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< Back Dignity or Death David Cowles Jun 15, 2026 “There is nothing dignified about death… In fact, death is the antithesis of dignity.” Everybody talks about Dignity . Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas , repeatedly warns of AI’s potential to undermine ‘human dignity’. A month later, he doubled down in Madrid, “ Dignity takes precedence over all utility…every truly just society is built upon the recognition of the inviolable dignity of the human person.” On the other end of the spectrum, advocates for ‘physician assisted suicide’ often ground their argument on ‘the right to die with dignity ’. Nice work if you can get it, but… News flash : Death is the one universal condition and there is nothing dignified about it! This magnificent body that we’ve been curating lo these many years suddenly stops working and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t get it started again…much like an Opel Kadet I owned in the ‘60s. (No, my millennial friends, I did not know Lincoln; the War between the States took place in the 1860s .) Add to that the fact that death is usually accompanied by some or all of the following: Ø Acute trauma Ø Extreme pain Ø Cognitive decline Ø Incapacitation Ø Incontinence Where is the dignity in that? In fact, death is the antithesis of dignity! We are born to live and death isn’t that. 4 billion years of evolution have honed us to survive and procreate. To die is to fail (sic)…or retire. There is no dignity in dying. Death is the ultimate indignity and in any event the manner and circumstances of our death are almost entirely out of our control. Those who look for dignity in their demise are confusing the ‘how they died’ with ‘how they faced death’. It is our response to death that allows us to salvage a modicum of dignity. Our sages confirm this; they tell us how to face the inevitable heroically: From Homer’s warriors on the plains of Troy to Jesus, Stephen, and the Christian martyrs. But perhaps the best counsel famously comes from a 20 th century Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas: “Do not go gentle into that good night…Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” Ultimately, there can be no compromise with Evil ( sed libera nos a malo ) and Death is its paradigm. “I set before you life and death…therefore choose life.” (Deut. 30: 19) But then again, life isn’t a heck of a lot better: I am reminded of the popular turn of the millennium meme, “Life sucks and then you die!” To wit, w e are born naked, helpless, and covered in mucus. We spend the next 18 years in survival mode, withstanding the abuse, neglect, and miseducation, known as happy childhoods . But not to worry, we have 40 years of wage slavery, known as successful careers , ahead. Worn out and less functional, we are finally ‘allowed’ (not to say ‘encouraged’) to retire into the marginal life of a ‘seasoned citizen’. Remind me, why did we make this journey in the first place? We did so because Leo’s not entirely wrong! There is a profound dignity attached to being human, but it’s not the dignity conferred by labor and certainly not by death, even if it is holy or heroic . We are not dignified by the World (fame, success, power); the World is dignified by us, and not by who we are but by what we do. And I don’t mean building castles of thin air, Ozymandias! We are the image and likeness of God and God is Good, not just ‘good’ but Good per se , and Good (God) manifests in our world as Beauty, Truth, and Justice (BTJ), and we are the creature uniquely qualified to recognize and propagate the beautiful, the true, and the just in our realm. Based on our reading of Genesis , we imagine ourselves the pinnacle of creation and we mistake species pride for dignity. Just how dignified are we? Let’s see. We let ourselves be hoodwinked by a snake, we traded Paradise for an apple, we hid from God in the garden like 5 year olds, we learned to be ashamed of our bodies, and we sank to the crime of fratricide. Some dignity! In fact, the mythological indignity of the primordial nuclear family became the launching pad for creation’s ongoing, heroic effort to recreate the Garden of Eden: Jesus’ Kingdom of Heaven, Revelation ’s New Jerusalem, Arthur’s Camelot, Marx’s Dictatorship of the Proletariat, Ezra Pound’s City of Dioce . Every entity, to the extent that it is good, is a member of the ‘set of all good things’. Lie quiet Russell, I mean that is Bertrand Russell . God is good… and God is Good. Therefore, every entity, to the extent that it is good, imitates God and subsists in God: “Through him, with him, and in him.” Domine non sum dignus. “Lord, I am not worthy.” Sed tantum dic verbo . “But speak just the Word ( logo ).” It is the Word of God, the logos , that orders the World in a way that supports the realization of eternal and universal Values (BTJ) in the spatiotemporal realm. It is the Word of God that makes human dignity possible. Pope Leo asks us to respect the dignity of all human beings because that is the teaching to the church; I would argue that we should respect the teachings of the Church because we have dignity. Dignity is primary. I’ll see Leo and raise him. But my dignity is reflected in and refracted by what I do, not in or by what happens to me. According to Thomas Aquinas, et al., from God’s eternal perspective, Value is simple…and singular: the Good . But just as white light refracts to generate a rainbow in spacetime, so Good manifests in specific contexts as Beauty, Truth, and/or Justice (BTJ). The Good is simple; it is the same for me as it is for you and it is the same for you as it is for God. I read the Book of Job as the hypothetical transcript of a case heard in Cosmic Court that confirmed once and for all the primacy and universality of Good. My dignity does indeed come from God but it comes, not as a perq of birth, but as a mission for life. Just as children imagine that there is dignity in imitating their parents, so we know that there is dignity in imitating God, i.e. in doing God’s work. And what is that work? To manifest Good, i.e. to realize Beauty, Truth, and Justice in our realm. So, theist, atheist, or agnostic, everything I do begins with a primal appetition for the Good, which is God and which manifests in our World as BTJ. In the 1950’s, our educators told us that our purpose in life was to know, love, and serve God. Not everything they taught us back then was right, but in this instance, t hey nailed it . I ‘know God’ when I seek Truth; I ‘love God’ when I foster Beauty; I ‘serve God’ when I restore Justice. In this, and only this, consists human dignity. Deo gratia! 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 Logos (not Legos) David Cowles Jun 9, 2026 “If Being is an organism, logos is its skeleton; if it’s an edifice, logos is the foundation and the frame.” 