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< Back Perfect Moments, Holy Moments David Cowles Nov 2, 2023 “Every moment, every event originates and culminates in God’s values.” Jean-Paul Sartre introduced the concept of a Perfect Moment in his debut novel, Nausea . Annie, a former girlfriend of Sartre’s hero (Roquentin), seeks salvation in the creation of "perfect moments"—choreographed events where action, speech, and context all work together to produce an experiential gem. The ‘salvation’ I’m talking about here is not the version preached by Christians (Christ, Heaven, etc.). Annie’s ‘salvation’ is an existentialist version. It has nothing to do with an ‘afterlife’; it is an immediate rescue from the absurdity of the world and the angst of being in it. If I can create a Perfect Moment (which I can’t), I can reassure myself that the world is not utterly absurd (which it seems to be). Annie pursues ‘salvation’ by creating and arranging scenes. For her, life is scripted but never rehearsed. Her ‘actors’ are given directions (sometimes explicit, sometimes implied): how to act, what to communicate, and when to emote. But the film is one-take only, with no reshoots, no edits, and the dialogue is improv. Annie’s life is one of perpetual frustration, disappointment, and despair. Annie’s world is a world of ideals, images, and forms. But that’s not the real world—a world stubbornly resistant to direction (alienation) and perpetually overflowing every ‘form’ we attempt to impose on it. That resistance, that overflow, is what ‘nauseated’ Sartre. Annie seeks salvation in the world. She arranges her moments to reflect back to her iher mage of herself. If she ever could actually create such a Perfect Moment, a physical expression of her spiritual essence, then she could be sure of her own salvation. The moment occurs, and it is perfect, so it (and by extension, I) is saved…in the mind of God. “Yeah, prove it!” Ok, the perfection of any event, any moment, is measured in relationship to God—his essence, his values. If a moment incorporates God’s values perfectly, it reproduces, on the temporal plane, the eternal order of things (“on earth as it is in heaven”). Therefore, the essence (order) of any ‘moment’ or event pre-exists the event itself…on the eternal plane, qua God. So it is necessarily saved, waiting to happen in history. The Perfect Moment is created by Annie for Annie; it reflects her. In that reflection, Annie can be assured of her own salvation. Very neat, very wrong! Annie is the ultimate narcissist. She is the God that came before YHWH, you know, when “the earth was without form or shape, with darkness over the abyss and a mighty wind sweeping over the waters.” Annie is trying to make a world that will reflect her image of herself to herself for herself. Claustrophobic? According to Judeo-Christian theology, YHWH also made a world ‘in his image,' but with two big differences: (1) YHWH’s world is free, i.e., unscripted. Its only limitations are the limitations imposed by the stage itself (Sartre’s ‘facticity’); (2) YHWH’s world reflects back to him…but it also projects out onto every other event in Universe. It is a projected image shared for the benefit of others, rather than an image reflected solely for the benefit of self. Of course, YHWH sprinkles his stage with various props, signs, arrows, etc. But what the actors choose to do with these props is entirely up to them. Like Annie, God is looking for himself in the world. Annie is building a mechanical apparatus in the hope that it will reflect her spirit. God says, “Here I am; copy me.” In the first case, Annie is the agent; in the second case, you are. According to Sartre, Freedom is the only Value. According to Pope Leo XIII, Value is Freedom. Therefore, God’s primal gift to the world is one gift with two faces. True freedom empowers (but does not compel) one to ‘do good’. In fact, according to Leo, one is only truly free - free from attachments, idols, etc.—when one is actively engaged in doing good. We are born free! But we voluntarily exchange our freedom for power and pleasure. We ‘sell our souls’ to honor our attachments and to feed our addictions. So just as Beauty, Truth, and Justice are each The Good as it expresses itself in various contexts, so Freedom…as it expresses itself in every context. Thus, Freedom is the uber-value, and Beauty, Truth and Justice are its subsets. Where is Keats when we need him most: “Value is Freedom, Freedom, Value.” Annie is motivated by the selfish desire to find her own personal salvation, or at least to confirm it, in one perfect moment. YHWH is motivated by his love for others; Annie is motivated by her love of self. Matthew Kelly’s book, Holy Moments , offers a bridge. Like Annie, Kelly is hyper-focused on the moment, and he finds salvation in that moment. But Annie’s salvation comes from an ‘artificially arranged material world’; Kelly’s comes through an ‘organically evolved spiritual world’. Now if I were you, the phrase ‘organically evolved spiritual world’ would have set off my ‘BS’ alarm: “metaphysical mumbo jumbo.” (For those of you religiously inclined, yes, the BS alarm is the voice of the Holy Spirit.) But in this instance, you can safely ignore the warning. Don’t turn off the alarm, though; just press the reset button! Every moment, every event, originates and culminates in God’s values. The event itself is the response of our created world to its creator’s values as they are projected into the material world (grace). My ‘organically evolved spiritual world’ is simply God’s nexus of values as they express themselves in the historical context of a specific moment. To the extent that you act out of those values only, you create a Holy Moment, not a Perfect Moment, a Holy Moment. 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.

