Search Results

< Back That Time You Weren't Exceptionally Divine Annie D. Stutley They say that a watched pot never boils. That’s a lie. It does boil, but do you know what doesn’t? A Tale of Three Christmases and Unexceptional Personal Limits.... I have two settings for Christmas. The first begins in November when I think of every holiday task I will complete early so the season is stress-free. The second is in the third week of December when I realize that I haven’t accomplished anything I planned. And nowhere is my holiday frenzy more frantic than on the eve of my children’s last day of school before winter break when I realize that I have procrastinated buying their teachers’ gifts. Of course it begins innocently enough. It always does. Years ago, when my kids were little, teacher gifts were something I could put off. They each had one teacher. I could run to the nearest gift store and buy three exceptional baskets of goodies. But now my kids are older with a whopping 20 teachers, coaches, and instructors. Sometime around Thanksgiving I remind myself to plan ahead for affordable yet heartwarming care packages that properly say, “Thank you for fostering my kid, who I know is sometimes a complete jackass.” Yet, I end up doing what I’ve done for years now. I make a mad dash to the grocery store the day before and determine that the best way to compensate for my ineptitude is to overcompensate. Thus, I choose a most complicated dessert that will wow my neglected teachers. And I will, of course , prepare it all myself. It sounds completely logical in the moment. One year, though, I actually conceded that one cannot make a dozen yule logs in one night. That year, my kids had only 12 teachers combined. So, I bought a case of wine and funny labels like “It’s 3:30 somewhere” and placed each clever label over the vineyard’s label. Simple! Except that you can’t drop your kid off at school with a backpack full of wine—not even in New Orleans. So, guess who unloaded a case of wine at the elementary school? This gal. Only our school doesn’t have a parking lot. Our school is in a highly trafficked neighborhood where there is rarely off-street parking. I found a spot three blocks away, only to get as far as two steps when I realized my scrawny arms cannot carry a case of wine down three blocks, through a security gate, and up a set of stairs. So I retreated. I took two thirds of the wine out of the box and carried four bottles at a time, deciding on three trips—one for each kid's teachers. To date, I don’t know why I thought it wise to bring the wine directly to the teachers and why I didn’t just leave them in the office. And I wish I had because guess whose Mom busted into fifth grade math class with wine? Yep, you guessed it. By the time I was on my third trip, I was sweating and my middle child (Middle Man) completely ignored me when I tiptoed in the dark into his reading classroom where they were watching Charlotte’s Web. As I sheepishly handed his teacher a heartfelt bottle of booze, a droplet of my sweat splattered and smudged the clever label. As God was my witness, I swore I’d never do the wine thing again. So, what did I do the next year? Homemade marshmallows. Lord to Heaven! That was a Christmas catastrophe. Marshmallows have five ingredients, and the biggest time consumption is waiting for them to set—two factors that led me to think my choice wise. However, waiting to begin at 8 o’clock at night to make marshmallows for 15 teachers means you’ll be staring at trays, waiting for them to set, well past midnight. It was close to one in the morning when I finally sliced the last pan of marshmallows and laid them in green tissue paper in red Chinese cartons. I was exhausted, maybe a little buzzed from the rosé I chugged that last hour but satisfied with my superpowers. Seriously, which other kid was gonna stroll into homeroom with homemade marshmallows? Not even Sheryl's kids. (See "That Time You Ousted Sheryl" for clarification.) But the following morning I realized just how not-Sheryl I am. Taking a final look at my supreme exceptionality, I peeked inside one of the cartons and resting contentedly were my perfectly, poufy marshmallows. But perfectly green ! In my complete Annie-ness, I didn’t remember that I live in New Orleans where our humidity is a legitimate reason to avoid moisturizer altogether and also where one should never put a food item made entirely of sugar onto anything soluble, namely green tissue paper. Frantically, I pulled all the marshmallows out—all 90 of them—for inspection. Most of the green was on the edges. For a split second, I considered leaving them alone. Maybe it would look intentional. Only it didn’t because the green bled down like green veins, and also, knowing my luck, some teacher had a freak dye allergy. I simply can’t be the parent to poison the science teacher. So I trimmed them. “It’ll appear intentional,” I said, as Middle Man looked despondently into the now heap of white powdered globs. “Sure. We’ll go with that,” he said dryly. That was the year my kids took irregular polygon-shaped marshmallows to school for their teachers’ holiday gifts and the year that, as God was my witness, I swore to never make marshmallows again. So, 2019 was to be my comeback. No sweaty wine. Nothing poisonous. That was the plan until I hadn’t bought a single ingredient for making gifts and was exhausted from a week of nursing Middle Man’s flu. I stumbled into the supermarket in the same yoga pants I’d worn for three days and spotted a display of packaged divinity. Right then is precisely when I should have realized the limitations put on me that week. It is also precisely why I’m pretty sure I don’t have a conscience at all because when I studied the mushy rounds of confection I said, “I can make that. Easy!” Silly Annie. Divinity is for grown-ups. Like marshmallow, divinity only has five ingredients, but with a nougat consistency. Divinity is also as far from a divine experience to make as the devil is from divinity. In fact, divinity is the devil. Here’s why: It was while I was laying out the ingredients when Mama trotted over to the kitchen to see what I was doing. Mama lives with us now, and there are moments when it is very convenient to have someone wise in your presence. That is, if you are the type of person to listen to wisdom. “You know, divinity is really finicky about humidity,” she said as I looked over the recipe. I ignored her. I lit a fire and poured the sugar, water, salt, and Karo syrup into the saucepan and waited. And waited. And continued to wait as the sugar liquid took half of my lifetime to reach 260 degrees. When it finally did, I slowly poured it into the mixing bowl of stiff egg whites and again waited and waited and waited for what seemed the remainder of my life for the magic to happen. But it did—to Mama’s and my complete astonishment. “Haha!” I proudly chuckled as I spooned poufy clumps of winter white onto a parchment paper-lined cookie sheet. “Humidity be damned!” They held their shape. It was on to batch two of four. It was during batch two that I realized I forgot to put my kids to bed. It was also during batch two that the dog made a river of pee in the dining room. And it was in the middle of batch two that as I stared at bubbling sugar determined to never hit 260 degrees that I called off the fourth batch. Middle Man was too sick for school. His presents could wait. But again, the divinity kept its shape. “I am so good at this!” I said to no one in particular, a tiny prideful note sent out into a world determined on making me feel inept. By the time I started batch three, Middle Man was in a Tamiflu and broth coma on the couch and the other two kids were asleep upstairs. The river of pee had been cleaned. I even remembered to move the damn Elf on the Shelf. It was 10:30. Again, I prepared the sugar to boil. And in the quiet of my holiday home, I stared at the pot. They say that a watched pot never boils. That’s a lie. It does boil, but do you know what doesn’t happen? A sugar boil doesn’t hit 260 degrees without taking a piece of your soul with it. Studying that damn pot, feeling time and my alertness fade away, I contemplated all the choices that led me to making divinity at 11 p.m. on a Wednesday. Why must I push myself to rally behind some ideal that I should be exceptional? Who cares? I could have bought the divinity. I could have made boxed brownies. I could have filled tins with the teachers’ favorite store-bought candies and be in bed right now. Instead, as the sugar boil defied me, I questioned my very existence. Why do I even bother trying for any life exceptional? No one really cares if I do or don’t do anything well. Boiled sugar not reaching 260 degrees makes a person think such damaging thoughts, especially when they are tired and a little buzzed from chugging rosé the last hour. So, too, will a divinity mixture that still hasn’t formed into the right consistency after seven minutes of mixing on high speed! The grinding motor of the mixer shook me from my self-loathing. Why wasn’t this batch doing what the others did? I stopped the machine and tested a clump. It fell back on itself. “Crap!” I yelled at no one in particular. Again I mixed and mixed until it looked right and then spooned it out, only to see each clump puddle after just seconds. I could have made a fourth batch. I could have muscled up and finished strong. But I didn’t. And you know why? Because New Orleans is insanely humid, and I should have listened to my mother. But mostly because though I may strive to be exceptional, there is nothing exceptional about my limits. It was time I learned that. I was short by five teachers. Two didn’t need a present before the next afternoon. Another we’d see again before Christmas. So, I scanned the house for replacements and found twelve of two dozen gourmet cookies that had been delivered the day before. They were worth giving away for the sake of my sanity. I filled the remaining tins with the re-gifted cookies, planned to buy the other gifts in the morning, and as God was my witness, swore to never make divinity again. I know enough to know that I can’t pull off procrastination without mishap. I can’t pull off a lot of things without a little drama. But I’m so much more than my ineptitude. I’m kind. I’m a good listener. I’m relatable. I’m a doting mother, a great wife, sister, daughter, and friend. Screw divinity. I’m badass without it. I shut the lights off downstairs at midnight—an hour earlier than the marshmallow affair of 2018. But as I was cleaning up