1500 Words, 7 minute read Do you like riddles? Give these a try: (1) What do people fail to comprehend before and after they have heard it? (Heraclitus) (2) What is shared by everyone but acknowledged by no one? (Heraclitus) (3) What separates us from what is closest to us? (Heraclitus) (4) What was before all things, through which all things came to be? (St. John) (5) What scatters all things and gathers them together…simultaneously? (Heraclitus) (6) What is with God (spirit) outside history and with us (flesh) in history? (St. John) (7) How do we know that all things are one? (Heraclitus) Each of these riddles has the same answer and, you guessed it, the answer is logos . But that doesn’t help very much, does it? What is this logos and how can it be all things to all people (as above)? Logos is an ancient Greek word, of course, whose meaning has evolved. The original concept was that of a weir or net, useful for example in fishing. Logos first emerged as an organizing principle in the philosophy of Heraclitus, a 5 th century BCE pre-Socratic from Ephesus , modern Turkey. After a stint with the Stoics, logos resumed center stage with Heraclitus’ fellow Ephesian, the Apostle John (c. 80 CE). It is no exaggeration to say that John’s Gospel is Christianity’s founding philosophical document (vs. biographies, letters, diaries, sermons, exhortations, hymns, etc. elsewhere in the New Testament). Today, logos is typically translated as ‘word’ – not wrong, but certainly the semantic minimum . Odd too, because John uses a completely unrelated term whenever he’s referring to a unit of speech. If we’re sticking with the language metaphor, then logos is more like syntax than word . More broadly, logos suggests order, i.e. the way uniform spacetime accommodates non-linear concentrations of energy such as subatomic particles, atoms and molecules, objects and organisms, galaxies and their clusters, to wit the way it helps me catch a fish. If Being is an organism, logos is its skeleton; if it’s an edifice, logos is the foundation and the frame. On the other hand, logos is nothing like an architect’s drawing. Blueprints specify a building’s details down to the positioning of fixtures in the bathrooms. Logos , on the other hand, is ‘detail agnostic’. It does not care how spacetime clumps, only that it does so inexorably and spontaneously: “Light appeared in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1: 5) It is as if your contractor said, “Here is the house’s footprint; it’s non-negotiable. But you can break up the interior space (rooms, corridors, etc.) anyway you wish. One great room, 100 tiny cells, it’s up to you.” *** “Cold enuf 4 ya?” (What, you don’t speak New England ?) If it is, then pour some water in a bowl and watch it freeze. Fascinated? Well, it’s better than watching paint dry! Ok, so do it again…and again. Each time, you begin with a liquid and end up with a solid. But the process is not instantaneous; phase change takes place over time, and the specific sequence of crystallization never repeats…exactly. Did you make videos? Then note that while no two crystallizations are the same, there’s no way to distinguish one pattern generation (in space and time) from another…except point. The most we can say is, “They look different.” The territory is the map. Or we could say that the crystallization patterns (in space and time) differ from one another infinitesimally. Therefore the difference between any two patterns is the difference between every two patterns. We could say the ‘difference’ is really a differance (Jacques Derrida). “Cold enuf 4 ya?” No worries, I’ve got a Markov Blanket that will keep you warm (below). *** Logos is a rich philosophical concept, an abstract model of physical process. Recently, however, developments in math and physics have identified concrete correlates. For example, in 1995 Michael Talegrand conjectured that given any unspecified number of points scattered across an unspecified number of dimensions, it is always possible to connect some of these nodes to form a convex surface that divides the space asymmetrically into a compact, self-contained interior and its exterior template. Unexpectedly, Talegrand’s conjecture was recently proven (with some help from AI) and is now a theorem. It basically states that the tendency of spacetime to self-organize is endemic. Logos is what Being is. Order is neither imported nor injected; it emerges naturally. This tendency of chaotic elements to self-order ( logos ) is what distinguishes fecund Being from sterile Void. Logos is Being and Being logos . That is how there is something rather than nothing. The Book of Genesis outlines the process. Beginning with that inert Void, the primal separation of light from dark kicks off a process (crystallization?) that results in the World as we know it today. Genesis , of course, attributes the process to divine agency but there is no reason, at least not initially, to accept that conclusion. *** The bifurcation of spacetime creates a non-linear gradient that distinguishes inside from out . In living organisms (cells), this gradient takes the form of a semi-permeable membrane, an organelle responsible for the structural integrity of the organism and for its long term survival in an ever changing environment. To achieve this dual mandate, the membrane must enable, but censor and ultimately limit, the exchange of energy/matter/information between the interior and the exterior of the organism. This limited exchange of elements across a non-linear gradient is characteristic of so-called dissipative systems . When spacetime self-orders, it does not break into inert monads, forming a multiverse. Solidarity is always preserved by logos . Here Aquinas was right, “Being is one!” And so Riddle #7 is solved. Congratulations, BTW. I beg your pardon: I promised you a Markov Blanket (above) and so far all I’ve delivered is a semi-permeable membrane. You must be freezing! What gives? Well, turns out our membrane includes a Markov Blanket, so it’s everything I promised you…and more! (With a track record like this, I should run for public office.) To the extent a Markov Blanket is in place, interior and exterior are isolated. Nothing inside can communicate with anything outside, or vice-versa, without the intermediation of the Blanket: I → MB → O and O → MB → I but never I ↔ O. In living organisms, a Markov Blanket is one function of a membrane. It preserves the integrity of the interior. It functions like Big Brother (TV show or novel); like a prison warden, it reviews all communication between inmates and the outside world; it mediates all communication…until it doesn’t. Communication is one thing. Food and Waste are something else again. The warden does not monitor the daily delivery of food nor the continuous discharge of waste. These functions are organic to a prison. The membrane allows order to be concentrated and conserved in convex regions of spacetime known variously as ‘insides, interiors, figures, or bubbles’, even as the whole (inside/outside) obeys the 2 nd Law of Thermodynamics, i.e. even as entropy increases inexorably. This remarkable existential feat is known as homeostasis , a complex of self-regulatory mechanisms that