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

< Back Philosophy’s 10 Fatal Fallacies David Cowles Aug 19, 2025 “We imagine we’re seeing the Universe as it is; in fact, we’re looking through a kaleidoscope, mistaking colored glass for reality.” Western philosophy is sick. It’s coming up on 100 years since Alfred North Whitehead and Jean-Paul Sartre published the last great comprehensive philosophical systems ( Process and Reality and Being and Nothingness ). They did so at a time when most of their contemporaries had concluded that ‘systematic philosophy’ was an oxymoron and that the proper purview of philosophy was limited to analysis . No wonder! 2400 years after Plato, we were still debating the same tired issues…with no resolution in sight. It is only sensible that folks began to ask whether the very notion of philosophical inquiry was flawed, whether ultimate or even relative truth was discoverable, whether metaphysics could ever be meaningful. My own superannuated contemporaries, the ones who kept me up all night in college dorm room bull sessions, have apparently given up. They are content that existence has no extrinsic meaning : “Cultivate your own garden.” (Voltaire) “A man should eat and drink and enjoy himself.” ( Ecclesiastes ) The fault, however, lies not in the stars but in ourselves. We imagine we’re seeing the Universe as it is; in fact, we’re looking through a kaleidoscope, mistaking colored glass for reality! The intellectual and spiritual diseases of the 21 st century – cynicism, nihilism, solipsism, skepticism, secularism, relativism, hedonism, et al. – stem in large part from 10 fundamental philosophical fallacies. Scattered across multiple academic disciplines – math, topology, physics, logic, ethics, linguistics, theology et al., these fallacies share one feature in common: they are all intellectually descended from Horatio…not Hamlet. Fallacy #1 – Geometry Euclid taught us that parallel lines do not intersect; well and good! But in the real world, all lines intersect. What originates at a singularity (Big Bang) converges at a singularity (Heat Death: Big Crunch or Big Freeze). Frost’s two roads both lead home and ultimately all roads do lead to ‘Rome’. Euclidean geometry is orientable . A sheet of paper has two sides that never meet. Even if we join two ends of the sheet to make a loop (a BK crown), obverse and reverse remain distinct. In fact, now they also permanently split the world in two: ‘inside the loop’ vs. ‘outside the loop’. Closed geometric figures (circles, triangles, etc.) divide 2 dimensional planes into inside and outside areas separated by an impermeable one dimensional perimeter. Likewise, spheres and polyhedra divide 3-d space into inside and outside volumes, separated by a two dimensional surface. We’ve trained ourselves to take these things for granted. But we all know that we don’t live in a world like this. At least since Heraclitus (5 th century BCE), we’ve known that in the real world ‘everything flows’. Nothing corresponding to Euclid’s orientable model exists anywhere ! Every ‘impermeable’ boundary is in fact a dissipative membrane: Ultimately there are no insides or outsides. All bifurcations are local (temporary) and ‘imperfect’: “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” (Frost) Even protons eventually decay. Consider a living cell, for example. It takes 30 trillion of them to form just one adult human body. Each cell is separated from every other cell and from the rest of its external world by a membrane we misleadingly call a ‘cell wall’. We have developed a complex science to account for the dissipative behavior of this membrane: once thought impermeable, more than a billion molecules cross it every second. The cell ‘wall’ is biology’s Maginot Line…or its ‘Checkpoint Charlie’. In the Real World, all lines intersect, therefore all planes form loops. Conforming to the fundamental topology of the Universe, all loops ‘twist’ to form one-sided Mobius Strips, and every higher dimensional ‘object’ (e.g. a Klein Bottle ) includes an embedded Mobius Strip. The geometry of the Real World is non-orientable . Orientable , Euclidean Geometry assumes 360° symmetry. Rightly so, but only in certain ‘special cases’, e.g. circular shapes and electromagnetic fields. Let X be a point on a circle. Move X 360° in either direction, et voila , X-again. More fundamentally, though, the Real World exhibits 720° symmetry, a characteristic of non-orientable geometries. Tetrahedra, the foundation of all structure (Plato, Fuller), consist of 4 triangles whose interior angles each add up to 180° (180 x 4 = 720). A tetrahedron is the union of two 360° circles (360 x 2 = 720), twisted relative to each other, so that it is impossible to trace the sides of the tetrahedron without going over one side twice. Fermions, the building blocks of all matter, exhibit symmetry only after rotating through 720°. 360° symmetry gives us access to only half a world (one circle) – we’re like Alice before she stepped through the looking-glass. The Higgs Field creates a ‘mirror world’, unknown to the pioneers of Western mathematics: Euclid, Archimedes, et al., through which all matter must pass. Orientability (flatness) is a fundamentally ‘local’ phenomenon. Just as the round Earth appears locally flat, the non-orientable Cosmos appears locally orientable . If you smashed any globally non-orientable Klein Bottle into pieces, each piece (local) would be orientable …but the whole is not. What is true of the Whole is not true of any of its so-called Parts. Parts are always orientable , Wholes never are. (This distinction may define Wholes vs. Parts.) But as we shall soon see ( Fallacy #2 ), there are no Parts, only Wholes exist, Wholes embedded in other Wholes. Fallacy #2 – Topology We are accustomed to thinking of the material world as a hierarchy of Wholes and Parts: “A whole is equal to the sum of its parts”, or is it “a whole is greater than the sum of its parts”, or “the sum of the parts is greater than the whole?” But in the case of a Klein Bottle ( Fallacy #1 ), what is true of the Whole is true of none of its so-called Parts, taken individually or even collectively. This degree of ambiguity alone should be a clue: something is wrong with this picture! If contradictory propositions about Wholes and Parts are all true, then everything is ‘true’ and therefore nothing is True . In fact, there are no Parts, only Wholes. To be is to be whole and to be a Whole. Some Wholes are embedded in other Wholes but embedded Wholes are not Parts; they are Wholes in their own right, symbiotically embedded. The nucleus of a cell is an independent organism, symbiotically embedded in its host. Same with mitochondria. A human cell in turn is not ‘part’ of a body, it is an independent organism, a Whole, embedded in a broader Whole. These observations lead to four wildly counter-intuitive corollaries: (1) “No two events intersect” unless one is entirely embedded in the other. Unless B and C are entirely disjoint, either B is embedded in C or C is embedded in B. But if one event is embedded in another then they function as a single event. (2) However, if B and C are disjoint, each may be embedded, independently, in A. But in that case, there is no consistent arithmetic relationship (common metric) spanning the volumes of C, B, and A. Even though B and C are embedded in A they are not ‘parts’ of A; so it is not necessarily the case that A > B or A > C or A ≥ (B+C). A, B, and C are independent Wholes, each with its own unique metric. Therefore, the volume(s) of B and/or C and/or (B+C) can be greater than A. The volume of A can even be infinitesimal (hyperreal), or zero, or negative while the volumes(s) of B and C and (B+C) ‘stay positive’…and real. (3) B and C can influence A and A can influence B and/or C but B and C cannot influence each other except through the intermediation of A. A causal relationship ( Fallacy #4 ) is the only relationship between entities (B ↔ C) that is not permitted IRL. The Real World is truly the inverse of the Euclidean World in which all of us live our daily lives. (4) “…it don’t rain in Indianapolis in the summertime.” (O. C. Smith) We imagine that the Universe pulls itself up by its ‘bootstraps’, that fundamental particles assemble themselves into ever more complex structures: electron → atom → molecule → cell → organism → community → society → the United Federation of Planets ( Star Trek ). In fact there is no pulling up, there are no bootstraps and nothing assembles. There are only Wholes that construct themselves by incorporating qualities manifested by other Wholes. To paraphrase Stephen Hawking, “It’s Wholes all the way down.” Fallacy #3 – Space, Time & Scale We are transfixed by the enormity of space and time and by the c. 60 orders of magnitude separating the cosmic event horizon from Planck’s measurements. In fact, however, space, time and scale are just three different axes on which we can conveniently arrange events to illustrate various pathways of inherited order. Time, for example, allows us to arrange events on a grid that corresponds to a desired ordering principle, e.g. increasing entropy. Until 1964, following Einstein et al., we were certain that the speed of light placed an absolute bound on the degree of integration possible in any universe. In fact, we now know that most events (particles) are entangled with other events across vast tracts of spacetime; and between entangled events, spacetime is annihilated – not that information travels faster than ‘c’ but that spatiotemporal separation is simply irrelevant. It is epiphenomenal in relation to substructural entanglement. Space is an ordering principle that allows us to quantify the strength at which various forces are felt by various entities. Re Scale , 60 orders of magnitude may be just what we need to house all the bits of information that currently constitute the universe. Fortunately, the universe is making room for more; it’s expanding. Speculation : Does the rate of cosmic expansion put a limit on our ability to generate new bits of information? Or does the rate of information generation determine the rate of cosmic expansion? Does the advent of AI mean that we could be headed for a new period of hyperinflation? But all of this is purely relative. According to George Macdonald, “Form is much but size is nothing.” And before him, William Blake: “To see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour.” But just exactly how ‘relative’ is it? According to Roger Penrose’s CCC model of cosmology, the isolated photons characteristic of the Big Freeze may be the primordial fluctuations in the CMB that become/became the seeds that drive/drove the formation of galaxies. In fact, the fundamental structure of the World is neither spatiotemporal nor scalar; it’s fractal . There are patterns that occupy regions of spacetime and repeat over and over again with slight variations - at every scale, in every place, in every timeframe. The rotations of the galaxies around their black holes recapitulate the revolutions of the solar system; the nucleated structure of the Eukaryotic cell recapitulates 20 th century models of the atom. Patterns persist; the universe is a many layered onion. Fallacy #4 - Causality “Everything has a cause.” From physics to theology, this premise was virtually unchallenged (lie quiet, David Hume) prior to the 20 th century’s discovery of relativity, quantum mechanics, chaos and entanglement. Causality and Ontogenesis have become virtual synonyms. In fact, however, there are no ‘causes’, and therefore no ‘effects’; there are only events . Every event is causa sui and sui generis . Perfectly free and unconditioned, every event occurs in the context of a specific configuration of prior events, i.e. in the context of its own unique Actual World. “What is actual is actual only for one time and only for one place.” (Eliot) Every event is a cosmos-filling field, a reaction of the Whole to the Whole, driven by a primordial appetition for The Good, i.e. for Eternal Values such as Beauty, Truth, and Justice. The probability of any specific event occurring in the Real World is infinitesimal. Yet events do occur. Is this not just another way of saying that every event is miraculous – not a suspension of physical law but the most dramatic possible expression of that law? In every event, the Actual World is both the subject and the object of the event, but it is never the event itself: “Jam yesterday and jam tomorrow but never jam today!” (Carroll) But without Causality , how do we account for the remarkable uniformity we find in nature? I mean, a proton is a proton is a proton…for 10^32 years! Our overwhelming sense of continuity has several independent sources, none of them related to Causality. First , all events are motivated by a bundle of shared values (above) that naturally lead toward a convergent future. Second , while the content of all future events is entirely undetermined, the qualities of the Omega event are certain, i.e. the material realization of the Eternal Values. Third , while every event is novel, no event is entirely new. As noted above, every event is causa sui and sui generis , but no event (except God?) creates ex nihilo . No two events are entirely the same: Creativity is the spark of difference. No