< Back Ulysses – a Guide to Reading Scripture David Cowles May 8, 2024 “Most of us study events and notice patterns, Joyce studied patterns and noticed events.” When I was but a tike, it was commonplace to study the Bible’s two testaments as mirror images of one another. Happily, like much of ‘50s culture, this practice has fallen by the wayside. But resuscitate it, if only for a moment, not for its theology but for its physics. As Roman Catholics, we were taught that the Old Testament (OT) reflected the New Testament (NT). Events in NT matter – a lot; events in OT exist primarily as signs, prophesies, forerunners, ‘types’ of events to come (NT). We were not encouraged to consider the equally attractive (or unattractive) possibility that the New Testament might be a reflection of the Old. And yet that most certainly is the case! The Gospel of Matthew in particular takes great pains to demonstrate exactly how NT events fulfilled OT prophecies. The key, of course, is who’s had a bit too much to drink and who’s driving the car. Critics of Christianity have suggested that the synoptic gospels are a mostly fabricated attempt to show that Jesus of Nazareth possessed the characteristics of the Messiah as spelled out in the Old Testament. There is no doubt that OT Jews were concerned with the coming of a Messiah. Less certain are the characteristics of this Messiah and whether Jesus of Nazareth ticked all the boxes. It is likely that at least some of the events reported in the synoptic gospels are historical, but it is certain that the NT reporting of those events (e.g. in Matthew) is selective and explicitly intended to draw a connection with the so-called ‘prophecies’ (OT). The question is, how much is history and how much is spin? And then, of course, there are the brave few who deny any significant cross fertilization between the two anthologies . They attribute alleged correspondences to a combination of coincidence (dubious) and the overactive imaginations of commentators (undoubted). So, I’ve offered three theories of how the two testaments might relate: →, ø, ←. Could there be others? For example, what if patterns in OT and NT resonate just because certain patterns are found more or less everywhere, more or less all the time? In such a world, everything is prophesy and everything fulfills prophecy. The World is massively self-referential. There is a semantic web that ties all events together. Everything signifies; everything is signified. Everything is a sign “we are here to read” (Joyce), fulfilling past prophecies and prophesying things to come. In Ulysses , James Joyce set out to show how the archetypal patterns of Western Civilization can resonate with the events of a single day in Dublin. Specifically, he highlighted the parallels between the events of June 16, 1904 and Odysseus’ pan-Aegean cruise recounted by Homer. There is no suggestion that events in 1904 CE were ‘caused’ by events in 994 BCE, or vice versa. They are reflections of one another, and reflection is not vectored – it’s reciprocal…by definition. Time’s iron clad tyranny is overthrown. It is as true to say that B → A as it is to say that A → B, which is to say it’s not very true at all. A neither causes B nor is caused by it. A is a pattern, B is a pattern, and perhaps not surprisingly, the two patterns exhibit far greater congruence than mere ‘coincidence’ could possibly explain. More surprisingly, the two patterns exhibit greater congruence than even ‘causation’ can predict. Causality is not conformity. An effect only occasionally resembles its cause. Correlation is an entirely unique mode of connection among events. But the World is not bi-polar. It’s more than just 20th century Dublin and 10th century (BCE) Ithaca. In Dublin life, Joyce detects incipient harmonies with various cultures, enshrined in different media. While events in Ireland reprise events in the Aegean, they also reflect other patterns, e.g. Roman Catholic Liturgy (the ‘Mass’) and Shakespeare’s Hamlet . History, liturgy, poetry, fact and fiction, co-exist for Joyce in a cosmic ouroboros ∞. Pattern is substructure. Tangible events, performances, etc. are ‘accidents’; they are epiphenomenal. Joyce is agnostic when it comes to time, place, or medium. Pattern is everything. Most of us study events and notice patterns, Joyce studied patterns and noticed events. Read Ulysses . For about 2 weeks after, your world will be enchanted. Every bird’s song, every street’s sign will have been curated specifically for you. A name in a newspaper headline connects to a 4th century theologian. Everything is everywhere all at once, until it isn’t. A mystical experience induced by literature! We only know what we can see. The final editors of the Old Testament (500 – 200 BCE) reflected on the world as they lived it. Likewise, the New Testament authors (50 – 100 CE). What is remarkable is the congruence between events in 1st century CE and events that occurred 500 to 2000 years earlier. Consider the scope. Our story begins in Mesopotamia c. 2000 BCE, moves to Canaan, then on to sunny Egypt, back to Canaan, off to Babylon…and home again. At every stop, OT Jews had to defend their faith against the polytheistic and pagan tribes of the Middle East; NT Jews (including proto-Christians) were locked in a struggle with Greco-Roman culture. And yet, patterns endure, linking a dimly remembered past to a vaguely imagined future and giving laser-like clarity to both. Pattern is the annihilation of time. It brings everything into focus, it’s what’s left over. It’s what endures after history has done its worst; it’s where the past, the present, and the future sit around a barrel fire singing Kumbaya. Folks asked Jesus for a sign. Pattern is ‘the sign’, the triumph of order over entropy. Signs point to patterns, but pattern is the sign pointing to the Kingdom of God. 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.

“Satan glorified political power for its own sake. He defended the socio-economic status quo…Jesus’ mother proclaimed a political and economic revolution...” < Back Satan, Mary, and ‘Da Judge’ David Cowles Oct 15, 2023 “Satan glorified political power for its own sake. He defended the socio-economic status quo…Jesus’ mother proclaimed a political and economic revolution...” There’s nothing like a good old-fashioned barroom – you know…that place ‘where everybody knows your name’. Sadly, this Anglo-American institution is in decline on both sides of the Atlantic. We love to complain about socio-economic inequality and yet we are quietly witnessing the demise of a great leveler. The bar is where landlords and tenants, shop owners and wage earners, lawyers and tradesmen, bankers and borrowers have traditionally sat side by side, enjoying ‘a pint of the best’, and sharing their perspectives on the sorry state of the world. I love a good bar; you never know who you’ll meet and, if you shut up for a second, you can eavesdrop on the most interesting conversations. In my younger days, I frequented a bar where the ‘regulars’ included the owner of a rival bar, a pre-school teacher (and Stalin scholar), a florist, a contractor, a biology professor, a municipal employee, and an attorney. My best story, however, concerns a lazy summer afternoon with me sitting alone on my usual perch in my then favorite watering hole. Unexpectedly, two men and one woman walked in, already deeply engaged in animated conversation; they sat down right next to me. I had been going to this same bar for years, and as far as I know, none of the three had ever been there before. But of course, I recognized them immediately! Have you even been in a public space when suddenly and unexpectedly you encounter somebody famous? How do you react? Do you tell them how much you appreciate their ‘work’? Do you ask for their autograph? Or do you totally ignore them? I have adopted an intermediate strategy. I nod knowingly in their direction (sometimes they nod back) and I leave it at that. But not this time! On this occasion, I sat frozen on my stool, eyes forward, watching my bar mates only out of the corner of one eye and then only as reflected in the huge mirror that hung over the bar’s display of bottled spirits. And speaking of spirits, my drinking companions that day were none other than Mary, the virgin Mother of God, Lucifer (aka Satan), and ‘Judge Gudy’ (Gideon). In my experience, the only subjects worth talking about in a bar are religion and politics and this afternoon’s guests had apparently settled on politics as their topic du jour . Satan boasted proudly of his accomplishments in the field of politics. He reminded Mary that he had offered her son, Jesus, “all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence.” (Matthew 4: 8 - 9) Of course, Mary reminded Satan that Jesus had turned him down flat, but she did not challenge his boastful claim that he could in fact deliver ‘all the kingdoms of the world’. Clearly, this is political power way beyond anything Boss Tweed or Mayor Daley could have imagined. Then Mary lectured Satan on the terms of God’s own political praxis: “He has thrown down rulers from their thrones but lifted-up the lowly. The hungry he has filled with good things; the rich he has sent away empty.