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Culture Culture Culture is the way we live out Philosophy and Theology in community. Pontius Pilate “Pilate could be the avatar of an entire class of folks in the post-industrial West, society’s so-called middle managers.” Read More What’s the Matter with Santa Claus? “Do you remember when and why you stopped believing in Santa?” Read More The Seven Pillars of Wisdom “Kabbalah kept the pre-Socratic tradition alive until it could be born anew in the Age of Aquarius.” Read More Don’t Teach Your Kid to Count! “Our own number system is based on a highly specialized, and not necessarily privileged, concept of quantity.” Read More The Great River “What the Cross is to Christianity…the River is to Process Philosophy.” Read More Self, Inc. “You’re the CEO of Self, Inc…What’s your mission statement?” Read More Childhood Lost “Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, but children are from the planet Mercury.” Read More Be Half There “'Be Here Now,’ cried Baba Ram Dass in the ‘60s. But was that good advice?” Read More Alphabet “Reciting the alphabet is like peeling layers off of a prize-winning red onion.” Read More Arithmetic “I want to repeal all the fundamental laws of Arithmetic.” Read More Just One More Beer “…Regretting your actions would mean disclaiming the entire forward course of world (cosmic) history.” Read More Everybody Loves Grammar “If the physical world isn’t structured according to the rules of grammar, the social world certainly is.” Read More Mythology Before Marvel Comics “Sturluson searched for the universal patterns that connect all times, all places, and all scales…and, Glory be to God, he found them.” Read More Should I Vote? “What if there was an election where everyone was eager to vote…but nobody cared who won? It’s happened!” Read More The Paradox of Childhood “…We treat children…as pets, slaves, snuggle bunnies and proto-adults”. Read More Is Childhood a Crime? “Parents dote on their royal highnesses…and rarely miss an opportunity to damage them in the process.” Read More Vanity “Every day for 80+ years, we imagine ourselves to be someone we are not, and we work tirelessly, and fruitlessly, to become that person. 'That' is Vanity.” Read More Bacteriology…and American Football “…Will it surprise you to learn that not every bacterium is a team player?” Read More Kabbalah and Thomas the Train “Children and tank engines are not so different from the rest of us. They crave meaning! They only settle for pleasure when…they lose hope.” Read More Deconstructing Popeye “…then I am basically an automaton. I am carbon-based AI. I am the product of nature (inherited traits) and nurture (upbringing)…my parents’ mini-me.” Read More Age is an Algorithm “We systematically suppress our actual experience and replace it with whatever it is we think we are supposed to experience, and we call that reality.” Read More Chess “A recent headline in the 'New York Post' read: King Castles!” Read More Football and Quantum Mechanics “This is what we do on Sunday nights and Mondays during football season: we play 'what if' and 'if only'.” Read More May Day “This one day converges mythology (Norse), cosmology (Pagan), theology (Christian) and ideology (Marxist) with ancient fertility rites. And for my next trick…” Read More The Lego Movie and John Stewart Bell “This movie includes a huge twist with cosmological implications.” Read More Middle Voice “Eat or be eaten, kill or be killed. It’s a terrible way to live! But we’re living it…(but) it wasn’t always this way, and it doesn’t…have to be this way.” Read More JK Rowling and Pliny the Elder "What about werewolves, giants, trolls, and dragons? We don’t believe in them; they’re not real! Are they?" Read More Dante and The Beatles “If a world can or must…self-annihilate…then that world does not exist, never did exist, never will exist, cannot exist.” Read More Football Math “At last, an opportunity to watch football in peace! … Just beer, pretzels and picking out the next Tom Brady.” Read More I Led Three Lives “Modern physics is right now living at least three lives and possibly a fourth.” Read More I Wasn't Anything Every day is Halloween…Every day I get to make the decision anew: who am I going to be today? Read More Mommy Math Part One If counting is such a powerful tool, how is it that for the most part, we don’t count? Read More Pronouns Next time someone asks you for your ‘pronouns,’ try telling them, ‘you/you’…see what happens. Read More Ectaban Ecbatan may share the seven-ringed pattern of the solar system, but Paradise shares the seven-ringed pattern of Ecbatan! Read More /ˈdjuːti/ Why can’t a monarch wear whatever shade of nail polish she wants? Read More Learn to Swym “Language Endures. We Don’t” – now that is a bumper sticker! Read More Alice In Looking-glass world, there’s plenty of there and then, but not a whiff of here and now. Read More Imagine! “John’s Utopia is a 20th century version of Friedrich Nietzsche’s flat universe.” Read More BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different Land is imbued with holiness, which means that, like God, it is beyond human measures of usefulness or control. Read More Xiako Can't Count So, what’s up with the Piraha? How can they get by without numbers? Read More Speaking Piraha The hidden grammar censor in our Euro-brains whispers