town made its way to her betrothed ears, Lucy was ordered by Paschasius, the Governor of Syracuse, to burn a sacrifice to the emperor’s image. When Lucy refused, she was sentenced to be defiled in a brothel. The day guards came to take her away; however, Lucy, strapped to oxen, could not be moved. Bundles of wood were heaped at her feet and despite their best efforts, they could not set her on fire. It seemed the power of God was so strong in her, Lucy, steadfast in her will, would not die until guards cut her throat. In the fifteenth century, news of her eye gorging gave her status as the Patron Saint of eyesight. I learned all of this at the ripe age of sixteen, seven months before my confirmation. This brush with one powerful woman in the Church led me to discover other women in Church history. One of the tasks our priest made us do in preparation for being confirmed was researching a number of different saints in order to pick our confirmation names. Though I was steadfast about Lucy as my confirmation saint, a path I’d never waver from, there were many other women who mirrored her tenacity and who I considered as confirmation saints to watch over me. I prayed to them every night, calling on Saint Quiteria for her patience and Saint Margaret of Antioch for her kindness. Typically, the things I was distraught over were small, a scuffle with a friend here, an unrequited love there, but the idea of a direct line to powerful women every night in prayer gave me peace in the quiet corners of my bedroom. Sharing my most vulnerable secrets with women like me felt more religious than a school-sanctioned confirmation. They understood my pain in womanhood tenfold. Throughout the rest of high school, I focused solely on the things these women brought to the Church. My high school, named after St. Francis Xavier , expanded my understanding of saints with similar names, those sometimes overshadowed by male counterparts. St. Frances Xavier Cabrini , for example, an Italian-American Roman nun, piqued my interest while working on a senior class project about the advancements religious figures made in the Church. Devoting her time, energy, and resources to establishing schools and orphanages for Italian immigrants, St. Frances Cabrini lent a voice to the hopeless when all else was lost, a feeling that mirrored my aimlessness growing up sixteen and troublesome. I was too young to understand the word feminism, too young to know how that might look reflected in my life, but these women who came before me stoked a fire in my soul that could not be tamed. Disobedience ran through me, leveling me with my male counterparts. I challenged male teachers and wrote in the school newspaper about oppositions, questions, and concerns I had with my lessons. I pushed back against the status quo, and in that defiance, found a space where I belonged. (Editor's note: In this issue of ATM, our Crucible Challenge essay winner is a junior at Cabrini High School in New Orleans.) Finding footing in a world that appears to condone worshiping men can be incredibly hard, especially when that world extends past every aspect of your being. I never met nuns growing up, never experienced a female teacher bearing the fruits of religion class, and the confusion it bred made me feel secondary, dismissed as someone undeserving of praise. Yet, Saint Lucy, alongside other female saints, stood for something unique, women who were passionate, confident, and fearless under the watchful eyes of the patriarchy. With them, I was more than second best. I was head fast, sincere, and strong. A person born to thrive, not hide, my individuality. Meggie Gates is a freelance writer living in Chicago, Illinois. In the past, their work has appeared in the Chicago Reader , Southside Weekly , and Vulture Magazine . You can find more of their work or what karaoke bar they're singing at this weekend here. Previous Next

< Back JK Rowling and Pliny the Elder David Cowles "What about werewolves, giants, trolls, and dragons? We don’t believe in them; they’re not real! Are they?" What does the creator of Harry Potter have in common with a 1st century CE Roman historian? Simple, they share a passion for Beasts! Arguably, Rowling and Pliny are responsible for the two greatest European Bestiaries of the Christian Era. They provide bookends to a tradition that spans 20 centuries and that appears in some form in every culture and in every era. First, some background: What is a ‘Beast’ ? Any life form other than Homo sapiens could be considered a Beast . ‘Beasts’ include our fast friends: lions, tigers, and bears, oh my! They also include Spot, our family’s best friend . But that barely scratches the surface. ‘Beasts’ include proto-humans from Neanderthal to Yeti. They include dragons, centaurs, and other supposedly mythical creatures. They include all manner of chimera, e.g., unicorns, griffins, and merpeople (known as ‘ mermaids ’ before the gender revolution). Push out the envelope to include flesh eating plants, pernicious bacteria and unclassified life forms like fairies, elves, and leprechauns. We live in the universe of a small child. We live in the company of fellow human beings. Beyond that, we know Spot the dog, Puss the cat, and Elsie the cow. We have stuffed giraffes, rhinos, hippos, et al. We trust that these puppets have real-world prototypes, even though few of us have ever actually petted one. What about werewolves, giants, trolls, and dragons? We don’t believe in them; they’re not real! Are they? Like our neighbors’ bratty children (but unlike our own cherubs ), we are terribly spoiled – so spoiled