two events are entirely different: Solidarity provides a shared foundation. Solidarity does not compromise Creativity; it empowers it. Beauty, Truth, and Justice are massively enhanced by Stability and Continuity. Imagine Beauty without harmony (order), Truth without knowledge (wisdom), Justice without precedent (law)! The creative urge characteristic of the Universe as a whole seeks to realize Eternal Values while maximizing Intensity of Experience. Each event serves its own subjective interests (intensity) as it meets the objective interests (value) of the wider World. The two interests are not necessarily in conflict, but they are distinct. Intensity and value both depend on stability. You can’t high-jump if you’re standing in quick sand. Therefore we assert the following proposition: “All events conserve as much of their inherited Actual Worlds as possible consistent with their overriding objectives of realizing Eternal Values and maximizing Intensity of Experience.” Events are not caused, they are motivated and curated - motivated by appetition for the Eternal Values and curated by the hierarchy of ontological imperatives: Value, Intensity, Consistency. What we experience as Causality is simply the Curation of Novelty. Therefore there is a Prime Directive, a meta-ethics: “Accomplish as much as possible by changing as little as possible!” Qualia are conserved without the phantasm of Causality…and Occam’s Razor is respected in the process. Fourth , we treat events as though they were points in spacetime; they are not. They occupy regions of space and periods of time. (Note: Every event is a World Wide Wave but that wave is concentrated in a defined region of spacetime known as its ‘location’). Within that location each event is holistic. If A is normally followed by B, then A and B are simply aspects of a single event. But we don’t see things that way. We turn events into movie reels. We break them up into static frames scaled to the perceptual requirements of our human anatomy. We practice ‘ontological vivisection’. Sometimes we affix labels like ‘intention’ or ‘tone’, ‘cause’ or ‘effect’ to various frame sequences. But in reality these are all just facets of a unitary phenomenon (the event itself). Finally , we are mesmerized by the concept of Causality itself. Events transform their worlds. It is possible to track the unfolding of events by following the trail of transformations, the gradual flow from lower levels of entropy to higher levels. There’s nothing wrong with this, as long as we don’t confuse ‘flow’ with ‘cause’. It is also possible to walk the process back, to focus on what is now and backtrack through an imagined sequence of ‘quantum changes’, one following another, until you’re willing to say you’ve reached the ‘origin’. There’s nothing wrong with this either, as long as we don’t confuse ‘sequential’ with ‘causal’. Fallacy #5 - Set Theory Around the dawn of the 20 th century, logic and sets met…and it was love at first sight. Suddenly, everything had to be described in terms of sets. By the time my children were ready for school, even basic arithmetic was taught as set theory. They learned symbolic notation before they learned addition. This was not necessarily a bad thing! Set Theory is a powerful tool. But then Bertrand Russell discovered an apparent ‘paradox’ in ‘naïve set theory’ and ‘fixed it’ by adding a ludicrous new axiom (The Axiom of Foundation). AF states that no set can be a subset (or member) of itself. There are valid sets that are not members of themselves. For example, the set of Real Numbers is not itself a real number. But these sets tend to be inert collections, baseball cards gathering dust on a closet shelf. More fundamentally, the Universe consists of sets that are recursive, i.e. that are members of themselves. Example : the set of physical laws is itself a physical law (a meta-law ). Criteria : (1) Changing the ‘value’ (defined as broadly as possible, perhaps similar to ‘qualia’) of any one member normally changes the ‘value’ of the set itself; and (2) changing the ‘value’ of the set potentially changes the ‘value’ of every member of that set. Rule of thumb : Recursion is characteristic of sets that model organic processes. A universe without recursion is sterile…and very likely impossible. What does it mean ‘to be’, Prince Hamlet? To be a difference that makes a difference. (Gregory Bateson) To be many in one and one among many. (Whitehead); all for one and one for all (Dumas). In pursuit of consistency, Russell sacrificed relevance. IRL, every action is recursive, every action is self-modifying, every action acts on the actor. Fallacy #6 - Arithmetic The rules of arithmetic are powerful, but they are also pernicious. 2500 years ago Zeno proved that arithmetic cannot account for even the simplest real world phenomenon (e.g. the flight of an arrow). The next 2000 years of Western intellectual history may be understood as a coordinated assault on Zeno, triumphantly culminating in the simultaneous discovery of Calculus by Leibniz and Newton c. 1700 CE. Alleluia! The multiplication tables, scourge of 8 year olds everywhere, were finally vindicated. Until they weren’t. 200 years after Newton, Bertrand Russell pointed out that calculus does not resolve Zeno’s paradox after all. Both arithmetic and calculus assume that the real world is continuous, which it is not; it’s discrete, it’s quantized. It’s a foam, not a fluid! Later Godel showed that arithmetic is also incomplete: it inevitably labels certain well-formed propositions ‘undecidable’. I wish I had known about Godel’s work when I was in 3 rd grade. Whenever I encountered a problem too big for my Pooh brain I would have written ‘undecidable’ on the answer sheet (with predictable consequences). According to the rules of arithmetic, ‘operations’ are transitive, commutative, associative and distributive. Translation: a quantity is a quantity is a quantity…regardless of its context. Of course, this is only true in the classroom. IRL, the order of operations makes a big difference. Whenever X + Y = Y + X, it is strictly a matter of coincidence. IRL, nothing is ever divorced from its context and no operation is oblivious to its order. Fallacy #7 - Language We take it for granted that language provides a reasonably accurate map of the real world. It doesn’t! Our contemporary Indo-European languages are almost entirely dependent on action/passive verb forms: i.e. action divorced from reaction. In fact, we’ve known for centuries that “every action entails an equal and opposite reaction” (the very same Mr. Newton), that “what goes around comes around”, that “karma is a b*tch”. Action isolated from reaction imitates the sound of one hand clapping. Once upon a time our Indo-European languages were dominated by a verb form that expressed the reflexivity and interactivity of real process (i.e. the Middle Voice ). However, the technological advances of the bronze and iron ages coopted language into the service of engineering and Middle Voice verb forms atrophied. Who needs the interpersonal when we are exploring the interplanetary? As described in the story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11: 1-9), we are left with languages that no longer communicate anything of existential significance. Bummer! Fallacy #8 – Consciousness Some of us imagine that consciousness is a feature of experience unique to human beings. Some think it is associated with an ephemeral substance like the ‘soul’, Gilbert Grape’s famous Ghost in the Machine (Ryle). Still others think that consciousness can be reduced to electrochemical processes. None of these models is even remotely on point. Consciousness occurs whenever one discrete region of the ontological field becomes aware of another such region. I am aware of the people, places, and things around me. A cell is aware of the molecular bath in which it is immersed, a nucleus is aware of the cytoplasm surrounding it, a proton is aware of its companion electron, two entangled photons are simultaneously aware of one another even ‘across the universe’. (Beatles) Contrary to pre-20 th century assumptions, there is no such thing as unconscious awareness (sensation, perhaps, awareness, not). Tweens, relax, there are no zombies! Whenever one region of the ontological field is aware of another region, it automatically becomes aware of itself being aware of that region. Ultimately, all awareness includes self-awareness, so all awareness is conscious. In the real world every ‘actual entity’ (event) is both directly and indirectly aware of its environment – indirectly through being aware of itself being aware. There is an infinitesimal difference between the object of direct awareness and the mediated object of indirect awareness. This is equivalent to what Jacques Derrida called differance . We see the world stereoscopically, resulting in two slightly skew images with a quantum of difference between them. That is where consciousness lives; this is what we call ‘identity’. Therefore, consciousness does not reside in any subject, object, or process; it transcends them all. It is Sartre’s universal Neant (Negation). When Roger Penrose (c. 2010) first proposed that consciousness was a quantum phenomenon, he didn’t know the half of it. We have grown up with the assumption that awareness and consciousness are two different things – and that’s right, sort of. Being conscious is not the same thing as being aware; but awareness automatically entails consciousness. Every action acts on both its subject and its object. An ‘act of awareness’ is no different. When I am aware of X, I am the apparent subject (active voice) of that awareness and X is the apparent object (passive voice). ( Fallacy #7 ) But in fact, as I am aware of X, X is also ‘aware’ of me (Middle Voice). But since I have no access to X’s subjective experience, I experience X’s experience of me as me being aware of myself being aware. I become ‘self-conscious’; I am shy . I channel ‘the other’ (Sartre). Therefore, a conscious being is inherently interpersonal, even if ‘the other person’ turns out to be a stone; been there! (Anaximander, Buber, et al.) The object of my awareness (the world) is in a state of perpetual flux (Heraclitus’ flow); it is coincident with time. The subject of that awareness (‘I’) is in a state of permanent stasis (Parmenides’ Aletheia ); it is atemporal. The object of my awareness is perceived through its qualia ; the subject of my awareness has no qualia : it is one, simple, featureless, eternal. I (object) am different than I was a nanosecond ago; I (subject) am the same as I was at the moment of my conception, the same as I will be at the moment of my death. There is no ‘preferred time’. Self-help gurus notwithstanding, Now is no more real than Then . I am simultaneously and instantaneously who I was, who I am, and who I will be at every moment of my life. I do not need to die to ‘see my life flash before my eyes’; I live that, here and now. YHWH said, “I am what am” (Exodus 3: 14). Descartes said, “Cogito ergo sum.” I say, “ I am I” period, a quantum manifestation of eternal, universal Being. I have no ‘hair’ (Hawking). I am Odysseus, I am Nemo, I am Everyman ! I am Consciousness per se but only as it is experienced over a certain ‘defined set of related events’ which Whitehead called a Personal Society…or a Person. Fallacy #9 – Ethics Admit it or not, we are all children of the Enlightenment and so we are direct descendants of Machiavelli, no matter how many ‘times removed’. Regardless of what we profess, we all behave as if ‘ends justify means’. And perhaps they would…if they existed. We’ll work a 60 hour week at a job we detest if it enables us to feed our families…or go to Disney World; but would we do so if we learned that our spouse had just won the lottery…or that Disney World was closing? We’ll move to a Ritzy neighborhood we can’t afford so that our kids can go to the best schools. Would we do so if we learned that the school committee was about to fire all the teachers and open a series of open air academies in the Athenian tradition? (Well, maybe I would do that!) And unfortunately, some of us will shoot a passer-by in the street if it gives us the cash we need to feed our tastes, habits, or addictions. But even we might think twice if we knew the passer-by was skint . In fact there are no ends…and so there are no means. Of course, there are prior events and subsequent events but that doesn’t make the former a means or the latter an end . Without Causality ( Fallacy #4 ) nothing can be a means to anything. “Evening came and morning followed, the first day,” (Genesis 1: 5) doesn’t mean that the darkness caused the dawn. But even if you insist on preserving the idea of causality, Machiavelli won’t wash. For something to be a ‘means to an end’ there has to be some sort of ‘intentionality’, i.e. the end must be in sight, if only virtually, at the moment of means . But in fact, the relationship between specific prior events and specific subsequent events is chaotic and therefore essentially unproveable, unpredictable and uncontrollable. Would you raise a colony of butterflies in Borneo so that a certain Cubs game would be rained out? Neither would I. And yet, unlike Indianapolis, it does rain in Chicago in the summertime! It is entirely