beforehand, I stuck the puddled divinity from batch three in a hot oven. Maybe I could make divinity cookies a thing? After the last bowl was clean and the good divinity packed, I shut off the oven, left the door ajar, and went to bed. Yet, I forgot about those “cookies” in my oven until the following night when I preheated the oven to 450 degrees to cook a roast. I was seasoning said roast, grateful that divinity and a need to be exceptional was a thing of the past, when from his couch confinement, Middle Man said, “What’s that smell?” I sniffed the air. It smelled like burnt sugar. That’s odd, I thought. Then I remembered my experiment. I threw open the oven and went temporarily blind as billowing smoke rushed into my kitchen and overwhelmed my first floor. Alarms went off, dogs barked, and my flu child gagged. Divinity struck again! Those damn leftover globs melted straight through my silicone cookie sheet onto the oven floor. Some of us aren’t meant to meddle with the Divine. Starting with me. 2020 Update: Today was the last day of in-person school for Middle Man. He went with four pre-packaged coffee cakes to give to his four teachers. The cakes were baked in a kitchen far away from mine and by the hands of a professional. Last night I watched a cheesy Hallmark Christmas movie and sipped rose', all without turning on my mixer once. Annie D. Stutley lives and writes in New Orleans, La. She edits several small publications and contributes to various print and online magazines. Her blog, " That Time You, " was ranked in the Top 100 Blogs by FeedSpot. To read more of her work, go to her website , or follow her at @anniedstutley or Annie D. Stutley-writer on Facebook. Previous Next

I’ll take the wisdom of Yogi Berra over that of Bill Clinton any day: Whatever is, is! < Back A Universe From Nothing David Cowles Nov 30, 2022 I’ll take the wisdom of Yogi Berra over that of Bill Clinton any day: Whatever is, is! In 2012, renowned physicist and cosmologist, Lawrence Krauss, published A Universe from Nothing . The avowed purpose of the book was to debunk the idea that some sort of transcendent entity (e.g., ‘God’) is necessary to account for the universe as we experience it. Krauss subtitled his book: Why there is Something rather than Nothing . Of course, this subtitle implies a question that Krauss did not need to spell out for his readers. Anyone who might be tempted to read a book like this is already well acquainted with it. In fact, it was probably the first question serious thinkers ever asked, and it is still as relevant and thought-provoking today as it was 3,000 years ago. At least since Parmenides (b. 515 BC), Western philosophers, theologians and scientists have struggled with the subtitled question. To answer it, we need to define our terms, but that should be easy: even toddlers know the difference between ‘something’ and ‘nothing’. Or do they? Is a dream ‘something’? How about an illusion…or a delusion? How about a unicorn? A squared circle? How about virtual particles that we ‘know’ exist but that, according to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, must annihilate one another before they are directly detected (i.e., measured)? Turns out, Being is not as simple a proposition as we might have supposed; but what about Nothing ? Is empty space nothing? How about a perfect vacuum? What about quantities outside the Planck scale? How about the ‘potential’ my parents and teachers saw in me as a child, but that was never realized? Krauss offers us three possible definitions of ‘nothing’. He begins with the notion that ‘empty space’ is ‘nothing’ and he shows, convincingly I think that so-called empty space inexorably spawns virtual particle pairs, radiation, and various space-filling ‘fields’: “Empty space can have a non-zero energy associated with it, even in the absence of any matter or radiation… The gravitational ‘pressure’ associated with such energy in empty space is actually negative… The energy of empty space (nothing) gets converted into the energy of something.” The problem with Krauss’ argument is that it is a bit too convincing. On closer examination, it turns out that ‘empty space’ is never really empty. It cannot be conceived without its virtual particle pairs, its ‘pressure’ (albeit negative), and its radiation and fields. We do not begin with empty space and then suddenly flip a switch and ‘create’ these constituent phenomena; these phenomena are part of whatever empty space is. ‘Empty space’, then, is clearly not ‘nothing’. Krauss admits as much: “… It would be disingenuous to suggest that empty space endowed with energy…is really nothing. In this picture, one must assume that space exists and can store energy…” Actually, though, Krauss’ empty space argument is odd for a quite different reason. Sir Isaac Newton believed that space was a passive receptacle that (logically at least) preceded whatever might populate it. Few, if any, cosmologists believe this today. Einstein taught us that space and time are aspects of a single reality: 4 dimensional spacetime. Now, modern cosmologists seem to be of two minds, either: 1. Spacetime is not a primary (substructural) property of cosmos but rather a secondary (emergent) property; or, 2. Spacetime is an illusion, pure and simple, and does not exist. A summer 2018 special edition of Scientific American showcases both points of views. The issue is titled A Matter of Time but, as we now know, space and time are aspects of a single 4-dimensional reality, so the same arguments should be applicable to space. In this issue, Craig Chandler ( Is Time an Illusion? ) argues that time, if real at all, is an “emergent property” of the cosmos, not its substructure: “Space and time are secondary concepts…” But Chandler has a foot in both camps: “… Many in theoretical physics have come to believe that time fundamentally does not even exist.” He synthesizes these views using a ‘block’ model of spacetime: “Spacetime is like a loaf of bread that you can slice in different ways, called either ‘space’ or ‘time’ almost arbitrarily.” According to this model, spacetime is a 4-dimensional loaf . If you slice it vertically, you get slices of time. Everything that happens at a given ‘moment’, no matter where it happens, is captured by that one slice. On the other hand, if you slice it horizontally, you get slices of space. Everything that happens at a given ‘location’, no matter when it happens, is captured on that one slice. Slicing the loaf diagonally reveals the effects of relativity. Astonishingly, this apparently 21st century idea is nothing new. The so-called ‘father of Western philosophy’, Parmenides, had essentially the same idea 2500 years ago: “… What-is is ungenerated and imperishable…unbeginning and unceasing…whole, single-limbed, steadfast and complete; nor was it once, nor will it be, since it is, now, all together, one, continuous…” In other words…a loaf of bread. In contrast, Krauss’ argument seems to rely on the discarded Newtonian model (above). Krauss grudgingly acknowledges these objections to his theory. But then he asks an even more intriguing question: ‘What if not even empty space is presumed to exist?’ What if we use ‘nothing’ to define the ‘state of things’ (whatever that might mean) before even empty space appears? “… The rules of quantum mechanics would apply to the properties of space and not just to the properties of objects existing in space… Should one consider the possibility of small, possibly compact spaces that themselves pop in and out of existence? … As Stephen Hawking has emphasized, a quantum theory of gravity allows for the creation, albeit perhaps momentarily, of space itself where none existed before…” Just as Krauss first argued that virtual matter, radiation, particle fields and negative pressure emerge spontaneously in empty space, now he argues that empty space itself emerges from an even more primitive state of being (or should I say ‘non-being’?). In this spirit, he titles his tenth chapter Nothing is Unstable . He does not mean by this that everything is stable but rather that instability is ‘ontologically substructural’, i.e., a fundamental characteristic of ‘Being’ itself. It applies to ‘nothing’ as well as to ‘something’. This argument is so challenging that the arguments against it do not come from physics, but from linguistics and philosophy. Contemporary scientists who dare wade into the waters of philosophy are invariably influenced by three men: A.J. Ayer, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and John Austin. (Or if they are not so influenced, they certainly should be.) These three pillars of ‘analytic’ English philosophy (first half of the 20th century) argued that many, if not most, problems of philosophy stem from an imprecise use of language. While the three men’s views and methods differ widely, they were all laser focused on the way language is employed to frame philosophical problems. Collectively, they argued that terms used to describe everyday events (‘ordinary language’) do not suddenly acquire new and different meanings just because they are applied to cosmic and metaphysical phenomena. Red is red is red. Let’s apply that insight to Krauss’ assertion that “nothing is unstable”. Something is unstable if it possesses or exhibits the quality known as ‘instability’ (or lacks the quality known as ‘stability’). But how can the quality of instability, or stability, be possessed or exhibited by ‘nothing’? Only an entity that is ‘something’ can possess or exhibit qualities, instability included. There are no disembodied qualities, at least not where I live. “Look, there goes green arm in arm with damp as usual?” – not so much! Therefore, the sentence ‘nothing is unstable’ is (in the parlance of analytic philosophy) meaningless . By stating that “nothing is unstable”, Krauss implicitly acknowledges that his pre-existent ontological reality (‘nothing’) is really ‘something’ after all. But then what could we say about it? Perhaps we could speculate that it is something that exists solely in the mode of pure potentiality; but that is still ‘something’ – all of which works to defeat Krauss’ argument. Another lion of early 20th century English philosophy, Alfred North Whitehead, built his complex and comprehensive “Philosophy of Organism” around just three undefined terms: one, many and creativity. Perhaps Krauss’ ‘nothing’ is Whitehead’s ‘creativity’, the restlessness that lies curled up, like Kundalini, at the base of Being. Finally, Krauss offers us a third version of ‘nothing’. This version does not allow for potentiality or quantum fluctuation; it applies the definition of ‘nothing’ in the most rigorous possible way. Krauss rejects this version as ridiculous, and he claims that philosophers and theologians who insist on applying this definition are acting in ‘bad faith’: they’re simply refusing to engage in the debate at any level. In the parlance of the playground, they have picked up their ball and gone home. However, this is precisely the view of nothing that contemporary Italian philosopher, Emanuele Severino advances. Often called a Neo-Parmenidean, Severino holds that all being is eternal. Whatever is cannot not-be, nor could it ever not-have-been, nor could it come-to-be; it just is: “… It must be said of everything that, precisely because it is not nothing, it cannot become nothing (nor can it have ever been nothing), and therefore it is and reigns eternal. Everything is eternal.” Here I’ll take the wisdom of Yogi Berra over that of Bill Clinton: Whatever is, is! In any event, kudos to Krauss. He dared to take on the toughest of all problems in philosophy and ultimately, he had the courage to admit that he could not prove his hypothesis: A Universe from Nothing. Bottom line, being is, nothing isn’t, whatever is not can never come to be and whatever is, cannot cease to be. “That is all ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know.” – Keats. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Share Previous Next 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