allow a figure to maintain its integrity (order) against an entropic ground for an extended period. In the case of living organisms, e.g. cells, homeostasis requires a regulated exchange of particles/energy between the interior and exterior of a cell. These exchanges serve solely to maintain the character and the integrity of the Bubble. They do not satisfy Gregory Bateson’s ontological criterion: they do not constitute ‘a difference that makes a difference’. In other contexts, figures can act intentionally to modify their grounds ( techne ); this is not that! Here the exchange of energy occurs only to suppress change, i.e. to propagate the status quo . It has no informational value. Other than homeostatic noise, no direct communication occurs between interior and exterior . All communication is mediated by the membrane functioning as a Markov Blanket. Information generated internally impacts the Blanket and, if appropriate, the Blanket impacts the exterior. Likewise, information generated externally… The natural tendency of spacetime to bifurcate into convex shapes, sustained by homeostatic processes but otherwise segregated from their exteriors by a Markov Blanket, is direct, experiential evidence of the operation of logos at the heart of Being. So back to our riddles: (1) What do people fail to comprehend before and after they have heard it? logos. (2) What is shared by everyone but acknowledged by no one? logos. (3) What separates us from what is closest to us? logos. (4) What was before all things, through which all things came to be? logos. (5) What scatters all things and gathers them together…simultaneously? logos. (6) What is with God (spirit) outside history and with us (flesh) in history? logos. (7) How do we know that all things are one? See above, logos. 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< Back The Wisdom of Wisdom David Cowles Jun 9, 2026 “Who would have guessed that the struggle of Good vs. Evil would boil down to a debate pitting King Solomon against Bertrand Russell?” 1500 Words, 7 minute read The Old Testament Book of Wisdom is traditionally attributed to King Solomon (10 th century BCE) but it was actually written in the 2 nd century, in Greek (vs. Hebrew or Aramaic), and most likely in Alexandria (Egypt, not Virginia…and not in Palestine). 200 years before Jesus, the author of Wisdom was already attempting to reconcile Judaism with the best of Greek philosophy – a noble project, elaborated by the Apostles John and Paul and culminating in the work of Thomas Aquinas a millennium later. That said, the brilliance of Wisdom could not be fully appreciated until the 20 th century CE, when Solomon, the wisest man of his generation, met Bertrand Russell (the wisest man of his?) in the mud wrestling pit at the Oxford Union. Why the grudge? It’s just a tiff about gods, nature, math, logic, and God. I mean, Jeez, it’s not the World Cup or anything! But still… “Some men (sic) see things as they are and ask Why . I dream of things that never were and ask Why not .” (Bobby Kennedy) Our Solomon (KS) is firmly in the first camp; he is a pragmatist. He recognizes an abundance (not necessarily a preponderance) of Beauty (Nature), Truth (Order), and Justice (Harmony) in the World. When he asks, “Why?” the answer (to him) is obvious: God! KS might have said, “God created the World, God sustains the World, and the World is made in God’s image and likeness. Any Beauty, Truth or Justice (i.e. any Good ) that happens in this World is a reflection/refraction of God’s nature and/or the fruit of God’s generative (and generous) activity.” He might have said that! Our Russell (BR) did not deny the existence of ‘good things’ and he did not even dispute the idea that ‘all good things’ could constitute ‘a set’ (math & logic), i.e. the Set of all Good things. Russell argued on logical grounds that the ‘Set of all Good things’ (SG) could not itself be a good thing, i.e. that no set can be a member of itself. This seems counterintuitive. Of course SG is a good thing; therefore it must be a member of the Set of all Good Things. And this doesn’t seem to be a one off anomaly. The set of all mathematical objects is itself a mathematical object; no? How about the set of all technologies? The set of all information? I could go on. Of course, there are sets that are not members of themselves. The set of all horses is not a horse. Clearly, there is room here for pluralism, but no, BR is insistent - so much so that he makes it an Axiom of Logic that no set may be a member of itself (even if it obviously is). ( Note : Russell gets around this apparent absurdity by saying that when a set is a member of itself, it is not a set after all but a class .) The set of Logical Axioms is a secular version of Moses’ Ten Commandments so when BR spoke ex cathedra , the world dutifully went silent…and stayed that way for more than half a century…until one brave soul (or fool) dared to shout, “Look, BR has no clothes!” Wisdom defeats Russell, a British Empiricist at heart, with an argument that begins with their shared recognition of Good (i.e. Beauty, Truth, Justice) in the World. Humans instinctively and correctly recognize the ‘divine’ in concrete manifestations of such Virtues. Sincerely if mistakenly, we elevate ‘good things’ to the level of ‘god things’, aka gods. The Sun is good; we recognize it, we deify it ( Ra ), and ultimately, we worship it; we are animists. Only later do we personify it ( Helios ); now we are pagans. Polytheism has its plusses: e.g. its penchant to recognize traces of divinity throughout the natural world; but on the other hand, the tendency for gods to proliferate makes the system quite unwieldy. What can be deified and what can’t? The wind, a waterfall, an eddy, my uncle’s pipe? The pagan equivalent of the Council of Nicaea (325 CE) would have to be in nearly continuous session, sorting out the conflicting claims of the pseudo-divine. Here, theology reached an inflection point: Do we collapse the various gods into a single divinity (monotheism) permeating all things or do we go all in on idolatry? Do we solve the problem of divine proliferation by designating ever more gods? And when we have exhausted Nature’s storehouse, do we start manufacturing our own gods, i.e. idols? This is the turn that has Solomon in a snit. It’s one thing to associate unique gods with specific natural phenomena. The impulse is benign. It’s quite another thing for us to make our own gods. Instead of a God who ‘made all things’ and/or is ‘incarnate’ in the World, we make gods of the works of our own hands. We become creator, gods are our creatures. We reduce divinity to the status of a bobble, a trinket, or a toy. That is a level of blasphemy that Solomon, for all his patience and wisdom, simply could not countenance. This time, we don’t need to put words in Solomon’s mouth; we have his own words (by attribution), compliments of the Book of Wisdom (chapters 13, 14): “ For all men who were ignorant of God were foolish by nature; for they were unable from the good things that are seen to know him who exists unseen, nor did they recognize the craftsman while paying heed to his works… They should have realized that these things have a master and that he is much greater than all of them, for he is the creator of beauty… (Solomon is clear: Beauty is a thing-in-itself, an objective reality, and not a subjective accident but the product of intentional agency.) “Yet these men are little to be blamed, for perhaps they go astray while seeking God and desiring to find him. For as they live among his works, they keep searching, and they trust in what they see, because the things that are seen are beautiful.