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< Back Past, Present, Future David Cowles "So, it turns out that the universe did not have a lot of options when it came to structuring time." “The Past” does not exist – by definition. It consists of events that once happened or might have happened but are not happening now. “The Future” does not exist either – also by definition. It consists of events that will happen or may happen but have not yet happened and are not happening now. What exists is what is happening now, and neither the Past nor the Future is happening. That leaves “The Present”. According to post-modern deconstructionist, Jacques Derrida, the Present consists of all events (potential as well as actual) that are neither elements of the set of actual or possible past events nor elements of the set of actual or possible future events. Derrida follows the Via Negativa ; he defines the Present, not by what it is, but by what it is not. This scheme presupposes that every event is unique. No two events, however similar they may seem, can ever be the same event . Cosmic censorship will not allow an event to happen more than once. Among other things, this allows us to assign each unique event to a specified coordinate region. No two events can have the same coordinates. Otherwise, the world be irreparable chaotic: “…without form or shape, with darkness over the abyss and a mighty wind sweeping over the waters.” (Genesis 1: 2) While innumerable events could occur in any specified coordinate region, only one event does occur in that region. Broadly speaking, there are three popular models of time: Linear Time (e.g., the relentless progression of birthdays), Static Time (all events occur simultaneously), and Cyclical Time ( aka Eternal Recurrence). Eternal Recurrence (Nietzsche, et al.) presents some of the same philosophical problems as Time Travel. In the latter case, ‘the past’ is never a settled matter of fact. Instead of living their lives in the Present, time travelers focus on adjusting the Past to create a different Present . Of course, it’s a fool’s game because any modification of a past event, no matter how slight, can have unanticipated, and possibly catastrophic, consequences. Or it can also have no perceptible consequence at all. Either way it is unpredictable and therefore uncontrollable. Time can amplify or dampen, but it can never just conserve or repeat. Now suppose a time traveler were to go all the way back to the primordial event, Big Bang, and prevent that event from occurring: no universe…and no nosey parker to modify it. A universe in which time travel is a possibility is a universe that does not exist because it is self-erasing. With Eternal Recurrence, the Past cannot be modified but past events can pop back-up anywhere in spacetime. Here, too, the past is never totally in our rearview mirror. Unless the universe is micro-determined, the reoccurrence of a past event does not necessarily ensure that the future will repeat as well…but neither does it preclude such a possibility. And since the possibility is not precluded, we must assume that that will happen at some point. Once that happens, the universe will just ‘seize up’ eliminating any notion of novelty or freedom. So, it turns out that the universe did not have a lot of options when it came to structuring time. Time cannot be recursive! Whether we alter the past to change the present or bring the past forward in order to relive it, time would no longer include a real future, and without a real future, time would not be time. Cain left Eden to earn a degree in urban planning. Abram left Ur to find the Promised Land. Moses left Egypt to create a just society. Generations of Americans went west in pursuit of liberty and/or luxury. None of these ‘heroes’ had any interest in changing the past, or in conserving it for that matter. They understood life as perpetual change, and they sought to harness that change in pursuit of novelty and progress. Time Travel and Eternal Recurrence take that away. Progress is no longer a hope, a dream, a goal, or a project; now our future is found in our past. We look to improve the present not by building a new future but by resuscitating or modifying a spent past. It’s the myth of a Golden Age. Now back to the real world. A world with a non-degenerate dimension of time. This world – the world - consists exclusively of unique events, both actual and potential: (1) whatever happened or might have happened (Past), (2) whatever will or might yet happen (Future), and (3) whatever did not happen and could not happen either in the past or in the future (Present). Present events, then, are not at all like past or future events. The present is the realm of pure potential; it is ever fresh. The Present inherits the past and anticipates the future; therefore, no event is ever either random or determined. There are no efficient or final causes at work in the Present. Whatever happens in the Present is a function of free will, acting on the past (without changing it) and projecting toward the future (without limiting it). The great 20th century physicist, Richard Feynman, took an alternate route but, like Robert Frost, he ended up at the same destination. He defined the Present, positively (rather than negatively ), as the sum of everything that might have happened in the past, whether it did or did not, and everything that might happen in the future, whether it does or does not. He called this method, Sum over Histories . Relative to the actual past, the Present may appear random; relative to the actual future, the Present may appear irrelevant. But relative to a Past that includes everything that might have been, whether or not it was, the Present precludes randomness; likewise, relative to a Future that includes everything that might yet come to be, whether or not it does, precludes any repetition. Either way, you can’t go home again. The Present, as you can see, is stranded on an ontological island. Parodying a Christmas special, the Present is the island of misfit events . Neti, neti – neither past nor future, that is the present. The Present is not an alternate Past or, for that matter, an alternate Future. Since the Present consists of only those events that could not have happened in the past and that cannot happen in the future, the Present is unique – perhaps the paradigmatic example of uniqueness since any overlap with non-present events is strictly prohibited – again, by definition. Traditional Western metaphysics, according to Derrida, defines the Present positively in terms of “what is”. Borrowing from Exodus , chapter 3, the Present “is what is”, it is the “eternal now”. Derrida correctly, in my view, and bravely, acknowledges that any such positive metaphysics must inevitably point to the existence of God, which he, of course, being a 20th century intellectual, denies. To resolve this dilemma, Derrida suggests we define the Present negatively , in terms of what it is not. The question of what it is, if anything, is left open. Present becomes an undefined term in his ontology. ‘God’ is odd man out. In any event, this post-modern Present is not the infinitesimal point posited by Newtonian physics and illustrated on the Real Number Line. It may yet turn out to be an infinitesimal point, or more likely a Planck unit, in which case the set of the present events would have no members (it would be a null set); but we don’t know that yet. It is something to be discovered, not assumed. Our initial hypothesis must be that the Present is a region like the Past and the Future. If the region turns out to be empty, so be it. But ‘region’ implies ‘extension’. If the present occupies a region on the timeline, then presumably, it must have extension along that line. But that would mean that the present was a combination of past and future elements; it would not be ‘Present’ at all, at least not in Derrida’s sense of the word. I see protestors gathering outside my first-floor window. They’re singing songs and carrying signs, mostly saying: Save the Present. Sidebar : if you look closely, you can see that on many of the signs, the word “Present” has overwritten the scratched-out remnants of “Planet." One superannuated hippie is carrying a sign on which “Present” appears to have overwritten “Whales." There is only one way to salvage a real Present: you must assume that ‘Present’ denotes an extensive region on the timeline which, experienced internally, is timeless. Viewed from the outside, the so-called Present appears to have duration (a form of extension); but not when viewed from the inside. The Present is a process, but ‘process’ does not necessarily imply ‘sequence’. We are used to process unfolding in time. But it doesn’t have to be that way. There is no ontologically compelling reason why process needs to be a function of sequence or vice versa . Example : I am listening to the 5th Brandenburg Concerto. It takes about 20 minutes to perform. That performance occupies a place in the spacetime continuum and, if necessary, the experience can be analyzed minute by minute. But as soon as that happens, the Concerto itself disappears. We are no longer ‘experiencing the Concerto’, we are no longer in the Present; now we are dissecting measures written down 300 years ago and/or anticipating the experience of hearing the Concerto performed at a later date. We have allowed the Present to dissolve into the Past/Future. Subjectively, we incorporate the Past and the Future into our experiential Present as Faith and as Hope, respectively. If Anaximander is right and Being occurs only when potential entities self-actualize by giving each other ‘reck’, then the Present is constituted simply as Love. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Previous Next