possible that Bornean butterflies cost the Cubs a trip to the World Series but there is absolutely no way to know that, much less predict it, much less control it. All we can say is (1) there are butterflies in Borneo, (2) a Cubs game got rained out in the 4 th inning with the Cubs leading 10 – 0, (3) the game had to be replayed, and the Cubs lost, (4) the Cubs missed the post season by a single game. So, “Mission Accomplished, Butterfly?” Because there is no knowable, predictable, controllable relationship between prior events and subsequent events, there are no ends . Therefore Ethics , at least since 1500, is not so much ‘wrong’ as ‘absurd’. Imagine a frustrated parent trying to rein-in a houseful of mischievous preteens. Dad decides to post a new set of house rules on the refrigerator door, and he warns of dire consequences if even one of the new rules is broken. However, the rules are purposely written to ensure they will be unintelligible. Welcome to the Enlightenment! There is only one valid ethical imperative: Create beauty, disseminate truth, act justly…all regardless of any so-called consequences. Fallacy #10 – God Our final faux pas, Fallacy #10 , is fittingly a catch-all for a google of fallacies, i.e. the set of all affirmative propositions, actual or potential, that identify God with any specific predicate. The list is endless, because God is ineffable. That said, it is possible to make meaningful statements about God using metaphorical language. It is as if God were Being, Good, Beauty, Truth, Justice, Love, Freedom, etc. Reason allows us to identify these as Divine Qualities and experience shows us that these qualities permeate, however incompletely and imperfectly, the material world. Therefore, they are an epistemologically valid way for us to talk about ‘ineffable God’ using metaphors grounded in human experience. That said, the millennia old debate, “Does God Exist?” is misconceived. First, God is not an existent among existents; ‘God’ is what all existents share in common, God is their foundation. Second, God does not ‘exist’ so much as ‘occur’; like everything else, God is an event. ‘God’ is the name we give to the ‘Bundle’ of ontological features that all actual entities exhibit, i.e. that underlies the phenomenon of Being itself. ( Grammatical Note : All actual entities share certain ontological features, but it is the Bundle itself that underlies Being per se .) Of course, this turns the matter of God’s existence into a tautology. Est ergo Deus Est , or for the Narcissists among us, Sum ergo Deus Est , and for the more spiritually developed, Es Ergo Deus Est . But is that a good thing or bad? Can ‘analytic’ propositions be meaningful? How many angels do stand on the head of a pin? The entire Bible can be read as God’s ongoing but often unsuccessful effort to communicate his nature to the world, climaxing when his “Word (logos) became flesh ( Xpristos ) and dwelt among us.” (John 1: 14) In the end, no one is more misunderstood than God. We pray for signs, for miracles, for God’s intervention in history and in our personal lives, and when we don’t get what we think we’re due, we accuse God of suborning evil . In point of fact, we have substituted an avatar for God, and we have fashioned it in our own image and likeness. We have set up a straw man (‘God is like us’ replaces ‘we are like God’) so that we can indict God when he does not conform to our own ‘high’ standards of conduct. But “My thoughts are not your thoughts; neither are your ways my ways.” (Isaiah 55: 58 – 59) We are agents, we act, we make stuff happen. God does not make things happen; he removes barriers so that good things can happen of their own accord. God is a liberator, not an engineer; like Jeremiah and John the Baptist, we are God’s engineers. Look at Genesis . God said, “ Let there be light;” then God “ saw that it was good.” And only then “evening came and morning followed, the first day.” This is not to limit or demean God in any way. God is everything God could possibly be…consistent with the created world being what it is, i.e. totally and completely free (Sartre). I am not speaking here only of human free will ; I am talking about the existential freedom enjoyed by every single event in Universe. It is through the intermediation of God that the Eternal Values are available to the World as lures for feeling and motives for action. But only we can answer, “Yes!” History is entirely in our hands…and what a mess we’ve made so far. The Eternal Values, God’s essence, are why (not how) there are events. And it is in so far as those fleeting events manifest Eternal Values that the events themselves are timeless. God motivates actions, curates experiences, and redeems results. Cain founds cities, Noah builds boats, Moses leads an insurrection; Joshua fights battles, Solomon builds a temple, Jesus saves! Judeo-Hellenic civilization goes back almost 3,500 years. Ironically, some of the most philosophically impactful works came early: The Book of Job , Ecclesiastes , Parmenides’ On Nature , Plato’s Timaeus , the Gospel of John , and a selection of canonical Epistles, including Colossians , Ephesians , Corinthians , Romans , Hebrews , James , and the letters of John and Peter. A case can be made that the Golden Age of speculative philosophy ended with Augustine of Hippo c. 500 CE. 1500 years later, we’re still debating a lot of the same issues: Who am I? Where did I come from? Why am I here? Who R U? Is there a God? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do good things happen to bad or morally indifferent people? And, of course, why is there something rather than nothing? What else would you expect? We’ve been looking at these problems through some seriously dysfunctional lenses. Coke bottle bottoms would work better! It’s no wonder that academic philosophy is held in such low repute. For the most part, it takes for granted characterizations of reality that are obviously (above) false. We pretty much need to start over again. But first somebody has to say it out loud, “The Emperor is seriously underdressed.” *** Rodin, Auguste. The Thinker. 1902. Bronze sculpture. Musée Rodin, Paris. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back How is Government Like Soft Serve Ice Cream? David Cowles Jul 5, 2022 Democracy, Oligarchy, Monarchy, Tyranny, even Anarchy, are means of government, not government itself. How is government like soft serve ice cream? – that’s easy! Government comes is just two flavors: Theocracy & Plutocracy. Democracy, Oligarchy, Monarchy, Tyranny, even Anarchy, are means of government, not government itself. God rules…or $$$ rules, period. “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Mammon (money).” (Mt. 6: 24) The story goes that Benjamin Franklin, upon leaving the Constitutional Convention, was asked by a by-stander, “What kind of government have you given us, sir?” Franklin replied, “A Republic, if you can keep it.” I imagine God having a similar conversation with Moses: “Lord, what kind of government are you giving us?” – “A Theocracy, Moses, if you can keep it.” ( Spoiler Alert : Moses did keep it and passed it on to Joshua and the Judges who followed; but in the end Israel did not keep it!) “I will be your God and you will be my people.” (Gen. 17: 7 et al.) This same covenant formula is reiterated over and over again in the Old Testament. It is Israel’s political constitution …and therefore ours as well. God’s intentions are clear. He wants to rule Israel (his people, us) directly but through the agency of the people themselves: “Government of the people, by the people…” (Lincoln) According to this view, the purpose of ‘government’ is to execute the will of God, period. There is no ‘legislative branch’ because there is no legislative function . All law has already been written for all time (Torah); from here on, it is ‘simply’ a matter of interpretation. Yahweh’s lament : “I created heaven-and-earth and endowed it with freedom. Out of Egypt, I husbanded you across Sinai into Canaan, the Promised Land. I gave you 613 statutes (Torah) guaranteed to bring you strength, health, long life, fertility, and prosperity. Knowing you’re not always the best students, I created some study aids for you, and I encouraged you to use them, even though some would call that cheating. (It is your life’s work to reopen the gates of Eden…so do it by any means necessary!) I wrote the answers on the blackboard…and on the cuffs of your shirt: I emblazoned my will across the cosmos (Nature) and I planted it in your hearts (Conscience), and yet…” In the Saini, God’s rule was mediated by Moses and Aaron and later by Joshua. After the death of Joshua, Theocracy evolved into Anarchy – but that’s not a bad thing! In fact, it was a necessary step toward rule by God through his people collectively . Without the leadership of God’s hand-picked patriarchs, a new social structure took root. To “provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare and secure the blessings of liberty,” Judges rose from the ranks. Frequently, a Judge emerged to confront a specific crisis. The Judge’s mandate to govern came from three sources: (1) the Judge’s oath to uphold God’s law (Torah) and (2) the people’s consent to be ‘judged’ and (3) the urgency of the crisis itself. This style of Theocracy worked well (for the most part) for approximately 250 years (1250 to 1000 B.C). Plutocracy, on the other hand, is defined as the rule of wealth . Wealth and power have a symbiotic relationship. Money is fungible. Wealth can be traded for power, and power can be used to amass great wealth. This is the paradigm of a ‘vicious circle.' Look around you! So, to riff on Lincoln: “ All government is government of the people, some government is government by the people, but only Theocracy is government for the people.” Theocracy is not a respecter of persons. Only from God’s vantage can we see that people are not only created equal, but are equal and will always be equal. From God’s perspective, whatever appears to us to be a ‘difference’ is “Vanity!” (Eccl. 1: 2) “Do you know who I am?” – yes, I do; you're dust and ashes. Next… We are all ‘babes,' born of the self-same womb, but in the eyes pf the world, that begins to change almost immediately. Disparities of genetic programming and social circumstances lead to differentiated levels of wealth & power; but in God’s eyes, nothing changes, ever. ‘Equality’ is eternal! Therefore, God and only God is qualified to rule. Only God can rule for the people , all the people because it is only before God that we are truly equal. To paraphrase Deuteronomy, “I set before you Theocracy and Plutocracy; therefore, choose Theocracy.” Few do! Thoughts While Shaving is the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine ( ATM) . To never miss another Thought, choose the subscribe option below. Also, follow us on any one of our social media channels for the latest news from ATM. Thanks for reading! Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Job and the Problem of Evil David Cowles May 27, 2025 “Once Scripture is understood…on its own terms and not those imposed on it…one can only ask, What problem of evil?” In most editions of the Bible, the Book of Job is suspended between Torah and the New Testament , i.e. between Genesis and Revelation . Its position is apt. It is a lengthy (over long?) meditation on the Problem of Evil – a ‘problem’ introduced at ‘Creation’ (Genesis 1 – 3) but resolved by the ‘Resurrection’ and the ‘Apocalypse’. If this sounds surprisingly simplistic, it’s because it is. Nevertheless, the Problem of Evil is cited by non-believers as the number one reason for their rejection of Judeo-Christian theology. It was also the rationale Bertrand Russell relied on in his best-selling, Why I am not a Christian . Why the disconnect? It begins, unfortunately, with our understanding ( mis ) of the story of creation itself. The popular image of God shouting commands into an abyss is anti-Biblical…and a bit ridiculous. No wonder folks don’t believe. It is important to remember that YHWH said, “ Let there be light.” ( Genesis , 1: 3) He did not say, “Light, be!” as most people seem to think. He was not a frustrated parent barking at a naughty child; nor was he a raging motorist, yelling, “Start, you sucker!” at his stalled automobile. Rather, he was a compassionate curator ! Nor did he imagine that light would obliterate the primal darkness (“…the earth was without form with darkness over the abyss…” – v. 2). Instead, we learn that God merely “separated the light from the darkness” (v. 3). Later, in the Gospel of John , we celebrate the fact that “the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1: 5) Phase #1 of the creation process was not complete, however, until “God saw that the light was good” (v. 4) and “Evening (darkness) came and morning (light) followed, the first day.” (v. 5) All of which raises an obvious question: Why would an ‘omniscient, omnipotent and benevolent’ God need to ‘wait and see’ before determining that created light was a good thing? Could God have created something that was not good ? Would God need to pause and assess developments before rendering judgement? In a sense the whole so-called Problem of Evil is addressed and resolved in these first 5 verses of this first Bible