“ (Luke 1: 52 – 53) Clearly, we were in for a good old-fashioned 19 th century donnybrook. Satan glorified political power for its own sake. He defended the socio-economic status quo. His platform did not include even a single mention of ‘justice’; but he confidently asserted the corrupt malleability of ‘all the kingdoms’ (not some, not most… all ). Nor did Jesus contest Satan’s ability to deliver absolute political power. It was taken for granted. On the other hand, Jesus’ mother proclaimed a political and economic revolution the scope of which would have made Marx and Lenin cringe. The argument might have gone well into the evening, “Who’s driving?” I thought, had ‘Judge Gudy’ not intervened, “May I tell my story?” “3 millennia ago, give or take, I was threshing wheat in a winepress to hide the grain from the Midianites who were occupying our land. Suddenly, almost as if I’d been confronted by an angel, I thought, ‘You’re a brave man, and the Lord is with you’. I thought, If not me, who? If not now, when? If it’s going to be it’s up to me! “But of course, bravado gave way to skepticism and caution. “If the Lord is really with us, why has all this happened to us? Did I really receive a message from God or was I just daydreaming…again?” I prayed, “Give me a sign!” And I got one. “So that night, I engaged in my first act of revolutionary violence. I overturned the altar of Baal, tore down its ridiculous ‘pole’... a symbol of status quo and social hierarchy. Instead, I built on that same site an altar dedicated to YHWH and, using the wood from the pole, I sacrificed a whole bull. I even gave the altar a name, ‘Jehovah Shalom’, which means, ‘God is wholeness’. “Of course, I got caught, but I was the beneficiary of a ‘woke’ wave of ‘selective prosecutions’ and let go. I realize now that the destruction of Baal was just an initiation ritual; God was testing me to see if I was ready for bigger things. For better or worse, I passed the test. “Great for God, not so great for me! The cops (and my dad) had put the fear of Baal in me; I didn’t relish another bout with the law. But also, I didn’t want to turn down God, so I asked for another sign. And then another. No way out now! “So, I raised an army of 32,000 to take on 135,000 occupying soldiers. Farmers and craftsmen against Midian’s professional military. God or not, I couldn’t face the prospect of inflicting such carnage on my own people. So I decided to send 31,700 soldiers back home to their families. I would fight Midian…but with just 300 of my best . “I blush when people call me ‘the Father of Guerilla Warfare’. I was no military genius; I was just scared. I was willing to serve God, even if it meant martyrdom, but I was unwilling to sacrifice any more lives than absolutely necessary in the process. Besides, what was I going to do with 30,000 untrained soldiers? Better to rely on my best and brightest . And so, ya da, ya da, ya da … we won. With the help of God, and a lot of good luck, we drove Midian across the Jordan and out of Israel. "My only thought then was to get home to my father and my pastoral life. Surely my dad will let me drink wine now that I’ve defeated Midian in battle, or maybe not! Anyway, no more fighting for me. But my neighbors had other ideas. They insisted on making me King. "No way! As the leader of a victorious army, I was in a position to lay down the law… and this time I didn’t need to wait for a sign: 'I will not rule over you nor shall my son; the Lord will rule over you.” And so it was that “for 40 years the land was at peace...'” Silence followed. Slowly, Mary and Satan paid their tabs and Mary picked up the bill for Gideon. Satan left quietly followed a few minutes later by Mary. It seemed as though Gideon might hang out a while but, tab paid, he too left the bar. At that moment it occurred to me that the intellectual history of the 19 th and 20 th centuries had just played out in front of me. Satan advocated for secular pragmatism, democratic capitalism, the new world order. Mary argued for the overthrow of the existing socio-economic order to be replaced by a benign version of Marx’s Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Gideon argued for nothing. He lived his ideology, a fine blend of devotion to God, compassion for his fellows, and dedication to purpose. He had no desire for political power; he was content to let God rule Israel directly, without interference from permanent political institutions. He demonstrated the spirit of what today we call Anarchism . 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. 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< Back God Hypothesis David Cowles Nov 29, 2021 A much beloved friend and family member sent this to me T-day morning. Much appreciated! But I could not help but notice the care taken to avoid any reference to “God, the father almighty, creator of Heaven and Earth”. I am not suggesting that everyone must believe in God. Far from it. But I am suggesting that substituting various ‘pagan’ alternatives does not work: “god (as if God could be anything else but a proper noun), universe, life, earth”. Imagining that any of these could be sui generis capable or creating all that is ex nihilo is absurd. If you don’t buy into the “God Hypothosis”, ok, well and good, but suggest a viable alternative. A much beloved friend and family member sent this to me T-day morning. Much appreciated! But I could not help but notice the care taken to avoid any reference to “God, the father almighty, creator of Heaven and Earth”. I am not suggesting that everyone must believe in God. Far from it. But I am suggesting that substituting various ‘pagan’ alternatives does not work: “god (as if God could be anything else but a proper noun), universe, life, earth”. Imagining that any of these could be sui generis capable or creating all that is ex nihilo is absurd. If you don’t buy into the “God Hypothosis”, ok, well and good, but suggest a viable alternative. 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 Comfort for Clumsy Believers: What the Disbelief of the Disciples Means for Us Deidre Braley "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?'" Every quarter or so, I have an existential crisis. It’s not something I typically bring up in conversation; it turns out that questions like, “What if everything we’ve believed about God and the universe is wrong?” tend to dampen the overall mood of dinner parties and coffee dates. Plus, it just isn’t polite Christian talk. Nobody wants to hear the late night doubts of a so-called believer—least of all me . These questions are unwelcome; these doubts, disturbing. But I’ve found comfort as of late in the recountings of Jesus’ death and resurrection in the Gospels. For the first time in all of my rereadings, it’s striking me that the disciples really didn’t understand the entirety of what Jesus was up to and who he was. There is evidence that, in the backs of their 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?” How have I missed it until now? How did I not see that these men—just like me—grappled with the pesky whispers that poked and prodded at the foundations of their faith, their security, their eternal futures ? I’ve always assumed that since they knew Jesus personally, it was a given that they also understood he was really the Son of God. That every moment they were in his presence, his essence of saving grace would be so palpable that they’d know for sure who they were dealing with. That there would be no way they could touch and see, eat and banter with Jesus himself and still hold on to any shred of disbelief that mumbled, “Maybe he’s just a really good guy. A stellar prophet. Ten out of ten, as far as leaders go.” The Disbelief of the Disciples But looking around at Jesus’ closest handful of friends in the days surrounding his death and resurrection, we see a group of people thrown into the confusing waters of uncertainty, fear, and doubt. Judas acts a traitor. Simon Peter denies knowing him. The disciples in the upper room refuse to believe Mary when she tells them Jesus has left the tomb. The men on the road to Emmaus can’t even see past their discouraged hopes to realize that Jesus himself is walking alongside them. In short, even though they knew Jesus and he’d told them exactly what would happen, they still couldn’t seem to bring themselves to the point of certain, unwavering belief. Doubt is often seen as a character flaw. Society loves the certain. But maybe certainty is such a hot commodity because it’s what we all actually