< Back The Haiku Challenge Haiku is a traditional form of Japanese poetry usually consisting of 17 syllables, arranged in three lines of five, seven, and five syllables, respectively. Starting with our Special Beach Issue, each issue of ATM will include Haiku, selected by our editors from submissions by you, our loyal readers. Please send us your Haiku to editor@aletheiatoday.com. Be sure to put “Haiku Challenge” in the subject line, and your seventeen-syllable poem may be shared with the world. (You can read more about haikus and see examples in Haiku Corner in this issue of AT Magazine.) Previous Share Return to the Table of Contents, Beach Issue Next Return to the Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back Of Mice and Mirrors “On a deeper level than you know, your neighbor is yourself…and you are your neighbor.” David Cowles Do I know who I am? Only if I know who you are! And so a new ‘mouse test’ solves a three millennia-old conundrum: How do I even know that I am ? Bet you haven’t thought much about that since college! Fortunately, others have. René Descartes (d. 1650 CE) claimed to have discovered being in the process of thinking: cogito ergo sum . As self-absorbed adolescents, most of us found Descartes’ naval gazing attractive and convincing for a time. But Descartes had his critics—some before he was born. The grandfather of Western philosophy, Anaximander (c. 550 BCE), believed that each of us comes to be only by relating (‘granting reck’) to an ontological equal, e.g., another person. 2500 years later, a Jewish existentialist, Martin Buber, picked up the baton: “In the beginning is the relation.” In between, there was a guy named Jesus (c. 30 CE), aka the Christ, who picked out one of the 613 mitzvahs found in Torah and made it the cornerstone of his philosophy: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” This is not the standard Sunday School ‘do unto others’ – this is radical ontology: Regard your neighbor as yourself because, on a deeper level than you know, your neighbor is yourself…and you are your neighbor. This Jesus inspired a cadre of followers that included two of the world’s greatest philosophers, Paul of Tarsus and John of Ephesus. Together, the three created a stir that lasted a few hundred years. Then Jesus went out of fashion, and we had to ‘make do’ with the acrid ideas of Machiavelli and his heirs. So began the real Dark Ages (1500 – 1900 CE). But now we know, Jesus was right after all (along with Buber, Anaximander, et al.). “And how do I know? A mouse test tells me so!” Here’s how: At birth, a ‘mischief of mice’ is divided into two teams; call them Team Jesus and Team Descartes . Cartesian mice are raised in a mouse-free, mirror-free environment, aka isolation. Christian mice grow up in the company of other members of their species and in the vicinity of mirrors. It’s Game Day! Experimenters first select a Cartesian mouse. They put a dollop of white ink on the mouse’s black fur, and then they place that mouse in front of a mirror. Nothing happens. (What’d you expect, fireworks?) But then they repeat the experiment, this time selecting a good, church-going Christian mouse. As soon as the Christian mouse catches sight of itself in the mirror, it begins to engage in heightened grooming activity, apparently attempting to wipe off the white ink. Our Christian mouse (1) knows what she is supposed to look like (through experience with other mice), (2) realizes that the mouse-in-the-mirror is she, (3) recognizes that she does not look as she should, and (4) initiates remediation, aka self-grooming, to correct the problem. This is an intellectual tour de force . But it may come with a dark side! Jun Yokose, study author, University of Texas, writes: “Using gene expression mapping, the researchers identified a subset of neurons in the ventral hippocampus that were activated when the mice ‘recognized’ themselves in the mirror. When the researchers selectively rendered these neurons non-functional, the mice no longer displayed the mirror-and-ink-induced grooming behavior. “A subset of these self-responding neurons also became activated when the mice observed other mice of the same strain (and therefore similar physical appearance and fur color), but not when they observed a different strain of mouse that had white fur.” “The gene expression analysis also showed that socially isolated mice did not develop self-responding neuron activity in the hippocampus, and neither did the black-furred mice that were reared by white-furred mice, suggesting that mice need to have social experiences alongside other similar-looking mice in order to develop the neural circuits required for self-recognition.” Does this mean that incipient racism is hard-wired into the mammalian genome? Or, much worse, that it is inherent in the process of thinking itself? In that dire case, do we need to be concerned that racism will be an emergent property of AI? How would you recognize a racist bot? Are we about to unleash a new generation of Klansmen? Moving beyond ‘race’, if that were even possible, the research suggests that self-awareness ( aka consciousness) may require us to see ourselves from outside-in, reflected either in other, similar-looking members of our community or in an external image (e.g., reflection in a mirror) of ourselves. Would art, e.g. a cave painting, serve the same function? Writing this in December 2023, I am struck by how quickly Hamas’ recent invasion of Israel triggered an eruption of antisemitism across the globe. With little apparent thought, folks’ opposition to the specific policies of the current government of Israel turned into violence against anyone of Jewish descent, anywhere, without provocation of any sort. Many Jews oppose both the objectives and the tactics of Israel’s military offensive, but that reality seems lost on the knee-jerk antisemites. You can hardly escape the feeling that this was simmering just below the surface, waiting for the slightest crack in the crust of civilization to erupt geyser-like into the air. You will not be surprised to hear that the 21 st century may be when we finally learn that we’re not alone. You’ve been expecting little green men on your front lawn for years now. But I’m not talking about extraterrestrials; I’m talking about the myriad of species with whom we share our planet, most of whom were here long before we were. Who’s the alien now? The fact is, we live surrounded by sentient, self-aware organisms that we have shamelessly treated as if they were pet rocks . Now, as we push back the fog of anthropo-exclusivity, perhaps we will also discover our own common humanity. 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. Share Previous Next

< Back The Ark of the Covenant David Cowles Feb 9, 2023 “You want me to believe that your God is invisible, that he lives in an empty box…and you want me to worship that box?” The Ark of the Covenant, along with the Tabernacle that housed it, has an important role in the history, identity, and spirituality of the Jewish people. Its construction was mandated by God in the Torah … and God was not stingy with his advice. In fact, he gave his artisans explicit instructions re its shape, size, contents, and adornment. Why so many details? According to Torah scholar, Rashi (11 th Century CE), the Tabernacle and the Ark were constructed in direct counterpoise to the infamous Golden Calf. The state of theology in the Middle East in the 2 nd millennium BCE was deplorable. Almost without exception, conceptions of God were rooted in the material world: idols, nature nymphs, heavenly bodies with their myriad motions and constellations. The Golden Calf is emblematic of this theology. In the Middle Ages, this theological method would have been called the via positiva : affirmative propositions about God: “God is…” Ancient Middle Eastern theology was the handmaiden of the state . It was a self-conscious function of religion to support social hierarchies, reinforce cultural mores, and promote public order, aka the State. Pre-Mosaic theology was inherently reactionary; unlike Judeo-Christianity, it was indeed an ‘opiate of the people’. Marx was right; he just came along three millennia too late! Is there a reciprocal relationship between idolatry and tyranny? Watch this space for future updates. Fortunately, Moses stepped up and filled in for the tardy Karl. In the Book of Exodus , Moshe and YHWH plot, organize, and carry out a political, cultural and theological revolution, the scope of which would have made Lenin and Mao drool. According to author Katia Bolotin , Moses succeeded in imbuing the people with a unity of purpose…without the social fiction of a State. “He transformed them into a united workforce of willing individuals. How was this achieved? By respecting and valuing each person’s contribution, Moses demonstrated that everyone mattered. He impressed upon the people the greatness of their collective mission...” In other words, who needs a Stinkin’ State when you’ve got Moses…and YHWH…and a fallen world to redeem. In fact, it all started with a new conception of Divinity: “I am who am” (or “I will be what I will be”). God cannot be identified, compared, or even symbolized by anything material. The new religion was iconoclastic and therefore a true liberation theology . “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in their own eyes.” (Judges 21: 25) In addition to the via positiva (above), the Middle Ages recognized another theological method called the via negativa . Unlike its self-assured cousin, the via negativa consists of negative propositions about God. God is defined by what he is not. Like Michelangelo, the ‘negative’ theologian chisels away at an undifferentiated block of marble until a hidden image appears (‘a negative’). Neti, neti – God’s not this, God’s not that. Today, it is generally accepted that we can only learn about God by analogy (Thomas Aquinas), by negation (Nicholas of Cusa), or perhaps by personal experience. In 1200 BCE, I rented an apartment in Bethlehem overlooking a schoolyard. Canaanite and Jewish children played side-by-side; it was wonderful. On the first day of the new school year, I happened to be sitting at an open window and I heard an interesting conversation between two 3 rd graders: “My daddy can beat up your daddy.” “Well, my God can smite your god.” “Ok, show me your God.” “I can’t.” “Why not? I can show you mine . He’s huge and scary and made of gold and covered with jewels. Why can’t you show me yours?” “I just can’t, that’s all; but I can tell you stories about my God and the amazing things he did for our people long ago; or I can show you the Ark of the Covenant where God’s special presence lives.” “Now you’re talking! Let’s go see that. Then we’ll see your God.” “Well, no, even if I could lift the lid, which I can’t, there’s really nothing to see inside. Just some souvenirs of the time my people spent in Egypt and Sinai: manna, a flowering staff, and some stone tablets we picked up in the desert.” “So, where is your God? You said that his special presence was in the Ark. Why can’t I see him then? Is he wearing an invisibility cloak?” “No, no one can see him because he’s nowhere…and everywhere…all at once; he’s here right here now as a matter of fact. We just can’t see him.” “So, let me get this straight: you want me to believe that your God is invisible, that he lives in an empty box (kind of like Oscar); you want me to believe that your nowhere God can ‘smite’ my golden god ; and you want me to worship that box?” It was probably too much to hope that a third-grader would be able to explain that the Ark was a ‘sanctified space’ through which God’s presence was manifest to his people. We do not worship ‘the box’ per se ; we worship its emptiness. Folks used to seeing their god as figure find it hard to see our God as ground. So, as you can probably guess, things did not go well from here. “What are you, a wise guy? I was hoping we could be friends, but now I see that I’ll just have to beat you up instead. Sorry.” Of course, we no longer have the physical Ark. But Katia Bolotin (above) suggests we recreate the Ark in our own lives: Make every gathering a place (a space) where God’s presence can dwell. Build communities, not through constraint but through the discovery of common purpose. Not bad advice coming from the second millennium…BCE! Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