< Back Norman Lear Neo-Talmudic Sage of Democracy and Good Times Dr. Stephen Stern "Nobody wins democracy. It's not a possession, but a continuous process that requires everyone's participation." Norman Lear passed away at 101 after living a life that not only brought laughs to millions, but did so while dedicating himself to what Abraham Lincoln referred to as “the unfinished work of Democracy.” Here we show that not only is Lear’s work neo-Talmudic, prophetically midrashic, but that the way we frame him offers a different paradigm from which to expand understandings of democracy as more than the enlightened property based social contract understanding of community. A Young Jew Who Cared about Democracy Born in 1922, to a blue-collar Jewish family in New Haven, Connecticut, Lear’s father H.K.—he told people the “K” stood for King—brooked no dissent in the house. The kids dared not speak back and if his mother disagreed, she was told to “Stifle!” He had a hard time keeping down a job and always had a new scheme up his sleeve until he returned back from a trip to Oklahoma and was arrested for fraud. He was incarcerated until after Norman’s bar mitzvah. Lear’s mother and sister moved in with his grandparents, but Norman was circulated among relatives, never having a stable home. His escape was the radio, where he loved comedy, but found himself distressed by the antisemitic ravings of Father Charles Coughlin. Lear was a proud American, but knew that his Jewishness was leading to his exclusion. Graduating high school, Lear wanted to go to college, but after his release from incarceration, his father still had not been able to work steadily and the family had no money. So, Lear took a longshot and entered a contest sponsored by the American Legion with an essay entitled “The Constitution and Me” where he argued that his Jewishness did not keep him from being fully American, but rather informed his Americanness. He won a scholarship to Emerson College. He split his time there between the classroom and local burlesque house where he saw some of the greatest comics of the time including Phil Silvers and Red Buttons. Emerson being one of the nation’s leading dramatic schools, he was learning to act, direct, and write. He seemed destined for show business…and then came Hitler. When the war broke out, Lear, like so many other young Jewish men, felt the need to volunteer. He was a radio man and gunner in the army’s air force, flying many dangerous missions during the war. Indeed, at one point a bullet pierced his plane, killing the soldier next to him. In word and deed, Norman Lear was dedicated to promoting democracy and fighting fascism, hatred, and bigotry. Mostly In the Family After the war, he returned home, got married, and started working as a publicist. He moved to Los Angele, where he had a cousin whose husband, Ed Simmons, was trying to become a comedy writer. One night, the wives decided to go to the movies, leaving the guys home with the kids. After the little ones were in bed, Norman asked Ed what he was working on. It was a song parody. They had it done when their wives came home. Singing it for them, they thought it hilarious. Norman said they needed to sell it…now. So, they went downtown to a club where comedian Betsy Abbott was performing and between sets, approach her. She loved it and bought it on the spot for $25—a week’s salary for them. They decided to become a team. Writing a piece for Danny Thomas, they quickly became known in the industry and were picked up by Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. Eventually, the team broke up and Ed went on to write for Carol Burnett. Norman wrote and started producing for a range of programs which allowed his family to live comfortably…and then he read an article in TV Guide. It was about a British program called “Til Death Do Us Part” about a conservative father and liberal son who argue about everything. It took Lear back to his own childhood and he knew he had to develop an American version. That, of course, became All in the Family, a groundbreaking show that Lear could not get picked up. It was too provocative, too edgy, too smart. He was discussing topics that serious news programs rarely touched on, much less a comedy. The network thought the seriousness would kill the laughs. It was run with a warning to audiences the first season, telling them about sensitive topics. It got off to a slow start, but where the public did not appreciate it, the critics did and after it won several Emmy’s, it became a hit. Archie Bunker was a blue-collar, bigot who hated liberals and minorities, but who loved his family including his wife Edith and his liberal daughter Gloria whose grad student husband Mike lived with them. The liberal Mike and the conservative Archie would fight nonstop, rehearsing exactly the debates that were happening around dinner tables across the country in the early 1970s. Archie’s frequent use of racial slurs alarmed the network and censors, but they brought an honesty and realism to the program which was also the pivot point around which the comedy revolved. There were no strawmen, no cartoon characters, but real people wrestling real problems. It changed television comedy forever. Instead of the screwball silliness of “Mr. Ed” or unrealistic domestic portrayals of “Father Knows Best,” we were seeing real America, warts and all. It was funny because it was true. But those laughs and that truth served Lear’s lifelong project of defending Democracy. A healthy democracy requires authentic debate, critical examination of a range of viewpoints. The American entertainment landscape was a falsely sterile ecosystem, devoid of real questions, new views, and authentic searching for solutions. Lear sought to change all that, to bring the town square, John Stuart Mill’s marketplace of ideas, to the small screen in everyone’s living room. Enlarging the Family Democracy requires freedom of speech because the truth will sometimes reside where we least expect it. We need to hear a wide range of perspectives and consider the insights they bring in order to keep from becoming trapped in our own cognitive bubble. Yet, America has a tragic history of silencing important voices. Lear’s love of democracy demanded that he increase the number of viewpoints in his comedy. He was not just going to look at white men on different sides of the political spectrum. When Edith’s outspoke feminist cousin Maude Findlay appeared in one episode, the reaction from fans was instant and overwhelming. She had to have her own show. Bea Arthur’s portrayal of the title character was fearless as it took on issues from substance abuse, to domestic violence, to suicide broke ground. The two-part episode in which Maude considers whether to get an abortion is one of the most important moments in television history. Lear replicated the All in the Family formula with the great Redd Foxx on Sanford and Son featuring junk dealer Fred Sanford in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. Maude’s maid Florida was another strong character who clearly needed her own program and Lear launched Good Times, featuring the first two-parent black family to be the focus of a television show in America. They lived in the notorious Cabrini-Green projects in Chicago and that led to an unexpected visit to Lear’s office by a group of Black Panthers who demanded to see the “White trashman,” Lear. They confronted him, asking why all of his black characters were poor when there were many well-off Blacks wealthier than most Whites. Lear knew they were right and knew what he had to do, another spin-off. The Bunkers’ next door neighbors, George and Louise Jefferson owned a chain of laundromats and the profits from them allowed them to be moving on up to a deluxe apartment in the sky. The Jeffersons, which was the longest-running series in television history was also the first to feature a mixed-race couple that shared a bed. Lear continued to work to increase the number of perspectives he could mainstream. One Day at a Time humanized single mothers in an age of increasing divorce. Hot l Baltimore featured a stable gay couple and sought to humanize sex workers. Remembering Father Coughlin’s antisemitism that tried to silence him, Lear demanded that no voices be silenced. Neo-Talmudism Talmudic thought begins with the Torah and its mitzvot, the commandments Jews must obey. These are the fixed points, the undeniable stakes that ground rabbinic Judaism. But as a text, the Torah and associated books of the Tanakh, require interpretation. There is an active cognitive human element that must be added in order to glean wisdom from the words. Jews may be the People of the Book, but the Book is not passively absorbed. Indeed, quite the opposite, it is actively explored and interpreted by scholars in a wide range of ways. Unlike Christianity in which different sects are distinguished by their interpretations and fight (sometimes violently) among themselves over whose understanding is the literal truth, for Jews, God’s truth is too big to