inaudibly, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Why did the speaker place ‘tall’ and ‘basketball’ in the same sentence, unless they are somehow connected?” A major fallacy that comes with a huge price tag. Read More Enlightenment! “It is often said that victors write history. That is even truer when the war is cultural rather than political.” Read More How to Coach an Undefeated Football Team “Team is not a collective noun; it’s a verb: to team.” Read More Teaching Physics in the 21st Century Schools will soon be reopening with kids returning to begin a new school year. Now is the time to begin thinking about the fall curriculum. In this article, we outline a 10-unit physics curriculum for grades four through eight, all based on The Yellow Submarine. Read More I'm Bored! “We are co-responsible for the world. We are all always our siblings’ keepers!” Read More Believers Need Not Apply We’ve constructed a super-elaborate cosmology to explain how ‘it is’ arose spontaneously from ‘it is not.’ (If that doesn’t make any sense to you, trust me, it doesn’t make sense to me either.) How did the universe come to be? It just did! How did the ratios of the masses of subatomic particles get so finely tuned? They just did! Read More Offense Taken! There is nothing more self-satisfying or self-aggrandizing than ‘taking offense’. Read More Is 65 the New 45? That’s conventional wisdom…and in this rare case, conventional wisdom is not wrong…but neither is it perfectly right. Read More Everybody's Autobiography Is it possible to write an autobiography of everyone, to somehow incorporate the wildly varying events of different people’s lives into a single story? Absurd, right? But not so fast! Read More Can Subject/Verb Agreement Make the World Go Round? We imagine that our world is made up of ‘things’ (nouns), their accidental qualities (adjectives), and the relationships between them (verbs). We imagine this because just such a classification system is embedded in our native tongue: modern English, for example, or most any other contemporary Indo-European language. Read More Voice Verbs “I am stuck on Band-Aid ’cause Band-Aid’s stuck on me!” So says the jingle for one of the world’s most iconic products. But more importantly, and quite unexpectedly, this slogan is one of the best examples of ‘middle voice thinking’ in American pop culture. Read More Antonyms Antonyms. No such thing! Not-X includes the shadow of X. Example: ‘Pretty’ and ‘Ugly’. ‘Pretty’ refers to the totality (gestalt) of a person, place, or thing. ‘Ugly’ refers to those elements of the aforementioned that are not consistent with a ‘pretty’ whole. ‘Pretty’ and ‘ugly’ appear to be antonyms…but they’re not. In fact, they operate on two entirely different syntactic levels. ‘Ugly’ actually derives its meaning from the concept of ‘pretty’. Therefore, we can say ‘ugly’ includes “the shadow of ‘pretty’”; but not so the other way around. Read More Covid 20 So we were told that COVID-19 came from bats. By the summer of 2020, it should have been obvious that this was wrong. COVID-19 has behaved in some very unique ways that most probably reflect the effects of ‘human engineering’. Now the scientific consensus is shifting. Read More Amazon Amazon provides reliable, rapid, and inexpensive delivery service; and the US Postal Service? Well, to be kind let’s say ‘not so much’. So who is being sued by the feds? You guessed it…Amazon. Apparently, success today is automatically an anti-trust violation. Read More Culture

Aletheia Today magazine essays relating to philosophy with a focus on pre-Socratic philosophers and their influence on modern thinking Philosophy Philosophy is the story of ideas, from the pre-Socratics through the Analytics…and beyond. Apr 1, 2025 From Socrates to Silicon Valley “Who is Peter Thiel? Conservative, libertarian, or 21st century Marxist?” Read More Feb 1, 2025 After Parmenides... “Western philosophy is the history of our effort to understand the silence of Parmenides, or to break it.” Read More Dec 1, 2024 Causes of the Civil War “Chaos is not an absence of causality, as is generally supposed, but an excess.” Read More Oct 15, 2024 Zeno's New Paradox “Achilles is still sulking, humiliated by a…tortoise; but at least we have a universe and…we can be assured that its ultimate trajectory is toward Good.” Read More Oct 15, 2024 The Secret Life of Things “The secret life of things is nothing less than the life of God.” Read More Oct 15, 2024 The Probability of Nothing “Divinity is a language unto itself, or as a five-year-old grandchild once explained to me, ‘God is outside the numbers’.” Read More Oct 15, 2024 Robert Frost was Wrong “Waiter, bring me one order of everything on the menu and when I’ve finished, I’ll pay for whichever dish I liked the best.” Read More Sep 1, 2024 Why R U, U? “Hamlet was right: you either are…or you are not. There is no disembodied ‘being’ walking abroad, seeking an ‘identity’. King Hamlet’s ghost is not real!” Read More Jul 15, 2024 Destiny Versus Fate “Your Destiny is the Fate of others; the Destiny of others is your Fate.” Read More Jul 15, 2024 Moses, Machiavelli, and Morality “The moral value of an event lies in the act itself, not in its conformity to a set of norms and not in its consequentiality…every event is its own end!” Read More Jul 15, 2024 Is the Universe Real “The most important