book. All the stuff about God’s ‘omniscience, omnipotence and benevolence’ comes later and, for our purposes right now, is beside the point. The testimony of Genesis is clear: God’s hands are clean! Not so, the Book of Job . Here God is put on trial, charged with fostering evil . Job has quite literally staked his life, his health, his family, his fortune, and his reputation on the verdict. But our hero has a tough ‘row to hoe’. God is represented, albeit incompetently, by a ‘dream team’ consisting of three ‘wise men’ and a ‘fool’. Speaking of ‘fools’, Job appears pro se ; he has himself for a lawyer. Worse, God is not only the defendant but also the judge and jury. Can anyone say, “Conflict of interest?” The trial raises every imaginable legal issue. Does Job have standing to sue God? Can God even be sued? Can God be compelled to come to court? If the court were to rule against God, how could it enforce its verdict? How could it impose a sentence on the Creator of Heaven and Earth? Now the matter of God’s ‘omniscience, omnipotence and benevolence’ takes center stage. Unlike Genesis , Job presents the Problem of Evil in its more familiar trappings. A full account of the proceedings are available elsewhere on this site. Suffice to say, the procedural issues are resolved to the satisfaction of both parties and, in a stunning reversal of fortunes, God finds against himself and restores all of Job’s assets plus damages . Job is underwhelmed. He expected this outcome all along. His problems were merely procedural. Once the trial commenced, Job trusted that he would prevail. Even the obvious conflict of interest didn’t concern him. God on the other hand, perhaps sensing the weakness of his position, tries to bully Job into withdrawing his suit. But Job will not budge. He meets God’s bluster with his trademarked ‘frustrated patience’. He has faith that justice will out, i.e. if he holds his ground, the court will ultimately have no choice but to rule in his favor. Job did not believe that God’s nature would allow him to act unjustly…and he was right! Right trumps wrong after all. But the court’s decision applies just to this one case; millions of Job’s fellow sufferers, while buoyed by the trial’s outcome, remain mired in pain. The final resolution, the cosmic solution, comes in the New Testament’s Resurrection narratives and in the Book of Revelation . Here we learn (after the prophet Isaiah) that God is our fellow traveler, that he suffers ‘the whips and snares of time’ alongside us, via compassion and ultimately, via Incarnation. He is born, tiny and defenseless, into our world at our level. He endures in full the pain of mortality ending in a slow and painful death on a Cross. Clearly, our God is no wimp! But had the story ended at Cavalry, we’d be in rough shape; it didn’t! Jesus overcame mortality, pain and death via his Resurrection and eventual Ascension into Heaven (where he sits at the right hand of his Father). Finally, the last book of the Bible, the Book of Revelation , describes in minute detail, albeit in coded symbolism, the process by which evil will be eradicated, root and branch, from the World, and our primal Paradise restored, fulfilling Paul’s assurance that God will be ‘all in all’ (1 Cor. 15: 28), pan in panti ( Anaxagoras ) Once Scripture is understood in this way, i.e. on its own terms and not those imposed on it by non-believers, one can only ask, “What problem of evil?” Image: Blake, William. Satan Smiting Job with Sore Boils. c.1826. Ink and tempera on mahogany, 326 x 432 mm. Tate. Presented by Miss Mary H. Dodge through the Art Fund, 1918. 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.

“Popular music is a treasure trove for the philosophically curious.” < Back I am the Walrus David Cowles Jul 15, 2023 “Popular music is a treasure trove for the philosophically curious.” Unraveling the ‘inner meaning’ of popular lyrics can be a full time job…and then there’s the question of whether you’re actually accomplishing anything worthwhile in the process. The majority of folks believe that our work is a waste of time: “It’s music, man, just enjoy it,” or “Lyrics are lyrics, they don’t mean anything,” or “Who are you to tell me what the artist means?” Literary criticism has fallen on hard times in this age of radical subjectivity and cultural relativism. And yet we labor on: “There has to be a pony at the bottom of this pile of…” In my view, popular music is a treasure trove for the philosophically curious. Perhaps no popular song has more successfully resisted our deconstructive efforts than the Beatles’ classic, I Am the Walrus – in part because the Beatles themselves denounced efforts to analyze its lyrics. But there may be a deeper reason. These lyrics are just about the last thing you’d expect from the Beatles: a Christology that is as crisp and clear as anything you’ll find anywhere in the New Testament. After all, John Lennon himself would later write, “Imagine there’s no heaven…and no religion too.” Stunningly then, Walrus opens with a ‘translation’ of John 14: 20, “I am in my father, and you are in me, and I am in you:” I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together… Newly elected Pope Leo XIV has reprised this theme with the motto he chose for his coat of arms: In Illo Uno Unum (“In the One, One.”) Walrus also channels James Joyce, another ‘atheistic theologian’. We are immediately reminded of Buck Mulligan intoning the words of the Eucharistic rite while standing atop the Dublin Omphalos at the opening of Ulysses . ‘I’ (the Walrus), of course, is Christ. He is one with his father ( I am he ), as we are one with the Father ( as you are he ); we are also one with Christ ( as you are me ) e.g., in Eucharist; and we are all together as Christ’s Mystical Body, as Church, and in the Kingdom of Heaven. Ok, seems like we may be on a roll here… but we’re not! What follows next is a bunch of ‘dream imagery’, possibly intended to parody the ‘less transparent’ parts of the Roman Catholic Liturgy: See how they run like pigs from a gun; see how they fly; I'm crying. Sitting on a corn flake, waiting for the van to come, Corporation T-shirt, stupid bloody Tuesday, man you've been a naughty boy, you let your face grow long. Again one thinks of Joyce: “Rite words in rote order.” ( Finnegan’s Wake ) Clearly, any attempt at an ‘interlinear translation’ of the Walrus text is doomed to fail. But that does not mean that the lyrics are nothing more than a chef’s signature word salad . There’s plenty of ‘dog whistle’ philosophy woven into these verses. First, there is a profound contempt for ‘civil authority’ (the police) and its client and principal beneficiary, ‘corporate culture’; then there’s a nod to the ‘nun-of-this-and-nun-of-that’ morality of the Decalogue and the rest of the Torah. In the 1960’s boys were still expected to assume society’s leadership roles. ‘A long face’ was the first sign that a boy might not be adjusting to society’s expectations. Ditto ‘crying’. ‘Fake it ‘till you make it’ might have been our motto growing up. Remember, “You better not pout, you better not cry…” but there’s a whole lota cryin’ goin’ on in this song. Feeling adrift? Not to worry. The chorus will get you back onside: I am the egg man. They are the egg men. I am the walrus. As clearly as the opening verse expounds Christology , the chorus represents Ecclesiology . The ‘egg man’, of course, is Jesus and the ‘egg men’ are his disciples, specifically his 12 apostles, the cornerstone of his church. But why ‘egg man’ specifically? Just as an egg is the ‘incarnation of a chicken’, so Jesus is the Incarnation of God. The egg is a potent symbol of resurrection, rebirth, and regeneration (the Easter Egg). It is an apt symbol for the dawn of a ‘new age’. Remember, Jesus is said to usher in the Age of Pisces . It’s 0 CE, it’s springtime in the Zodiac. And then there’s that other ‘egg man’, you know, Mr. H. Dumpty. Like Humpty, Jesus was fragile. Humpty fell, Jesus was pushed (i.e. crucified), but like Humpty, he broke. But whereas “all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again”, Jesus rose in tact (‘body and spirit’) from the dead! And ‘the egg men’? Jesus’ apostles, of course. Why ‘egg men’? Because they followed the Big Egg and like the Big Egg, they were martyred (except for John…and Judas of course). Mister City policeman sitting, pretty little policemen in a row. See how they fly like Lucy in the sky, see how they run; I'm crying. The earlier symbols reappear. From the beginning, Christianity has had a love/hate relationship with civil authority. On the one hand, “my kingdom is not of this world,” but on the other hand, it was civil and ecclesiastical authority that crucified Jesus and martyred the apostles. According to Thoman Aquinas, civil authority is A-Okay as long as it doesn’t conflict with God’s Values: Render unto God what is God’s . I doubt if the antics of UK police c. 1967 met this criterion. Still, celebrating the police ‘running’ is on the revolutionary side for the Beatles. After all, we’re not talking Barry McGuire here! Yellow matter custard, dripping from a dead dog's eye, crabalocker fishwife, pornographic priestess, boy, you've been a naughty girl, you let your knickers down. Of all the controversial themes embedded in Walrus , it was this verse that got the song banned by the BBC. In Puritanical London the only thing more compulsory than male privilege was female propriety : ‘Keep your knickers on, girlie (sic)’. Yet there was one thing even worse than male petulance and female promiscuity and that’s gender ambivalence . In the immortal words of Archie Bunker, “Girls were girls and men were men”… on both sides of the Atlantic! Of course, the Egg Man and his Egg Men (sic) sublimate all such division in unity. No more male privilege, no more female propriety, no more rigid segregation (by gender…or anything else). “In the One (Christ), we are One.” – Leo XIV Here the chorus repeats, once again clawing us back from the edge of a semantic abyss; and then… Sitting in an English garden, waiting for the sun. If the sun don't come you get a tan from standing in the English rain. “Waiting for the sun” is the lot of every English man and woman…and of every Christian. Intentionally or not, Jesus left the early Church with an expectation of Apocalypse Soon , i.e., the Second Coming of Christ. It hasn’t happened…yet! (Although current events do give rise to speculation that it may be closer than we think.) Christians have come to terms with this elongated time frame by recognizing ‘anticipation and patience’ as salvific in their own right. In the same way, English men and women have come to terms with their weather. The Beatles anticipated the Rolling Stones by 2 years: “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find…you get what you need.” The chorus returns, but this time with an added twist: I am the egg man (now good sir) They are the egg men (a poor man, made tame to fortune's blows) I am the walrus (good pity). The chorus has a chorus of its own. In the background, someone is paraphrasing text from Isaiah (the ‘Suffering Servant’)…or is it from Shakespeare’s King Lear ? Or are they reimagining the conversations that took place at the foot of the cross on Good Friday? Expert, texpert choking smokers, don't you think the joker laughs at you. See how they smile like pigs in a sty, see how they snide, I'm crying. The first 4 words of this verse sum up the entire human condition at the end of the Industrial Revolution: fragmentation of labor, technocracy, industrial pollution, and our own unhealthy strategies for relieving stress (e.g., smoking). The Joker, of course, is none other than Satan himself; and why shouldn’t he laugh? An entire culture is effectively discarding God’s gift of life in pursuit of vain pleasures and empty honors. I’d laugh too…if I wasn’t one of those people. Semolina Pilchard, climbing up the Eiffel tower; elementary penguin singing Hare Krishna, man, you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allen Poe. I’ve saved the worst for last! Referring just to this final verse, John Lennon himself called it gibberish . Reportedly, he was trying to thwart folks like us who tend to over-analyze his lyrics. Perhaps we should take Lennon at this word. Others, however, have found meaning in these words. Pilchard might be a reference to Sgt. Pilchard of the London Met, famous for his drug raids carried out against rock and roll celebrities. ‘Semolina’ (wheat flour) could be a disparaging reference to ‘Whitey’; but it could also signify a kind of anti-Eucharist, ‘the Eucharist of the anti-Christ’. References to the Eifel Tower, penguins, and Hare Krishna signal Lennon’s desire to extend the message of Walrus beyond the geographical and cultural limits of ‘Christian England’. And the alleged ‘kicking’ of Poe, quite possibly at the feet of the UK police (above), is emblematic of how post-industrial civilization treats its artists. Like the Egg Men before him, Poe is the victim of ignorance and intolerance. Satisfied? Ok, maybe, but does anyone think this is really what Lennon had in mind when he wrote Walrus ? How should I know…and does it make any difference anyway? Archibald MacLeish said that a poem (song) should not ‘mean’ but ‘be’. I agree. But if it ‘is’, then it has a life of its own, apart from the artist who created it. There are two ways that something can exist. It can ‘exist’ in reference to other things, in which case we say, “It means;” or it can exist by, in, and for itself, in which case we say, “It is”. If Walrus is, then it must be free to mean whatever it comes to mean, and then this exercise in literary criticism is not in vain. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Return to our Beach Read 2023 Table of Contents Share Previous Next Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Click here. Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, September Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back Reading The Bible Backwards David Cowles May 23, 2024 “We struggle for freedom from the prisons others build for us, from the prisons we build for others, and from the prisons we build for ourselves.” We are accustomed to reading books from cover to cover in the order determined by the author/editor(s). Take the Old Testament: Genesis through Malachi . The order makes sense. Creation had to come before Exodus, which had to precede Monarchy, preceding Exile and the erection and destruction of the Second Temple. Of course, this order is not necessarily the order in which the texts themselves were written. Some of the material in Job and Exodus , for example, is much older than anything in Genesis . The modern Bible groups the books of the Old Testament into four categories: Law (Torah), History, Wisdom, and Prophesy. Read this way, the Old Testament tells a perfectly coherent story. Torah : Creation (Genesis), Liberation (Exodus), Theocracy (Leviticus). History : The transition from Theocracy (Leviticus) to Anarchy (Judges) to Monarchy (Samuel) to Tyranny (Kings, Chronicles, et al.) and ultimately to Captivity (Daniel, Ezekiel) in Babylon (6th century BCE) and Repatriation. Wisdom : The Wisdom Writers paint with a broad brush; they are the ‘big picture’ guys. They write at the level of cosmology, ontology, and metaphysics. They condemn all manifestations of secularism: idolatry, materialism, even consumerism. As they do so, they outline an alternative world order. Prophesy : If wisdom is big picture , prophesy is laser focused . Prophets react to the socio-economic conditions and events of their own time. They write at the level of journalism. Recurring peeves: concentration of wealth, abuse of power, lax observance of Torah and ever increasing secularism. Wait! Something’s not quite right about this picture. The Old Testament was edited and assembled in the time of the Prophets. Wisdom, History, and Torah (Creation & Law) should be viewed from that perspective. But we don’t read the Bible that way, do we? We start with Creation and, well, you know the rest. Doing so makes it seem as though history is a chain of semi-logical deductions with today as its ‘theorem du jour ’. In fact, however, we build our past based on empirical inductions beginning with today . Make no mistake: Judeo-Christianity is a revolutionary idea! It was revolutionary when Abraham left UR, when Moses confronted Pharaoh, when Joshua conquered Jericho, and when Canaan lived in relative peace during 250 years of Theocratic Anarchy under the Judges. It was revolutionary when Jesus fought a war on two fronts, confronting the twin authorities of Rome and Jerusalem, and when Paul planted the seeds that undermined the Roman Empire. It is just as revolutionary today and fortunately, since 1776, we’ve learned a bit about revolutions. We have learned, for example, that all revolutions require three things: A searing indictment of things as they are (status quo). A clear vision of things as they could be (utopia). A practical program to get from point A to point B. We find all three in the Old Testament…but not in the ‘right’ order! The Prophets condemned the immorality, corruption and tyranny that had taken over Palestine. But a critique of current injustice, by itself, doesn’t get the job done. It takes three legs to make a tripod. Critique only bites if it is powered by a vision of ‘what might have been and could still be’. That’s the job of the Wisdom Writers. The Prophets and the Wisdom Writers tell the same story but from different perspectives…and we need them both. The Prophets focus on the specific historical and political situation, the Wisdom Writers on the futility of any human endeavor that lacks God as its guiding principle. Hijacking the words of Robert Kennedy, Prophets “see things as they are and ask why?” Wisdom Writers “dream of things that never were and ask why not ?” Which brings us to the third leg of our tripod: Praxis . It’s how we get from A to B. If Prophesy answers the what , and Wisdom answers the why , Praxis offers the how . Praxis has two sides: History and Strategy. What’s been tried and how did that work out for us? What practical steps must we take now to realize our vision (Wisdom)? We need to begin with a practical political platform – like the Party manifestos in the UK…only realer and truer . But for us, this turns out to be the easy part! Long before there were prophets and wise guys, there was already a detailed political program to redeem an alienated world – it’s called Torah: 613 rules of conduct - time tested in the crucible of Sinai, at the great wall of Jericho, and during the time of the Judges - guaranteed by God to promote health, prosperity, justice, and peace. Wait! 613 rules of conduct? What am I, 8? 613 rules, yes; 8 years old, you wish! But don’t fuss, there’s a secret, shh! Lean in and I’ll whisper it to you: “Torah includes its own Cliff’s Notes . You just have to know where to look.” (If only Tolstoy, Dickens and Thackery had been as considerate.) The Torah consists of 613 laws (above), 611 of which are specific laws applicable to specific behaviors in specific situations; but the other two are general laws, applicable to all things in all situations, and as it turns out: these two laws perfectly summarize the other 611. Therefore these two general laws, collectively known as the Great Commandment (Mt. 22: 37-40), summarize the other 611 (tactics) and form the core of our revolutionary strategy: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” (Deut. 6: 5) “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Lev. 19: 18b) To which Jesus adds, “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Mt. 22: 40) We struggle for freedom: freedom from the prisons others build for us (prophesy), freedom from the prisons we build for others (praxis), freedom from the prisons we build for ourselves (wisdom). Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! 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“Who is Peter Thiel? Conservative, libertarian, or 21st century Marxist?” < Back From Socrates to Silicon Valley David Cowles Apr 1, 2025 “Who is Peter Thiel? Conservative, libertarian, or 21st century Marxist?” In April, 2009, during the Obama Honeymoon , when all the nation’s problems seemed to be behind us, an obscure billionaire, Peter Thiel, wrote a little noticed, but revolutionary, article for the Cato Institute. Safe to say, Mr. Thiel is obscure no more! Let’s sample: “I remain committed to the faith of my teenage years: to authentic human freedom as a precondition for the highest good. I stand against confiscatory taxes , totalitarian collectives, and the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual…” Hold on, Death and Taxes! Abolish both ? If I’m not mistaken, the last sane person to promote such an agenda in earnest went by the name of Jesus . “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” Bomb shell! From Kindergarten on, American children are taught that ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ are synonymous. Of course, they’re not! A popular assembly can be just as repressive as any hereditary monarch…more so according to Hegel. Athens c. 400 BC was the paradigm of Western democracy; how did that work out for Socrates? Was France really better off under the National Convention (1792 – 1795) and the Reign of Terror than it was under the Bourbons and the Bonapartes? Remember too that both Germany and Italy were functioning democracies c. 1930. And when democratic institutions resurfaced in Eastern Europe (c. 1990), many countries ‘democratically elected’ freedom-phobic regimes. This scenario is playing out right now in the states of the former GDR. Look at our own history. If the United States were a ‘direct democracy’ (rather than a ‘representative republic’), would slavery have ever been abolished? Civil Rights legislation enacted? Would homosexuality still be a crime? To victims, the tyranny of the majority is just as loathsome as that of a lone dictator. From Pericles to POTUS, democracy has obviously ‘underdelivered’ on its promise. Still, there is a difference between saying that democracy does not guarantee freedom and saying that it is incompatible with freedom. Peter has made quite a leap! But perhaps he was not wrong. Does anybody remember Mikail Gorbachev (1931 – 2022)? He was a democrat who led the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1991, when he was forced out of office by a demagogue (Boris Yeltsin). Domestically, Gorbachev attempted to implement two seemingly parallel reforms: Glasnost (openness) introduced government transparency, freedom of speech, and multiparty democracy . Perestroika (restructuring) injected Soviet socialism with elements of Western capitalism and free enterprise. Unexpectedly, the two worked at cross purposes. Russians’ long pent-up desire for prosperity overwhelmed the social appeal of democracy and New Russia ended up with neither. Gorbachev ran again in 1996, his last hurrah, receiving less than 1% of the popular vote and finishing 7th in a field of 10 candidates. Sic semper democraticus ! “As a Stanford undergraduate studying philosophy in the late 1980s, I naturally was drawn to the give-and-take of debate and the desire to bring about freedom through political means… As a young lawyer and trader in Manhattan in the 1990s, I began to understand why so many become disillusioned after college…Among the smartest conservatives, this pessimism often manifested in heroic drinking…” Been there, done that! “The notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ (has become)…an oxymoron…(but) I do not despair because I no longer believe that politics encompasses all possible futures of our world. In our time, the great task for libertarians is to find an escape from politics in all its forms…The critical question then becomes one of means, of how to escape not via politics but beyond it. “Because there are no truly free places left in our world, I suspect that the mode for escape must involve some sort of new and hitherto untried process that leads us to some undiscovered country; and for this reason I have focused my efforts on new technologies that may create a new space for freedom.” Local politics can be engaging. Real issues, real candidates with real policy suggestions, and real voters choosing sides based on what’s best for them, their neighbors, and their community as a whole. I grew up in Boston in the 1950’s and 60’s, when boys were expected to be priests, politicians, or police and ‘citizenship’ consisted of rooting for the Celtics and engaging in local politics. I had my first formal ‘campaign position’ at age 13 though I was informally campaigning from the age of 9; and of course I still root for the Celtics! Politics today, local or national, bears no resemblance to my boyhood experience. As a profession, it no longer attracts ‘the best and the brightest’, and the campaign itself comes down to a ‘beauty contest’ conducted via high cost, high tech media. There is little hope that ‘any government so assembled’ will assiduously protect social and economic freedom (Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness). Thiel goes on to discuss the Internet and Space Exploration. Social media, though isolating in some respects, also allows the creation of new spaces where people can interact, perhaps through avatars, ideally without interference from government. Space is ‘the final frontier’. Just as 16th century explorers and 19th century pioneers led to the establishment of new communities and new forms of community, so space travel. In 50 years, self-sustaining human civilizations will exist on multiple planets and moons in our solar system – more opportunity to experiment with consensual forms of social coordination. Remember, Thiel wrote his essay in 2009. If rewritten today, it would most likely be expanded to include at least two other technologies with the potential to open up depoliticized social spaces: Blockchain and Computing 2.0 (AI and QC). Thiel-ism , if I can call it that, is the belief that the inevitably tyrannical state, democratic or otherwise, will become irrelevant as a consequence of technology. Perhaps it already has. Hmm, where have I heard that before? Oh yeah, Karl Marx! As the means of production (technology) evolve and as the proletariat gains access and then control over that technology, the state will become superfluous and wither away. For the first time in human history, “we have the technology” to make this happen. So who is Peter Thiel? Conservative, libertarian, or 21st century Marxist? Image: Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Death of Socrates. 