fit in any one interpretation. All of the different approaches unlock the various truths contained in the text. It is not subjectivism where anything goes, as it is tied to the text, but it encourages a creative stance toward unraveling the wisdom hidden within the words. This approach is profound in marrying an absolutism—the text itself is venerated—with perspectivalism—the text gives rise to multiple understandings, all of which are considered meaningful. It allows for an intellectual version of a choir in which different voices sing different lines, but harmonize or contrast in order to create a bolder sound that no one could imagine when hearing only one voice. The profundity of this dialogic approach stands in opposition to the Hellenic-Christian tradition. In it there is one and only one truth. It is the goal. The entire process is teleological, driven with a single end in mind—achieving a grasp of that one and only truth. But the Talmudic tradition sees the value laying not in the endpoint, but in the process, not in the knowing, but in the learning. As a result the great rabbi and philosopher Emanuel Levinas argues that beneath the commitment to the mitzvot, there exists one meta-mitzvah—discussion shall never cease. If the Sacred Text is a ball, then you can think of the Hellenic-Christian approach as a game of soccer, each trying to possess the ball and score a goal, thereby defeating the others who want the ball for their own. But the rabbinic approach is instead a game of hacky-sack where the ball is hared amongst all, each doing with it what they will—some scholars making impressively fancy moves twisting in unexpected ways—while other rabbis are more straightforward in being simple in how they pass to someone else. But all of them are engaged in a collective endeavor, seeking to keep the process going as long as they can, all focused on the ball but passing it among themselves. We can keep the game, but replace the ball. By changing the Sacred Text, we are no longer being Talmudic. Instead, we are being what we call “neo-Talmudic.” One can find neo-Talmudism throughout intellectual history, where some sacred text—be it a work of art, a social institution, or an ideal—is considered sacrosanct, yet is kept alive by constant reinterpretation. In fact, Norman Lear’s television legacy is a perfect example. For him, the sacred text is the democratic experiment that is the American experience. What Lear gave to us was a great game in which the circle of players included those from a wide range of backgrounds. Each got their chance to play, to demonstrate their skills and style in working with it as they would. Everyone else would watch and laugh in appreciation until it was passed to another who would then get their turn. One might say that much of his work exercises TV prophetic midrash, an approach that doesn’t base democracy only on property rights, but directs us to understand it as never ending discussion. No one gets to own the democratic discussion in Lear’s work. Norman Lear’s great insight was that nobody wins democracy. The American democracy that Lear loved with all of his being was not an end, a goal, a thing to be possessed. He realized that it was a process, a happening that required all of us. The point was not assimilation, homogenization, the disappearance of difference. That is what Hitler wanted. Democracy was, as Levinas pointed out, an unceasing conversation. The discussion must never end. But the only way to keep it going, was to have all of us—especially those who have been kept out—to become active parts of it. Norman Lear made us laugh, but he also made us think, and in doing so tried to make more of us part of “us.” Co-written with Dr. Steven Gimbel of Gettysburg College’s Philosophy Department. Gimbel is the author of “Einstein’s Jewish Science,” a one time finalist for the national Jewish book award. Image: Photo of Carroll O'Connor as Archie Bunker from the television program All In the Family.. Credit: CBS This piece was republished without edits with permission from the author. Dr. Stephen Ster n has authored Reclaiming the Wicked Son: Finding Judaism in Secular Jewish Philosophers, and The Unbinding of Isaac: A Phenomenological Midrash of Genesis 22. His forthcoming book, The Chailight Zone will be out later this year, 2024. Stern is an Associate Professor of Jewish Studies & Interdisciplinary Studies, and Chair of Jewish Studies at Gettysburg College. Return to Summer 2024 Previous Next

< Back Pope Leo XIV David Cowles May 11, 2025 “As it was then, so it is now, the future of the Church, and the World, seems to hang in the balance.” The decision by Cardinal Prevost to take the name ‘Leo XIV’ draws our attention to the striking parallels between Continental Europe (c. 1875) and Planet Earth (c. 2025). As it was then, so it is now, the future of the Church, and the World, seems to hang in the balance. Leo XIII (1878) faced the scourge of communism and the inhumane socio-economic conditions that led to its rise. Like his eponymous predecessor, Leo XIV must also juggle a dual mandate. He must confront the ideology of militant secularism rampant in the world today and even more importantly, he must shift the intellectual paradigm that breeds many of our contemporary ‘ism’s’: economic materialism, philosophical nihilism, radical skepticism, de facto solipsism, political anarchism, and scientific pragmatism. It is said that the teachings of the Church never change…and on important matters of doctrine, that is true. 17 centuries later we are still rooted in Nicaea (325 CE) which in turn is rooted in the Scripture and Tradition of the early Church. That said, these never changing doctrines of Roman Catholicism need to be updated continuously to reflect the idiom of the day. 4 th century formulae, which express something that is forever true, struggle to be inspiring, or even understood, in our scientific age. There is no shame in this. The Greek Bible had to be translated into Latin and then into hundreds of languages worldwide. The essential content remains unchanged, hopefully, but without ongoing linguistic updates, it risks becoming a litany of rote incantations. Leo XIV is uniquely called, and uniquely qualified, to update the idiom…not from Latin to English, Spanish, or Italian…but from linear to non-linear models of reality. Pope Sylvester II (c.1000 CE) was widely considered to be the preeminent scientist and mathematician of his day. How many other second millennium popes could have made the same claim? Now, Leo XIV, armed with a degree in Mathematics from Villanova, is positioned to reclaim the Sylvesterian tradition. The intellectual foundations of our civilization need to undergo a radical reformulation and Christianity, with its unique Gospel message, is well positioned to lead that process. It all begins, you guessed it, with mathematics. Most of us, dear readers, were raised on arithmetic, linear algebra, Euclidean geometry…and calculus, i.e. the reduction of non linear phenomena to linear algorithms. These ‘hacks’ have taken us to the Moon and back, but they are still just hacks; they tell us nothing about the real structure of the world. That’s a problem…a big problem! We have come to regard the flat map (math) as if it were the territory (world) and so we have come to believe, once again, that the world too is flat. We are like ancient mariners, staring at our charts and expecting to sail off the edge. We need a new Galileo to say, “It’s round!” If Leo XIV is to be the new Sylvester, the new Galileo, who are we then in this mock drama? We are the Inquisitors of course. We are the defenders of all things flat. We are happy to ignore all empirical evidence in order to defend our linear presuppositions. As children of the Enlightenment we are mesmerized by cause and effect: A → B, a straight line (actually a vector). But in nature, nothing is flat, no lines are straight, and no space is strictly Platonic. Even more alarming for every A and B in the real world, A ↔ B and A ↔ A. A ll process is reciprocal and recursive. The linear is an abstraction, a degenerate case of the non-linear, useful for calculation, useless for any deeper understanding. Christian cosmology is non-linear at its core. Just a few examples: ➢ The creator of ‘heaven and earth and all things visible and invisible’ is incarnate as one quantum (Jesus of Nazareth) in that sea of beings. ➢ The author of eternal life and the savior of the world was executed for treason and blasphemy by political and religious opponents. ➢ “Love your neighbor as (not like) yourself.” (Mt. 22: 40) ➢ “Take and eat; this is my body…this is my blood.” (Mt. 26: 26 - 30) ➢ “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in them.” (Jn: 6: 56) ➢ “Blessed are the merciful for they will obtain mercy.” (Mt. 5: 7) ➢ “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” (Mt. 6: 12) ➢ “I am in my father, and you are in me, and I am in you.” (John 14: 20) In fact, non-linearity permeates the Bible and the Liturgy of the Church but these citations should be enough to convince you that Christianity cannot be understood or fully appreciated from a purely linear mindset…and for 500 years we have trained ourselves only to think in straight lines. When we were kids (before Vatican II), it was commonplace to criticize the church for its reliance on Latin. “How is anyone supposed to understand this stuff?” Little did we realize, Latin was not the problem; linearity was. How is anyone with a linear mindset supposed to understand a non-linear universe? From this perspective, the current state of the Church should surprise no one. We are witnessing the final stages of Christendom’s 500 year fall from a universal ideology to a quirky artefact of intellectual history. “The wonder is, (it) has endured so long!” ( King Lear ) Fortunately, there are indications from his initial papal greeting that our new Peter understands the problem: “Even today, there are many settings in which the Christian faith is considered absurd, meant for the weak and unintelligent. Settings where other securities are preferred, like technology, money, success, power, or pleasure.” – Leo XIV Your mission, Leo, should you choose to accept it, is to fix it! Buena Fortuna! God speed you on your way. Image: Caravaggio’s The Calling of Saint Matthew (Vocazione di San Matteo), painted between 1599 and 1600 in oil on canvas, measures 322 by 340 centimeters and is housed in the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome. 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.