thing we’ve learned is that we know so much less than we thought we knew.” Read More Jun 1, 2024 The Living and the Dead “1,500 years ago, we didn’t have these problems. We knew all that we needed to know about life.” Read More Apr 15, 2024 The Meaning of Life “In the absence of God, or any transcendent reality, the meaning of life can only be death, oblivion, and the total absence of meaning – aka the Absurd.” Read More Apr 15, 2024 Dante and the Yellow Submarine “Yellow Submarine did for the Divine Comedy what West Side Story did for Romeo & Juliet…but I very much doubt the Beatles had any idea what they’d done!” Read More Apr 15, 2024 Super-Determinism “Things are the way they are simply because they are the way they are.” Read More Mar 1, 2024 Happiness “Some folks are ‘happy’ living their lives on a beach; others need a boardroom; some need a bar.” Read More Mar 1, 2024 Life is a Movie “Our so-called World is a reflection without an object; it is the sound made by one hand clapping.” Read More Jan 15, 2024 I Seem To Be a Klein Bottle “I am what the Universe sees when it looks in the mirror.” Read More Jan 15, 2024 Determinism…or Entanglement? “Take Vegas! The casino’s ‘edge’ is as little as 1% on some bets. At those odds, I should be able to play forever…but probability is not actuality.” Read More Jan 15, 2024 Robert Frost “Anyone can go for a walk in the woods but only Frost can walk this way.” Ask any English teacher. The Road Not Taken is a perennial favorite, especially among young readers, who often understand it as an anthem of adventure and non-conformity - Jack Kerouac in verse. But is this really what the poem is about? Read More Dec 1, 2023 Do you Know *What I am*? “I am my own great-grandmother (‘Eve’). Eerie…not to mention incestuous.” Read More Dec 1, 2023 Do We Need ‘God’? “Does the idea of a Supreme Being make you uncomfortable? No problem; just will it away!” Read More Dec 1, 2023 Logical Positivism “Following the science, LP assumes that the same act, performed under the same conditions, will always produce the same result…it’s true, precisely 0% of the time!” Read More Dec 1, 2023 Utilitarianism “How new wealth is to be distributed is just as important as how old wealth has been distributed.” Read More Dec 1, 2023 Love Actually “…When your identity is indefinitely plastic, when events are no longer ‘orientable’, when relations are neither transitive nor commutative, that’s Love…actually.” Read More Oct 15, 2023 Causality and 'The Bhagavad Gita' “Because every event is sui generis, no event causes any other event! That said, every event contributes to the Actual World of every subsequent event.” Read More Oct 15, 2023 R U WYSIWYG? “What You See Is What You Get! Right…or wrong?” Read More Jul 15, 2023 Personae “Turns out, I am the Worldwide Wrinkle…and so are you!” Read More Jul 15, 2023 I am the Walrus “Popular music is a treasure trove for the philosophically curious.” Read More Jul 15, 2023 The Ship of Theseus “There is only one I am, shared by YHWH and Jesus…and me…and you…and Rene Descartes (…ergo sum).” Read More Jun 1, 2023 Albert Camus “Either death is ultimately subjected to something greater and more general than itself (Being) or death ultimately subjects everything to itself and then nothing else has any meaning or value.” Read More Apr 15, 2023 Mythology Now! “Mythology is common to all ages. There is no theology, philosophy, or science without it.” Read More Apr 15, 2023 Morals and Values “Don’t our morals reflect our values? Surely the concepts are at least related. Yes, they are related…they are antonyms. A value is the opposite of a moral.” Read More Apr 15, 2023 I Seem to be a Membrane “My so-called inner world, the ‘I’, contains nothing; it is simple. It admits no change…there is no inner world.” Read More Mar 1, 2023 Middle Voice “Eat or be eaten, kill or be killed. It’s a terrible way to live! But we’re living it…(but) it wasn’t always this way, and it doesn’t…have to be this way.” Read More Mar 1, 2023 Who R U? - The Caterpillar “It is the uniqueness of events that 'creates' spacetime; it is not spacetime that makes events unique.” Read More Jan 15, 2023 Particularity “The first known application of Occam’s Razor occurred 50,000 years ago, not in 14th century England as is generally supposed.” Read More Nov 30, 2022 A Universe From Nothing I’ll take the wisdom of Yogi Berra over that of Bill Clinton any day: Whatever is, is! Read More Oct 15, 2022 I Wasn't Anything Every day is Halloween…Every day I get to make the decision anew: who am I going to be today? Read More Oct 15, 2022 Systematic Philosophy Some people's search takes them to Fatima or Lhasa or into Outer Space. Mine took me to the dentist. Read More Oct 15, 2022 Achilles and Tortoise If Zeno can defeat his teacher, the whole class wins! Zeno today, me tomorrow! Read More Oct 15, 2022 Prepare to Be Shocked You may be thinking, “WHAAAT? That’s impossible! Who could live without numbers? If they don’t have them, then they must invent them, right?” But you would be wrong. Read More Oct 15, 2022 Ectaban Ecbatan may share the seven-ringed pattern of the solar system, but Paradise shares the seven-ringed pattern of Ecbatan! Read More Sep 1, 2022 Imagine! “John’s Utopia is a 20th century version of Friedrich Nietzsche’s flat universe.” Read More Sep 1, 2022 Parmenides I “Parmenides anticipated Trinitarian theology and 19th century German dialectics (Hegel, Marx). May we refer to his cosmology as Monothreeism™?” Read More Jul 13, 2022 Shakespearean Nihilism Editor’s note: It’s that time of year when many readers attend ‘summer theater.’ If Shakespeare is on the bill, you may find this essay relevant. Don’t leave home for the theater without reading this first! Read More Jul 12, 2022 The Sultan and the Sea One of life’s great ironies is that people who live near water are not always very good swimmers, if they are swimmers at all. And this is how it was on this island. Read More May 29, 2022 The Problem of Good The purpose of this essay is not to resolve, or even rehash, the Problem of Evil, but rather to situate the Problem of Evil in the context of an even broader problem that I call, ‘the Problem of Good’. Read More May 29, 2022 Eternity vs. Immortality Do our lives have meaning? You bet they do! But what is that meaning, and from where does it come? Read More Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, September Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

Win prize money or the chance to be published in Aletheia Today magazine by taking of the AT Challenges. Challenges Are you clever? Good at riddles, a poet, a writer, a math whiz, or just a sharp critical thinker? Take one of our AT Challenges and you may win prizes or see your work published in a future issue. The Sultan and the Sea Challenge First, read The Sultan and the Sea in this issue of Aletheia Today magazine. Next, take the Sultan and the Sea challenge. Read More Winner of the Haiku Challenge Find out who is our first ATM Haiku Challenge Winner! Read More The Haiku Challenge Haiku is a traditional form of Japanese poetry usually consisting of 17 syllables, arranged in three lines of five, seven, and five syllables, respectively. Take the Haiku Challenge today! Read More The Faith Chaplain Challenge Inspired by this issue's Being Faith Chaplain in a Secular World, tell us how you navigate not just your faith in the workplace, but also how you share your faith with others in places where your personal beliefs aren't always popular or even welcomed. Read More

The Arts Art is how we express philosophical and theological insights beyond merely denotative language. We All Live in a Yellow Submarine “The occasional dragon notwithstanding, we hardly ever see monsters in Liverpool anymore.” Read More The Owl and the Pussycat “The entire story makes no sense…unless there’s something special about that ring, something you can’t get at Harrod’s at any price.” Read More Dante and the Yellow Submarine “Yellow Submarine did for the Divine Comedy what West Side Story did for Romeo & Juliet…but I very much doubt the Beatles had any idea what they’d done!” Read More Marcel Proust “Who has not dreamed of reliving a cherished moment, not through the ghostly shadows of mind but, like Job, in the flesh?” Read More Robert Frost “Anyone can go for a walk in the woods; only Frost can ‘walk this way’.” Ask any English teacher. The Road Not Taken is a perennial favorite, especially among young readers, who often understand it as an anthem of non-conformity and adventure - Jack Kerouac in verse. But is this really what the poem is about?" Read More Do You Noh? “In the eternal present, not only is every historical event preserved in real time, but every possible event is preserved as well.“ Read More I am the Walrus “Popular music after World War II is a treasure trove for the philosophically curious… Paraphrasing Ecclesiastes, there’s a time to wind and a time to unravel, and now is the time to unravel.” Read More Messiah Redux “Were Handel and Jennens dog whistle revolutionaries?... It is one thing to criticize the secular State, yet another to call for dashing it to pieces.” Read More Handel’s Messiah "There is only one full proof indication that Christmas is coming: the endless performances of George Frideric Handel’s Messiah. Yup, it’s that time of year! Read More Moore's Nativity “No need to study theology at university… (or) go to Sunday school. It’s all right there in front of us…and Henry Moore helps us see it: Christianity!” Read More Kandinsky: The Painter of Other Worlds The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Alice In Looking-glass world, there’s plenty of there and then, but not a whiff of here and now. Read More Mary Poppins, Sufi Master The story of Mary Poppins is the story of one small boy’s initiation into the teachings of Sufi spirituality and the secrets of Sufi mysticism. When the initiation of Michael Banks is complete, Michael has come, at least in some measure, to know the mind of God. Not bad for seven-years-old! Read More The Meaning of Music We pray the Psalms hoping to conform our minds, our values, our wills to God’s. Remember, God is his essence; we, on the other hand, are each free to create our own essences. Unfortunately, most of us are making a hash of it! Music elucidates the pre-verbal, non-phenomenal structures of the real world. Its meaning is not subject to logical analysis, scientific verification, or mathematical proof. The only test of music’s validity is its beauty. Read More

What happens when we converge a completely unlike pair of ancient and modern influencers? Converge This! Converge This! Articles exploring the 21st century convergence of philosophy, theology and science.