1787. By Jacques Louis David. Oil on canvas. 51 x 77 1/4 in. (129.5 x 196.2 cm). Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Wolfe Fund, 1931. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Share Previous Next Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Click here. 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< Back Advertising David Cowles Nov 17, 2022 “Madison Avenue knows us. It knows that our deepest longing is to be ourselves, to be what we are, to lose our absolute freedom in the security of an identity....'Never happening!” Once upon a time, advertising was information – ok, ‘spun information’, but still, information. Is anyone old enough to remember “Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is?” And what a relief it was! It soothed many an upset stomach and aching head back in the day (i.e., back when we used to eat and drink). Truth in advertising! Ok, truth packaged in a catchy jingle sung by a loveable cartoon character but ‘truth’ nonetheless. Now, fast-forward to today. Take drugs! (Well, only if they’re legal…and safe, of course.) Today’s ads for drugs (Rx and OTC) barely mention what the drug does (positively), but there’s plenty of attention paid to potential complications and contraindications. Some of my personal favorites: heart attack, stroke, kidney failure, and that old chestnut, death. But my all-time favorite, yes, trumping even death, is “Don’t take this drug if you are allergic to it.” Duh! Anyway, nobody cares. Today, ads are all about who you’ll be if... That’s weird. Won’t I still be me ? No, you won’t! You’re not yourself now; you never were, and a new car or a designer drug isn’t going to change that. You know, and you have always known, that there is a disconnect between who you are and what you are . You felt it when you were 3, and 13, and 33; you’ll still feel it when you’re 66…or 99! Alienation (‘being other than you are’) doesn’t go away; you don’t outgrow it, and there’s nothing you can take for it. At every moment of every day of every year of your life, you are, you have been, and you always will be someone , just not yourself . Life is like an old 8MM home movie: you can see yourself crawling, walking, off to school, getting married, etc., but you can never see ‘you’. You’re not there (it’s cellulose for cryin’ out loud!). In film, as in life, there are always only images of you, never you . We’re taught that we are shape-shifters: there is some mysterious ‘substance’ that defines us and that remains us even as we, like Proteus, assume a million different personae. It is one of the many things we’re taught that are not true. Deep down, you know that you’re unmoored, untethered, that you are an exile, a stranger, an imposter. You are like Shakespeare’s actor who “in his time plays many parts.” Yet, the actor is none of his parts, and none of your parts is you. What about all your parts taken together? Still not you. Don’t waste your time pushing this envelope, the result will always be the same. Being someone (or something) is irremediably different from being you . A persona is not a person! Hang on, it gets better! It is not just that you are unrelated to your personae – you are the negation of those personae. Neti, neti! You are not this, or that. In fact, not being them is who you are ! You are a verb. You negate, therefore you are! Non sum ergo sum. You are ground for the figures of the world, or they are ground for you, but either way, never the twain shall meet. So what? So, everything! Not being who you are is who you are! Are you lonely, anxious, scared? Of course, all the time…you should be. Welcome to existential angst . So, what does any of this have to do with advertising? Today’s ads don’t tell us about a product, about how it works, about how it can benefit us in our lives. Today’s ads are about who we are . They promise that you can become your persona du jour…if only you’ll drive a certain car or take a certain drug. Madison Avenue knows us. It knows that our deepest longing is to be ourselves, to be what we are, to lose our absolute freedom in the security of an identity. Who wouldn’t want to be a doting parent, playing ball in the park with your child, or a beaming child, riding shotgun in your parent’s brand-new pick-up? Never happening! We can never be ourselves in the way Madison Avenue intends. (I may have a family, but I cannot BE spouse, father, etc. There’s always a thin film between myself and my roles.) Today, most ads promise just that – but falsely, because nothing could ever do what they promise, not even when Hell has finally frozen over. We are not who we are and that’s all there is to it, madmen (sic) notwithstanding! Thoughts While Shaving is the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine ( ATM) . To never miss another Thought, choose the subscribe option below. Also, follow us on any one of our social media channels for the latest news from ATM. Thanks for reading! Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back What's It Like to Be a Bat David Cowles Nov 26, 2024 “What kid hasn’t thought about what it would be like to be a free flying eagle or a majestic oak?” The 20th century certainly had its share of philosophical tomes: Being and Nothingness , Being and Time , Process and Reality , and Philosophical Investigations to name a few. But it also had many somewhat less ambitious gems like Martin Buber’s I and Thou . What’s it like to be a Bat , a 1974 essay by Thomas Nagel, falls into this second category. By 1900, it had begun to occur to us that mental phenomena might be reduceable to chemical reactions and electrical pulses. From Freud to Ryle to Skinner to Dennett, the race was on to find ways to account for the phenomenon of consciousness solely in terms of physical processes. After all, we have more or less successfully reduced biology to chemistry, why shouldn’t we expect to reduce psychology to physiology? But Nagel objected to the analogy. Just as it seemed that we were on the brink of a materialist solution to the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness, Thomas Nagel fired an unwelcome shot across the bow. What Is It Like to Be a Bat? arrived at the ‘academy’ with all the fanfare of a 3 day dead fish. There was indeed a stench, but it turned out it was coming from the academy itself. Nagel threw open the windows and let in fresh air and the light of day. He exposed the bankruptcy of the reductionist agenda: “There is something that it is like to be a bat…what it is like for a bat to be a bat…because we know what it is like to be us.” Do we? Do we know what it’s like to be ourselves? Or is that what we’ve been trying to figure out for the past 3000 years? I am myself, of course, but that’s pretty much a tautology. It doesn’t tell what it’s like to be me. But I’m also aware of being myself…and that is what it’s like to be me – that non-thetic awareness of self qua self. I am aware of my awareness, no matter what I happen to be aware of. And so I say with some justification, “I am conscious.” When a hypothetical life form ‘responds’to environmental stimuli, biochemical pathways are activated and that may produce some sort of coordinated behavior on the part of the organism. But that does not necessarily mean that the organism is aware of itself qua organism or that it is aware of itself being aware of its environment or that the whole plays a part in determining how the parts of the organism (organelles) act in response to external stimuli. Response to stimulus does not necessarily imply consciousness. However, whether the Zombie organisms we’re proposing actually exist in nature is a hot topic of debate among biologists and philosophers today. 100 years ago, human children were often thought to be Zombies, as well as members of aboriginal tribes, of ‘other’races, or even of ‘other’ nationalities. I am reminded that in the 1960’s folks actually asked whether Vietnamese people experienced loss with the same intensity as Euro-Americans. Disgusting as all this is, we can learn from it…and also take some solace in the fact that we’ve come a long way in a fairly short period of time. In the 2020’s folks are asking whether unicellular creatures might be conscious. What kid hasn’t thought about what it would be like to be a free flying eagle or even a majestic oak? But when you imagined it, you imagined that you, yourself , would be that oak or that bird. You imagined ‘being yourself being something else’; you didn’t even consider ‘becoming someone else and being something else’ – big difference! That would have been ridiculous…and meaningless. The sentence, “I became someone else” is oxymoronic. I can only and ever be I (whatever I is), and never other , because ‘other’ is defined as ‘not-I’. Kid, oak, or eagle, I’m still me. Having feathers in place of hair or bark in place of skin doesn’t make me any less me. This is not to dismiss Nagel’s ground breaking insight. There is something it’s like to be something, but which ‘something’ I’m being is of no matter to anyone but my transitory self. I could be ‘hare’ today and ‘goon’ tomorrow and still be me, the same me! A hawk is not a Hapsburg, but what it’s like ‘to be a hawk’ is the same as what it’s like ‘to be a Hapsburg’. I am, whatever I am, always me. I know who I am and I know that I can be whatever I choose to be…and still be me. Who I am never changes (Parmenides); what I am never stays the same (Heraclitus). If what I am never stays the same, then what I am (e.g. a bat) can never be who I am! ‘Who’ implies the conservation of identity across some region of spacetime (or other phase space). The Heraclitean flow vitiates even the concept of identity. I can step into the same river as many times as I wish; both I and the river have and retain our identities. But I can never step into the same water twice. Flowing water has no stable identity…by definition. I, on the other hand, from infancy to seniority, from paramecium to paralegal, am still myself. I am what it’s like not to be whatever I happen to be at the moment. “ Neti, neti” – not this, not that! " I know this because I am what’s left whenever I stop being what I am. I am that which keeps me from becoming what is. Sartre might say, “I am my freedom!” A well-meaning adult asks a bewildered child, “And what do you want to be when you grow up?” Absurdly, the question assumes that the child wants to be the only thing that the child can never be, and that is, some thing , a what ! So long as the child is a who, she can never be a what; sorry, Grandpa! Even so, there are a number of correct ways to answer Grandpa’s question: (1) defiantly, “I don’t want to be any thing ;” (2) confidently, “I just want to be me;” (3) heroically, “Nemo” (from the Odyssey , not the novel…or the movie); (4) mythologically, “Proteus” (the shape shifter); (5) existentially, “I want not to be whatever I am and to be whatever I am not;” (6) ghoulishly, “I want not to be the one thing I am certain to become…a corpse.” ‘Astronaut, firefighter, pro athlete and rock star’ are not on the list. I wonder how the important children in your life would answer Grandpa’s question. Something to think about. What it’s like to be me never changes. I am T he Ship of Theseus . No matter how much you swap out my physical or social infrastructure, I am still the same ship. Even if everything changes ( doxa ), nothing changes ( Aletheia ). To paraphrase a famous cliché: “The more things change, the more what stays the same stands out,” i.e. the ship ! Heidegger divided the phenomenon of existence into Dasein (that it is) and Wassein (what it is). ‘Being something’ is a quantum of experience ( Dasein ) regardless of ‘what’ that something is. ‘To be’ cannot be reduced to its predicate, i.e. to what it is. As Nagel astutely pointed out, there is something it’s like to be something; but what it’s like to be something is the same no matter who’s being it and no matter what that something is. Every day, when I wake from deep sleep, I rediscover what I am. In my dreams I am usually a youngish man in good health, living an active lifestyle; when I wake up, I discover that I am none of those things. Sometimes the disconnect can be quite disorienting, but I never question that I’m me . What I am may be in doubt for the moment, but who I am is not. If it was, then according to the cannons of 21st century psychology, I would be ‘a crazy person’. I have not yet had the experience of waking up as a member of another species…but I don’t rule it out a priori . I’ve read Ovid! I can conceive of myself being a sparrow. I cannot conceive of myself ‘being not-me’ . Discovering that my septuagenarian self is a sparrow is improbable; discovering that I am not-me – impossible! Not crazy. Met him pike horses (Joyce) is not something on my bucket list, but if it did happen, oak or eagle, sponge or spore, I do not doubt that I would still be ‘me’. Again, not crazy! Speaking of Ovid, according to his Metamorphosis , folks are shape shifting all the time. Yesterday’s fair maiden is tomorrow’s swan, but her sense of self remains unchanged. That’s the tragedy, that’s the punishment. Leyda, born human, must live an avian life. If Leyda were no longer Leyda, the story would lose all