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. < Back Rabbi Dr. Jon Kelsen Contributor 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. Parshat Emor: Making it All Count

< Back Happiness David Cowles Apr 13, 2023 “If we somehow manage to convince ourselves that the purpose of life is our own personal happiness, then we are in for a world of hurt.” Today, everyone is looking for the meaning of life, its purpose, what, if anything, makes life worth living? The consensus (not unanimous) of western philosophers is that the purpose and meaning of life is ‘personal happiness’. This is an oxymoron . When we say something has purpose or meaning, we are connecting that thing to something outside it; but happiness is not ‘outside’ the happy person, so the concepts of purpose and meaning can’t apply here. X cannot be the meaning of X; otherwise, ‘meaning’ would have no meaning . The meaning of X can only be found somewhere in ~X. Personal happiness refers only to X. If we somehow manage to convince ourselves that the purpose of life is our own personal happiness , then we are in for a world of hurt: “… Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself (love). Happiness must happen…” (Victor Frankl) “Happy? Anyone can be happy. What’s the purpose of that?” (Bob Dylan) How could things have gone so wrong? The divine values, Beauty, Truth, and Justice are values that everyone in every life circumstance is free to pursue to the best of their ability. Happiness, on the other hand, is often dependent on fickle circumstances. We may find it hard to ‘whistle a happy tune’ in the face of crushing poverty, chronic disease, unrequited love, or personal tragedy. It would be nice if we could smile our way through life’s vicissitudes…but it’s unrealistic. The ‘happy slave’ is, for the most part, ‘bourgeoisie fiction’. If anything is the purpose of life, realizing it should not depend at all on things beyond our control. Rephrased: if the proposed ‘purpose of life’ is something outside our control, then that cannot be a purpose . A purpose can only be a purpose if it can be achieved; otherwise, it’s just a fantasy. Beyond this, there is a cultural element at play. In our culture, children no longer have any intrinsic value! They exist for the enjoyment of their parents. They exist to be loved; what can possibly be wrong with that? Not so long ago, things were different. Couples conceived explicitly to produce offspring that could be an economic asset. Kids were raised to help run the house, the farm, the ranch, the store, or the loom. Every child had a purpose! Hopefully, they were also loved. Today, at least in the Atlantic community, children have no short term economic value . Ask any parent managing the cost of daycare, summer camp, groceries, and college tuition… As good parents, and of course, we are all good parents, it’s easy to make our children’s happiness Job One. Who then can blame a child then who, upon graduation, continues to steer her ship solely according to that beacon? I have lived a full life. I married, had children and grandchildren, built a successful business that created jobs, enhanced the wellbeing of tens of thousands of customers, provided a comfortable living for my family, and left me with plenty of playtime! Looking back, I see that playtime , such a source of happiness for me at the time, is the least important part of my story. I don’t regret it per se , but I see it now from a different perspective. Caring for others and helping to smooth their way in the world still seem like a worthy ‘purpose’; enhancing my short-term personal happiness does not. It would be nice to think that I was motivated by the opportunity to care, and that I used my playtime merely to recreate . It would be nice…but then I’d be writing about another man. The minute I put the tuba down, the music stopped. What happened to all that happiness? Is it stored-up somewhere in a vault? Can I make periodic withdrawals of principle? Oh well, I have the memories…at least for another few years, I hope. How I treated others, good and ill, will reverberate through the universe until Big Freeze; how much I enjoyed the foie gras at Biba in 1990 will not. As pupils in a parochial (Catholic) elementary school in the ‘50s, we did not have this problem. Every September, we’d take our seats on the first day of class and that day we would learn just two things: God is the supreme being who made all things. God made us to know him, love him and serve him. First grade? Eighth grade? Same lesson! No reference to personal happiness or ‘self-actualization’. The alleged Death of God has made such catechetical memes unintelligible to my grandchildren. I don’t worry about them now, they’re fabulous; but I do worry about where they’ll be when they finally decide to put their own tubas aside. Will they look back at all that’s left undone in their lives, and say with me, “Gee, I could have had a V8?” 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 King James David Cowles Nov 15, 2022 “We’re not in Kansas (or even Kensington) anymore, are we?” We’ve recently posted several Thoughts on ‘legitimate government’ and on the proper relationship between church and state: The Gettysburg Address Gettysburg Too Election Day 2022 We hoped to point out that things we take pretty much for granted can be viewed in very different, but still coherent, ways. King James I of England ( aka James VI of Scotland) succeeded Elizabeth I in 1603. We are indebted to him for the most famous book ever published, the King James Bible . King James had a view of government that is different from anything we’ve reviewed so far. We can take a peek at his 1609 speech before Parliament; but caveat lector : this did not come from The New Yorker or from the editorial pages of The Guardian . “Kings are not only God's lieutenants upon earth, and sit upon God's throne, but even by God himself they are called Gods... “Kings are justly called Gods, for that they exercise a manner or resemblance of divine power upon earth. For if you will consider the attributes to God, you shall see how they agree in the person of a king… “God hath power to create, or destroy, make or unmake at his pleasure, to give life or send death, to judge all, and to be judged nor accountable to none. To raise low things, and to make high things low at his pleasure… “And the like power have Kings: they make and unmake their subjects: they have power of raising, and casting down: of life and of death: judges over all their subjects, and in all causes, and yet accountable to none but God only... They have power to exalt low things, and abase high things, and make of their subjects like men at the chess. A pawn to take a bishop or a knight… “As to dispute what God may do is blasphemy, so is it sedition in subjects to dispute what a king may do…” Wow! We’re not in Kansas (or even Kensington) anymore, are we? (Notice how James cleverly manipulates the threat of class warfare to scare the nobles in Parliament into submission!) James is an ultra-nominalist. He rejects the idea that God does what he does because it is objectively ‘good’; James believes that things are ‘good’ because God does them. Nominalism is the theological equivalent of every parent’s last refuge: “Because I said so.” Similarly, laws are ‘just’ solely because the king wills them. Forget about ‘Church and State’, welcome to ‘Church of State’. In a theocracy, Church rules: the State is merely a ‘functional department’ of Church. In a Republic, Church and State are distinct, albeit overlapping, entities with distinct, but also overlapping, jurisdictions. Messy, but... In the world of King James, however, State rules: the Church is a ‘functional department’ of State. None of the 20th century’s greatest tyrants (Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, e.g.) would have dreamt of asserting such bold a claim to legitimacy. Today’s world is full of Theocrats and Republicans (above) leaving few to champion James’ Absolutism. His 1609 proclamation deviates from the developing political philosophy of Europe (500 to 1600), but it also reverses a basic tenet of Judeo-Christian theology that dates back at least to Genesis (2,000+ years before James). In fact, you’re only three verses into Genesis when you see the problem: “Then God said: Let there be light, and there was light. God saw that the light was good.” According to James, God acts without regard to ‘good’. Why then does he check to see if the light he created passes muster? God acted, but he immediately evaluated his act in reference to a pre-existent standard (Good). According to James’ theology, God has no truck with Good. He acts however he acts and by that ‘acting’ he creates Good…for us. It would be ridiculous for God to check to see if his action was good since Good did not exist before he acted. How do you get around this? I only see three alternatives: (1) God is ridiculous, (2) God is delusional, (3) God is ignorant - his right hand doesn’t know what his left hand is doing, (4) “ It’s just Genesis! ” It’s true that we need to read Genesis with a different eye then we would use when reading a book like Maccabees , but arguably the two most important books of the Old Testament, Job and Psalms , are devoted to the idea that ‘God is Good’ (not ‘Good is God’). Perhaps we’ll take a look at those sources in a later edition of TWS . Image: James I, oil on canvas by Daniel Mytens, 1621; in the National Portrait Gallery. 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.