Alethia Today magazine essays relating to contemporary beliefs and values in today's society Culture Articles on contemporary society--its beliefs, values, and accomplishments; plus, original poetry and fiction BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different News Title The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. Read More Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, September Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

Science and Technology Science delivers the raw material that becomes Philosophy and Theology; then it tests their propositions against data from ‘the real world’. 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…” Read More How to Build a Warp Drive “Buckle up! While your friends are lining up for a trip to Mars, you’re headed for Alpha Centauri…and beyond!” Read More Psilocybin “If I decide to take a ‘trip’ someday, would you care to join me?” Read More A Brief History of Motion “Zeno exploited the continuity of Real Numbers to show…that motion is incompatible with Arithmetic.” Read More Out of the Mouths of Bots “Our Bot has understood IRT something that took our species millennia to grasp: Life is absurd…” Read More Pando and Me “Pando is Pando because Pando isn’t ‘Pando’ anymore!” Read More Genesis and Quantum Computing “Quantum Mechanics is the secret code that unlocks Genesis and when it does, we are surprised to discover that Genesis may be ‘literally true’ after all.” Read More Life Imitates AI “We trained our bots to imitate us and now, voilà! We are imitating our bots.” Read More The Problem of Waste “(Theology) will have to account, not just for the evil in the world, but for something much worse in modern eyes…the inefficiency of the world.” Read More What Is Time? An astronomer explains the search to find its origins... Read More Read My Mind! “What you’ve most feared since early childhood is on the cusp of becoming a reality: people reading your thoughts.” Read More Of Mice and Mirrors “On a deeper level than you know, your neighbor is yourself…and you are your neighbor.” Read More Bacteria Are People Too “I’ll bet a bacterium could hold its own in any Parisian café. They don’t need to study existentialism at the Sorbonne; they live it every day.” Read More Follow the Science “Every event is novel, and no event causes any other event. Every event is free, causa sui, and sui generis. But the universe is also conservative…” Read More Causality & the B-Gita “Because every event is sui generis, no event causes any other event! That said, every event contributes to the Actual World of every subsequent event.” Read More Time for a New Turing Test “…This modified Turing Test is designed to root out ‘Carbon Privilege’, the unstated but nearly universal assumption that carbon-based life forms are somehow ‘better’ than their silicon siblings.” Read More To Bot or Not to Bot “Now I can choose whether I want to be deceived by a carbon-based life form or a silicon-based life form; how cool is that?” Read More AI, Justice, and Job “Can a Bot go beyond its programming and our inputs to devise unique solutions to novel problems - solutions that exhibit Justice as their determinative Value?” Read More Navigating the Nexus of AI "Imagine if AI had its own commandments, like 'Thou shalt treat all data equally.' Encouraging ethical principles in AI programming can keep its decisions in line with virtues like fairness, justice, and empathy." Read More ChatGOD "ChatGPT can be smart, but it can never be holy. In being an e-being, precisely because its intelligence is artificial, it is necessarily alienated from the Divine. It can only be 'as if,' never truly as." Read More Do Bots Know Beauty? “I…propose…that we make this the test, not Turing’s, of whether a bot is conscious." Read More AI for Healthcare “Boka, is it true you used to drive 10 miles to see a doctor once a year and called that healthcare?” Read More Think Like a Bot “We developed AI to simplify the process, and expand the potential of thinking. We did not set out to dictate the content of thought itself…” Read More SETI “It may turn out that life is every bit as ubiquitous in the universe as it is on Earth, but it may also turn out that we are utterly alone.” Read More AI and Marxism “Marxism’s stated goal is to transfer ownership of the means of production to the producers. Dare I say, Mission Accomplished?” Read More Artificial Intelligence “Aletheia Today Magazine will devote its entire Fall Issue (9/1/23) to Artificial Intelligence…and we’d love to include YOU in the conversation.” Read More Where the Time Goes “I need have no fear of time, that ‘great eraser’. I don’t live because of the past or for the future. I live by and for the present.” Read More Our Visitor From Andromeda “'Distributed intelligence' challenges our ideas of God and of Nature; but it may offer a pathway to a new and better theory of cosmogenesis.” Read More Pando “How are you at riddles? Let’s see!” Read More Our Inanimate Neighbors “Awareness is always dynamic; it has no spatio-temporal location… Awareness is not a property of entities, or even of organisms; it is a property of networks.” Read More Who Invented the Internet “Al Gore claims the honor, but research shows that proof of concept testing began in 802 AD...” Read More Be a Bee Why ‘milk and honey?’ Why not ‘sour grapes and corn mash?’ Turns out, it’s all about the honey! Read More Science & the Yellow Submarine – Part II In this issue of ATM, we will finish our journey. We will visit all the remaining “seas” (I promise), plus Pepperland itself. So, hang on tight! Read More Common Sense Academy Routs Info Tech, 97 - 3 "Imagine that the Borg Collective and Jean Luc Picard had a baby…" Read More Science and the Yellow Submarine Part I Yellow Submarine is much more than just a delivery vehicle for the Beatles’ 1960s musical repertoire. The film addresses important ontological and cosmological issues, and it offers some truly remarkable scientific insights in the process. Read More Vacuum Monster Is there any such thing as Vacuum Monster in our universe today? Sure, there is! Read More Electricity “The Electrical Life of Louis Wain” is a movie currently playing on Amazon Prime. Louis is an early 20th century English painter with zero artistic merit…but that’s not important. What is important is the way Louis experiences the world. From time to time, he encounters the ineffable in the course of his everyday living. He imagines that what