“ But the most miserable people of all are those who rest their hopes on lifeless things, who worship things that have been made by human hands—images of animals artistically made from gold and silver, or some useless stone carved by someone years ago… “The idol made with hands is accursed, and so is he who made it; because he did the work and a perishable thing was called god . The ungodly man and his ungodliness are equally hateful to God; what was done will be punished together along with him who did it… For the worship of idols not to be named is the beginning and cause and end of every evil.” According to Solomon, all ‘beautiful things’ share a common quality (beauty), thereby disclosing the real existence of Beauty. Beauty per se is ontologically prior to its expression in various concrete objects and events. The set of ‘all things bright and beautiful’, by virtue of their shared Beauty is itself a beautiful thing; therefore Beauty, the common element of every beautiful thing, the element that makes the ‘beautiful’ beautiful, is itself beautiful and therefore is itself a member of the ‘set of beautiful things’. God is good, and God is the Good per se , and the Good is experienced in our World as Beauty, Truth, and Justice. Consequently, Keats can write, “Beauty is truth and truth beauty.” Both are manifestations of the Good and therefore manifestations of God. God is both beautiful and Beauty per se . Likewise, God is both truthful and Truth; God is just and Justice. Therefore God is a member of the set of all things beautiful, the set of all things true, and the set of all things just. Recognizing that beautiful, true, and just things exist in the world, understanding that Beauty, Truth, and Justice are objective absolutes, neither subjective nor relative, and concluding that Beauty, Truth, and Justice imply intentional agency (i.e. the existence of God) preclude any rational preference for Evil over Good. Conversely, all evil is at its root a rejection of what is beautiful, true or just in deference to some other pseudo-value (e.g. unjust gain, lust, power, sloth), i.e. in deference to the works of our own hands, i.e. in deference to idols. Who would have guessed that the struggle of Good vs. Evil would boil down to a debate pitting King Solomon, ‘the baby splitter’, against ‘better red than dead’ Bertrand Russell? But that is the whacky world of Intellectual History…and I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else! Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! 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< Back Dark Forces Reconsidered David Cowles Jun 8, 2026 “Dark Forces are thought to account for 95% of the universe’s gravitational behavior…96% on October 31.” 1100 words, 5 minute read “For nearly thirty years, Dark Energy has been the cornerstone of modern cosmology. When astronomers discovered in the 1990s that the universe wasn't just expanding but accelerating, getting faster as it grows, they needed an explanation. Dark Energy was it, an invisible pressure built into the fabric of space itself, pushing everything apart. Nobody has ever detected it directly, but the maths seemed to demand it, so into the equations it went.” - Mark Thompson, BBC, May 31, 2026 Dark Energy seemed to account for the fact that the universe seemed to be expanding at an accelerating rate. Cosmologists had already given the name Dark Matter to another mysterious force, this one seeming to hold galaxies together. (If cosmologists are not always poetic, they do strive to be consistent.) Between the two, Dark Forces (Oooo!) are thought to account for 95% of the universe’s gravitational behavior (96% on October 31). A new definition of Scientific Method is emerging: Whenever you can’t explain some phenomenon, ‘discover’ a new ‘force’ to account for it and then label that force ‘dark’ so no one can expect to explain it. Neat trick…no wonder these guys (sic) got all A’s in high school; they really are smart after all! Dark gravity/anti-gravity forces have long been accepted as canonical by the astronomical community. The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded in 2011 in recognition of the ‘discovery’ of Dark Matter. But Cambridge(s), we have a problem! Actually, several problems. Earlier on this site we reported on a new set of measurements that seem to suggest that the expansion of the universe is not accelerating after all; in fact, it’s slowing down. Oops! So we have a beautiful theory , all dressed up with nowhere to go. Anyone who’s been stood up on prom night can empathize with the cosmological angst. But believe it or not, it gets even worse for our denizens of the dark. Mark Thompson (above), science broadcaster and author, continued his remarks, turning his attention to a team of mathematicians who recently “…found that accelerating expansion falls naturally out of Einstein's original equations, without any need to bolt Dark Energy onto the side. The universe accelerates not because of some mysterious invisible force, but because of the inherent mathematics of how space and matter behave in the wake of the Big Bang.” So not only did your prom date ghost you, it turns out that the prom had already been cancelled and nobody bothered to let you know. *** Just 15 years ago we thought we had everything figured out…well, at least one thing figured out: ‘We’re all in the dark!’ (95% dark anyway). MIT Technology Review (5/19/2025): “We can put a good figure on how much we know about the universe: 5% . That’s how much of what’s floating about in the cosmos is ordinary matter—planets and stars and galaxies and the dust and gas between them. The other 95% is dark matter and dark energy, two mysterious entities aptly named for our inability to shed light on their true nature... Cosmologists have cast dark matter as the hidden glue binding galaxies together. Dark energy plays an opposite role, ripping the fabric of space apart.” Poor Isaac Newton must have been on mushrooms when he thought to explain gravity in terms of a perfectly visible , and regrettably tactile, apple (falling from a tree branch overhead). Dark gravity/anti-gravity forces have been accepted as canonical by the astronomical community for about three decades, but the smug satisfaction that comes from intellectual certainty does not last long. Take in the 2026 view from the left coast (UC Davis): “…A new paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society produced mathematical proof that the standard model of cosmic expansion, the one built around dark energy, is fundamentally unstable.” So your prom date ghosted you, but the prom had been cancelled anyway, and OBTW, the brand new limo you hired to take you to the prom was just recalled - something about a tendency for this model’s engine to explode? And I thought I was having a bad day! Scientists invented the Dark Universe hypothesis to give a name to things they couldn’t explain. “We believe in things we don’t understand…” Based on what we know , the Universe shouldn’t work. There’s not nearly enough mass to hold galaxies together. In fact, however, galaxies do exist, 100’s of billions of them with more forming ‘every day’. So something’s wrong and the Dark Universe hypothesis seems to solve the problem. Of course, it’s merely ‘solving’ one unknown in terms of another. So where do we go from here with our Dark Forces? Well, the headlines are already in the can: “ Dark hypotheses confirmed!” And they will be confirmed because any advance in our understanding of the universe will now be labeled dark . And why not? ‘Dark Universe’ has no denotative meaning, nothing that might subject it to the risk of falsification. It’s a universal place holder for whatever we don’t know now but may discover later. ‘Dark’ is apt after all. Once we learn something about the universe that we don’t already know, whatever that is, that will be what ‘dark’ is. It will define ‘dark’. Of course it will. We don’t know what Dark is so whatever turns out to solve the paradox will be quite correctly labeled Dark , and we will say, “Of course that’s what Dark Matter and Energy are, we knew it all along.” Except of course, we didn’t. Do you doubt me? It’s already happening. A recent article by Evan Gough in the February 09, 2026 issue of Universe Today suggests replacing the Black Hole hypothesis with…you guessed it, Dark Matter. According to Gough, it may be dark matter, not a black hole, that resides at the center of the Milky Way and holds the galaxy together. So the Dark Forces are living up to their name. They can explain virtually everything…no matter what anything is. Thanks for reading through to the end and now, if you don’t mind, just one more favor, please: Can you just remind me how science is different from magic? 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 Purpose, Meaning, Value David Cowles May 15, 2026 “The beautiful…floats imperceptibly above the surface of the painting and underneath the gaze of the connoisseur - in the realm of pattern (logos).” “Does it have any purpose, any meaning, any value?” Isn’t this approximately the first question we ask whenever we encounter anything novel? Notice I say ‘question’, not ‘questions’ – because these three ‘questions’ are actually the same question expressed in different contexts: (1) Can this entity further my projects? Can I put it to some use? Can I find a purpose for it? Techne . (2) If not, does this entity have a message for me? Does it contain information? “The signatures of all things I am here to read.” (Joyce) Gnosis . (3) If not, does the entity have value per se , in its own right, apart from any possible utility? Logos . Unexpectedly, these ‘contexts’ reflect three facets of the Divine Nature, i.e. of the Good, manifest in the World as Beauty ( logos ), Truth ( gnosis ), and Justice ( techne ). Purpose, Meaning, and Value (PMV) are vectors; they point beyond mere materiality. Purpose refers to the techno-sphere, Meaning to the noosphere, Value to the logo-sphere, three layers of Being that template the purely material ( physis ). They are what-is caught in the process of becoming what-is-not. They are what-is transcending itself. PMV refers to an aspect of things that is not immanent in the things themselves: “This painting is beautiful.” Heads nod in unison. But where does that beauty come from? From the eye of the beholder? Or from the physical painting itself? Or from values that transcend the painting, the artist, and the critic? If the beauty lies with the beholder, then it is no more significant than my grandchild liking peppermint stick ice cream: nice to know…but end of! If beauty lies in the painting itself, then it is inseparable from the particular pigments and brush strokes used. But if that is the case, how is it that a second painting with exactly the same range of color and acumen of craft is butt-ugly? The beautiful is grounded in the canvass and appreciated by the connoisseur but it exists in its own realm: it floats imperceptibly above the surface of the painting and underneath the gaze of the connoisseur - in the realm of pattern ( logos , see below). Against all of this, there’s Nietzsche: “One is necessary, one is a piece of fate, one belongs to the whole, one is in the whole – there exists nothing which could judge, measure, compare, condemn our being, for that would be to judge, measure, compare, condemn the whole… But nothing exists apart from the whole!” ( Twilight of the Idols ) This 19 th century proto-existentialist recognized that PMV transcends the material world but he denied that anything transcends ‘the whole’ and therefore he denied the possibility of any meaningful valuation. Note : “I like it,” is a valuation of sorts but it is not yet meaningful; it is the semantic equivalent of a sigh. It refers to the painting, and it refers to the critic, but it makes no appeal to the transcendent. However, anything beyond ‘I like it’ or its equivalent invokes values that do not reside either in the critic or in the craft. So, checkmate! PMV is how we ‘judge, measure, compare, condemn’; therefore, they cannot exist in a flat (linear) Universe such as proposed by Nietzsche and implicit in today’s reigning ontological paradigm, Scientific Positivism . Unless, of course, Nietzche is wrong! Much as we admire Nietzsche’s take no prisoners style of philosophizing, few of us live our lives as Nietzscheans. The twin ‘illusions’ of agency and hierarchy are just too strong. I have to choose, coffee or tea, and I can’t reconcile myself to the idea that my choices are random, determined algorithmically, a matter of habit, or a product of fate. Agency sets me apart from the World. Phenotypically, the distinction of not-self from self is our first exposure to the non-linearity of Being. Through me, the World experiences and acts on itself; ego is the vehicle and first fruit of recursion. But Agency (self vs. not-self) is a specific example of the more general phenomenon of hierarchy . Remember Nietzsche, “Nothing exists apart from the whole?” But I do , I am of the whole, but I am also apart from the whole. Philosophers love to split a hair, pick a nit, but there’s no splitting or picking here! Either Being is flat (linear) or it’s hierarchical (recursive). If it’s flat, nothing transcends anything else and PMV is an empty concept. However, if anything has purpose, meaning, or value, then Being per se is non-linear and everything has at least the potential to be useful, informative, or