lack, addled by our own human condition. The disciple, too, were humans, and I see now that they each struggled with varying degrees of disbelief. What is significant to each of their stories does not turn out to be their level of dubiety, though—it is the way they end up responding to their natural predisposition to doubt. Judas, for example, is consumed by his disbelief. I have always wondered how he possibly could have betrayed Jesus, knowing he was the Son of God. Because honestly, how did he think that was going to work out for him? But now it strikes me: he didn’t know it, not really. If he had, he never would have traded him for thirty pieces of silver. He would have understood he was making a preposterous exchange (a bagful of coins for the Savior of the world) and that his treachery would have eternal consequences. My theory is that it wasn’t about the silver at all; it was about the fact that he heard the crowds all around him saying, “He is not who he says he is,” and allowed them to feed the doubts that niggled there in his soul. You can almost hear the snake in the Garden whispering the same lie in Judas’ ear that worked with Adam and Eve: “Did he really say that?” Judas justified his betrayal by shaking his head alongside the others, letting the disquiet of his disbelief overwhelm even the intimacy, miracles, and teachings he’d experienced in his close walk with Jesus. It isn’t only Judas, though, who questions the truth of Jesus’ words. Before it happened and on multiple occasions, Jesus himself had explicitly told his disciples that he would be mocked and shamed, beaten and killed, and then would rise on the third day. But it is written, “...they understood none of these things. This saying was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what was said” (Luke 18:34). This proves to be true, for on the day of Jesus’ resurrection, when Mary and the other women burst in to tell the eleven that the tomb was empty, Luke says, “these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them” (24:11). And when a disguised Jesus meets the two men on the way to Emmaus and asks why they look so sad, they respond, “...we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel” (Luke 24:21). The unspoken implication is obvious here: But he wasn’t. It is clear that belief and doubt had done battle in their souls; their belief had told them that Jesus was the Messiah, while their doubt had told them he was just a man. In his death, disbelief had won, and the men succumbed to despair. A Closer Look at Simon Peter Simon Peter was not immune to doubt either. He walked on the water to Jesus, yes, but he also began to sink the moment he saw the wind and the waves. And later, his three denials of Jesus are evidence that he did not have enough faith to stand against the enormous fear mounting within and around him. And yet, throughout the Gospels we see Simon Peter among the first to surrender to belief. At Caesarea Philippi, Simon Peter confesses that Jesus is “the Christ, “the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). On the mountain with Jesus during the Transfiguration, he is the one to (albeit awkwardly) embrace the seemingly-impossible fact that Moses and Elijah are there too; he offers to set up a tent for each of them (Matthew 17:4). When the other disciples balk at the notion that Jesus has risen, Simon Peter dashes from the room and arrives in breathless wonder to see the folded linens for himself (Matthew 24:12). And when the resurrected Jesus later appears on the beach where they are fishing, he is the first to recognize him as Lord and jump in the water in his haste to get to him (John 21:7). Simon Peter is not set apart in these stories because of his absence of disbelief or his stunning quality of character. In fact, he seems like a bit of a hothead—rash and impulsive and imperfect as any of us. But now I see that his superpower is his utter willingness to surrender to belief and, like a clumsy jump off the high-dive, to submerge himself in holy mystery. It’s not always pretty and he doesn’t always stick the landing, but he does keep jumping. Comfort for Clumsy Believers I’m comforted to know that those who walked with Jesus—who heard things of heaven directly from the Master’s mouth—also struggled against insidious doubt. I’m even more comforted by Jesus’ response to their clumsy attempts at belief. On the road to Emmaus, he admonishes the two disheartened men, saying, “‘O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?’” (Luke 24: 26). But he doesn’t leave them there; he goes on to interpret “to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (v.27)—starting all the way back at the beginning as if to gently lead their analytical minds into the territory of total belief. And to Thomas who says, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe” (John 20:24), Jesus appears and lets him do just that, as if to say, “I know this handicap you’re working with—humanity—is a tricky, finicky thing. Come, let me lead you to belief.” He helps his friends believe with their minds and their physical beings, appealing to wherever the incredulity has laid siege. He encourages them to touch, think, and feel. He helps them do whatever it takes to clear the shared hurdle of humanity: a quizzical nature. I have to believe that if there was grace for them, there is also grace for us clumsy believers—the ones who are troubled with unwelcomed doubts as we lay awake at night, and who sometimes tremble under the weight of our own existential crises. But let’s also take inspiration from Simon Peter. He was sifted by the devil and, like so many of us, heard the echoes of the original lie reverberating in his eardrums. But instead of letting disbelief win out, he still jumps out of the boat. He still lunges toward his Lord. When the enemy and all the world cry, “Is he really who he says he is?” Simon Peter waves them off as if to say, “Yes—he is I AM. And I am here for it.” Jesus responds to his friends’ varied degrees of doubt with tenderness and grace. He is not surprised by their disbelief, nor does he turn away because of it. But as Thomas puts his fingers into his wounds, Jesus does say, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe” (John 20:29). Remember—it is not our disbelief that defines our faith, but rather how we choose to respond to it. So the next time we find ourselves in the turbulent waters of late-night doubting, we needn’t give in to despair, nor chastise ourselves for having questions. Instead, we can consider ourselves normal, and then remember that our response is what drives the narrative. Judas had doubts and betrayed the Savior of the world. Simon Peter had doubts, and Jesus gave him the keys to the kingdom. The difference? Judas leaned into disbelief of what he couldn’t see, while Simon Peter leapt into the mystery. Let us be followers who, addled with doubt though we are, choose to keep jumping from the boat, to keep lunging toward our Lord, and to keep on believing what we can’t see. It is our willingness to surrender to belief that will ultimately define our faith. Deidre Braley is a freelance writer and editor. She lives in Maine with her husband and two children, and most days can be found savoring an overly cheesy bagel or drinking a second cup of coffee while working on her weekly newsletter, The Second Cup . She is a strong believer in the power of poetry, picking roadside flowers, and blowing past small talk at all costs. Follow her on Instagram @deidresecondcup or on Facebook — she loves meeting new friends. Return to our Holy Days Table of Contents Previous Next