he is experiencing is a form of ‘electricity’ that permeates the world but lies beneath the plane of ordinary sensory perception. Many of us have had a similar experience; but I doubt if any of us called it “electricity”. In my day, it was fashionable to call it “energy”; Star Wars called it “the force”. I wonder, what’s the current nom de jour? The ineffable is the ineffable because it is…well, ineffable. It is the ‘immanence of transcendence’ in our everyday world. If we must name it, we must name it metaphorically. It is, after all, ineffable. In classical times, it might have been called “beauty”; in the middle ages, “God”. But to Louis Wain, it is “electricity”. How come? Louis Wain lived in the final days of a dark age ironically known as The Enlightenment. Though long past, it still casts a shadow. The Enlightenment was rooted in materialism and mechanism and in the certain belief that technological progress would inevitably bring about Utopia. So “electricity” was the closest anyone of that era could come to naming the ineffable. We know better today; but we are still struggling to find our own metaphor for the immanence of transcendence in the world. Read More Entropy The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics (aka ‘entropy’) ensures that the universe will meet with a bad end: oblivion! Our lifelong battle against evil (the absence of order, i.e., the absence of being) is ultimately hopeless. Evil will triumph in the end…gradually, sporadically, but inexorably! But this all takes place in spacetime; what if spacetime is not all there is to Being? Spacetime represents an unrelenting progression from past to future; we know it as ‘aging’ (mortality). But there is a problem with this model. If everything is either past or future, then nothing is present, and if nothing is present, then nothing actually is. Bottom line, if there is being, there must be a ‘present’. But there is no present in spacetime (and if there is, it is infinitesimal and so of no consequence). If there is Being, there must be a Present. That is where Being resides. To be is to be present. The Present is a dimension perpendicular to spacetime. It is what people mean when they talk about ‘God’. The world consists of events. No event is 100% evil and only one event (God) is 100% good. The Present (God) preserves what really is (i.e., the good) and harmonizes every such good into a single event which, per Alfred North Whitehead, is God’s Consequent Nature. So, the battle against evil is ultimately hopeless, but the struggle itself is the source of all hope – the fruit of all faith and the expression of all love. Read More Hidden Life An earlier “Thought” introduced “The Hidden Life of Trees”, the reflections of a career forester. The book focuses on communities of trees. In these communities, trees demonstrate the ability to communicate, to share resources, to perform selfless, eleemosynary acts, to recognize and care for progenitors as well as offspring. Are these activities enough for us to ascribe a type of consciousness to these communities? Read More Trees According to life-long forester Peter Wohllben (The Hidden Life of Trees), trees communicate via electrical signals transmitted through their roots. Fungi connect the roots and form a “wood wide web”. Communication is at 220 Hertz and signals travel at 1/3rd of an inch per second…not exactly the speed of light. Read More

The Bible The Bible is a treasure trove of primary source material at the foundation of the Intellectual History of the West. Ephesians 2:10 “In this one verse…St. Paul proposes a radically new model of what it means to be a human being.” Read More How Matthew Spins Mark “The same facts can take on different ‘meaning’ depending on how they’re presented. Read More Mark’s Diary – Notes for a Screenplay “And so they were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, Jesus leading the way, and the disciples were filled with awe, while those who followed behind were afraid.” Read More Jeremiah “God places his words in Jeremiah’s mouth. How can this be consistent with Jeremiah’s status as a free and independent entity?” Read More Mark’s Marks of Authenticity “There is no single work more important than the Gospel of Mark…the Intellectual History of the West hangs on it, so its authenticity is of paramount importance.” Read More Re-Imagining the Magnificat "In our zeal to project our conceptions of The Ideal Woman onto this enigmatic first-century figure, we’ve strayed a bit from the little we do know." Read More The ‘O Antiphons’ “We are asking Christ to come… to teach us, rescue us, shine on us, free us and, repeated three times, to save us.” Read More Eucharist “…The spacetime world of matter and energy, 14 billion years old and almost 100 billion light years across, is not the final word.” Read More The Comedy of Job “Failure to appreciate the comic elements in Job has resulted in an almost universal misreading of the text.” Read More Revelation “This is possibly the shortest ‘play’ in all of literature…and yet it is arguably more important than anything Shakespeare (or even Andrew Lloyd Weber) ever wrote! Read More Psalm 151 “But deliver us from evil,” this last verse is the key to the entire prayer. Read More Beatitudes “The eight beatitudes are a 'manifesto' for change, a change in the way we understand the world…behave in that world… (and) act toward one another. Read More Jericho “Some of us were waving copies of Mao’s Little Red Book; we all should have been clutching copies of the Old Testament.” Read More Job is My Superhero "No one has taken a bigger risk than Job, and no one has faced longer odds; and yet, Job has taken God to court and won!" Read More Bible Read Backwards What would happen if we read the Old Testament in reverse order? From back to front. What if we began with Malachi and ended with Genesis? Read More What Did John See? The Bible doesn’t tell us what John saw, but it does tell us that the breaking of the seventh seal was followed by half an hour of total silence. Why? Read More The Final Psalms Ultimately, the Kingdom of Heaven is the transfiguration of the historical realm into the eternal realm, according to God’s values. Read More Corinthians How is it that God can perform the miracle of Incarnation? Or to put it more accurately, how is it that God is the miracle of Incarnation. Read More The Riddle of Job If I do my job in this essay, you may become a modern-day version of Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, who “stoppeth one of three." You’ll be spreading the truth about Job to anyone who’ll listen. Read More Genesis Wins Nobel Prize Traditionally, Nobels are awarded only to ‘living recipients’ and only for work completed in the preceding year. In its statement, the committee said it felt an exception was needed in this instance “in order to right a grievous wrong.” Read More