enervating. That potential is what defines an ‘entity’ in a non-linear world. To be is to have the capacity to convey influences. There is a crucial ethical dimension to this. If the World is flat and without transcendent value, then we are free to use (abuse) our environment as we see fit. If those uses are unsustainable or inhumane, so what? We cannot be judged. But on the other hand, if entities have purpose, meaning, or value, they transcend mere materiality and that severely constrains how we may relate to them. Perhaps the most developed ethic in this vein is that of the Eastern European Hasidim . According to this Orthodox Jewish sect, every entity contains a divine spark, a fragment of Shekinah , YHWH’s Presence in the World. Our mission is to release those sparks so that they can reunite, ultimately constituting the ‘Cosmic Messiah’ (as envisioned by Teilhard de Chardin et al.). Here Asian and European philosophies overlap. Anaximander, the grandfather of Greek philosophy, taught that Being itself is the product of two potential or virtual entities granting each other ‘reck’ (respect) and thereby constituting each other as ‘actual entities’ with the potential to convey influences. We fulfill our mission when we treat everything we encounter with that respect, when we grant ‘reck’, when we let everything around us ‘be all that it can be’ (US Army), i.e. when we transform daily living into a sacrament (“The grove needs an altar” – Ezra Pound). Consider also Native American spirituality. It expresses respect and gratitude to the animals and plants that must be hunted and gathered to sustain human life. Bottom line, I may not arbitrarily exploit or co-opt other entities solely to further my projects or satisfy my desires. Instead, I must meet every person, process, or thing on its own terms, using it according to its best purposes, respectfully, though not always deferentially. Upon encountering a new entity, I must not ask what it can do for me; I must first ask what I can do for it (JFK). And it is by treating others with nurturing respect that I release the well-hidden spark within myself. In fact, care of others is care of self because your neighbor is yourself. ( Great Commandment ) By the grace of God, you save yourself by saving others: ‘Forgive us…as we forgive!’ ( Lord’s Prayer ) And who is my neighbor? Well, you are, of course, dear reader, but also the stranger, the sojourner, the refugee, and the outcast. And the coral reef, the bumble bee, the quaking aspen and the wood wide web; Gaia , kosmos , ‘Brother Sun, Sister Moon’. (St. Francis) The Torah may be read as the user’s manual for Planet Earth - 613 ‘DIY hacks’ for dealing ethically, and effectively, with the world of persons, places, and things. I only come to be in the context of you, the other: you individually (reader), you collectively (society), you transcendently (God). The network precedes the nodes. Therefore logos cannot be an emergent property of physis (sorry Muster Mark…Karl). Logos must be substructural. “It from bit.” (Wheeler) You’ve heard of the Higgs Boson, the newly discovered particle that gives matter its mass? Well, it is logos that gives entities purpose, meaning, and value . But if anything has purpose, meaning or value, then everything , every entity, is potentially a signifier and therefore everything we do, however local, however trivial, has cosmic implications. Every thing is in every thing (Anaxagoras Hot Link ) and we are called “to see a world in a grain of sand.” (Blake) If every entity is potentially purposeful, meaningful, or valuable, does the Cosmos as a whole, Being itself, also have significance. Is what’s good for the goslings good for the goose? According to academic logicians (e.g. Bertrand Russell Hot Link ) the answer is ‘no’: no set can be a member of itself, and the set of all entities, the Universal Set (U), is not itself an entity. But this is obviously just a convention. For example, the set of all mathematical objects is itself a mathematical object. Of course, we’re free to define this relationship any way we want but to say that no set can be self-referential seems a bit silly and makes the whole enterprise suspect. On the other hand, not every set is a member of itself. The set of all horses, for example, is not a horse. So which is it? Is the set of all entities (U) an entity in its own right, and therefore its own member, or is it merely an inert, purely conceptual, collection? This is perhaps Cosmology’s most important question. It is a fundamental tenet of this site that concepts, if valid, should apply across all scales. There is not one rule for a quantum and another for a queen; the fundamental structure of the Universe must be scale-agnostic. The so-called Universal Set (U) goes by many names: Cosmos, Universe, World, Being, God. What’s your Ultimate Reality? Regardless of labels, the question is the same: Is Reality, at the level of ultimate generality (U), a real thing or just an idea? To answer this question, we need Gregory Bateson! So many phenomena can be defined by applying his catch-all criterion - a difference that makes a difference. The nexus of all entities is certainly different from any subset of those entities and from the mere multiplicity of the elements themselves. So, different? Check! But is it a difference that makes a difference ? For that, we need to take a step back. What would it mean for the Universal Set (U) to make a difference? It can’t make a difference to something outside itself since by definition there is nothing outside it. So if it makes a difference, it must make a difference to itself and that means it must make a difference to at least one of its members (elements). But if it makes a difference to one member it makes a difference to all members (Principle of Solidarity). Of the world’s major religions, Christianity is perhaps the most explicit in its doctrines surrounding the reality and efficacy of the Universal Set: “In the beginning was the logos and the logos was with God and the logos was God and…the logos become flesh and dwelt among us.” (John 1: 1 – 3, 14) Translation : the Universal Set is an actual entity and so it is a member of itself. U є U; Incarnation! So we find ourselves in the position of the residents of Jerusalem c. 500 BCE, hearing the Book of Deuteronomy read out for the first time: “I set before you life and death; therefore, choose life.” (30: 19) I set before you everything ( panta ) and nothing ( nihil ); therefore, choose everything. Either the universe is an unimaginably huge pile of steaming excrement ( nihil )… or it is thoroughly saturated with Purpose, Meaning, and Value ( panta ). And if panta , then U itself is an actual entity that makes a difference in the careers of every other member, every other actual entity. In my view at least, there can be no middle ground. “Mademoiselle, may I take your order? Will you have Panta or Nihil today?” Image is from Jackson Pollock and its called: One: Number 31 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.