meaning. So, what’s it like to be a bat? Exactly what it’s like to be you! Because to be is ‘to be what you are regardless of what you are’. So be a bat if you want but it won’t stop you from being you. New job, same you; new family, still you; new home country, you. Different species? Sorry, still you. You can run but you cannot hide. So, “What’s it like to be …(anything)?” Well, what’s it like to be you ? That’s exactly what it’s like to be a bat…or anything else for that matter. Everything that is, is what it is, in the same way that you are what you are. Once you were a single celled zygote, then an embryo, a baby, child, teen, adult, senior. That initial cell will copy itself 100 trillion times during your lifetime. Right now, about 30 trillion of those copies are alive and working together as your body. Throughout all of this there is one you , only one you, and always the same you ; that never changes. It’s what Thomas Aquinas would have called a ‘simple substance’. It has no parts, no aspects, no qualities. It’s what Jean-Paul Sartre called neant , nothing. You are existence without essence. You are the sound of one hand clapping! Think back to your earliest memory. There you were! It was you, the same you that’s chatting with me now, many decades later. To suggest that 4 year old ‘you’ is not the same thing as 44 year old ‘you’ or 88 year old ‘you’ is nonsense. It’s you; you are you. You are not one you, then another you. That’s not what ‘you’ means. You are what does not and indeed cannot change amid the universe of changes; you are the river, not the water. “Wait,” you say. “I’m not the same now at 44 as I was at 4? Not even close.” Ok then, tell me what’s different? Ok, any anything else? Anything else? Ok, all of what you just described as being different…none of that is any part of you ! It’s all part of your external world. We have fallen prey to a fallacy: we’ve accepted the idea that my skin forms the boundary between me and not-me. Not true! My body, the contents of my mind, the patterns of my habitual behaviors… none of that is me. That’s all my world! The Serenity Prayer nails it: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change (the world), the courage to change the things I can (freedom), and the wisdom to know the difference (philosophy).” Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to contact us on any matter. How did you like the post? How could we do better in the future? Suggestions welcome. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back My MD Should Be a Bot David Cowles Jul 10, 2025 “AI is 4 times better at diagnosing complex medical conditions than MDs. This…could be the death knell for the traditional practice of medicine.” In an earlier post on this site, My PCP Should be a Bot , we argued that AI could take over many of the mundane tasks associated with Primary Care and assist physicians with their other, higher level functions. It is clear now that we undershot the mark…by a wide margin. Yes, AI has a place in Primary Care, but it has a much larger role to play in Specialty Care, especially in advanced diagnostics. Microsoft reports that AI consumer products like Bing and Copilot see over 50 million health-related inquiries every day. Search engines and AI companions are quickly becoming the new front line in healthcare. But this is only scratching the surface of what’s possible. AI can do more, much more; it can be transformational. Along with CRISPR and Bespoke Medicine (N = 1), AI can be part of a huge advance in population health. Toward the end of 2024, Microsoft launched a dedicated consumer health effort, led by clinicians, designers, engineers, and AI scientists. But for AI to make a real difference, clinicians and patients alike must be able to trust its performance. No surprise here. New technologies always entail an adoption curve. Is it safe to drive one of them newfangled horseless carriages? Or fly in one those aero planes? (I mean, if God wanted us to fly, wouldn’t he have given us wings?) But 100 years later, we have Carvana and Travelocity. To practice medicine in the United States, physicians need to pass the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE), a rigorous and standardized assessment of clinical knowledge and decision making. USMLE questions were among the earliest benchmarks used to evaluate AI’s competence. Not surprisingly, generative AI has now advanced to the point of scoring near-perfect scores on the USMLE and similar exams. But these tests primarily rely on multiple-choice questions, which favor memorization over deep understanding. By reducing medicine to one-shot answers on multiple-choice questions, such benchmarks undoubtedly overstate the apparent competence of AI systems and obscure their limitations. No one’s going to trust a Bot to manage a loved one’s healthcare purely because it performed well on some standardized test. Algorithmic medicine might rely on discrete answers to specific questions but ars medica , the art of medicine, requires clinical reasoning capability. How does it perform on ‘sequential diagnosis’, a cornerstone of real-world medical decision making.  In this process, a clinician begins with an initial patient presentation and then iteratively selects questions and diagnostic tests to arrive at a final diagnosis. For example, a patient presenting with cough and fever may lead the clinician to order and review blood tests and a chest X-ray before they feel confident enough to diagnose pneumonia. Each week, the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) – one of the world’s leading medical journals – publishes a Case Record of the Massachusetts General Hospital, presenting a patient’s care journey in a detailed, narrative format. These cases are among the most diagnostically complex and intellectually demanding in clinical medicine, often requiring multiple specialists and diagnostic tests to reach a definitive diagnosis. How does AI perform in this arena? Surely here we need the empathy and imagination of a well-trained and highly experienced human agent. To answer these questions, Microsoft created a series of interactive diagnostic challenges based on 304 recent NEJM case studies. Clinicians, be they AI Bots or human physicians, were able to ask iterative questions and order appropriate tests. As information became available, the clinicians could update their reasoning, gradually leading to a final diagnosis. This diagnosis can then be compared to the gold-standard outcome published in the NEJM. Each requested investigation also incurs a (virtual) cost, reflecting real-world healthcare expenditures so we can evaluate performance across two key dimensions: diagnostic accuracy and resource expenditure.  The Microsoft AI Diagnostic Orchestrator (MAI-DxO) is a system designed to emulate a virtual panel of physicians with diverse diagnostic approaches collaborating to solve cases.  Orchestrator can integrate diverse data sources. It can turn any LLM into a ‘panel’ of virtual clinicians that can ask follow-up questions, order tests, deliver a diagnosis, and then run a cost check before deciding to proceed.  MAI-DxO paired with OpenAI’s o3 correctly solved 85.5% of the NEJM benchmark cases. Pretty good! But how does this compare with the recommendations of real life, flesh and blood specialists? For comparison, Microsoft created a panel of 21 practicing physicians from the US and UK, each with 5-20 years of clinical experience. On the same tasks, these experts achieved a mean accuracy of…wait for it…just 20%. Astonishing! AI is 4 times better at diagnosing complex medical conditions than MDs. This is a shot in the arm for AI assisted medicine but, more importantly and quite unexpectedly, this could be the death knell for the traditional practice of medicine. What are we missing? Is our AI system ordering every possible test – regardless of cost, patient discomfort, or delays in care? Nope! MAI-DxO is configured to operate within defined cost constraints. This allows for explicit exploration of the cost-value trade-offs inherent in diagnostic decision making. In fact, Microsoft found that MAI-DxO delivered both higher diagnostic accuracy and lower overall testing costs than physicians. Microsoft’s findings also suggest that AI reduces unnecessary healthcare costs – not so surprising given that 25% of U.S. healthcare spending is wasted on interventions that are inappropriate for the patient’s actual condition. So how can we account for this amazing result? On the plus side, no single physician, no team of physicians, can span the full complexity of the NEJM case series. There is always one more voice to be heard. AI, on the other hand, doesn’t face this limitation; it can blend breadth and depth of expertise. But the discrepancy is so glaring that we cannot escape the conjecture that something ‘not so good’ must be happening at the physicians’ end of the see-saw. Follow-up studies should focus on why flesh and blood ‘agents’ perform so poorly. Are they overworked? Are their information systems outdated? Do they have a harder time moving past their initial ‘blink’ diagnoses, even when evidence is pointing in another direction. Or are they limited by inappropriate sociological biases based on things like the patient’s gender, race, age, occupation, education level, income, or zip code? But there is an overwhelming sense that such follow-up studies, important though they are, will amount to just rearranging deck chairs on The Titanic . If Microsoft’s findings are confirmed, traditional medicine is dead…period. The big question now is how long it will take society ‘to stop life support and pronounce’. There is a meme of unknown origin that states that it was not until 1900 that medicine did more good than harm. The Microsoft study suggests that that assessment might be wildly overoptimistic. A better meme might be, “When will medicine finally begin to do more good than harm?” Will the healthcare profession hasten the achievement of that benchmark…or retard it?” Brutal…I know; but consider what’s at stake! Rembrandt. The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp. 1632, oil on canvas, 216.5 × 169.5 cm. Mauritshuis, The Hague. Baroque, Dutch Golden Age. Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp captures a pivotal moment in the history of medicine—when science, observation, and education began to challenge traditional, experience-based practice. In much the same way, today’s AI diagnostic systems, like Microsoft’s MAI-DxO, are disrupting the modern medical profession. The painting shows medicine as a spectacle of human intellect dissecting the unknown; now, AI replaces the demonstrator’s scalpel with data-driven precision, automating what was once a learned, manual, and interpretive act. The cadaver becomes a metaphor for how patient care risks being depersonalized in the era of algorithmic medicine. 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 Hadassah Treu Contributor Hadassah Treu is an international Christian author, blogger, and poet, and the Encouraging Blogger Award Winner of 2020. She is passionate about encouraging people in their journey to faith and a deeper walk with God. Hadassah is a contributing author to several faith-based platforms and devotional and poetry anthologies. She has been featured on (In)courage, Living by Design Ministries, Thoughts About God, Today’s Christian Living (Turning Point), and other popular sites. You can connect with Hadassah at www.onthewaybg.com. AI, Our New Frenemy A Prayer for Restoration Prayer for Comfort Prayer To Combat Disillusionment in Faith