Deep dive into the crossroads of theology, philosophy, and cosmology. Cosmology is where Science and Philosophy converge in their search for a Theory of Everything (TOE). The Eternal Present “The Present is…a series of concentric circles, with its axis perpendicular to linear spacetime…” Read More Life on Mars “Based on what we think we know about biogenesis, there should be life on Mars. If it turns out that there isn’t, somebody’s “got some ‘xplainin’ to do, Lucy.'" Read More The Probability of Nothing “Divinity is a language unto itself, or as a five-year-old grandchild once explained to me, ‘God is outside the numbers’.” Read More Is the Universe Real “The most important thing we’ve learned is that we know so much less than we thought we knew.” Read More Playing with Blocks “Everything I needed to know about cosmology, I learned watching my grandchildren play with blocks.” Read More The Frost Diamond “God is ‘special’ only to that extent that in God, A and Ω are the same event.” Read More Determinism…or Entanglement? “Take Vegas! The casino’s ‘edge’ is as little as 1% on some bets. At those odds, I should be able to play forever…but probability is not actuality.” Read More Returning to Andromeda “What sort of God would throw candy wrappers on a pristine beach? I mean, burning someone at the stake, well maybe, but littering, no way!” Read More Past, Present, Future "So, it turns out that the universe did not have a lot of options when it came to structuring time." Read More A Universe From Nothing I’ll take the wisdom of Yogi Berra over that of Bill Clinton any day: Whatever is, is! Read More Cosmic Crossroads You say, "Big Bang;" we say, "Genesis." You say, "Constantine;" we say, "Ascension." Read More A Theory of Everything (TOE) Thirty years after the death of Jesus…St. Paul quoted an already ancient Christology…a TOE. Read More The Nature of Time Confining events within a single order of magnitude reinforces our tendency to categorize events as past, present, or future. After all, if a quantum of experience can be no more than one second long, almost everything must seem past or future from that perspective. Read More Quark Soup “I once filled the entire universe, but for less than a second. I am 100,000 times hotter than the center of the sun, but I am still a liquid. I am denser than anything in the universe, except a black hole, but I flow 20 times more easily and smoothly than water. Who am I?” Read More

Aletheia Today magazine essays for children and families and exploring faith, religion, and questions about the universe. Tweens, Teens, & Young Adults Articles of special interest to younger readers (also articles submitted by younger writers) Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, September Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

Society Society is the way we live together. It is the concrete manifestation of Culture in interpersonal behavior and institutions. From Marx to Mark “The Gospel of Mark is no biography…It’s a call to action, a manifesto, a How to manual for non-violent guerilla warriors everywhere, 1st century…or 21st.” Read More Christian Anarchism ”A heretical state is not a bad state…A heretical state is not a state at all. There are no bad states. There are only states and pseudo-states.” Read More Fifth Grade Slump, Eighth Grade Cliff “We must surrender the notion that adolescence is a dress rehearsal for adulthood. It’s not; it’s real life! Read More Jesus Christ Revolutionary “He cured the sick and fed the hungry…because it was the right thing to do, here and now, and because it demonstrated what might be possible, universally, in a time to come.” Read More The End of History “Fukuyama proclaimed ‘The End of History’ with a celebratory flourish. But be careful what you celebrate!” Read More The Wonder School “Learning begins with curiosity and children are nothing but question-boxes.” Read More Leviticus and the Fed "The Fed’s 2% inflation policy is a modern version of the Levitical program. It pays for the social safety net that is our way of redistributing wealth.” Read More Home Alone “Macaulay Culkin is ‘every boy’ and his Home Alone family is ‘America’s family’ – except it’s not!” Read More Satan, Mary, and ‘Da Judge’ “Satan glorified political power for its own sake. He defended the socio-economic status quo…Jesus’ mother proclaimed a political and economic revolution...” Read More Political Alienation “Marx’s hypothesis that a person’s voting habits would be determined by their relationship to the means of production was blown out of the water…” Read More How Moses Saved Egyptian Civilization “…Walk through the streets of Jerusalem, through the marketplace at Mahane Yehudah, and find distinctly Judaized foods, dress, music, and customs from every part of the world.” Read More The Lottery “The state lottery is just about the only financial vehicle that offers some folks a realistic opportunity to materially impact their economic circumstances.” Read More Jean-Paul Sartre and Pope Leo XIII “Separated by c. 75 years, these men nonetheless faced a common challenge: Rebuild civilization!” Read More Christ the King “Sir, you are quite simply insane. We know exactly what holds our universe together; it is electromagnetism, gravity, and the strong force…not Christ.” Read More Job vs. James, Rex “God is good because he’s good, not just because he’s God.” Read More