Aletheia Today presents its Holy Days issue, where faith and science converge to celebrate and explore religious traditions. This special edition delves into the significance of holy days from the Old and New Testaments, offering a blend of process philosophy, scripture study, and critical essays. Discover the deeper meanings of religious observances and their relevance in modern society, fostering a harmonious dialogue between faith and science. Inside Our Holy Days 2024 Issue Philosophy The Meaning of Life “In the absence of God, or any transcendent reality, the meaning of life can only be death, oblivion, and the total absence of meaning – aka the Absurd.” Dante and the Yellow Submarine “Yellow Submarine did for the Divine Comedy what West Side Story did for Romeo & Juliet…but I very much doubt the Beatles had any idea what they’d done!” The Frost Diamond “God is ‘special’ only to that extent that in God, A and Ω are one…God is what it means to initiate and what it means to culminate.” Super-Determinism “Things are the way they are simply because they are the way they are.” Theology Marx vs. Mark “The Gospel of Mark is no biography…It’s a call to action, a manifesto, a How to manual for non-violent guerilla warriors everywhere, 1st century…or 21st.” Sacramental Priesthood “I’m willing to bet there are some people out there (actually, a lot of people) who would literally love to spend their careers revealing the presence of God to others.” Culture & The Arts The Wonder School “Learning begins with curiosity and children are nothing but question-boxes.” The Concept of Death “Change cannot entail the annihilation of what changes… Something of what was must be conserved or it’s not ‘change’ at all, is it?” Spirituality Beyond the Rainbow Bridge: The Loss of a Pet and the Afterlife "In the silence of loss, I cling to the whispers of hope, believing that beyond the veil of goodbye, our beloved pets wait, their love an eternal beacon guiding us through the darkness." Comfort for Clumsy Believers: What the Disbelief of the Disciples Means for Us "There is evidence that, in the backs of the disciples' minds, there was always the glimmer of the same question that shimmers on my frontal lobe today: 'But what if we’ve gotten it all wrong about him?'" Navigating Easter to Pentecost "Jesus was always teaching. Teaching, all the time." Finding Gold in the Scars "We will adorn our scars with gold and reminisce on our journey—guided by hope." Readers React What's the buzz about? Our readers' reactions to Aletheia Today... Additional Reading Can't get enough of Aletheia Today's content? Check out the books that inspire our magazine.

< Back Common Sense Academy Routs Info Tech, 97 - 3 "Imagine that the Borg Collective and Jean Luc Picard had a baby…" David Cowles According to Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, et al., we only think about 3% of what we think we think. Come again? Only 3% of the thoughts we think we think are really our own thoughts. The rest (97%) consists of memes we’ve memorized over the years as part of our ‘acculturation’. 97% of what we think we think is what we call Common Sense. The ‘common sense answer’ to any question is whatever answer is most likely. Common Sense is nothing if not ‘trendy’. Overall, only 3% of what we think we think is Information; the rest is Common Sense (Noise). So, 97 to 3 - Wow! I once coached a basketball team that lost a game by this much – or at least it seemed that way at the time. Roughly speaking, Information is the difference between what is and what might have been. Therefore, the Information Content (IC) of any event (including those ‘events’ we call ‘communication’) is the difference between what happened and what was expected to happen. On average, 97% of what we think is what we expected. Only 3% is novel, fresh, unanticipated. So, in an average sentence, 3% is Information, 97% is Noise. Of course, Noise is not entirely without IC; that content consists of confirmation that what was most likely the case is in fact the case. The more likely it is that x will occur, the less information is generated when x does occur. Noise is not a state of Zero IC but a state of Minimal IC, the least IC possible in a given situation. Communication requires both a ‘sender’ and a ‘receiver’. Communication occurs only to the extent that the sender and the receiver are synchronized. Think of a radio. It is only a source of Information when the receiver is synchronized with the transmitter, i.e., when they are ‘on that same wavelength’ (i.e., station). There are many ‘synchronizing’ agents at work in our lives: language, culture, shared experience, etc. Add one more to the list: the rate at which Information is communicated (sent and received). Communication only occurs when Information is being sent…and received…at the same pace. In our relentless human pursuit of Information, we would like to communicate as much information as possible in as little time as possible. Common Sense suggests that we can achieve this goal by increasing the size, frequency and velocity of the information packets sent. But Common Sense would be wrong…as usual! These steps will not increase the volume of information communicated; they will decrease it! Instead of information flowing freely (laminar flow), it clogs the receiver (turbulent flow). Have we stepped through Lewis Carroll’s Looking Glass ? We are certainly living in a ‘backwards’ world, that much is certain. It turns out that Common Sense works to minimize the Information Content of every conversation; and that’s no accident! (Headline: “Mind Blown!”) Evolution (genetic, epigenetic, and cultural) works to maximize the global communication of information by minimizing the IC of every specific conversation. Huh? Information is novelty; Common Sense abhors novelty. That's why it’s called Common. Common Sense sacrifices Information in pursuit of Intelligibility. The less Information I transmit (per packet, per second), the more readily that information will be absorbed by the receiving party. If you want to see what the world would be like without Common Sense, try reading James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (FW). This ‘novel’ is designed to eliminate every vestige of Common Sense from the text. Every word, every letter, requires our full attention. We can anticipate nothing. FW maximizes IC but makes the reader 100% responsible for receiving it. Ok, but ask yourself this, how many people have read FW from cover to cover…and understood it? Two somewhat more accessible writers whose work is still ‘IC dense’ are Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound (Cantos). Many authors (myself included?) use language as if it were a wave and the readers as wave-riders. The goal is to deliver Information in a sequence of pre-measured packets at a pace designed to optimize absorption and retention. “It’s a good summertime read,” is considered praise when, in fact, it refers to a dumbing down of the world. Sorry, Rodin, I’m just 3% thinker, 97% thought – thought by the collective we call ‘humanity’ via the medium we call Common Sense. Are you familiar with Star Trek: The Next Generation? Imagine that the Borg Collective (97%) and Jean Luc Picard (3%) had a baby: I am that baby! 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! Share Previous Next

< Back Deidre Braley Contributor Deidre Braley is author and host of The Second Cup blog/podcast, where she loves to teach people that Jesus is for them, not against them. She has a monthly newsletter on Substack and her subscribers enjoy weekly content that focuses on communing with Jesus and others, creating beauty when it's hard, and celebrating this weird and wild life. She serves as editorial advisor on The Truly Co. Publication, and has been published in both The Truly Co. magazine and Joyful Life magazine. Deidre has also recently published her 2022 Advent Guide and invites you to follow along with her during this season of anticipation. Refresh the Crèche Call Me a Dinosaur. I Won't Use ChatGPT Summer of Enchantment A Simple Christmas

Is the Sermon ‘in the can’ after all? < Back Serenity Prayer David Cowles Sep 1, 2022 Is the Sermon ‘in the can’ after all? The Serenity Prayer , regularly recited before meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and in many other venues around the world, has become part of our shared spiritual heritage. When I first heard it, I was appalled! I mean, check it out: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” To my tween ears, these words reeked of quietism : accepting things as they are, being grateful for what you have, honoring your parents (and others ‘in authority’), etc. This was everything I resented, everything I was beginning to rebel against. Who prays for this? As I grew older, I imagined (myself) that I was defying authority, battling evil against all odds, bravely ‘speaking truth to power.' I tilted at windmills, dreamed impossible dreams, and calmly prepared for inevitable martyrdom. But after years of ‘tilting’ (in more ways than one), I began to see the wisdom in what I had so viscerally rejected decades earlier. First, I had to come to terms with the fact that I was not the person I imagined myself to be: not now, not then, not ever, never! Then I began to recognize that the Serenity Prayer , so hated at first hearing, included insights I had already embraced from other sources. Eventually, I came to see that the Serenity Prayer is actually a riff on the Lord’s Prayer, especially its dramatic climax: “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from Evil.” Ask Christians what part of the ‘Our Father’ they find hardest to understand, and many will quickly cite this verse. But interpreted through the lens of the Serenity Prayer , the difficulty vanishes. What is temptation ? We are tempted when we consider using one part of the world, something good-in-itself, as something other than its ‘best self.' We are tempted to go ‘off label,' as