in fact that we actually have the chutzpah to complain about conditions in our habitat. Let’s take stock: we live alongside other, mostly peaceable humans in a civilized society. We’ve domesticated our pets and tamed our ‘beasts of burden’ (horses, oxen, etc.). As for the rest of the animal kingdom, as noted above, we’ll take ours stuffed, thank you… and not by a taxidermist. Most of us will be born, grow, live, and die without ever hearing a dragon roar (Puff notwithstanding)! We live in a well-designed zoo. Our enclosure is virtual - but virtually impermeable. We imagine that we are the zookeepers but in fact we are the exhibit. And yet, we complain: “The food could be better, it gets chilly at night, the sheep bleat too loudly, etc. If ‘zoo management’ really cared about us, they’d do something about these deplorable living conditions, right?” It’s that darn old Problem of Evil coming back to bite us again, albeit in a new guise; but Pliny and Rowling turn the ‘problem’ on its head by asking, “What if there was no Zoo? What then?” Whining, we ask, “Why aren’t things better than they are?” Clearer eyed, Pliny and Rowling asked, “Why aren’t things much worse?” IRL, Sally and Spot are your playmates…but it could just as well have been Behemoth and Leviathan. Pliny and Rowling both take a page out of Wonderful Life – no, not the Jimmy Stewart movie, the Stephen Gould book. Life could have, and may have, evolved in many different ways, almost all of which would have been much less hospitable than what we’re used to. Why did life evolve the way it did? Or did life evolve in all sorts of horrible ways, with us somehow sheltered from the worst results? Is there cosmic censorship? Did the horrible monsters of our imagination just never evolve? Or did they evolve in all their pomp and fury but behind some sort of invisible barrier, a cosmic filter perhaps, that protects us? If so, is that evidence that there is a ‘bias toward good’ in the universe that saves us from fates far, far worse than mere death? Is that ‘bias toward good’ a manifestation of what we call God ? Can we ask anything more of God than such a tilt ? Who even asks questions like these? Well, how’s this for a NY Times Best Seller list: Job, Pliny, Augustine, Einstein, Tolkien, Hugh Everett (physicist), and Rowling? Our questions put us in good intellectual company. Perhaps Augustine said it best (paraphrasing): I don’t know whether proto-humans exist or not but if they do, then they must somehow also be descended from Adam and Eve (Genesis 6: 1-4). Pliny and Rowling turn the classic Problem of Evil on its head. In their hands, it becomes a Problem of Good : If life on earth could have evolved in such horrible ways, why didn’t it? Or, if it did, how is it that we are sheltered from its worst effects? Who made Middle Earth ‘safe for humanity’? Note : We explored this Problem of Good in more detail in ATM Issue #1. The so-called Problem of Evil has led many to deny, or at least question, the existence of a benevolent God. The great Bertrand Russell, for example, wrote an entire book, Why I Am Not a Christian, to broadcast his conclusion. If so, the discovery of the Problem of Good should have the same effect…but in the other direction. How is it that things are not very, very much worse than they are? Could that be evidence of some sort of ‘divine influence’? Ponder that a while, if you will, but while you ponder, perhaps you’d like to meet some of my cuties : According to Pliny, the Scythians feed mainly on human flesh. The Anthropophagi drink out of human skulls. The Psylli expose their newborns to deadly serpents to prove the mother’s chastity and test the father’s paternity. Calingi women conceive at 5 years of age and don’t live beyond the age of 8. The Asmoths have no mouths and live only on odors. Rowling picks up where Pliny leaves off. She takes full advantage of 20 centuries of geographic exploration, and scientific discovery to expand Pliny’s menagerie and to give her creatures greater definition. Her bestiary includes all the usual suspects: Centaurs, Griffins, Dragons, Pegasus, Unicorns, Werewolves and, of course, Yeti. She also includes some relative newcomers to the beastly scene: Erklings, for example, are three-foot tall, elfish creatures native to the Black Forest; their preferred diet, of course, is the flesh of young children. On the other end of Rowling’s genetic spectrum is the Acromantula, a spider-like creature, capable of human speech, now native to Borneo. It is thought that the Acromantula may be the product of genetic engineering…by humans. Like COVID-19 perhaps? When we were very young, we believed that monsters lived in unseen spaces: under our beds, in our closets, etc. Gradually, we outgrew such beliefs. But what if we were right in the first place? What if the monsters were there all the time, but somehow something protected us from them. Was it the trusty nightlight? Or Daddy’s always thorough ‘sweep’ of my room at bedtime? Or was it the benevolent bias of being, aka God? 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 What Is Time? An astronomer explains the search to find its origins... Sten Odenwald St. Augustine said of time, “If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain to him who asks, I don’t know.” Time is an elusive concept: We all experience it, and yet, the challenge of defining it has tested philosophers and scientists for millennia. This article was originally published in the May 2022 issue of Astronomy . Read the rest of the article here . Click the cover image to return to Spring 2024. Share Previous Next