Is the Sermon ‘in the can’ after all? < Back Serenity Prayer David Cowles Sep 1, 2022 Is the Sermon ‘in the can’ after all? The Serenity Prayer , regularly recited before meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and in many other venues around the world, has become part of our shared spiritual heritage. When I first heard it, I was appalled! I mean, check it out: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” To my tween ears, these words reeked of quietism : accepting things as they are, being grateful for what you have, honoring your parents (and others ‘in authority’), etc. This was everything I resented, everything I was beginning to rebel against. Who prays for this? As I grew older, I imagined (myself) that I was defying authority, battling evil against all odds, bravely ‘speaking truth to power.' I tilted at windmills, dreamed impossible dreams, and calmly prepared for inevitable martyrdom. But after years of ‘tilting’ (in more ways than one), I began to see the wisdom in what I had so viscerally rejected decades earlier. First, I had to come to terms with the fact that I was not the person I imagined myself to be: not now, not then, not ever, never! Then I began to recognize that the Serenity Prayer , so hated at first hearing, included insights I had already embraced from other sources. Eventually, I came to see that the Serenity Prayer is actually a riff on the Lord’s Prayer, especially its dramatic climax: “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from Evil.” Ask Christians what part of the ‘Our Father’ they find hardest to understand, and many will quickly cite this verse. But interpreted through the lens of the Serenity Prayer , the difficulty vanishes. What is temptation ? We are tempted when we consider using one part of the world, something good-in-itself, as something other than its ‘best self.' We are tempted to go ‘off label,' as they say in the pharmaceutical industry. Furthermore, we are tempted when we consider turning gasoline into Molotov cocktails, using drugs, not to cure diseases, but to get high, and using science, not to make life better for everyone, but to make implements of war. Less dramatically, food is good, gluttony is not; conviviality is good, drunkenness is not; sex is good, promiscuity (may not be) is not, etc. But really, what’s so bad about these things? Everyone has temptations, most of us give (into) in to them, but who cares really - for the most part no one gets hurt – and as my grandfather used (today) to say , “100 years from now no one will know the difference.” Or will they? Do our ‘venial sins,' our peccadillos , matter? Back to the text: “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from Evil.” What is this ‘Evil’ and why is it so uncomfortably juxtaposed next to ‘temptation’? Did Jesus make a mistake? Did he drop a line? Did he miss a cue off his teleprompter? Do need to reshoot the Sermon on the Mount? “Sermon, take 2.” Or did Jesus mean exactly what he said? Is the Sermon ‘in the can’ after all? Are Evil and Temptation really kissin’ cousins, as the Lord’s Prayer seems to suggest? They are…but not for the reasons we were told as kids! We ‘yield to temptation’ when we ‘misuse’ something, when we pull something out of the intricate tapestry we call ‘reality’ and give it outsized importance in our lives, i.e., when we put anything (even God) on a pedestal. When we are tempted, we begin to see the world as a collection of parts, not as an integrated whole. When we yield to temptation, we use one or more of those parts against the whole. “It’s not fair! I pulled just one little string out of this enormous fabric – I just wanted to admire its bright color and its sheen – et voilà , the entire tapestry has unraveled at my feet. And I wasn’t doing anything that bad!” You’re half right. Assigning something undue importance in the scheme of things, allowing it to determine your behavior, that is evil. It violates the First Commandment (no idols) and ‘both halves’ of the Great Commandment . When it comes to sins, this one scores the hat trick . But why? It doesn’t kill anyone, it doesn’t destroy the world; what it does do is ‘put strange gods’ above YHWH, who is “all good and deserving of all our love." Today, I notice you brought pate en baguette for your lunch. I love pate; when your back is turned, I steal your sandwich (and eat it). A good thing-in-itself, I turn it into an idol. Even if only for a moment, I have put my love of inanimate pate ahead of my love of you and ahead of my love of God. In New Testament terminology, I have traded ‘the living bread’ (God) for ‘bread that does not satisfy’ ( pate en baguette ). (John 6: 51 – 58) I have sinned against God and against ‘my neighbor’ (you); but neither you nor God is the real victim here. After all, I can’t do anything to diminish God, and one pate sandwich won’t diminish you by very much. (In fact, just between us, a little ‘diminishment’ on your part might make a certain cardiologist I know very happy. No need to thank me!) No, the real victim of my crime…drum roll please…is me! Good is the essence of God. Values are refractions of God’s Goodness. The values we find in the spatio-temporal world are reflections of God’s values. I am made in God’s image and likeness, so my value is also a function of God’s value. When I yield to temptation and eat your pate sandwich, I am putting your sandwich ahead of YHWH in the ontological hierarchy of the universe. I have tried to diminish God, but God cannot be diminished. I only end up diminishing myself. “Pate is my shepherd; I shall not want.” (Psalm 23) I have a new god, and so I have made myself a reflection of that God. I am chopped liver! I am tempted to pull on just one string in the tapestry. When I do that, the tapestry may begin to unravel. That ‘unraveling’ is what Evil is! Scientists call this unraveling entropy. I ask God not to let the beauty of his world tempt me to turn its parts into idols. Then I ask God to “deliver us” from the ‘great unraveling’ which is Evil. Now back to the Serenity Prayer : “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” There are things about the world (which includes my own body) that I cannot change. For example, I cannot make myself taller than I am. My height (and other physical limitations) is something I need to accept; that’s Serenity! On the other hand, I can break open my piggy bank and use the proceeds to buy the best pair of ‘trainers’ I can afford; I can practice my vertical leap (and other skills) every day. Hardest of all, I can ignore the taunts of others (“look at the midget trying to play basketball”) and their ‘discouraging words.' That’s Courage! As if I were on a post-apocalyptic battlefield, I see wreckage strewn everywhere, wreckage wrought by folks trying to change things they can’t and wreckage of folks failing to change the things they can. I need to move through the skeletons of moral warfare without tipping to one side or the other; that’s Wisdom! David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com. Previous Next Share Do you like what you just read? 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