they say in the pharmaceutical industry. Furthermore, we are tempted when we consider turning gasoline into Molotov cocktails, using drugs, not to cure diseases, but to get high, and using science, not to make life better for everyone, but to make implements of war. Less dramatically, food is good, gluttony is not; conviviality is good, drunkenness is not; sex is good, promiscuity (may not be) is not, etc. But really, what’s so bad about these things? Everyone has temptations, most of us give (into) in to them, but who cares really - for the most part no one gets hurt – and as my grandfather used (today) to say , “100 years from now no one will know the difference.” Or will they? Do our ‘venial sins,' our peccadillos , matter? Back to the text: “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from Evil.” What is this ‘Evil’ and why is it so uncomfortably juxtaposed next to ‘temptation’? Did Jesus make a mistake? Did he drop a line? Did he miss a cue off his teleprompter? Do need to reshoot the Sermon on the Mount? “Sermon, take 2.” Or did Jesus mean exactly what he said? Is the Sermon ‘in the can’ after all? Are Evil and Temptation really kissin’ cousins, as the Lord’s Prayer seems to suggest? They are…but not for the reasons we were told as kids! We ‘yield to temptation’ when we ‘misuse’ something, when we pull something out of the intricate tapestry we call ‘reality’ and give it outsized importance in our lives, i.e., when we put anything (even God) on a pedestal. When we are tempted, we begin to see the world as a collection of parts, not as an integrated whole. When we yield to temptation, we use one or more of those parts against the whole. “It’s not fair! I pulled just one little string out of this enormous fabric – I just wanted to admire its bright color and its sheen – et voilà , the entire tapestry has unraveled at my feet. And I wasn’t doing anything that bad!” You’re half right. Assigning something undue importance in the scheme of things, allowing it to determine your behavior, that is evil. It violates the First Commandment (no idols) and ‘both halves’ of the Great Commandment . When it comes to sins, this one scores the hat trick . But why? It doesn’t kill anyone, it doesn’t destroy the world; what it does do is ‘put strange gods’ above YHWH, who is “all good and deserving of all our love." Today, I notice you brought pate en baguette for your lunch. I love pate; when your back is turned, I steal your sandwich (and eat it). A good thing-in-itself, I turn it into an idol. Even if only for a moment, I have put my love of inanimate pate ahead of my love of you and ahead of my love of God. In New Testament terminology, I have traded ‘the living bread’ (God) for ‘bread that does not satisfy’ ( pate en baguette ). (John 6: 51 – 58) I have sinned against God and against ‘my neighbor’ (you); but neither you nor God is the real victim here. After all, I can’t do anything to diminish God, and one pate sandwich won’t diminish you by very much. (In fact, just between us, a little ‘diminishment’ on your part might make a certain cardiologist I know very happy. No need to thank me!) No, the real victim of my crime…drum roll please…is me! Good is the essence of God. Values are refractions of God’s Goodness. The values we find in the spatio-temporal world are reflections of God’s values. I am made in God’s image and likeness, so my value is also a function of God’s value. When I yield to temptation and eat your pate sandwich, I am putting your sandwich ahead of YHWH in the ontological hierarchy of the universe. I have tried to diminish God, but God cannot be diminished. I only end up diminishing myself. “Pate is my shepherd; I shall not want.” (Psalm 23) I have a new god, and so I have made myself a reflection of that God. I am chopped liver! I am tempted to pull on just one string in the tapestry. When I do that, the tapestry may begin to unravel. That ‘unraveling’ is what Evil is! Scientists call this unraveling entropy. I ask God not to let the beauty of his world tempt me to turn its parts into idols. Then I ask God to “deliver us” from the ‘great unraveling’ which is Evil. Now back to the Serenity Prayer : “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” There are things about the world (which includes my own body) that I cannot change. For example, I cannot make myself taller than I am. My height (and other physical limitations) is something I need to accept; that’s Serenity! On the other hand, I can break open my piggy bank and use the proceeds to buy the best pair of ‘trainers’ I can afford; I can practice my vertical leap (and other skills) every day. Hardest of all, I can ignore the taunts of others (“look at the midget trying to play basketball”) and their ‘discouraging words.' That’s Courage! As if I were on a post-apocalyptic battlefield, I see wreckage strewn everywhere, wreckage wrought by folks trying to change things they can’t and wreckage of folks failing to change the things they can. I need to move through the skeletons of moral warfare without tipping to one side or the other; that’s Wisdom! 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 Share Do you like what you just read? 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< Back Mythology Before Marvel Comics David Cowles “Sturluson searched for the universal patterns that connect all times, all places, and all scales…and, Glory be to God, he found them.” Most of what we know about Norse Mythology comes from Wagner ( The Ring ), Tolkien ( Lord of the Rings ), and Marvel Comics. Behind these secondary sources stand the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda . The former is a collection of poems, some dating back to the 9th century CE; the latter is the work of a single man, Snorri Sturluson of Iceland (c. 1220 CE). Unfortunately, these first written records date from a time when Christianity was already beginning to make a mark in the Northlands. It is a matter of scholarship to separate the original pre-Christian content from later Christian influences…and, happy you , we will not attempt that here! Sturluson’s singular contribution was to organize varied material from the Poetic Edda into a quasi-coherent narrative, but what makes the Prose Edda so important, and therefore our focus, is its mind-bending structure. Mythic thinking expresses itself in narrative. True to form, Sturluson sews together countless short stories into one overarching tale. It is no exaggeration to describe the Prose Edda as the first Autobiography of Everything, anticipating by 700 years the work of James Joyce, Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein. Sturluson began by situating Norse mythology in the context of Hebrew proto history: “Almighty God created heaven and earth and all things in them, and lastly, two humans from whom generations are descended, Adam and Eve…After Noah’s flood, there lived eight people who inhabited the world, and from them generations have descended… “(But) the vast majority of mankind…neglected obedience to God and…refused (even) to mention the name of God. But who was there then to tell their children of the mysteries of God?” Wait, are we talking about the 13th century CE…or the 21st? According to Christian theology, God gave human being the gift of ‘reason’ so that even the ‘unchurched’ can discover Truth. Surprisingly, the same doctrine appears in Norse mythology: “(God) gave them a portion of wisdom so that they could understand all earthly things…what it could mean that earth and animals and birds had common characteristics in some things…They reasoned that the earth was alive. It fed all creatures and took possession of everything that died.” But at the same time, Sturluson also situated his Nordic narrative in an Hellenic context. Just as the New Testament is the merger of Jewish theology with pre-Socratic Greek philosophy, so Norse mythology is the intersection of the Greek myth and Christian metaphysics: “Near the middle of the world was…Troy. We call the land there Turkey…Twelve kingdoms were there and one high king…He was married to the daughter of the high king, Priam…They had a son (Hector); he was called Tror; we call him Thor…When he was ten…he was as beautiful to look at when he came among other people as when ivory is inlaid in oak. His hair is more beautiful than gold. When he was twelve, he had reached his full strength… “Then he traveled through many countries, explored all quarters of the world, and defeated unaided all the berserks and giants, one of the greatest dragons, and many wild animals. (Hercules?) In the northern part of the world, he came across a prophetess called Sibyl, whom we call Sif, and married her.” Eighteen generations later, a descendant of Thor and Sif was born: “A son whose name is Woden; it is him we call Odin. He was an outstanding person for wisdom and all sorts of accomplishments. His wife was called Frigida, whom we call Frigg. Odin had the gift of prophesy and so did his wife, and from this science he discovered that his name would be remembered in the northern part of the world and honored above all kings. For this reason, he became eager to set off from Turkey…” Note that 18 generations earlier, Thor had earlier left Turkey (Troy) and migrated to “the northern part of the world” (Scandinavia); now Thor’s descendant, Odin, recapitulates his ancestor’s journey. (Just as Jesus’ Flight into Egypt recapitulates the Exodus .) This will not be the last time that our narrative recapitulates. Mythic space is fractal space: patterns repeat - repetition at scale is the meta-pattern of process. Sturluson sees Troy as the cradle of civilization and is eager to associate it with Scandinavia. In this, he is channeling Virgil, whose Aeneid connects Troy with the founding of Rome. In fact, Troy is the mythological prototype for all cities. It is the City of Cain ( Enoch ), it is the City of Dioce (Ecbatana, Pound’s ‘city of patterned streets’), it is Midgard (Tolkien’s Middle Earth). It is worth noting that the two great powers of the first millennium CE both trace their origins to the defeated party in the Trojan War. “After that, he (Odin) proceeded north to where he was faced by the sea, the one which they thought encircled all lands, and set his son over the realm which is now called Norway…their language, that of the men of Asia, became the mother tongue over all these lands.” When Gylfi (King of Sweden) entered what appeared to be Val-hall (Valhalla), “He saw three thrones, one above the other, and there were three men, one sitting in each…the one that sat in the lowest throne was king and was called High; next to him the one called Just-as-high, and the one sitting at the top was called Third.” The structure of divinity