Healthcare is a problem and not just in the US. Everywhere cost and quality battle; everywhere both are losing. But as in so many other things, the US is the bell cow. Healthcare - AI First Healthcare is a problem and not just in the US. Everywhere cost and quality battle; everywhere both are losing. But as in so many other things, the US is the bell cow. Healthcare has been an issue in the US since the mid-60’s and it has perhaps been issue #1 over the last 40 years. Today, it consumes almost 20% of our GDP but 30% of that cost is spent on treatment that is not appropriate for the patient’s actual condition. We’ve tried provider networks, we’ve tried managed care, we’ve tried consumerism, we’ve tried wellness – nothing works! Surprised? We know that government control, price fixing, supply rationing, and demand management never work…ever, anywhere, for almost anything. So why should healthcare be any different? What does work, almost always, almost everywhere, for almost anything? Technology. Why not give it a go? Lord knows we’re tried everything else. Now don’t get me wrong. Doctors know a lot; they know how to do a lot of things. But the system is structured so that this knowledge rarely benefits the typical patient during a typical interaction. ‘Patient management’ takes the place of genuine care. So, need a brain transplant? Come to the US! Have a skin rash? Rub mud on it…under the supervision of a qualified holistic healer, of course. Or add an AI Bot to your care team and see what happens: Healthcare & The Titanic “We have the technology to transform healthcare…we just need the will to deploy it and we will begin to build that will only once we stop moving furniture.” Can AI Save Healthcare? “What was once a healing art has become physiological engineering… the healthcare system treats me as if I were a cheap knock-off of the 6 million dollar man.” My MD Should Be a Bot “AI is 4 times better at diagnosing complex medical conditions than MDs. This…could be the death knell for the traditional practice of medicine.” My PCP Should Be a BOT “Dr. Bot would handle patient in-take, conduct the initial interview…order appropriate tests, and offer a preliminary diagnosis…” Who's Afraid of an HMO? “HMOs dumbed down quality and erected formidable barriers to care… (so) why would anyone want to bring them back?” 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 Regressive Child Rearing David Cowles Jun 1, 2026 “Best intentions notwithstanding, we are raising our children to succeed in a long gone world… and to fail in this one!” According to Marcus Aurelius, Heraclitus of Ephesus (5 th century BCE) taught, “We must not act or speak like children of our parents.” In other words, we must not become who we were raised to be. (No, Marcus did not write the copy for Progressive’s Homeowners Becoming their Parents ad campaign; sorry, Flo!) Physical and social evolution is always a blend of stability and change. The future preserves something of the present – or it wouldn’t be our future - and the present preserves something of the past, or it wouldn’t be our past. “April (present) is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory (past) and desire (future), stirring dull roots with spring rain. Winter (past) kept us warm, covering earth in forgetful snow, feeding a little life with dried tubers. Summer (future) surprised us coming over the Starnbergersee with a shower of rain…” ( The Waste Land ) This combination of continuity and change is what affords our World its solidarity, its plasticity, and its novelty. It applies to most physical and social processes; but child rearing, at least as it is practiced in the modern North Atlantic Community, is a notable exception. ( Note : In this article, I’m going to draw from my relationship with my father but the analysis I offer could just as well apply to my mother or to any primary caregiver.) By the time I was old enough to form a vague notion of where I fit into the scheme of things, my #1 desire was to please, and as far as possible, emulate my caregivers (e.g. my father). To accomplish this, I had two sources of information: my father’s day-to-day behavior and his daily ‘directives and invectives’. His directives came straight from his father’s playbook. His behavior on the other hand reflected his own lived experience. His message to me was a blend of the two. Let me set the stage, and to keep things simple, let me slightly (but only slightly), modify the dates: Assume my paternal grandfather was born in 1900, my father in 1925, myself in 1950, my youngest daughter in 1975, and my grandchildren c. 2000. Not far off from actual as it turns out. My father was well intentioned, if at times a bit clueless. No doubt, he wanted me to have the ‘best possible’ childhood consistent with my becoming the ‘best possible’ adult…which in 1950 he defined primarily in terms of socioeconomic comfort. Still, hardly child abuse! My father’s parents were survivors of World War I, the Roarin’ 20s, and the Great Depression. Over the years, they developed values well suited to their own lived experience but not necessarily best suited to my father’s personality or to his time in life. The world in 1925 was very different from the world as it was in 1900 or as it would be in 1950. My grandparents raised my father to succeed in a 1875 – 1925 version of the world, not the 1925 – 1975 version. Sidebar : It is said that generals prepare to fight the previous war. Likewise, we parent our children to be successful members of the previous generation. My dad embarked on parenthood, relying on his father’s directives (1900 – 1925) tempered by his own lived experience (1925 – 1950). Bottom line : my father raised me to succeed in the world as it was c. 1925, the midpoint, not as it was in 1950 or as it would be in 1975 (my midpoint), or God forbid, in 2000. Regrettably, my children in turn were raised to succeed in the 1950’s; but happily, it is my grandchildren now who help me adjust to life c. 2025! Don’t get me wrong, tradition can be a good thing. An anchor to windward can keep you from flying off into space, Icarus-like. But as cultural change accelerates, the din of cognitive dissonance becomes more cacophonous…and more paralyzing. Most non-human life forms don’t have this problem. Their cultures evolve slowly, if at all. Continuity is more important than creativity. Information passed on, genetically, epigenetically, and culturally, is crucial for survival. Rare eruptions of adaptive novelty are an evolutionary bonus . For humans, on the other hand, novelty is critical to the survival of the individual, the social order, the culture, and the species. Disruption is our superpower. But we fear it and we suppress it. Each generation must free itself anew, but only partially, from the shackles of the past before it can begin to make its own ‘mark’ on history. Parenting in our culture means raising children to be a generation behind their times. Best intentions notwithstanding, we are raising our children to succeed in a long gone world … and to fail in this one! Oddly enough, it is grandparents ( full disclosure : I am one, many times over), loosely defined to include any interested adult two generations or more removed , that play an increasingly important role here . By 1950, my grandparents realized that the world had changed. They were not living in 1925 any more and certainly not in 1900. ‘Without admitting guilt’ they recognized past misjudgments and were free to meet their new born grandchildren on their own terms. Who is not a better grandparent than parent? Ironically, while ‘grandparent types’ may have the wisdom to parent well…they lack the energy. Parents, on the other hand, have more energy but ideologically, they are often stuck in the quicksand known as the past . What is most remarkable here, and disheartening, is that someone figured this out 2500 years ago. We think we’re so smart, and in some ways we are, yet we have collective ignored millennia old wisdom. Makes you wonder what else we’ve missed, doesn’t it? 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.