“What You See Is What You Get! Right…or wrong?” < Back R U WYSIWYG? David Cowles Oct 15, 2023 “What You See Is What You Get! Right…or wrong?” We live in a crazy world. There’s no doubt about that! Mythology, theology, philosophy, and science are some of the different ways we model this world. The result? Libraries full of conflicting theories…and no indisputable answers. Perhaps we’re overthinking things. Let’s simplify matters: What you see is what you get! Right…or wrong? WYSIWYG has champions across all intellectual disciplines. All we ‘know’ is what we ‘see’ (or sense) so why not build our models based on that data alone? Realism, naïve or otherwise; Materialism, Marxist or otherwise; Positivism, Logical or otherwise, plus Pragmatism and Empiricism – all assume that what you see is what you get. On the other side of the question, we also have some serious contenders: Homeric mythology, Judeo-Christian theology, Eastern spirituality, and Existentialist philosophy, to name a few. If it is true, that what you see is what you get, then we live in a self-contained, ontologically democratic universe, a flat world in which everything (‘what you get’) can be explained in terms of everything else (‘what you see’). Easy-peasy, lemon squeezy! Proponents of this view believe that human experience, aided by the tools of reason (e.g. logic and mathematics), provides sufficient information for us to account, fully or approximately, for the world we live in. So, mission accomplished , right? Let’s call these folks our ‘WYSIWYGs’. Of course, they’ll admit, we do not have all the answers yet, but we are close enough that we are entitled to have confidence that our project can, at least in theory, be completed. Most WYSIWYGs believe that it is ultimately possible to construct models of reality that account for our world within a tolerable range of accuracy based solely on the data of human experience. But is that true? Can a model that relies solely on the data of experience ever give a complete account of that experience, or of experience per se , or of the world that supports such experience? Alternatively, do we need to resort to something outside the realm of direct experience to complete our model? Once we have understood the world to the best of our ability, may we not still ask: “Is this all there is?” “Hold on,” you say. “Nothing is nothing without experience.” And you are correct! (Thank you for reading Aletheia Today .) But based on that direct experience, we can infer that something outside the realm of direct experience is influencing the data we glean from that experience. We can’t directly describe what we can’t experience (it’s ‘ineffable’) but we can describe its contours, the way it templates experience. Crazy? Well, when was the last time you saw the singularity at the heart of a Black Hole? Have you ever heard a ‘Big Bang’? And don’t get me started about strings, dark matter, and the multiverse! We reason from what we know to what we don’t know, every day. Reality is like a jigsaw puzzle…with one piece missing. After several days of painstaking work, the puzzle is complete, and beautiful, but with a hole in it. From the hole, we can deduce virtually everything that can be known about our missing piece, but we still don’t have the piece itself. It is generally accepted today that all models, languages, symbolic systems have limitations, boundaries if you will. The question is whether there is anything beyond those boundaries that really matters. Blaise Pascal wrote, “Faith indeed tells us what the senses do not tell, but not the contrary of what they see. It is above them…not contrary to them.” For Pascal, faith was necessary to complete the picture that the senses paint; for Pascal, faith was the missing piece. How do the differences between these competing views manifest in real life situations? Consider three practical examples: Neurobiologists have made great strides toward understanding the human brain and how it works. But many people feel that we are no closer than we ever were to explaining the phenomenon of consciousness. Certainly, we have theories about the physiological conditions necessary for conscious experience to occur, but have we accounted for the experience per se ? And if not, will we ever be able to do so? Similarly, astrophysicists have made great strides toward understanding the evolution of the universe. Indeed, we seem to have pushed the fog of ignorance all the way back to the first few seconds of time…and perhaps even beyond that, all the way to Big Bang itself. But is this enough? Have we accounted for the phenomenon of being itself? Have we truly answered the age-old question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” Finally, quantum field theory has been called the most successful scientific theory of all time. It predicts phenomena with approximately perfect accuracy; it has never been convincingly falsified by any experiment. That said, do we really understand what is happening at the quantum level of reality? All quantum physicists are capable of making the same astoundingly accurate predictions; yet they use a myriad of different models to account for their results. The positivist’s answer to this dilemma is simply to deny the meaningfulness of the questions themselves: (1) Consciousness is physiology; (2) Cosmos is Being; (3) QFT is its predictions. This last point is what’s called the ‘Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics’. According to Copenhagen , the accuracy of the predictions is all that matters. Models are meaningless. And yet, 90 years after Copenhagen, we’re still obsessed with our models! In Copenhagen, the scientific community shouted in unison, “Grow up!” And we did, for a while, but pretty soon we went back to building our models. The positivists’ solution is simple: meta-questions have no meaning. We have gone as far as we can go because there is nowhere else to go (Nietzsche). If you are still asking questions about consciousness or Being or the reality underlying quantum measurements, it is simply because you don’t understand those phenomena; if you did, you would understand that such questions are meaningless (Wittgenstein). But does saying make it so? Is our proclivity for formulating meta-questions evidence of our mental laziness…or testimony to our human spirit? According to French philosopher Albert Camus , the patron saint of the Absurd, it is human nature to seek unifying principles, even if such principles do not exist or are unavailable to us. Then we are Sisyphus, forever condemned to ask questions that have no answers or whose answers are beyond the grasp of gnosis . But are ‘not-knowing’ and ‘not-being’ one and the same thing? Is ‘absence of evidence’ ‘evidence of absence’? There are indeterminacies inherent in all conceptual systems (Gödel’s Incompleteness) and in all physical systems (Heisenberg’s Uncertainty). These limitations guarantee at least some separation between what can be and what we can know . At their best, anti-WYSIWYGs ground their position on what they ‘see’. For them, experience is a vector pointing toward a reality beyond perception and logic. For example, we ‘see’ things that we recognize as ‘beautiful’. We know they’re beautiful, but Aristotle notwithstanding, we can’t define Beauty, and we certainly can’t account for the presence of Beauty in our world. The same argument can be applied to Justice, Truth, and even Good itself. In a flat, self-contained, and ontologically democratic universe, there is no objective basis for valuing any one entity over any other. Existentialists might say that we are free to assign our own values to things…and they’d be right. But if those values are not rooted in something outside us, what difference do they make? Aren’t they just arbitrary projections of ‘taste’? I refrain from killing you, not because it is objectively wrong (Torah) but because the idea of killing any human being is distasteful to me. Any argument against arbitrariness must refer to something beyond the plane of ontological democracy. (Nietzsche) A world with values cannot be flat; it must be hierarchical, and hierarchy cannot function in a plane (unless you’re talking first class seating on an air plane ). In a flat world, how could the phenomenon of value claim aesthetic or ethical priority over anything else? Ludwig Wittgenstein: “No statement of facts can ever be, or imply, a judgment of absolute value…all the facts described would, as it were, stand on the same level.” How often do we find Wittgenstein agreeing with Thomas Aquinas? Aquinas advanced 5 ‘proofs’ for the existence of God, but only one, the 4th, still interests philosophers: “The fourth way is taken from the gradation to be found in things. Among beings, there are some more and some less good, true, noble and the like. But more and less are predicated of different things according as they resemble in their different ways something which is the maximum…so that there is something which is truest, something best, something noblest…and this we call God.” Thomas may not have proven the existence of God, but he may have proven that what you get cannot be reduced to what you see. The existence of Value, if you believe in Value, challenges the underlying premise of WYSIWYG, namely that we live in a universe bereft of ontological gradations. The Latin hymn, Veni Sancte Spiritus sums it up: “ Sine tuo numine, nihil est in homine, nihil est innoxium ”, which roughly translates “without you (God) human beings are empty and everything is noxious”. So, are you WYSIWYG…or anti-WYSIWYG? Admit it, you’d love to be WYSIWYG…and so would I. We could be tenured professors together at an Ivy League university! If only we could convince ourselves… Going solely on what we see, we must accept a world that came to be accidentally, that evolves purposelessly, and that self-destructs inevitably. Suffering overwhelms joy (The Buddha). Islands of order, virtue, truth, and beauty are eroded by entropy, and everything is ultimately erased by time. The world comes from nothing and returns to nothing. All of cosmic history amounts to nothing more than the life span of a self-annihilating virtual particle pair. All the things we do in life amount to nothing more than rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic . Ugh! But on the other hand, abandoning WYSIWYG comes at a price. We must accept that we cannot adequately model the world based solely on experience. We must add elements to our model that we cannot ‘prove’, logically, mathematically, or scientifically. We are necessarily now with Pascal (above) in the realm of ‘faith’. So what might an anti-WYSIWYG model look like? Amazingly, the ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides, often called both the ‘father of western philosophy’ and the ‘father of western science’, provided us with just such a model. Qua scientist, Parmenides was a keen observer and used those observations to construct remarkably accurate models of myriad physical and astronomical phenomena. But, qua philosopher, he understood that the world itself could not be fully explained solely on the basis of such observations. For Parmenides, a world must have two faces or aspects, one seen, one unseeable. He called the former the Way of Appearance ( Doxa ) and the later the Way of Truth ( Aletheia ). Now the Way of Appearance is just what you’d expect: “To come to be and to perish, to be and not to be, to shift place and to exchange bright color.” This is a world we recognize: discrete objects and events, coming to be, then passing away, moving through space, interacting with others, and exchanging qualities in the process. But the Way of Truth is something else again: “What is ungenerated and imperishable, whole, single-limbed, steadfast and complete…Nor was it once, nor will it be, since it is, now, all together, one, continuous…Nor is it divisible, since it all alike is…it is full of what is…” 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 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