< Back The Comedy of Job David Cowles “Failure to appreciate the comic elements in Job has resulted in an almost universal misreading of the text.” Comedy? I’ve heard the Book of Job described as tragedy, wisdom, and history, but never as comedy. How can the loss of one’s family, property, health, and social standing possibly be funny? Talk about ‘dark humor;’ but trust me (or don’t), it’s hilarious! The banter between Job and his so-called ‘comforters,’ even between Job and God, is as funny as any modern sitcom–no, funnier. The best way to show this would be to recast the epic poem as a stage or screen play. But where are Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Ionesco, and Beckett when we need them? Absent a master’s touch, would you at least let me point out some of the funniest snippets of the epic? This is not a sterile exercise in literary criticism. Failure to appreciate the comic elements in Job has resulted in an almost universal misreading of the text. As we shall see, proper recognition of the comic element sets things right. The Book of Job consists of 42 chapters, 40 of which contain a magnificent epic poem, every bit the equal of Homer’s diptych. The poem is nestled between a prose Prologue and a very brief prose Epilogue. For various reasons, we will focus only on the poem itself (95% of the total text). That said, I will also ignore the 6 chapters devoted to the input of a younger comforter, Elihu. These chapters are of dubious provenance and sit inert in the middle of the text. They contribute nothing to the discussion and neither Job nor God, nor the other comforters even refer to them. The epic proper begins with Job lamenting the day of his birth. Nothing funny about this. But Job has the added misfortune of being surrounded by (false) friends, three so-called ‘comforters’, cold comfort indeed! Eliphaz speaks first. Like a pre-pubescent boy in a schoolyard, Eliphaz responds to Job’s genuine suffering and heartfelt reflection with a taunt: “It is you who have fortified the trembling, and limp arms, you have strengthened. The stumbling would your words raise up, and buckling knees would you stiffen.” Eliphaz is, of course, being facetious. He applies to Job attributes usually reserved for God. “But now that (calamity) has come to you, you cannot (bear it). It touches you yourself and you are shaken…Call out now! Does anyone answer you? ... Rather, I would seek out El (God), before Elohim (also ‘God’) I would lodge my complaint.” 21 st Century translation: “If you don’t like the way God’s treated you, sue him.” Eliphaz is urging Job to do what he himself wouldn’t dream of doing: “Let’s see if I can goad Job into doing something so stupid that God will punish him even more! How much fun would that be!” But as we shall see (much later), Job turns the tables on Eliphaz and the other comforters. He does sue God…and he wins. Eliphaz and the other comforters are properly chastised and shamed. The story of Job has a happy ending, but the road to that climax is long and tortured; and in any event, I’m getting way ahead of myself. For now, Job must be content to banter back: “Thus have you now become naught (to me); you see a terrifying sight (me) and you are seized with fear.” Like most bullies, Eliphaz’ behavior is grounded in his own insecurity…and Job knows that. Foolishly, Job continues. Does he really think we can get through to these bullies? Now a second comforter, Bildad, joins the circle of torment: “(How long) will the words of your mouth be a massive wind? …(Suffering) is the fate of all who reject El.” Of course, this is ironic, since Job alone ‘knows’ El and keeps his commandments. But what miscreant doesn’t love it when a goody-two-shoes (Job) gets his comeuppance, even when it is undeserved. Job pretty much ignores Bildad’s noise; he is still mulling over Eliphaz’s suggestion: “If one wanted to press charges against him, not once in a thousand (times) would he respond…Even in the right, I would get no response…I do not trust that he would hear my complaint…and who can convene such a legal proceeding?” As with anyone in Job’s predicament, there is an inevitable undercurrent of despair: “The earth is handed over to the wicked. He covers the eyes of its judges; if not he, then who? …I will be found guilty, so why should I strive in vain.” Now a third comforter, Zophar, joins in, “A hollow man (Job) will be filled with intelligence when a wild ass is born to a human.” In other words, when pigs fly, Job! Here, Job loses his famous patience! There’s no reasoning with these taunters. He decides to call them out, “Truly you are people of intelligence and with you, wisdom will die! …Rather ask Behemoth (hippo) and it will instruct you, or the fowl of the sky – and it will tell you. Or converse with the earth…and the fish of the sea.” Job challenges the over-intellectualized theology of his tormentors. He suggests they return to basics. In the immortal words of John, Paul, George and Ringo ( Yellow Submarine ), “Be empirical, look!” Like Heidegger and others, the Job-poet calls for a theology rooted in phenomenology, i.e., personal experience. “I would rather speak to Shaddai (another name for God); it is an argument with El I desire. But you, you are smearers of lies, false physicians, all of you. If only you would keep silent – that would be wisdom for you !” Well said, Job, but unfortunately these bullies don’t get the message. They never do! Eliphaz jumps back in: “Does ‘a sage’ utter such windy speech and fill his belly with an east wind?” To which Job answers, “Futile comforters are you all. Is there no end to (your own) windy speech?” Throughout Job’s dialogue with the comforters and later with God, the interlocutors throw each other’s words back and forth. They repeat others’ words but put them in different contexts that give them different meaning. ‘Wind/windy’ is a good example. Job is the first to use the word, “Do you regard (my) words as just wind?” A classic victim’s mistake! A modern-day Maimonides needs to publish A Guide for the Bullied . Item #1 : Don’t give your tormentors anything they can use against you. Job flunks Victimology 101. “Do you regard my words as just wind?” is translated by the tormentors as “My words are just wind!” Wind is wonderful for word play; its various meanings run up and down the semantic register. Job is into the game now: “Futile comforters are you all: is there no end to windy speech?” On one hand, “windy speech” could mean, facetiously, “spirit inspired”…or it could refer to a disorganized and meaningless blast of air. It could apply to a verbose orator, but it can also refer to a certain noisy and often smelly bodily excretion, aka a fart! After a second lame attack from Bildad, Job goes on offense . In the most famous lines in the entire poem, he succinctly summarizes his theology and warns Bildad of impending doom: “I know that my Redeemer lives, and he will testify on earth. From behind my skin I look out, while in the flesh I’ll see Eloah (God). Something I myself will view - what my eyes, not a stranger’s, will see…you (Bildad) had better fear the sword…you had better beware of demons.” Job is digging himself into an ever deepening pit. There may be no recovering from this; Job may need to change schools. Now Zophar joins the circle of torment, but Job cuts him short: “After I speak, you may (continue to) mock yourself ” (i.e., blather on). Yet, Job uses his tirade against Zophar to score a major point: “Should I not lose patience over evil?” The comforters are apologists for evil; they excuse God for that which is evident to their senses. Here, Job throws down the gauntlet: Evil is evil and there’s no excusing it, period! In other words, even God must be good. Today, people debate “Good without God?” Job asks a much more interesting question: “God without Good?” From our 21 st century theological perch, it is hard to appreciate how controversial this was at the time. Suffice to say, it only served to further isolate Job as a minority of one. Sidebar : There is a modern analog. In 1964, Presidential nominee, Barry Goldwater, addressed these words to the Republican National Convention: “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice and moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue.” One third of the delegates walked out! Evidently, they too were willing to make peace with slavery and exploitation. Not Job! The Book of Job reads like a textbook of modern political theory: any correspondence between rhetoric and reality is entirely co-incidental. Now Eliphaz jumps back in with a tactic worthy of his 21 st century (CE) heirs. He accuses Job of precisely that crime of which Job is most innocent: exploiting the poor and neglecting their cry. It is a fabrication made from whole cloth, but hey, you can fool some of the people…, right? Like any skilled debater, Job does not give Eliphaz’ nonsense the honor of a reply; he’s already on to other things: “If you would let me know how to find him (God)…I would lay before him my lawsuit.” After a variety of legal maneuvers worthy of OJ’s Dream Team , God answers Job's summons and appears before him in a whirlwind. From the outset, God is contemptuous of his opponent and his remarks are dripping with sarcasm: “Who is this who obscures good counsel, (using) words without knowledge? ...I will ask you, and you will let me know…Tell me – if you truly know wisdom.” From here on, God’s speech consists primarily of a game of Have you Ever , punctuated with a few Double Dog Dares from A Christmas Story . He challenges Job to compare CVs with him: “Have you ever in your days summoned daybreak…Have you ever reached the sources of the Sea? ...Tell - if you know all of this. On what path dwells the light? ...You must know, for you were born then, your number of days is so many.” God is furious; he cannot contain his anger at Job’s effrontery. His words are venom tipped arrows. But notice what God does not do! He does not ‘smite Job with the jaw bone of an ass’ nor does he withdraw from the legal proceeding itself. Job is unfazed. Like Moses and Elijah, Job has anticipated God’s bluster and knows he must remain impassive if he is to get through it. Think Menelaus holding on tight to the shape-shifting Proteus. Eventually, God runs out of steam, “Should Eloah answer an accuser?” After all the ink and tears that have been spilled over this, now God questions whether he should even have responded to Job in the first place: “Maybe I should have taken the fifth…or drank a fifth.” Too late now, God, that horse is long since out of that barn. God’s rhetorical question creates an opportunity for Job to get a word in edgewise, finally, and Job makes good, but laconic, use of the opportunity: “Lacking respect, how can I answer you? My hand I place over my mouth. I have spoken once, and I will not repeat – Twice, and I will no more.” For millennia critics have taken Job’s words as an apology; how could they? At the most, this is the unfelt, sarcastically toned apology of a teenager. At the very most! Ask yourself, “Who’s disrespecting whom?” Either Job has disrespected God, and so forfeited the right to answer him, or God has disrespected Job, and forfeited the right to hear Job’s answer. In the first instance, Job’s words must be understood facetiously; in the second instance, as sarcasm. Job has apparently ‘rested’ his case. God now has one last chance to make a convincing argument. Wisely, he chooses a different tack: “Will you go so far as to breach my justice? Accuse me of wrong so that you are in the right? If you’ve an arm (as strong as) El’s…crush the wicked where they stand…Then I myself will praise you.” In other words, “Just do it!” Enough with the rhetoric, Job, if you can do better, go ahead; I won’t stand in your way and the whole world is anxious to see what you can accomplish. Bill Clinton is famous for saying, “It’s the economy, stupid.” In other words, stay on message. Job is famous for saying something like, “It’s justice, stupid,” and sticking to it. He must not, and he will not fall prey to God’s distractions. God closes with the tired reminiscence of an old man regaling the rest of his nursing home gang with tales of his past exploits: “I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker.” (Eliot) God spends his last 13 verses lionizing his creatures, Behemoth and Leviathan. One can imagine him thinking, “Yes, they are fierce, but at least they don’t talk back like you, Job.” God’s final stanza is nothing but sad, “He (Leviathan) has no match on earth, who is made as fearless as he. All that is haughty he’s got in his view; over beasts of all kinds he is king.” Job has previously stated something akin to the swami’s famous line in the Beatles’ movie, Help : “I will say no more!” But like the swami, he will say more. He cannot resist ‘the last word,’ and on that ‘word’ rests the whole meaning of Job, the foundation of Judeo-Christian theology: “I have known you are able to do all; that you cannot be blocked from any scheme. (God’s defense is not responsive to Job’s complaint.) Who is this revealing counsel without knowledge? (God.) Truly, I have spoken without comprehending - wonders beyond me that I do not know. ‘Hear now and I will speak! I will ask you, and you will help me know’ (not) . As a hearing by ear I have heard you, and now my eye has seen you. That is why I am fed up; I take pity on ‘dust and ashes’ (human beings).” Doesn’t it make you just want to reach out and slap him (Job that is, not God)? Oh, to be back in the 1950s! Any reader who has ever parented a teenager can put herself in God’s shoes, and any superannuated child can sympathize with Job. It’s the age-old battle of the generations, played out on the grandest of all scales. How can anyone have missed this? How come almost everyone has missed it? Answer: the incredible power of popular superstition. “God cannot be wrong, not even in an allegorical fable because he is God. What need have we of evidence…or even legal reasoning?” Theology 101 should begin with the Book of Job…and with the much older story of Job. It is a searing indictment of top-down theological reasoning. As Heidegger said, genuine philosophy (and by extension theology) must begin at the level of first person experience. We need to take ourselves more seriously…and less! We need to see the humor behind our entire endeavor. We need to eschew Sartre’s Spirit of Seriousness . God laughs at our efforts to understand him, but I hear that laughter as good-humored (not like that of Job’s comforters). We need to take a page from God’s book: lighten-up and know that I am God. **Calling all playwrights! Do you wish you’d written Waiting for Godot ? Or even Hamilton ? Now’s your chance to write a play that will leave these two triumphs in the dust. Your Comedy of Job will keep the Broadway lights on for what will seem like forever.” ** David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Return to our Summer 2023 Table of Contents Previous Next