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Philosophers Philosophers are artists working in the medium of ideas. They function both as landmarks and as signposts in our never-ending search for Truth. After Parmenides What to "Western philosophy is the history of our effort to understand the silence of Parmenides, or to break it." Read More Causes of the Civil War “Chaos is not an absence of causality, as is generally supposed, but an excess.” Read More Beyond Pascal's Wager “Once we get past skyscrapers and suspension bridges, we really have no idea what’s going on, do we?” Read More Robert Frost Was Wrong “Waiter, bring me one order of everything on the menu and when I’ve finished, I’ll pay for whatever dish I liked best.” Read More Philip Goff “You’ll end up living life as though you were counting cards at a Black Jack table in Las Vegas – in other words, profitably! But it’s still gambling.” Read More Bakunin Nailed It “Writing at the same time as Kierkegaard, 10 years before Nietzsche, and 50 years before Heidegger and Sartre, Bakunin got it right.” Read More Boethius “The ultimate pattern of events is determined, while the specific events that form that pattern are entirely undetermined.” Read More Thrown by Heidegger “Of course, I have no name, no face, no identity; I belong nowhere.” Read More Albert Camus “Either death is ultimately subjected to something greater and more general than itself (Being) or death ultimately subjects everything to itself and then nothing else has any meaning or value.” Read More Friedrich Nietzsche “Value-based judgments assume a transcendent point of view and sooner or later, that way of thinking leads to God-talk and any such talk is strictly verboten.” Read More Chatting With C.S. Lewis “It is the very mark of a perverse desire that it seeks what is not to be had… As long as you are governed by that desire, you will never get what you want.” Read More LEIBNIZ “In this model, God is a giant switching station, sharing qualities among myriad monads.” Read More

< Back Follow the Science “Every event is novel, and no event causes any other event. Every event is free, causa sui, and sui generis. But the universe is also conservative…” David Cowles Remember the Alamo and Follow the Science – words to live by, memes that inspire generations! We love science…and why shouldn’t we? I lived through all the painful and potentially lethal childhood diseases; today we have vaccines. I grew up without the “vast wasteland” (Newton Minow) known as ‘television’, and no video games. Quelle domage! How did I ever survive? When I wanted to know something, I had to travel to something called a ‘library’ and search through its stacks. Then I learned to ‘Ask Google’ to assemble relevant research materials for me. Now I can just wake up my bot, Claude, and he will do my research for me. He’ll even write my report for me if I choose. So follow the science? You bet! There is just one small glitch: not a single proposition in the ‘library of science’ is true! Or false, for that matter. Not one. Take calculus, for example. Without calculus, it is unlikely that any of the technological advances mentioned above would have occurred. The world appears to be continuous along all four dimensions, but it isn’t. This is the nub of the famous paradox proposed by Parmenides’ pal, Zeno of Elea, a mere 2,500 years ago. Calculus can do what Zeno couldn’t; it lets us treat the discontinuous as if it were continuous. It’s not true, of course! Discontinuity is still discontinuity, but calculus allows us to disregard that discontinuity and treat all phenomena as continuous. It’s a bit like geometry. As far as we know, there are no purely Euclidean universes. Yet, the postulates and theorems of Euclidean geometry have revealed much about the substructural order of the phenomenal world. “Something there is that does not love a wall.” (Robert Frost) There are no straight lines! Yet by studying the properties of straight lines, we can learn about that which is not so straight. Euclidean geometry assumes a flat universe in which lines can be straight and angles can be sharp. We don’t live in such a universe, but we can learn about our universe by studying Euclid’s pseudo-verse. Same with calculus! Same with science! Modern science studies with unimaginable depth and precision something that does not exist, i.e., a continuous world. Scientific Method (SM) allows us to probe the world with incredible precision. Anyone who made it through the 5 th grade knows the details of SM by heart: Observe, question, hypothesize, experiment, and interpret. And if you were too cool for school, you know that anyway (without the labels) because you’ve lived…likewise many of your unstuffed animal friends. The fundamental premise of SM is this: If you perform identical actions in an identical environment (e.g., laboratory), you will achieve identical results. SM is ‘AA certified’: the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. So the non-thetic scientific method is a hardwired feature of epistemology in our biosphere. Perhaps it is a product of evolution (physical and/or cultural); it certainly confers ‘advantage’ on those able to use it. But the whole house of cards rests on a normally unnoticed and unstated foundation – the assumption that any event can ever be repeated. In fact, every event is unique. It is a fundamental premise of ontology (Whitehead), the foundation on which all science must be built, that no two events can ever be the same. If they were, they would be one event, not two. ‘Same’ is a mathematical concept (‘equality’), not a physical reality. But there are no identical events, and therefore it is never possible to perform the same actions under the same circumstances. The scientific method is logical and practical, and it yields amazingly useful insights, but its propositions are utterly vacuous, fruits of a forbidden tree. SM is a useful epistemology that rests on an invalid ontology! “This is what a unicorn would look like…if unicorns existed.” Every event is novel, and no event causes any other event. Every event is free, causa sui, and sui generis . But the universe is also conservative….just conservative enough, as it turns out. If it were more conservative, we’d be in permanent gridlock; less conservative, chaos. Consider Events A and B. Let’s assume that B is as similar to A as any event can be to any other event. They are separated by a ‘quantum of difference’ - what Jacques Derrida called ‘ differance ’. Where do we find this ‘B’? Next to A, obviously. Dah! Neat trick! How’dya do it? Spacetime! Not a substructural feature of universe as we had long believed but rather a map of that universe. Spacetime is not the substructure of universe - it is a map, not a blueprint. Every map is the projection of a field according to a map-specific set of rules. One such map is spacetime , drawn so that every ‘B’ is adjacent to its ‘A’, of course. Spacetime is Minecraft on steroids. We assemble virtual blocks to create multidimensional structures, environments, etc. It is this map that makes it possible for the scientific method to ‘work’, even though it rests on a fallacious ontology. So push our science to the max and take advantage of all the gorgeous fruit it produces, but beware: Do not confuse the fruit (phenomena) with the tree (noumenon), do not confuse the map with the territory! Keep the conversation going! 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Share Previous Next