< Back In the Year 2125… David Cowles Jan 2, 2025 “The future is indeed bright…if we can get there. Unfortunately…the closer we get to utopia, the greater the risk of a wrong turn.” “In the year 2525, if man is still alive, if woman can survive, they may find…” So begins Zager and Evans’ iconic ballad (1969). But we won’t need to wait 500 years (2525) to know the score; 100 years should suffice nicely: “Train A is traveling at X mph and Train B is traveling in the opposite direction at the same rate. They will collide at 10:45 AM EDT on 4/1/2125.” Prepare for it! I know, I know, you’ve heard it all before, countless times in fact, but this time it really, really, really is true. Things are changing! Things are changing at an accelerating rate. Consider how far we’ve come in just the last100 years (1925 – 2025); we’re a long way from Herbert Hoover’s campaign pledge, “A chicken in every pot.” The ubiquitous American auto: ‘A car in every garage’. Television: ‘A TV in every bedroom’. The PC: ‘A computer in every home’. Cell Phone: ‘A phone in every pocket’. Smart Phone: ‘A computer in every cell phone’. Then there’s… Mail → Fax → FedEx → Email → DM The World Wide Web E-commerce: “Amazon calling!” Atomic energy harnessed: Dr. Strangelove . Space exploration & travel: “…One giant leap…” DNA discovered; genome sequenced. The 20th century changed just about everything we thought we knew about the world. Why would we expect anything less from Century 21? The 20th Century may be remembered as the time where human beings finally asserted control over their environment (for better or worse). If so, Century 21 may be known as the time when we assert control over ourselves. For example… AGI (AI) will permeate every aspect of our lives, democratizing knowledge and marginalizing native human intelligence. We will not so much think as be thought. We will build new life forms (carbon, silicon, hybrid) from scratch. Personal aerial vehicles are routine, (Meet George Jetson!) DNA will routinely be modified in utero and in vitro . Parents will mix and match their children’s traits online. We will regrow damaged limbs and organs. We will extend the crash cart ‘life recovery period’ from a few minutes to hours. Organic and inorganic body parts will be routinely interchanged. Regular, authentic, monitorable telepathic communication will occur regularly. Regular, authentic, symbolic and/or telepathic communication will occur with various species of animals and plants. Most diseases (other than engineered pathogens) will be eradicated. Life expectancy will extend beyond age 100. Permanent, self-sustaining colonies will thrive at various locations in our Solar System. Mars will be terraformed into the Bread Basket of the Solar System. Increased productivity will allow for the virtual elimination of poverty and taxation and for the provision of a generous guaranteed annual income for all. Century 21 will be ‘remembered’ as the time we took on Death and Taxes…and won! Notice that none of my predictions requires a conceptual break with what we know today. Such breakthroughs cannot be predicted or described, except to say that they will undoubtedly occur. So the future is indeed bright…if we can get there. Unfortunately, there is a competing set of scenarios which are on the whole more probable and which will render all of the above meaningless. Ironically, the closer we get to utopia, the greater the risk of a wrong turn. Here are just a few of the mistakes we need to avoid: A Superbug. COVID-19 was a shot across our bow. Whether accidentally or deliberately, human manipulation of the genetic code has the potential to create and release a deadly pathogen that we cannot eradicate or control. Nuclear War. We spent the ‘50s crouched under our desks at school…and nothing happened. The world’s political leaders proved more responsible than we expected. But the geo-political climate is much more dangerous today than it was 65 years ago and WMDs are proliferating. Hal 1000 (from 2001- A Space Odyssey ). We are capable of creating an artificial life form with the power to make decisions that will lead to human extinction or enslavement. Devolution. AI stifles thinking, Social Media replaces community, media ratings replace electoral democracy, Artificial Selection reduces genetic resilience. The Borg Collective. Notice what’s not on the catastrophe list: Climate Change. I believe that technology already exists, or soon will, to solve our climate problem. We lack the political will to deploy it; but as we get closer to Armageddon, that will change (I hope). Extraterrestrials. I don’t know if they exist but if they do, I doubt we’ll make contact in the coming century. And who knows, perhaps they’ll come in peace. So buckle up! You’ve got a great ride ahead of you…I hope. 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. 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.

Suppose we were to express our generation's secular worldview as a 'creed,' how would it read? < Back Competing Creeds David Cowles Jul 13, 2022 Suppose we were to express our generation's secular worldview as a 'creed,' how would it read? Christians are often chided for believing things that are, well, “unbelievable.” Maybe so — but is any of it any more unbelievable than what is generally, and for the most part uncritically, accepted as “Gospel” today, in our supposedly post-Christian era? I do not mean to insist that either model is necessarily right or wrong; rather, I want to point out that the two models are of a similar logical, epistemological, and ontological order. The fact is that our world is a many-splendored thing; it would be surprising if it did not require creative categories of explanation. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com. Share Previous Next Click here. Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, Fall Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

“An idol is that with no this…the sound of one hand clapping. It is Alice’s Cheshire Cat – all face, no body; all hat, no cattle!” < Back Idolatry David Cowles Oct 15, 2023 “An idol is that with no this…the sound of one hand clapping. It is Alice’s Cheshire Cat – all face, no body; all hat, no cattle!” Moses Maimonides (c. 1200 CE) wrote: “We are commanded ( Deuteronomy ) to demolish all idols and their places of worship with all kinds of demolition and destruction — breaking, burning, dismantling, and cutting down. Each method is to be used where most effective, where it will achieve the most complete and speedy destruction…there should not remain any remnant.” (That’s the 185 th Mitzvah.) Maimonides is not alone. Others have spoken out concerning the need to destroy injustice at its roots: Barry Goldwater (1964): “Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Jean-Paul Sartre (1948), Franz Fanon (1960) and Malcolm X (1964): “…by any means necessary!” Jesus of Nazareth (30): “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!” (Luke 12: 49) Interesting bedfellows, no? And yet, if Jews and Christians agree on anything, it’s peace! “The lamb shall lie down with the lion.” (Is.11: 6–9 & Rev 21: 1-4) But how do we get there from here? Tolerance of sin? Not according to Scripture! We are commanded to rid the world of sin - root and branch. (Job 18:16) Mercy for the sinner? Absolutely! “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” (John 8:7) Is idolatry sinful? Of course, it is! “Thou shalt not have other gods beside me.” (Ex. 20: 2) But idolatry is not just a sin, one sin among others; idolatry is sin itself! To put it another way, all sin is, at its root, idolatry . In fact, anything and everything is sinful precisely to the extent that… and only to the extent that …it functions as an idol, that it displaces God. Nothing is sinful in itself (everything is good to the extent that it is); it is only made sinful when we turn it into an idol (something it is not). Gold jewelry is not sinful, but it becomes sinful when we melt it down and form it into the likeness of a calf for us to worship. In the cosmology of Hasidic Judaism, everything this is, animate or inanimate, contains within it a divine spark. When we treat what is as it is , we release that spark and allow it to ascend home to YHWH. When we use what is as it is not , we further bind the spark in its spatiotemporal prison. The Judeo-Christian God is not merely ‘truthful’ and ‘just’; YHWH is Truth and Justice! Therefore, we commit a sin, a sin against God, whenever we engage in behavior contrary to what is true or just, i.e. whenever we practice idolatry. Every sin honors our own perverse will at the expense of God’s transcendent values, i.e., at the expense of God, who is Value, who is the Good. For our sophisticated selves, golden calves have lost their luster. No problem! A modern-day idolater may confer ultimate value on his personal safety, comfort and prosperity, on her schedule, agenda and career, all in lieu of God. No surprise here. Whenever we fashion a golden calf (or purchase a new Lexus) and place it on an altar (physically or metaphorically), we substitute what is inert and irrelevant for what is living and true. The Judeo-Christian tradition is built on mercy…up to a point; we are told that sins against the Holy Spirit cannot be forgiven. Why not…and what is a ‘sin against the Holy Spirit’ anyway? The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth (God’s Spirit) and therefore the foundation of what is real. When we deny what is real, we turn our backs on the Holy Spirit; and when we affirm what is false in place of what is true, we commit the sin of idolatry. We place the object of our false trust and belief on the altar in our hearts that should have been reserved for God alone. So why unforgivable? To sin against the Holy Spirt is to sin against Truth itself, to substitute an inert and decomposing idol for the living God. Our sins cannot be forgiven as long as we maintain personal maps of the world that are not congruent with God’s logos . i.e., do not conform to reality. It is a commonplace both of home discipline and social jurisprudence that a miscreant cannot be forgiven until he accepts responsibility for his misdeeds. Until we internalize God’s logos ( aka Torah), we are condemned to practice idolatry. There can be no question of forgiveness because, without an acceptance of logos , there can be no sincere resolution to ‘amend our lives’. Those who ignore logos persist in the practice of idolatry; they cannot accept responsibility for their actions, and therefore they cannot be forgiven. This is the sense in which it is correct to say that all salvation comes through Jesus: Jesus is the incarnation of logos . (John 1: 1 – 3) But all is not lost! When we do adopt logos , our idols literally vanish into