in the Prose Edda parallels, of course, the Christian doctrine of Trinity. There is one God (‘All-father’), but High, Just-as-High, and Third represent the three faces or personae of this one God. It is impossible not to see parallels with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. After a brief exchange of pleasantries, Gyfli is invited to ask any questions he wishes; what follows reads something like the 1950s RCC Baltimore Catechism …or Chapter 17 of Joyce’s Ulysses : Q: Who is the highest and most ancient of all gods? A: He is called All-father in our language… Q: Where is this god, what power has he, and what great works has he performed? A: He lives throughout all ages, rules all his kingdom, and governs all things great and small…He made heaven and earth, the skies and everything in them…But his greatest work is that he made man and gave him a soul that shall live and never perish, though the body decay to dust or burn to ashes. Q: What was he doing before heaven and earth were made? A: Then he was among the frost-giants. Whaaaat? Before heaven and earth were made, there were ‘frost giants’? Yup! In Norse mythology, the ‘created’ universe as we know it (heaven and earth, Midgard ) is embedded in a much broader reality (a Norse ‘multiverse’). Q: What was the beginning? And how did things start? And what was there before? A: It was at the beginning of time, when nothing was; sand was not, nor sea, nor cool waves. Earth did not exist, nor heaven on high. The mighty gap ( Ginnungagap ) was, but no growth. Q: What were things like before generations came to be and the human race was multiplied? In answer to this question, High, Just-as-High and Third begin to set out the fundamental doctrines of Norse cosmology. The primal (‘uncreated’) cosmos consisted of a region of great heat ( Muspell ) and a region of great cold ( Niflheim ) with a chasm ( Ginnungagap ) between them (“the mighty gap”). Sparks from Muspell and icy rime from Niflheim spilled over into the ‘gap’ and formed a vapor. Again, it is impossible not to see parallels, this time with the secular ‘something from nothing’ cosmologies of the 20/21st centuries: ‘Negative Vacuum Pressure’. A: There was a quickening from these flowing drops due to the power of the source of the heat, and it became the form of a man, and he was given the name Ymir…and from him are descended the generations of frost giants…” Ymir lived on four rivers of milk (the four rivers that flowed through Eden?) that came from a cow ( Audhumla ) who fed herself by licking the salty rime stones found in Ginnungagap. As she licked the stones, sculptor-like, she began to uncover a human form latent in the rime-stones. Soon, “…there was a complete man. His name was Buri…He begot a son called Bor…(and Bor) had three sons. One was called Odin, the second Vili, the third Ve…And it is my belief that this Odin and his brothers must be the rulers of heaven and earth…” So this Odin…he was the son of Bor, the brother of Vili and Ve, and the grandson of Buri, who was ‘licked’ into existence by a cow. Ok I guess, but he is also the son of Thor and Sif (above). Norse Mythology requires a level of neuroplasticity that most of us have not enjoyed since kindergarten. Then again, the Book of Genesis also presents two distinct accounts of creation which differ in focus and detail. But it would be a big mistake to dismiss this as ‘child’s play’. It is just such neuroplasticity that Jesus says is necessary for one to enter the Kingdom of Heaven (e.g. Mt. 18: 3). We’re left to wonder: Are High, Just-as-High, and Third actually Odin, Vili and Ve? But we’re not done yet! Bor’s sons killed the giant Ymir. And…they drowned all the race of frost giants, except that one escaped with his household. Giants call him Bergelmir. He went up on to his ark (!) with his wife and was preserved there, and from them are descended the families of frost giants…” Noah? “They (Bor’s sons) took Ymir and transported him to the middle of Ginnungagap, and out of him made the earth; out of his blood came the sea and the lakes. The earth was made of flesh, and the rocks of the bones…They also took his skull and made out of it the sky and set it up over the earth…Then they took molten particles and sparks that…had shot out of the world of Muspell and set them in the middle of the firmament of the sky…” We ‘the enlightened’ think of life as a late stage epiphenomenal eruption out of inert matter. The Eddas reverse the relationship. ‘The heavens and the earth’ ( Gaia/Kosmos ) are fashioned out of living matter (Ymir). Life, not matter, is substructural. The Gospel of John (1: 1-4) testifies to a similar process: “In the beginning was the Logos and the Logos was with God and the Logos was God…All things came to be through him and without him nothing came to be. What came to be through him was life.” So in Christian ontology as well as Norse mythology, life is the substructure of universe. The Prose Edda is like a Bach fugue: themes repeat, transformed. Note the complex ecosystem in place prior to creation, ‘before’ even the beginning of time. The primal entity, Ymir, feeds off of a pre-existent cow who produces milk from nourishment she receives by licking salty rime-stones. That process of licking in turn uncovers a second primal entity, Buri, from whom Odin, Vili and Ve are descended. These grandsons of Buri in turn kill Ymir, but they recycle his body as the raw material needed to create ‘heaven and earth’, i.e. space/time, matter/energy, the mortal realm. Care to stretch the envelope? Compare this process with the evolution of eukaryotic (nucleated) cells from their prokaryotic precursors. Essentially, two independent life forms ‘merged’ to form a single, symbiotic organism that became the basis for all animal and plant life on Earth. As above, this process happened only once in the history of terrestrial evolution. Q: How was the earth arranged? A: It is circular 'round the edge, and around it lies the deep sea, and along the shore of this sea they gave lands to live in to the race of giants. But on the earth, on the inner side, they made a fortification 'round the world against the hostility of giants, and for this fortification they used the giant Ymir’s eyelashes, and they called the fortification Midgard (‘Middle Earth’). Q. And where did the people come from who inhabit this world? A: As Bor’s sons walked along the seashore, they came across two logs and created people out of them. The first gave breath and life; the second consciousness and movement; the third a face, speech, hearing, and sight… This is a sophisticated Trinitarian model, similar to but importantly different from, the Christian model. First, the manifestations of God are allocated differently among the divine personae, and second, the phenomena associated with being human are grouped and segmented differently from how we might do it today. A (cont.): The man was called Ask, the woman Embla, and from them were produced the mankind to whom the dwelling-place under Midgard ( Middle Earth ) was given. After that, they made themselves a city in the middle of the world, which is known as Asgard. We call it Troy…In the city there is a seat called Hlidskialf, and when Odin sat in that throne he saw over all worlds and every man’s activity and understood everything he saw.” Humans build a city, Troy, which becomes the homeland of the gods (Aesir), who originally created heaven and earth, and the homeland of humans. The process of creation flows both ways: gods create for humans, and humans create for gods. Ontology is a Möbius strip: events recur even as orientations reverse. We find a close parallel in Ezra Pound’s Cantos : “Ecbatan, the clock ticks and fades out; the bride awaiting the god’s touch; Ecbatan/City of patterned streets…” Here, a city built by human hands is intended to be a home for the gods. In another article in this collection , we connect this ancient Iranian city both to Cain’s city (above) and to the ‘patterned streets’ (circles) found in Dante’s Divine Comedy . Perhaps Pound also had Troy in mind…or should I say, Asgard? But back to the Prose Edda : “He (Odin) is the father of all the gods and of men, and of everything that has been brought into being by him and his power. The earth was his daughter and his wife. Out of her he begot the first of his sons…(wait for it)…Asa-Thor.” Ok, enough already! Our story began with Thor, grandson of the proto historical king of Troy, Priam. Eighteen generations later, Odin was born. Odin married Frigg and together they migrated to Scandinavia. Now we learn that this same Odin is ‘All-father’, the father of all gods and men, that Frigg, his daughter and his wife is really ‘earth’ and that the first of their sons is the very same Thor with whom our story began. Gimme a break! What are we to make of all these apparent contradictions? Absolutely nothing! There are no contradictions in mythology. (-A) ≠ -(A). The concept of contradiction arises in systems characterized by identity, quantity, causality, extension, duration, and logic, where the transitive and commutative properties rule. None of these concepts figures in any important way in mythological thinking. Myths are the first TOEs (Theories of Everything). Hawking meets Tolkien. Like Hawking, mythology searches for universal patterns; like Tolkien, it then struggles to communicate these patterns using the limited resources of language. You , dear reader, expect your patterns to be symmetrical, continuous, and orientable, but the world we’re modeling is not like that at all. It is stochastic, discrete, and non-orientable. You expect beginnings, middles, and ends, but such things do not exist on a Mobius Strip. You are expecting events situated in spacetime; mythology replaces spacetime with a hierarchy of fractals. Scale takes the place of extension. The order of events is immaterial, and ‘time loops’ are expected, perhaps even required, perhaps even universal. Mythic thinking has only one proper subject: ‘the pattern of patterns’. In spite of the important parallels with Judeo-Christian theology and Greek proto-history, the Norse cosmos is fabulously more complex. As we have already glimpsed, in addition to humans, there are many other humanoid races: frost giants (including trolls and, unexpectedly, wolves), light elves, dark elves ( aka dwarfs), and, of course, gods (Aesir). Each of these races has its own ‘homeland’, but there are other ‘uninhabited’ homelands as well: Muspell and Niflheim (above), Hel (the land of the dead), Val-hall (Valhalla, the home of fallen warriors), and Gimle (the resting place of the righteous): “…(Gimle) shall stand when both heaven and earth have passed away, and in that place shall live good and