< Back What Are Farm Animals Thinking? David Grimm New research is revealing surprising complexity in the minds of goats, pigs, and other livestock. You’d never mistake a goat for a dog, but on an unseasonably warm afternoon in early September, I almost do. I’m in a red-brick barn in northern Germany, trying to keep my sanity amid some of the most unholy noises I’ve ever heard. Sixty Nigerian dwarf goats are taking turns crashing their horns against wooden stalls while unleashing a cacophony of bleats, groans, and retching wails that make it nearly impossible to hold a conversation. Then, amid the chaos, something remarkable happens. One of the animals raises her head over her enclosure and gazes pensively at me, her widely spaced eyes and odd, rectangular pupils seeking to make contact—and perhaps even connection. It’s a look we see in other humans, in our pets, and in our primate relatives. But not in animals raised for food. Or maybe we just haven’t been looking hard enough. That’s the core idea here at the Research Institute for Farm Animal Biology (FBN), one of the world’s leading centers for investigating the minds of goats, pigs, and other livestock. On a campus that looks like a cross between a farm and a small research institute—with low-rise buildings nestled among pastures, stables, and the occasional dung pile—scientists are probing the mental and emotional lives of animals we’ve lived with for thousands of years, yet, from a cognitive perspective, know almost nothing about. To read the rest of this article for free, click here. David Grimm is the Online News Editor of Science . He also writes for the magazine, where he covers animal welfare, animal rights, and the science of cats and dogs. He received a bachelor of science degree in biochemistry and cell biology from the University of California, San Diego, and a Ph.D. in genetics from Yale University. Grimm is the winner of the 2010 Animal Reporting Award from the National Press Club. In 2009, one of his stories for Science , "The Mushroom Cloud's Silver Lining," was published in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2009 . His writing has appeared in The New York Times , The Wall Street Journal , The Washington Post , Slate , BuzzFeed , and a variety of other publications. He teaches science journalism at Johns Hopkins University. Grimm is the author of Citizen Canine: Our Evolving Relationship with Cats and Dogs , which traces the evolution of pets from wild animals to members of the family. Click above to return to Winter 2024. Previous Next

< Back Football and Social Change David Cowles Sep 20, 2022 “…You feel your body sliding between other bodies, not under them; you look up and OMG, it’s Morning in America, daylight after all.” In Issue #2 of Aletheia Today Magazine (ATM) , we looked at football as an enterprise, and, more broadly, as a metaphor for life itself. Hopefully, we were able to contribute some concrete ideas on how to coach a successful team , how to succeed as a player, and how to lead a successful life once it’s time to hang up those cleats for good. (When is that, Tom Brady?) Building on that theme, this edition of Thoughts While Shaving (TWS) asks, “How is working for social change like playing fullback on a football team?” R U ready!? The quarterback hands you the ball…and now you’re staring at maybe eight different colored shirts, supported by 16 cleated legs. True, some of those legs are pushing your way but still, it’s a congealed mass: No Daylight, No Joy! But you do your thing. Coach designs the plays, QB calls them (on this team), you execute them. You don’t get ‘paid’ to second guess (actually, you don’t get paid at all, unless you’ve already made it to the NFL…or are violating NCAA rules). Still, it takes all your strength and courage to smash your body at top speed and with maximum force into a 1,500 lb. scrum. Yet you do it! Why? There is no chance of gaining any yardage, and you’re risking a fumble or, even worse, an injury. Why not just take a knee? Doesn’t that make more sense? It might, but that doesn’t matter, you’re not doing it. Why not? Duty to your teammates ? Faith in your coaches? Both, but more than either, Hope . Take a knee, avoid disaster, but lose all hope of any gain, or smash into the scrum, risk mishap, but maintain a sliver of possibility . So, you crash, ball clutched, legs churning, and guess what? Loss of a yard! Fourth down! Ok then, so what did you accomplish? Absolutely nothing, right? Well, in terms of field position, ‘absolutely nothing’ would be putting it generously. More accurately, you lost a yard and wasted a down. Still you accomplished something. Your self-sacrifice actually accomplished a lot: You demonstrated your Love for your teammates. They can count on you, you did your duty . Solidarity! You demonstrated your Faith in your coaches and your quarterback. Plus, you made your team smarter! When you succumbed to the scrum, you created information , data. Your coaches could see what went wrong; they can make adjustments. And you planted that same information in the other team’s psyche : “We smoked ‘em; they won’t try that play again. We better be on the lookout for some sort of sweep or maybe a pass.” Whatever. You can’t control how another team reacts to your data, but you can put the data out there and hope they misread or misuse it. Information and disinformation. If it’s not Love that makes the world go ‘round then surely it’s info/disfo: it’s the currency of grade school squabbles, middle school gossip, political campaigns, international relations and, oh yeah, war. Fourth down: The coach is sending in a new play. He’s a ‘boomer,’ and now we see he’s a fan of The Who to boot. So, guess what?! “Meet the new play…same as the old play!” That’s right, same play (with a minor tweak to the blocking scheme). The Gods Must Be Crazy (or at least the coaches). Isn’t this exactly the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome? But, of course, you’ll do your duty . Again, you smash the scrum, but this time you feel your body sliding between other bodies, not under them; you look up and OMG, it’s Morning in America , daylight after all. What does this have to do with the struggle for social change? Well, take a look (regardless of where you sit on the political spectrum): The Conservative movement after Goldwater (1964) The Civil Rights movement after the Martin Luther King (1968) The Gay Rights movement after Stonewall (1969) The Anti-War movement after McGovern (1972) The Right to Life movement after Roe (1973) Nicaragua after the Contras (1990) I could go on. In each case, dogged perseverance paid off…big time! Causes that everyone had written off as hopeless suddenly, Phoenix like, rose victorious. That’s how social change happens. Against all odds, Faith, Hope, and Love ( Duty ) can carve out a sliver of daylight (possibility). That’s how to play fullback …and perhaps it’s also how to change the world. Have you taken the ATM Survey yet? Tell us what articles you want to read and how we're doing? Click here . Thoughts While Shaving is the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine ( ATM) . To never miss another Thought, choose the subscribe option below. Also, follow us on any one of our social media channels for the latest news from ATM. Thanks for reading! Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back CVS and Consciousness David Cowles Oct 24, 2023 “…Congratulations…you just created your first universe. May I call you God? Or would you prefer Lord of ‘the Ring’?” Riddle : What does a cash register receipt from CVS have in common with an electron, human consciousness, and political revolution? Give up? Answer : They all exhibit 720° symmetry. What? 720° symmetry? That’s ridiculous! You can have 90° symmetry, 180° symmetry, 360° symmetry, but never 720°. That’s just not a thing. The idea itself is ridiculous. I agree with you. It is ridiculous…and yet, it is a thing. May I demonstrate? Next time you visit a CVS, please don’t throw away the mile-long cash register receipt they give you at check-out. Instead, turn it into a loop—but not just any loop—a special kind of loop known as a Möbius strip. Here’s how (not recommended for readers under the age of 3): Hold the two ends of the receipt, one in each hand. Twist one end 180 degrees. Scotch tape the two ends together. Not too challenging, but congratulations anyhow: you just created your first universe. May I call you God ? Or would you prefer Lord of ‘the Ring’ ? But now what can you do with your Precious ? Run your finger along its surface. Keep going. Still going? It’s endless, isn’t it? You’ve taken an everyday rectangle, albeit elongated, with well-defined sides and edges and turned it into a one-sided loop with no boundary. You’ve created what topologists call a ‘non-orientable’ surface. Now pick a spot on the ‘strip’ and imagine an arrow on that spot, pointing up; slide that arrow to the right or left until you come back to where you started (360°). Hmm, something’s different, isn’t it? Your arrow is pointing down now, as if it were a reflection of the original arrow. Of course, it is the original arrow, only now it’s ‘disoriented’, a bit like me after a long night at my local . But no problem! Just keep going in the same direction. Another 360° et voilà , your arrow’s pointing up again. Your universe is symmetrical after all, but that symmetry requires 720° of revolution, not the meager 360°, as in my boring universe. At first, it seems amazing that we can create 720°symmetry in 360° space, but the phenomenon is not as rare as you might suppose. Ever heard of an electron? Electrons have something called spin – the subatomic analog of your finger running along the Möbius strip. We’re familiar with spheroids. Obviously, they exhibit 360° symmetry, right? Not necessarily. Turns out that the electron, and the proton, all massive subatomic particles, in fact, exhibit 720° symmetry. They behave like figures on a Möbius strip, not like baseballs. BTW, just in case you were wondering, massless particles like the photon generally exhibit boring old 360°symmetry, but the graviton is a bit of a twist : it exhibits 180° symmetry. 