thin air. They were no-thing to begin with, they are nothing now! Where there was once a golden calf, there is now just a lump of gold. Our past sins are not forgiven…because they don’t need to be. They are well and truly ‘forgotten’: it is as though they never were! Again, according to John (8: 31-32), “…The truth will set you free.” To the extent that we reject what is true, we forfeit that ‘freedom’ and choose slavery. We roll back the Exodus. We willingly return to Egypt, ‘that house of bondage’ (Ex. 20: 2), just as the early Hebrew idolaters urged us to do. When we practice idolatry, we crawl back to Pharaoh with our tails between our legs, “We apologize for the seditious acts of Moses and Aaron, and we regret the disloyalty we exhibited by following them instead of you, O Great Ruler! Please let us build your pyramids again. (You’ll have to admit, nobody builds pyramids like we do!) So let us build for you again – and we’ll gladly make our bricks without straw as a way of showing you just how sorry we are.” In a famous movie, Cool Hand Luke (1967), the sadistic warden determines to torture Paul Newman until Newman’s character ‘gets his mind right’, i.e., until he conforms his will to that of the warden. It is not enough for Newman to obey; he must adopt his captor’s map of the world. Likewise, we are called not just to obey commandments, but to adopt our savior’s map of the world. That is what the Great Commandment (Matthew 22: 35 - 40) is all about…a map of the world: God…and neighbor. Per Jean-Paul Sartre (above), freedom is a precondition of every virtue and value. A value is only valuable to the extent that it has the potential to influence events as they unfold in the world. Likewise, an action can only be virtuous if it is performed freely . Per Barry Goldwater (also above), “Extremism in defense of Liberty is no vice.” In 1941 ( Escape from Freedom ), Eric Fromm argued that there is a basic human tendency to trade freedom for comfort (physical & existential). Is that tendency what we refer to as ‘original sin’? Is our fascination with idols our original sin ? The heroes of scripture are those who traded comfort and security for wisdom and understanding. Adam & Eve, for example, traded Paradise for the knowledge of Good & Evil. Abraham, Moses, Solomon, the prophets, John the Baptist and, finally, Jesus all traded comfort and security for wisdom and knowledge. In the 20 th century, British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, coined the phrase: “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.” ( Process and Reality , et al.) Idols are nothing if not concrete! And yet, as substitutes for God, they are illusory. They represent conceptually something that does not exist materially. Therefore, to idolize anything is to ‘misplace concreteness’. An idol is that with no this , there with no here, then with no now; an idol is the sound of one hand clapping. It is Alice’s Cheshire Cat – all face, no body, or to borrow a line from the modern American political scene, “all hat, no cattle!” Idolatry is just exactly what it says it is: the substitution of ‘not-God’ for God and ‘not-neighbor’ for neighbor. We all have our own idols, the things we either confuse with God or knowingly and willingly place above God according to our own, personal hierarchy of values. For example, if you’re living in Canaan in the 2 nd millennium BCE, you might confuse Baal (a local god) with YHWH (the maker of heaven and earth). If you’re living in America in the 21 st century A.D., you might be placing certain ‘material things’ above God on your ‘altar’. You know they’re not God, but at the end of the day, they exert more influence on your behavior than God does. We believe in God, but we put our faith in idols : alcohol, drugs, sex, money, power, affluence, notoriety, and fame…to name just a few. To be clear, these things are not ‘bad’ in themselves. We make them ‘bad’ when (and only when), we place them above God in our own personal ‘hierarchy of values’. All true values subsist in God’s essential being. In fact, those values are God’s essential being, but they are God’s essential being according to an order, a logos . When I substitute my personal hierarchy of values for the hierarchy of values that is logos , I create an idol. The logos (ordering) of God’s essential values optimizes the role each value plays in the whole. Logos is the expression of God’s values in the context of creation, in terms of the World. When we say that God exists, we assert the reality of God’s essence (values) and his logos (Christ). Idols are not just not God; they are not-God ! They do not instantiate the values we associate with God, nor do they project his logos onto (or into) the world. The philosophical journey of the Israelites began with God’s self-revelation to Moses: “I am what am.” (Exodus 3: 14) Which begs the question: “What is?” And now we are in a position to answer that question! (Drum roll please.) ‘What-is’ is God’s values, ordered via his logos and experienced in concrete actual entities that occur in the world for the benefit of others. ‘What-is-not’ is idols! Paraphrasing Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “idols, idols, everywhere but not a drop to drink,” not a drop of the living water that is, i.e., the spring that is the source of eternal life. 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 Click here. Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, Fall Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back Quark Soup David Cowles “I once filled the entire universe, but for less than a second. I am 100,000 times hotter than the center of the sun, but I am still a liquid. I am denser than anything in the universe, except a black hole, but I flow 20 times more easily and smoothly than water. Who am I?” Do you like riddles? Try this one: “I once filled the entire universe, but for less than a second. I am 100,000 times hotter than the center of the sun, but I am still a liquid. I am denser than anything in the universe, except a black hole, but I flow 20 times more easily and smoothly than water. Who am I?” Give up? I’m Quark Soup! But what the heck is that? All the objects in our world are made of atoms. Each atom consists of a nucleus and a bunch of electrons (ok, at least one electron) surrounding that nucleus. The nucleus of an atom is made of protons and neutrons, and protons and neutrons are made up of quarks: three quarks each to be exact. Quarks stick together…but not necessarily by choice. They are held together by a very strong kind of superglue called a gluon (glue-on, get it?). But gluons work differently from any glue you’ve ever used. When the quarks are just hanging out peacefully inside a proton or neutron, the gluons don’t do much; however, if one quark tries to break loose from the others, the gluons swing into action. They tug tightly on that quark so it can’t escape. The more the quark tries to pull away, the tighter the gluon tugs on it. Gluons are so strong that there is no way for a quark to escape from a proton or neutron…unless you heat it up to four trillion degrees (4,000,000,000,000º C). Only at that temperature (sometimes written 4 x 10¹², meaning 4 with 12 zeros after it) can quarks break gluons’ grip to form Quark Soup. So, where can I go to sample this rare gastronomic treat? You’d need to rent a time machine, but if you point your time machine at the center of the universe as it was 13 billion years ago, you’ll find yourself, quite literally, ‘in the soup.’ You’ll have to calibrate your time machine very, very accurately, though. Your target is a fraction of a second, 13 billion years ago. If you want Quark Soup, you’ve got to ‘stick’ the landing. Ok, that sounds annoying! How about I travel to the center of the sun instead? I hear there are some fabulous restaurants there, but no, sorry, you’re out of luck there too: the center of the sun is a mere 40,000,000º C – we’re still five zeros short. You have a better chance of getting a frozen popsicle on the sun than you have of getting Quark Soup. Let’s recap : You’re craving Quark Soup, but there’s literally nowhere in the universe you can go to get it, at least not now! You can either travel back 13 billion years…or you can make it yourself! The recipe is super easy, and the ingredients are relatively cheap, though the ‘pots and pans’ you’ll need for this recipe could be a bit pricey. Recipe : The nuclei of two gold atoms, two miles of tubing and some very powerful magnets. Insert the nuclei into the tube and use the magnets to accelerate the nuclei through that tube. When you get the nuclei up to a speed almost equal to the speed of light, use the magnets to make them crash into one another, head-on. Bang, you’ve got the temperature you need for Quark Soup! Once upon a time, but only for a fraction of a second, the whole universe was Quark Soup. Long before the end of that first second, the soup disappeared and has never since existed anywhere in the universe…except once on Long Island (NY); of course, where else? In 2010, at a place called Brookhaven, scientists finally freed quarks from their 13 billion year bondage! They built something called a Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC for short) – this is the costly part. They followed the recipe (above) exactly (using 1,740 powerful magnets) and guess what? It worked! They ‘created’ Quark Soup on Long Island. So, if you can’t get enough time off from work or school to go back to the center of the universe 13 billion years ago, perhaps you could make it to Long Island, a dozen or so years ago. Even so, this seems like a lot of trouble to go through for a drop of soup: what’s this soup like, anyway? What makes it soooo special? Well, for one thing, it’s hot, very, very hot, 4 x 10¹²º C hot, but it’s still a liquid: ‘ Quark Soup don’t boil!’ And what a liquid! It pours at least 20 times more easily than ordinary tap water, but it it is also very, very thick (i.e., dense). Good thing because it’s also very, very small. How small is it? Think of a box (cube) where each edge is about an inch long. Is that how small it is? Not exactly. Now split that box up into 10 smaller boxes. Is that how small it is? Are we there yet? Then, split one of those smaller boxes into 10 even smaller boxes, and keep doing this until you’ve done it a total of 12 times. That’s how small it is and, yes, we’re there now! Talk about small portions! Of course, you could order a sandwich with your soup, but no need. A drop of Quark Soup weighs about 1,000 pounds. Oops, hold that sandwich and bring me a doggie-bag instead. Turns out, Quark Soup is heavier (the correct scientific term is “denser”) than anything else in the universe…except a black hole. So, Quark Soup is hot, slippery, and thick, but what does it taste like? Is it worth all the fuss? Who knows? No one’s ever tasted it. There were no people around 13 billion years ago to sample this concoction, and time travel has not been perfected yet. What about Long Island? The scientists at Brookhaven were watching their weight. A 1,000 pound drop of soup was the last thing they needed! However, there’s another problem: a single drop would vaporize your whole body – a heavy price to pay for a sip, however delicious it may be. So, there’s no way to know what Quark Soup tastes like, unless, of course, you ask Bobby Flay. 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