righteous people for ever and ever.” Astoundingly, all of these ‘homelands’ are connected by the trunk of a single ash tree, Yggdrasil , that has three principal roots: one in the realm of the Aesir (Asgard), one in the realm of the frost giants, and one in Niflheim. These roots, in turn, may be associated with the three Norns who weave the history of the universe (fate) from skeins of string (not heterotic string…as far as we know). We learn from Third that “Odin is the highest and most ancient of the Aesir. He rules all things…Odin is called ‘All-father’ for he is father of all gods. He is also called ‘Val-father’ (father of the slain)…Hanga-god (god of the hanged) and Hapta-god (god of prisoners), Farma-god (god of cargoes, possibly to be understood as human cargoes, i.e., travelers, or even slaves)…” One of the Aesir, “…Loki or Lopt, son of the giant Farbauti…is pleasing and handsome in appearance, evil in character, capricious in behavior…There was a giantess called Angraboda in Giantland. With her, Loki had three children. One was Fenriswolf, the second Lormungand (i.e. the Midgard serpent), the third is Hel. “And when the gods realized that these three siblings were being brought up in Giantland…All-father sent the gods to get the children and bring them to him. And when they came to him, he threw the serpent into that deep sea that lies around all lands, and this serpent grew so that it lies in the midst of the ocean encircling all lands and bites on its own tail. “Hel he threw into Niflheim…The Aesir brought up the wolf at home…” But as the wolf grew, the Aesir felt the need to tether it securely. So they went to the dwarves and asked them to make a bond that that wolf could not break…and they did! “It was made of six ingredients: the sound of the cat’s footfall and the woman’s beard; the mountain’s roots and the bear’s sinews; the fish’s breath and the bird’s spittle…” To prove this this story is true, we are told, “…You must have seen that a woman has no beard and there is no noise from a cat’s running, and there are no roots under a mountain…” Earlier attempts to fetter Fenriswolf all failed…because the tethers were made out of ordinary materials. No matter how strong they were at the outset, they were inevitably weakened by the wolf’s incessant struggles. They were ultimately subject to the law of entropy, and eventually, the wolf escaped them all. The dwarves’ “fetter was smooth and soft like a silken ribbon,” but it acted just like the strong force binding quarks in an atomic nucleus: “…When the wolf kicked, the band grew harder, and the harder he struggled, the tougher became the band.” This is a marvelous example of mythic reasoning. The text leads us to believe that a woman has no beard, for example, because the dwarfs used it to make Fenriswolf’s fetter. But there is another possible interpretation: What if the dwarfs made something (a fetter) out of nothing, out of things that do not exist (e.g. a woman’s beard)? ‘Something made out of nothing’ is, well, something else . The laws of physics would be suspended and entropy ‘need not apply’. My nine-year-old grandson said, “The fetter was made out of the opposite of everything.” Exactly so, and therefore it behaved in a way opposite to all other materials. A mythological model of anti-matter, perhaps. No bird's-eye view of the Norse cosmos would be complete without consideration of Ragnarök, aka the Apocalypse. Admit it, this is what you’ve been waiting for since you opened this post. So…back to the catechism, and just in the nick of time: Q: What information is there to be given about Ragnarok? A: There are many important things to be told about it. First of all, that a winter will come called fimbul (‘mighty’ or ‘mysterious’) winter. Then snow will drift from all directions. There will be great frosts and keen winds. The sun will do no good. There will be three of these winters together and no summer between. …The wolf will swallow the sun…the other wolf will swallow the moon…The stars will disappear from the sky…trees will become uprooted from the earth; mountains will fall; and all fetters and bonds will snap and break . Then Fenriswolf will get free…the Midgard serpent will fly into a great rage and make its way ashore…After that, Surt (a fire demon from the race of giants) will fling fire over the earth and burn the whole world. Q. What will happen then after heaven and earth and all the world is burned…will there be any kind of earth or sky? A: The earth will shoot up out of the sea and will be green and fair. Crops will grow unsown…And in a place called Hoddmimir’s holt, two people will lie hid during Surt’s fire called Life and Leifthrasir, and their food will be the dews of the morning. And from these people will be descended such a great progeny that all the world will be inhabited. And so ends the discourse on Norse cosmology…and now comes the really interesting and totally revolutionary part: “But the Aesir sat down to discuss and hold a conference and went over all these stories that had been told him (Gyfli), and assigned those same names that were mentioned above to the people and places that were there (in Sweden), so that when long periods of time had passed, men should not doubt that they were all the same , those Aesir about whom stories are told above and those who were now given the same names. “So someone there was given the name Thor…and to him are attributed the exploits that Thor (Hector) performed in Troy.” Wow! What else is there to say? Simply, wow! In Ulysses , James Joyce maps a day in the life of ordinary Dubliners onto events in Homer’s Odyssey . An incredible feat! But the Prose Edda goes much further. Sturluson begins by mapping Norse mythology onto both Jewish and Greek proto-histories. Then he maps Christian theology onto Norse mythology. Finally, he maps Norse mythology onto the lives of ordinary, contemporary Swedes and, for his piece de resistance , he maps the lives of ordinary, contemporary Swedes back onto events in Greek proto-history. To borrow a Judeo-Christian concept, everyone is ‘priest, prophet and king’. What Joyce (and Pound) demonstrated brilliantly, Snorri Sturluson had demonstrated with even greater power and complexity centuries earlier: the various ontological categories that populate human thought are really just different ways of experiencing and understanding the present lives of ordinary people. Everything that happens is happening right now! The past and the future only exist to serve the present and they exist only in the present. On the one hand, the Prose Edda is a literary triumph. But on the other hand, it is exactly what Mythology is all about. Sturluson searched for the universal patterns that connect all times, all places, and all scales…and, Glory be to Odin, he found them. Friedrich Wilhelm Heine. Yggdrasil, c. 1886. Illustration for Walhall: Die Götterwelt der Germanen by Felix and Therese Dahn. This illustration of Yggdrasil captures the essay’s core idea of mythology as an interconnected, multi-dimensional structure that links various realms—gods, humans, giants—and weaves together different times and layers of meaning, symbolizing the fractal, cyclical nature of mythic storytelling explored throughout the essay. 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

Where does artifical intelligence and Chat GPT fit into philosophy, theology, and science? Aletheia Today is the magazine for believers in God and science. Process philosophy, scripture study, and critical essays bring science and faith together with western philosophers like Alfred North Whitehead and Jean-Paul Sartre. Deep dives into the meaning of the Old Testamant, the New Testament, and where the Bible fits into modern-day society. Is God real? Does Heaven exist? Inside Our Special AI Issue Philosophy Chatting With C.S. Lewis “It is the very mark of a perverse desire that it seeks what is not to be had… As long as you are governed by that desire, you will never get what you want.” AI for Healthcare “Boka, is it true you used to drive 10 miles to see a doctor once a year and called that healthcare?” Do Bots Know Beauty? “I…propose…that we make this the test, not Turing’s, of whether a bot is conscious." Neurotech Challenges Mental Privacy: New Human Rights? "Advances in neurotechnology do raise important privacy concerns. However, I believe these debates can overlook more fundamental threats to privacy." Theology ChatGOD "ChatGPT can be smart, but it can never be holy. In being an e-being, precisely because its intelligence is artificial, it is necessarily alienated from the Divine. It can only be 'as if,' never truly as." Navigating the Nexus of AI "Imagine if AI had its own commandments, like 'Thou shalt treat all data equally.' Encouraging ethical principles in AI programming can keep its decisions in line with virtues like fairness, justice, and empathy." Culture & The Arts Divine Connection or Digital Dalliance? "Prayer, for many, is more than just a laundry list of requests. It's a profound act of opening oneself to the divine, a dialogue between the mortal and the eternal." Wilber’s New Wife: A Theatre Odyssey©2023 "The evolution has begun, and I believe that the arts are going to be a very important partner for technology. Could this be the beginning of the next Golden Age? Absolutely." How ChatGPT Robs Students "When AI does our writing for us, we diminish opportunities to think out problems for ourselves." The Ease of Burden "Writing is not like Athena, springing fully formed from Zeus’ forehead. Writing is like all of Zeus’ other children, where he has to relate to someone for creation (and boy, does he relate). To create things, we need other people. It takes two to tango, two to make a child, and around 12 to make a sitcom." AI - Our New Frenemy AI and the Human Quest for Love AI - The Next Big Test of the Human Soul "The longing is powerful. Perhaps because this is the longing for unconditional love and acceptance with which every human being is born." AI and the Quest for Humanity’s Answers "AI will virtually obliterate the barrier between what can be known and what is known." Spirituality Call Me a Dinosaur, I Won’t Use ChatGPT "The fact of the matter is, we will never be like God, nor will we ever be able to create a system that knows everything, is capable of anything, and controls all things." The Trajectory of AI: Balancing Promise and Caution "Placing faith in AI to originate creations like art and music may lead to disillusionment. Ultimately, the true creator is a higher force." Readers React What's the buzz about? Our readers' reactions to Aletheia Today... Additional Reading Can't get enough of Aletheia Today's content? Check out the books that inspire our magazine.