720° symmetry is important in another context: consciousness. I am aware of a table. For the sake of argument, let’s assume it’s a real table existing in a material world. Thanks to the properties of my central nervous system, I am aware of the look and feel of this table, but I am also aware of myself, and I am aware of myself being aware of the table. That’s consciousness! But what’s that ? Is it some sort of transcendental substance, a ‘soul’ perhaps? Or is it just another manifestation of a material ‘neural net’? Neither. It’s a topological feature of Universe per se . Like mass and energy, particles and waves, it’s akin to the property of reflection: the universe reflects itself. Apparently, self-reflection is an irreducible property of Being. Perhaps it’s what Being is. That’s not to say that self-reflection is always, or even usually, conscious. Consciousness rises to the level of a phenomenon only in the context of certain well-defined, but currently unspecified, physical structures. Once upon a time, people broke Universe down into ‘mind’ and ‘matter." Gilbert Ryle ( The Concept of Mind ) put an end to that. He demonstrated that that sort of dualism makes no sense. Mind and matter, like mind and body, are just different aspects of one phenomenon. Today our models are more nuanced. But using the old terminology, it turns out that both mind (consciousness) and matter (massive particles) exhibit 720° symmetry. This appears to be the real, deep structure of Being, not the anemic ‘special case’ abstraction we know as 360° symmetry. As usual, we have things upside down! Universe is characterized by 720° symmetry; 360° symmetry is a relatively rare, ‘degenerate’ exception. Yet we’ve mistaken the exception to the rule…once again! We’ve imprisoned ourselves in a ‘toy universe’. We ‘swim’ in Maya . “You say you want a revolution” ( The Beatles )? Well, you’re at home here! And what is a revolution other than the inversion of the socio-economic arrow? Marx said it well: a “Dictatorship of the Proletariat”. The Psalmists, Isaiah and Mark, did even better: “The stone rejected by the builders has become the cornerstone.” But the prize for Best Said goes to The Who : “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” The Theory of Revolution requires that the fabric of society (the political logos ) be non-orientable. How else can we turn an up-arrow down? But, of course that could never happen in the real world, could it? We’ve never seen a revolutionary cadre turn into a new aristocracy, have we? Oh and BTW, I have a bridge for sale in Brooklyn that has your name written all over it. Let’s chat. Keep the conversation going! 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. 4. Aletheia Today Magazine (ATM) will be devoting its entire fall issue (released 9/1/23) to artificial intelligence (AI). What are the philosophical, theological, cultural and even spiritual implications of AI powered world? If you’d like to contribute to the AI Issue, click here . Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back How To Do Philosophy David Cowles Feb 6, 2025 “Communicating complex middle voice concepts has become philosophy’s #√2 challenge: So do it!” At its most fundamental level, philosophy takes data from one level of reality and organizes it into patterns that make sense of all levels of reality. “To see a World in a grain of sand…” (William Blake) Traditionally, philosophers have approached their mission from one of two vantage points. Existentialists, empiricists and phenomenologists (Sartre, Mill, Husserl) start with data taken from personal experience. They find patterns in that data which they hope will resonate at all levels of reality, experienced from all possible perspectives. The search for a TOE did not begin with Newton or Einstein or Hawking-Penrose; it began with Thales. From our unique, embedded vantage point we cannot know everything about everything, but perhaps we may hope to know something about something. So the task of philosophy is to identify ‘something’ we can know that can act as a universal decryption key. For some, that key lies in sense data (Hume), for others, in self-awareness (Descartes). Either way, this project requires a gigantic leap of faith. To do philosophy from the bottom up, you have to believe that the World is a Rosetta Stone, that it contains the key to its own decryption: “Signatures of all things I am here to read.” (James Joyce) Others take a top down approach. They consider the universe as a whole and search for patterns that can elucidate experience at all levels and from all perspectives. Plato, Hegel and Marx fall into this category. On the margins of Intellectual History, there is a ‘third way’ - an approach to philosophy that is neither bottom up nor top down; in fact it rejects the very idea that the World is organized along a vertical axis. Think ‘inside out’ instead of ‘up down’ (horizontal vs. vertical). Philosophers in this camp include Anaximander, Buber and Whitehead. Doing philosophy on the vertical axis means setting out either from the quantum or from the plenum and proceeding, somewhat algorithmically, to fill-in the gap. At its worst, this process can feel a bit mechanical. Doing philosophy on the horizontal axis, on the other hand, means giving up the polar concepts of quantum and plenum . The paradigm here is neither computation nor causation; it is organism. Sidebar : I am intentionally excluding from this survey folks whose primary contribution is as a theologian or religious leader. However, I cannot fail to mention Jesus of Nazareth. Without taking a single 400 level university course, he covered all bases: “ I am the Way (bottom up), the Truth (top down), and the Life (inside out).” We begin our journey c. 2500 BCE with the grandfather of Western philosophy, Anaximander. Anaximander believed the fundamental unit of reality to be neither quantum nor plenum but xreon (‘reck’), the mutuality of relationship. According to Anaximander, the ‘real’ World begins when two unrelated ‘virtual’ entities freely grant each other reck, each giving the other the space it needs to become itself. While not the dominant Western paradigm, it shows up everywhere in our culture: ➢ In advertisement: ‘Be all that you can be’. ➢ In scripture: “I (John the Baptist) must become less so that he (Jesus) may become more.” (John 3:30) ➢ On bumper stickers: “Live simply that others may simply live.” ➢ In prayer: “As we forgive those who trespass against us .” ➢ As a simple salutation: Shalom . Perhaps surprisingly, contemporary science has discovered that Anaximander’s somewhat arcane model is actually operational in the physical world; in fact, it forms the substructure of that world: ➢ Quantum Mechanics (c. 1925) revealed the existence of a ‘virtual world’ in which variables only acquire a specific value when they interact (are measured). ➢ Bell’s Theorem (1964) proved that particles well outside each other’s light cones can remain entangled and function as a single, coordinated entity. Philosophically, Martin Buber and Alfred North Whitehead brilliantly represented the horizontal vision during the early 20th century, but it was cybernetic philosopher, Gregory Bateson, who emerged in the later part of the 20th as the undesignated spokesperson for the ‘horizontal worldview’. Among his greatest hits: "It takes two to know one." R. Buckminster Fuller wrote, “The universe is plural and at minimum two.” In this he allied with our common ‘grandfather’. Bell’s Theorem refined this intuition: Everything is plural and at a minimum √2. Bell made Fuller interactive. In this horizontal ontology, there are no ‘naked singularities’; the #1 is just a placeholder. Counting begins with √2. A quantitative value less than √2 does not meet the threshold to be . Finally, the three vectors of Western Philosophy have analogs in our Indo-European languages. Our active voice verbs describe events from the bottom up (I do it); our passive voice verbs describe events from the top down (it is done to me). To describe events on the horizontal axis we would need a third voice, a ‘middle voice’ and we don’t have it, do we? But we did! Many IE languages had a strong middle voice syntax , once upon a time. It was used to describe events where reciprocity is involved; but according to some of the philosophers we met above, whenever there is an event, reciprocity is involved. If so, middle voice should be the ‘default voice’ in all our languages; it isn’t. And so, advocates of a horizontal world view struggle to express their positions and defend them against the glib, language assisted, advocates of the ‘vertical way’. As the quantum nature of reality unfolds, communicating complex middle voice concepts has become philosophy’s #√2 challenge: So do it! 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.