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Philosophy, theology, and science merge in Aletheia Today, the magazine for people who believe 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? Find your answers to life's questions at Aletheia Today. Cosmology Philosophy Philosophers Society Science Guests Theology The Bible Culture The Arts Archives Spirituality Subscribe today for FREE! Enter your email address here: Subscribe now! Thanks for submitting! We are happy to be able to provide Aletheia Today to all interested readers at no cost.

Imagine a complete Theology (Judeo-Christian), Ethics (Pauline), and Cosmology (21 st century), condensed into just 50 words. Now imagine an army of out-of-work college professors and librarians. That is the Lord's Prayer. Time Crystals and the Lord's Prayer The Lord’s Prayer is a fractal: It consists of 3 stanzas, each in turn consisting of 3 verses, each verse self-similar to the other verses in its stanza, each stanza self-similar to the other stanzas in the prayer and to the prayer as a whole. Cosmologists today like to talk of the Universe as if it were a hologram (The Matrix). LP presents it just so! The Lord's Prayer Paul’s First Letter to Corinthians includes a well-articulated system of values, which upon analysis, turns out to be an elaboration of ethics embodied in LP:er for a crystal of time? What if I threw in Knicks tickets?” St. Paul's Lord's Prayer But before all else, LP is the cornerstone of a theological and spiritual tradition with roots in ancient Judaism and parallels in RCC tradition and Kabbalah. Kabbalah and the Lord's Prayer Folks often wonder why Jesus only taught his disciples one short prayer. Why? What more was there to say? The Our Father “This tiny prayer…is a cyber-wonks dream. The density of information content is out of this world, quite literally!” 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.

Explore Aletheia Today's Groundhog 2025 issue: where philosophy, theology, and culture intersect. From Mark’s Gospel to Parmenides, faith, and love—thought-provoking insights await! Inside Resurrection 2025 Philosophy Freedom and/or Democracy? “Who is Peter Thiel? Conservative, libertarian, or 21st century Marxist?” The Eternal Present “The Present is…a series of concentric circles, with its axis perpendicular to linear spacetime…” Theology Is There ‘True Religion’? “We confuse a person’s right to express a hairbrained idea with the notion that that idea should be taken seriously.” Credo Ut Intelligam (Believe Me, I understand.) "I first believed, and only then, and only on the foundation of that belief, did I come to understand." Miracles “…Everything that happens happens only once…there is nothing under the Sun that is not new! Being and novelty are synonymous.” Ephesians 2:10 “In this one verse…St. Paul proposes a radically new model of what it means to be a human being.” Culture & The Arts How is the Cosmos Like DNA? “Most humans share about 96% of their DNA coding with common swine; politicians share 98%.” I Led 5 Lives “Everyone is right in their own eyes; therefore everyone else must always be wrong. Sound familiar? No wonder the world’s in a perpetual state of war!” Spirituality Quantum Theology Causation cascades through the cosmos until... New Life Through Pain "New life brings with it the joy of unquenchable hope, but a careless memory forgets that, like childbirth, new life comes only through great trial and, at times, pain." Hidden Hope in Spring’s Awakening Though hidden, life prepares for emergence in spring. Everyday Resurrections: The Divine Pattern of Healing and Transformation "Do you know that as a human being created in the image of God, you can experience everyday resurrections as part of God's pattern of healing and transformation?" 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 Healthcare – AI First David Cowles Jun 1, 2025 Healthcare is a problem and not just in the US. Everywhere cost and quality battle; everywhere both are losing. But as in so many other things, the US is the bell cow. Healthcare has been an issue in the US since the mid-60’s and it has perhaps been issue #1 over the last 40 years. Today, it consumes almost 20% of our GDP but 30% of that cost is spent on treatment that is not appropriate for the patient’s actual condition. We’ve tried provider networks, we’ve tried managed care, we’ve tried consumerism, we’ve tried wellness – nothing works! Surprised? We know that government control, price fixing, supply rationing, and demand management never work…ever, anywhere, for almost anything. So why should healthcare be any different? What does work, almost always, almost everywhere, for almost anything? Technology. Why not give it a go? Lord knows we’re tried everything else. Now don’t get me wrong. Doctors know a lot; they know how to do a lot of things. But the system is structured so that this knowledge rarely benefits the typical patient during a typical interaction. ‘Patient management’ takes the place of genuine care. So, need a brain transplant? Come to the US! Have a skin rash? Rub mud on it…under the supervision of a qualified holistic healer, of course. Or add an AI Bot to your care team and see what happens: 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.