< Back AI and Marxism “Marxism’s stated goal is to transfer ownership of the means of production to the producers. Dare I say, Mission Accomplished?” David Cowles It is a fundamental tenet of Marxist philosophy that we form a dynamic template with our technological environment; but unlike passive templates, this one is not symmetrical. To borrow from Genesis , we shape technology in our image while technology forms us in its likeness. Since Alan Turing, the goal of AI has been to build a machine that can fool a trained and conscientious operator into believing that she is interacting with a human being. We build our technology to reflect our own image back at us. We even give our gadgets nicknames. But at the same time, less obviously, technology is shaping us , its operators. According to philosophers from Marx to McLuhan, we become extensions of our technology, but philosophers notwithstanding, no one demonstrated the impact of technology on its operators and beneficiaries better than Charlie Chaplin, especially in Modern Times (1936). I am tempted, of course, to find an analogy here with the Eucharist. I mean, who wouldn’t? Is it my Roman Catholic background, or the influence of James Joyce ( Ulysses is one long Eucharistic analogy), showing here? No matter, the image is the ‘bread and wine’; the likeness , the ‘body and blood’. The ‘image’ enables us to approach the Eucharist, to interact with it, to consume it, but it is the ‘likeness’ that works below the surface to transform us into members of Christ’s mystical body. The Eucharist appears to us in a form we easily recognize but changes us into something we would not recognize so readily. Have I gone too far this time? Maybe. But back to Marx! (From Mass?) Today, everyone is worried about the impact of AI on social inequality. Understandably so! Every new technology does favor the well-to-do…temporarily: Who could afford a car in 1915? A TV in 1950? Or a personal computer in 1985? Maybe the one-percenters . Today, the average American family has all these things, often several times over. Initially these technologies created new divisions between haves and have-nots ; ultimately those same technologies resolved those differences: we all became haves (ok, limited haves , but haves nonetheless). In my day, it was Ford vs. Foot, Chevy vs. Shank’s Mare, Deisel vs. Deez’ll; today it’s Lexus vs. Corolla. In 1960, access to transportation determined access to the ‘means of production’. Today, we all have access to the loci of wealth…but some of us get there in leather seats. Of course, this leveling doesn’t happen overnight. It took 50 years for the automobile to ‘democratize’, 15 years for the TV, and 10 years for the personal computer; but AI will be fully democratized in less than 5. Caveat : There is more to socio-economic inequality than the number of TVs in your home. Inequality has many causes and many manifestations that have little to do with technology. That said, most every new technology does temporarily widen economic gaps but later works to narrow them, and again, AI will be no exception. The future requires no crystal ball. We live in an information age, powered by an information economy. Soon wealth will be measured in ‘bits’ rather than ‘its’. (My father’s generation had a saying, “Whoever has the most toys wins.” Not so then, not so now!) Today, access to information is still correlated with economic advantage, but tomorrow , virtually every person on Planet Earth will enjoy the same access to the same information as everyone else. That’s the promise of AI. From Moses ( Leviticus ) to Matthew (Jesus) to Marx to modern Scandinavia, curbing socio-economic inequality has been on the agenda of social reformers. Marxism’s stated goal is to transfer ownership of the means of production to the producers. Dare I say, Mission accomplished ? As history has shown, this is difficult to accomplish in an agricultural or industrial economy where productive assets require massive amounts of capital. It is hard to imagine funding a profit making farm or factory with less than $1,000,000; and how many of us have a spare $1M on hand? Various Marxist theoreticians have proposed various solutions; I think it’s fair to say that none of them has worked…so far. But is it possible that we are growing our way out of Marx’s dilemma? The information superhighway is a toll road, to be sure, but the cost of entry is a $500 computer and a $50 internet connection. Well within reach of families with 2 cars and 3 TVs! Of course, inequality will persist, driven by race, education, gender, etc. But the biggest single driver of inequality, access to capital, is about to disappear. ChatGPT is the new SVB! Who needs venture capital if you have a smart phone, a laptop, and a highspeed internet connection? Capitalism and communism converge; who’d a thunk it? ( Hairspray ) Aletheia Today Magazine is devoting its entire Fall Issue (9/1/2023) to the philosophical, theological, cultural and/or spiritual implication of Artificial Intelligence. Do you have some ideas you’d like to share? We’d love to add you to our growing list of authors; check us out: https://www.aletheiatoday.com/submit . Keep the conversation going! 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. 4. Aletheia Today Magazine (ATM) will be devoting its entire fall issue (released 9/1/23) to artificial intelligence (AI). What are the philosophical, theological, cultural and even spiritual implications of AI powered world? If you’d like to contribute to the AI Issue, click here . Share Previous Next

< Back Mark’s Marks of Authenticity David Cowles “There is no single work more important than the Gospel of Mark…the Intellectual History of the West hangs on it, so its authenticity is of paramount importance.” How reliable is a 2,000-year-old text? How do we know if the author had any knowledge of his (sic) subject matter? How do we know the book was composed with benevolent intent? Do we know why the book was written in the first place or who it was written for? Now I’m going to say something completely outrageous but then, we’re not afraid of a little hyperbole here at Aletheia Today , are we? Brace yourself: “In all of Western literature, there is no single work more important than the Gospel of Mark .” It’s relatively short and not especially poetic, but the Intellectual History of the West hangs on it, so its authenticity is of paramount importance. How so? The Gospel of Mark tells the story of a guy called Jesus and his adventures in and around a place called Galilee. The story is both spell binding and hair raising. If true, it’s a life changer. But what does it mean to say that a story like this is…or is not…. true ? The journey from text (I see it) to faith (I believe it) is a multi-step process fraught with cultural, linguistic and philosophical minefields. But I think we must begin with authenticity : Whatever else Mark may be, is it ‘authentic’? Is it what it says it is? For example, if it purported to be an academic history but was in fact a work of fiction, it would not pass the test of authenticity. Of course, fiction can be perfectly authentic, so long as it doesn’t pretend to be something else. Much of what we think we know about Jesus comes from Mark. That seems strange. Mark is the shortest of the 4 canonical gospels and it’s one of 27 books in the New Testament, all of which relate in one way or another to the life of Jesus. Then, beyond the New Testament, there are dozens of apocryphal texts concerning Jesus and there are a few references to him from non-Christian sources (e.g. Josephus). And yet, it all really comes down to Mark . Matthew and Luke , important as they are, are early exercises in ‘historical revisionism’. They are examples of a literary genre, popular since 200 BCE, which tries to make ‘difficult texts’ less difficult, i.e. more palatable to casual readers and more relevant to ‘contemporary’ concerns. Sound familiar? 90% of Mark is reproduced in Matthew; 60% in Luke. Both authors add extensive, overlapping quotations from a second, unknown source, sometimes called ‘Q’. Q may have existed merely as an oral tradition. Were it in print today, it would probably be titled something like, “The Sayings of Jesus of Nazareth, called the Christ”. In addition to Mark and Q, Matthew and Luke draw from their own sources (e.g. the Magi in Matthew, the infancy narratives in Luke). More importantly though, the three synoptic gospels are written for three distinct constituencies. Luke endeavors to make The Jesus Story attractive to his Hellenic audience. Matthew , on the other hand, seems aimed at the Jewish population in Palestine and the Diaspora. The author goes to great lengths to show Jesus as the fulfillment of Old Testament ‘prophesies’ regarding the Messiah. Most significantly, Matthew and Luke sanitize Mark. They attempt to make ‘the hard teachings’ and the ‘rustic wisdom’ more attractive to more urbane and educated audiences. There are dozens of examples; here’s just one: In the Garden of Gethsemane, immediately following the Last Supper, Jesus is at prayer when he is set upon by Judas, the temple guard, and Roman soldiers. One of Jesus’ followers, apparently Peter, reaches for a sword and cuts off the ear of the High Priest’s servant. (Mark 14: 43 – 50) Mark is happy to leave the story there; but Matthew, Luke, and even John take pains to situate the event in a context more acceptable to the casual reader. In Matthew and John Jesus tells the disciple to ‘sheath his