“I am a spy; I can sense it, but I have no spy craft, no Bond-tech, and no ‘should you choose to accept it’ mission.” < Back I'm Ageless and Timeless David Cowles Mar 1, 2024 “I am a spy; I can sense it, but I have no spy craft, no Bond-tech, and no ‘should you choose to accept it’ mission.” My parents were members of The Greatest Generation, not me! I was born into the Who Am I Generation , aka the Baby Boomers. For some reason, ‘Who am I?’ seemed like a sensible question to us, and we allowed it to permeate every aspect of our lives. My parents couldn’t understand me, nor can my children. So 75 years on, I’m motivated to return to the defining question of my generation: at the end of the day, “after the cups, the marmalade, the tea” (Eliot), who am I? Well… I am an organism : I am a unique member of the species Homo sapiens , one out of 100 billion humans who have lived on Planet Earth. I am a society : I am 30 trillion organisms (cells), each harboring another organism (nucleus), some harboring up to 1,000 additional organisms (mitochondria). I am an economy : The 30 trillion cells that form my body share a common code (DNA); yet they differentiate into tissues and organs that perform vastly different functions, all in support of the host organism, me; they practice an extremely sophisticated version of division of labor . I am a polity : My body houses, protects, and provides for 100 billion, mostly symbiotic, bacteria. I am a citizen : I participate as a member in various overlapping human societies and in one overarching society, the biosphere, which encompasses all terrestrial organisms. I am topos : I am a fissure in the fabric of spacetime. I hold a mirror up to the world. I am how the universe experiences itself. I am consciousness . I am a black hole : I have no hair , i.e., I have no qualia . I just am. I am the collapse of space and time. I am a singularity. I am a monad – I am unchanged since the moment of my conception, and I am unchangeable… at least until the moment of my death. Nothing about me that can change; anything that can change is not about me. I am an ouroboros : I am not what I am, and I am what I am not. I am forever chasing my tail. In Exodus 3, YHWH says, “I am what am.” I, on the other hand, “am not!”. I am everything…but in the mode of not being it. I am not anything; I am not everything. I am la différance – a neologism contributed to the French language by late 20th-century philosopher Jacques Derrida. I am a quantum of difference. A ≠ A’ but A – A’ = 0 or A = A’ but A – A’ ≠ 0. I am not myself, yet there is nothing between me and myself. I am myself, displaced. From my earliest memories, I have always felt that something was out of place. I never felt quite ‘myself’…and it turns out that that’s because I am not ‘quite’ myself. I am separated from ‘myself’ by différance . As a child, I felt a powerful disconnect between who (or what) I really was and the things I was doing, the person I was being, and the roles I was playing - a disconnect between ‘who I am’ to myself (nothing) and ‘who I seem to be’ to others (a float in the Macy’s Day Parade). I am 5. I am standing at the far corner of my posh pre-school’s front lawn. I am gazing outward, across a field of wildflowers, over a distant row of shops, onto the horizon. I am lonely, anxious, and terribly sad. As I stand and gaze, I feel that I’m not supposed to be here, but somehow, I am. I’m in the wrong place at the wrong time in the wrong body, but what can I do about it? Who can I go to for help? “Mommy, I’m not supposed to be here!” – I don’t think so. I don’t know enough yet to imagine that this angst might be the first stirring of philosophical insight or spiritual awakening. It just hurts…like most everything else at age 5. But I make a mental note: “Whatever happens, I will always remember this moment,” and so I do! In fact, thanks to Marcel Proust ( Search for Lost Time ), I’m still standing at the far corner of that lawn right now. Nothing has changed; no time has passed. I know that I’m supposed to be me. I mean, who else am I going to be? And I desperately want the me that I am to be ‘something or someone’. I confuse Being with Being X . Of course, to be something or someone is to be someone or something else , something I’m not, someone I can’t be. But I don’t know any of this at the age of 5! Imagine the loneliness…and the terror. I’m growing up among a bunch of ‘aliens’ (‘alien’ to me, not because I imagine they came from outer space, but because they appear to be something I’m not - persons.) I am a human baby, utterly defenseless, being raised by ‘wolves’. No wonder I have anxieties; no wonder I can’t breathe. I am a spy; I can sense it, but I have no spy craft, no James Bond tech, and no ‘should you choose to accept it’ mission. I am at the mercy of all that surveys me. Now I am 10; my ‘10-year-old boy’ identity is impressed upon me by every adult I encounter, by the way they treat me. But I am not a 10-year-old boy, and instinctively, at least, I know that. But again, what am I to do? Should I say, “Daddy, there’s been some mistake? I am not who you think I am. I am not 10; I am ageless and timeless. I’m just pretending to be 10. Please treat me as your equal, not as your 10-year-old son?” Gertrude Stein said that we are all always to ourselves, young men and young women. She was only partly right. Young adulthood is the time in life when we feel our age least. We are no longer too young for things, and we are not yet too old for other things. We are in the ‘opportunity zone’. We come to identify this period of minimal age with agelessness . Whenever we feel ageless and timeless, we imagine that we feel the way it feels to be a young man or woman. And so, I set off on a knight’s quest, determined to reunite my Peter Pan self with my shadow. Like generations of lords and ladies before me, I am in pursuit of the Holy Grail, aka ‘me’. Fortunately, I’ve always had friends in low places. My friends don’t treat me like a 10-year-old because they don’t see 10-ness in me anymore than they see it in themselves. To ourselves, we are ageless, and our friendship confirms this. Friendship is an agent and consequence of age-blindness. Why are peer groups so important to tweens and teens? Because they offer a safe space, free of toxic age consciousness. It’s the only thing that keeps us sane. 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 image to return to Spring 2024. Previous Next Share 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 the Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back The Mystery of the Star of Bethlehem Solène Tadié For more than two millennia, the Star of Bethlehem, which guided the Magi to the city where Jesus was born, has been rousing the curiosity of researchers worldwide. “And behold, the star that they had seen at its rising preceded them, until it came and stopped over the place where the child was…” (Matthew 2:7). The Star of Bethlehem, mentioned in St. Matthew’s Gospel, is one of the main symbols associated with Jesus’ birth, embodying the light of hope of salvation in the midst of darkness. But beyond its symbolism, this star is also an exhaustible subject of debate as a scientific phenomenon. Was it a historical event or only a pious fiction invented by St. Matthew? And if it was a historical event, how can we scientifically explain the occurrence of this exceptional astronomical event? Such questions have given rise to many different interpretations over the centuries. Moreover, as it is difficult to determine with certainty the exact year of the Nativity, a scientific explanation of the phenomenon would also be a potential time marker to help pinpoint the date of Christ’s birth. According to a calculation by German astronomer Johannes Kepler in the 16th century, an extremely rare conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn occurred three times in the constellation Pisces in 7 B.C., appearing to observers as a single luminous star. This would coincide with St. Matthew’s description of the celestial body appearing, disappearing and then reappearing to the Magi. A century earlier, Portuguese Rabbi Isaac Abravanel had already claimed that this specific kind of conjunction triggered the birth of the Messiah. This theory gained more credibility in 1925, when German orientalist Paul Schnabel deciphered ancient cuneiform tablets from the astronomical school of the Babylonian city of Sippar , which described the exact