sword’; Luke (a physician) goes further and shows Jesus healing the servant’s wound. It's an exegetical rule of thumb: whatever is ‘difficult’ in Mark is mollified in Matthew and Luke. And what of John? While John contains details of Jesus’ life, some paralleling the synoptic gospels, others unique to John, the gospel itself is not primarily biographical. It is better read as Systematic Theology, illustrated with events from the life of Christ. So, if Matthew was written for Jews and Luke for Greeks, who was Mark’s intended audience? Christians . Mark does not set out to prove that Jesus is the Messiah; he assumes it. Mark’s audience already has faith; they want details to supplement that faith and Mark does not disappoint: “This is real, guys!” Regardless of your religious convictions (or lack thereof), you might agree with me that Jesus of Nazareth is the most important person in all of human history. An extraordinary claim. Out of 100 billion, one. And concerning this man, we have just one primary biographical source? It’s crucial then that we know to what extent its version of events is authentic. Fortunately, we have a lot to work with. As every parent knows, a well-rehearsed narrative is the surest sign that a miscreant’s story lacks authenticity. Mark is anything but rehearsed. It’s as much ‘notes’ as it is narrative. It is as if one of Jesus’ followers kept a diary. Testimony to Mark ’s authenticity is the need Matthew and Luke felt to ‘clean up’ the text. Sometimes, raw data can be too hot to handle; it needs to be ‘spun’. Welcome to Mark , the unspun! Mark’s story lacks any pretense of grandiosity. Compare Mark’s opening verse, “Here begins the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,” to Matthew’s genealogy, Luke’s history, and John’s cosmology. While the later gospels were meant to persuade unbelievers, Mark takes the reader’s faith for granted. There is no need to ‘situate the story in context’. History has already provided that context and it is well known to Mark’s intended audience. For Mark, there’s nothing to prove and the lack of something to prove is one mark of the gospel’s authenticity. Were Mark to deviate significantly from events as they occurred, the effect would be disastrous. Most of Mark’s readers already knew the Jesus Story, at least in outline. Had Mark contradicted oral history, the text would have been ignored, rather than copied and elaborated as it was. The Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and even John testify to the fact that Mark was considered canonical (authentic) by the 1st century church. Your 10-year-old has just come in the door, 20 minutes after curfew. He can’t wait to explain all the reasons for his transgression. “This happened, then this happened, then…” Welcome to Mark’s world! The ‘narrative style’ is staccato, it races breathlessly along to its maddeningly ambiguous conclusion . Matthew, Luke and John present Jesus as a pretty cool customer , as Larry David might say. Not so, Mark. His Jesus is everyman (sic). The reader is in Jesus’ shoes the whole way: “That’s exactly what I would have done.” Incorrectly, the later Gospels may be read as presenting Jesus as half-God, half-man. Not Mark! Mark’s Jesus is wholly man…and therefore wholly God. Biographies, whether of heroes or villains, tend to present their subjects as ‘serious dudes’. Otherwise, who’d buy a single copy? Nobody wants to pay good money to read about some ‘fool’. The total lack of such pretense in Mark is one of the preeminent signs of its authenticity. Consider Jesus’ calling of the apostles. After calling Andrew, Peter, James, John and Matthew, Jesus “…went up into the hill-country and called the men he wanted; and they went and joined him.” In other words, he formed a gang. Immediately afterwards, “...He entered a house and once more such a crowd collected around them that they had no chance to eat. When his family heard of this, they set out to take charge of him; for people were saying he was out of his mind.” Hardly a good look for the savior of the world! But a deprecatory detail like this is strong evidence for the authenticity of the narrative. Who would make up something like that? It’s demeaning and embarrassing…so what would be the point? Of course, it could be intended to throw some 21st century journalist off her scent. But that assumes that the author of Mark had somehow intuited the principles of modern literary criticism – unlikely. The other evangelists paint a picture of Jesus as a peace loving peripatetic, roaming freely through Galilee and Judea, proclaiming the end of the exiting world order. It is a challenge to reconcile such a libertarian image with what we know of Palestine c. 30 CE. Let’s set the triangular stage. On one side, the two Herods, Pontius Pilate, and the Roman military. On another side, the Sadducees (Priests), the Pharisees, and the Doctors of Law (Scribes). On a third side, Jewish nationalists, the Zealots, the Essenes, Barrabas, etc. And in the middle of it all, an oasis, Jesus and his followers. This is a hard scenario to accept, and commentators have been struggling with it for 2 millennia. But Mark poses no such difficulty. Mark is clear. Jesus is a fugitive and a heretic – a fugitive from the Roman political order, a heretic from the Jewish religious order. Jesus is an insurrectionist and a blasphemer…a toxic cocktail. Mark presents Jesus as a ‘man on the run’…often in hiding. He is forever swearing folks to secrecy and then retreating from cities to hillside villages, eventually leaving Galilee altogether for Lebanon, the Golan, the Greek cities (Decapolis), and the East Bank of the Jordan. Regarding Jesus’s time in Lebanon, Mark writes, “…He left that place (Galilee) and went into the territory of Tyre. He found a house to stay in, and he would have liked to remain unrecognized, but that was impossible…On his return journey from Tyrian territory he went by way of Sidon (a roundabout route), through the territory of the Decapolis, to the Sea of Galilee (south-east shore).” Commentators have struggled to explain this route: it’s so circuitous! Exactly! (They just don’t get it. Jesus didn’t have AAA to plan his itinerary.) There is no mention of Jesus’ disciples in this section of the text. Given that he was hoping to remain anonymous, it is unlikely that he was accompanied by more than a few fellow-travelers…if any. This raises another question: Why did Mark bother to include this episode? It does nothing to advance the narrative. But if Jesus went AWOL for a time, Mark would have needed to account for that absence, as if he were an employment agent accounting for that troublesome 6-month hiatus in your CV. In any event, there is no false heroism in this account, and these are not the actions of someone who has something to prove. Nor are the stories those of an author trying to persuade a skeptical audience. We have Matthew and Luke for that! Mark’s text is clearly aimed at folks who’d ‘lived through the 60s’…and were in a position to call out any major omissions or inaccuracies. According to Mark, Jesus only entered Judea once, on his final, Quixotic Million Man March on Jerusalem. Jesus knew the likely outcome (divine omniscience not required). But his disciples were growing restless, and the noose around him was tightening. Jesus reasoned that it was now or never. So, “they were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, Jesus leading the way; and the disciples were filled with awe and those behind them with fear.” (Mark 10: 32) They approached Jerusalem by way of Jericho and set up base came in Bethany; then Jesus entered the city. After a ‘royal welcome’ replete with palms and Hosannas! Jesus headed for the temple precincts, perhaps anticipating a penultimate confrontation. He “…went into the temple where he looked at the whole scene; but, as it was now late, he went out to Bethany with the Twelve.” In other words, he arrived at his ultimate destination, ready to rumble, and found it virtually deserted. Everyone had gone home. Treason and blasphemy notwithstanding, the High Priest was not going to miss his dinner. So, Jesus heads back to the safety of his ‘stronghold’, Bethany, as he did every evening prior to the Last Supper. Next day, Jesus did not oversleep. Returning to the temple precincts, he threw out the moneychangers, tipping over their tables, and not allowing anyone to carry so much as a container through the temple. One is reminded of a modern sports event. From here on, Mark tells the story of Christ’s Passion in terms broadly consistent with the other gospel accounts. Two points worth mentioning: (1) Mark offers the clearest, most unequivocal version of Jesus’ initiation of Eucharist; he leaves no doubt that this is Jesus’ Body and Blood. (2) Mark reprises YHWH in Exodus (3: 14): “I AM,” reinforcing Christ’s divinity. Because Mark was so scrupulous in his telling of events in Jesus’ life, we are inclined to grant him some credibility on these larger, theological issues. “One who is faithful in small matters will also be faithful in larger ones”. (Luke 16: 10) In one of his parables, Jesus uses the analogy of a mustard seed: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds find shelter in its branches.” (Matthew 13: 31 – 32) In the Intellectual History of the West, the Gospel of Mark is just such a mustard seed…and we are they who live in its branches. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . purpose and devotion. Return to our 2024 Beach Read Previous Next