same astronomical conjunction in 7 B.C. “This is a good theory,” Father Giulio Maspero, a physicist and theologian at the pontifical University of the Holy Cross, told EWTN, mentioning other plausible scientific explanations, including the possibility of a comet. “Another theory, which may be shocking for us, is that the star was an angel. So, no astronomy here, but just a spiritual light that accompanies the Three Wise Men along their path,” he said. Father Maspero says this explanation is “coherent with the whole narrative,” as Bethlehem was filled with angels who were “proclaiming the glory of Jesus and announcing to the shepherds what was happening there”. There is also the possibility of an appearance of a nova or the explosion of a supernova around 5 B.C., as suggested by several Chinese and Korean astronomer’s chronicles, but this has never been definitively determined. The Spiritual Strength of Mystery For Brother Guy Consolmagno, astronomer and director of the Vatican Astronomical Observatory, the importance of the shining Star of the Holy Night lies above all in the fact that it shows that the physical universe can be used to get closer to God. “We don’t know whether Matthew was intending this to be a pious story to show that Christ was even more significant than Augustus, who had used astrology to say that he had to be an emperor, or if he was describing a real star or a real astronomical event, or if it was something totally miraculous and we will never know until we can interview St. Mathew himself and find out!” he said. But if there is no definitive scientific conclusion regarding the nature of the Star, the mystery surrounding this story makes it even more powerful for Christians. “We have to read the symbols, we need to look at the narrative, otherwise we cannot catch the true meaning of what God is saying to us,” Father Maspero said, adding that everything in the Gospel is a mystery. And the universality of redemption and assurance that God always answers those who seek him is the central meaning of the Christmas Star — a symbol that shouldn’t be distorted by an excess of scientism. Image: Detail of the 6th-century nave mosaic — which depicts the Three Magi wearing trousers and Phrygian caps as a sign of their Asian origin — in the Basilica of Sant' Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, Italy. (Photo: Register Files) Solène Tadié is the Europe Correspondent for the National Catholic Register. She is French-Swiss and grew up in Paris. After graduating from Roma III University with a degree in journalism, she began reporting on Rome and the Vatican for Aleteia. She joined L’Osservatore Romano in 2015, where she successively worked for the French section and the Cultural pages of the Italian daily newspaper. She has also collaborated with several French-speaking Catholic media organizations. Solène has a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, and recently translated in French (for Editions Salvator) Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy by the Acton Institute’s Fr. Robert Sirico. Return to our Yuletide Issue Previous Next

< Back Life After Life David Cowles Oct 17, 2024 “Nothing lasts forever. Maybe not even death.” Remember when things were simple? First you were alive, then you were dead. “Those were the days!” (Archie Bunker) Then medicine blurred the lines. ‘Brain death’ replaced ‘cardiac death’ as our preferred criterion; but now things have just gotten a whole lot more complicated! Researchers at Tufts University and the University of Vermont have found that the cells of deceased organisms can live on for substantial periods of time on their own and indefinitely when provided with nutrients, oxygen, and bioelectric or biochemical stimulation. Impressed? Don’t be: this is just the tip of the iceberg. Not all cells need to be reanimated immediately after the death of the host organism. For example, human white blood cells can survive up to 86 hours after organismal death. Muscle cells harvested from mice can be reanimated after as many as 14 days, fibroblast cells from goats and sheep after as long as a month. More astonishing still, these rejuvenated cells, nicknamed ‘xenobots’, have the ability to form multicellular organisms apparently unrelated to the body plans of their original host organisms. Skin cells extracted from deceased frog embryos can spontaneously reorganize into multicellular organisms in which they exhibit behaviors well outside their original biological roles. For example, these ‘second chance cells’ use cilia – small, hair-like structures – to navigate their surroundings. Who says there are no second acts in America? It gets better. Human lung cells can self-assemble into multicellular organisms that repair themselves and any neurons that just happen to be nearby. Apparently, there is such a thing as ‘a born caregiver’. The ability to restore themselves if they become damaged is a natural feature of living organisms, and it is preserved in xenobot biology. Xenobots can close a severe laceration within 5 minutes. These injured cells are able to heal their wounds, restore their shape and continue their work as before. Xenobots are even capable of memory; they have the ability to record information and use that information to modify their behavior. Researchers now hope that these xenobots may be trained to exhibit certain behaviors upon sensing appropriate stimuli. You were hoping your children would exhibit this ability, but that experiment turned out to be a howling failure; now you must place all your hope on xenobots. Can they learn to absorb and break down certain chemicals, especially environmental toxins? Can we train them to synthesize and excrete useful chemicals and proteins in the process? The remarkable plasticity of cellular collectives allows them to form bodies and exhibit behaviors that are quite different from their original organisms - without undergoing any modifications at the DNA level! These cells can spontaneously take on new roles and create new body plans without waiting for mutation and natural selection to work their magic. Perhaps these xenobots have things to teach us. For example, can they help us understand how individual cells naturally come together, communicate, and specialize to create a larger organism? It’s a new model that may provide a foundation for regenerative medicine. Xenobots and their successors may also provide insight into how multicellular organisms arose from ancient single celled organisms, and the origins of information processing, decision making and cognition in biological organisms. Perhaps you’re not as excited by all this as I am. Perhaps you don’t care so much about unicellular life forms. Maybe you’re wondering, “What about me? Why can’t my life be prolonged?” Well good news for you too! A new technology called OrganEx may be right up your street. Basically, OrganEx adds cellular level life support to traditional technologies like ECMO. It revives the body more slowly employing a gentler process of reviving cells that have already begun to die (see above). Turns out those single cell organisms are important after all! To test OrganEx, a Yale University team turned to humanity’s closest non-primate relative – who else but the common household pig? Two monitors, one for the heart and one for brain activity, showed flat lines. The pigs were dead. An hour passed. Then scientists connected each animal to the OrganEx system: heart monitors connected to four out of five pigs began to light up. The hearts’ electrical activity had resumed spontaneously, without chest compressions or other obvious lifesaving measures. What does this mean? With this technology, doctors might be able to extend the amount of time someone could be ‘dead’ before recovering. Minimally, it might make more organs from more bodies recoverable for transplantation. At a cellular level at least, death may not be as quick or as final as once thought. For the person who collapses from a heart attack and remains on the ground for 10 minutes, the findings raise a key question: How dead are they, really? One could imagine using OrganEx after a cardiac arrest. Nothing lasts forever. Maybe not even death. Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to contact us on any matter. How did you like the post? How could we do better in the future? Suggestions welcome. 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! 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