< Back Time David Cowles Aug 4, 2022 Contemporary views of Time include such ideas as: ‘there is no such thing; it’s an illusion; it’s a giant block and every moment is a slice; time is just one more dimension in spacetime,' etc. Our lead article in ATM Issue #2 ( The Beach Issue , 7/15/22) was titled Yesterday, the Very Tomorrow . This is a great kick-off piece for what we hope will be an ongoing discussion of Time in upcoming issues of ATM. Scientists and philosophers have mostly moved away from the idea that ‘time’ is substructural, that it is a hardwired feature of Being itself, that it just is. Contemporary views of Time include such ideas as, ‘there is no such thing, it’s an illusion, it’s a giant block and every moment is a slice, time is just one more dimension in spacetime,' etc. Whenever any fundamental assumption in science or philosophy is overthrown, it triggers a blizzard of new ideas and models. (That’s where we are right now with the concept of Time.) The goal of any new theory is always the same: account for everything we thought we knew and did; account for everything we thought we knew but didn’t; and account for the new ‘data’ that doesn’t seem to fit anywhere. What better forum is there than Aletheia Today Magazine for such a conversation. ATM Issue #3 will kick off with an article outlining the principal theories of time, current and past. It will include at least one article about the Piraha tribe of the Amazon (Brazil) and their very unusual conception of time (just one piece of their unique model of reality). I believe it was Augustine who said something like, “Everybody knows what time is, but nobody can describe it.” We are calling on all independent writers with an interest in Science & Philosophy: Do you know what Time is (or what it is not)? Can you describe it? We want to hear from you as we plan for future ATM issues dedicated to the discussion of Time. Please visit the Write for Us! section on the Aletheia Today site home page, follow our guidelines, etc. Let’s work together. “It’s time for time” – The Beatles ( Yellow Submarine ). 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.

“Nobody believes in Hell anymore…and that’s a good thing.” < Back Hell David Cowles Mar 1, 2023 “Nobody believes in Hell anymore…and that’s a good thing.” Nothing makes our post-Enlightenment hair bristle more than talk of Hell. Like a tween being threatened with corporal punishment, we cry out, “We’re too old for that!” And too wise and too sophisticated and too… Nobody believes in Hell anymore…and that’s a good thing. According to Sister Mary Therese (fourth grade), to be in Hell is to burn forever in unquenchable fire. Dante’s Inferno is a honeymoon destination compared to Sister’s version of the underworld. Today, people who believe in God frequently don’t believe in Hell precisely because they cannot imagine a merciful, loving God subjecting anyone, not even Adolf Hitler, to such a Draconian punishment. Color me in this group…at least on my best days. I’ve often wondered what happened to my fourth grade classmates. Did we split into two camps? On one side, those who retained a belief in God, but not in Hell, and on the other, those who retained a belief in Hell, but not in God, at least not in the compassionate, merciful Judeo-Christian God. Turns out, Sister Mary Therese was her own worst enemy. She taught an all too tangible Hell in hopes of reinforcing faith in a maddeningly intangible God. The strategy backfired, of course, big time! Either because we believe in God we can’t believe in Sister’s version of Hell, or because we believe in Hell, we can’t believe in a kind and just God. Imagine a ‘Pascal Matrix’ with four quadrants, i.e., four possible ‘solutions’: God/Hell, ~God/~Hell, ~God/Hell, God/~Hell. As with Pascal’s famous wager, the only solution that is a win for us is the fourth one (i.e., there is a compassionate, merciful God and therefore there is no fourth grade version of Hell). So we have only a one-in-four chance of ‘winning’, but fortunately for us, the payout is huge! Do the math: (.25 * 0) + (.25 * 0) + (.25 * 0) + (.25 * ∞) = ∞. I’ll play in that casino any day. Religious Ed for us (1955) was like watching a horror movie is for you. It scares you out of your wits but when it’s over you make yourself a snack and go to bed. The terror, though palpable, is too terrible to be real. We can’t accept that we live in a universe like that…and if it turns out that we do, then there’s nothing we can do about it and nothing that we do makes any difference or has any meaning anyway. The nightly news should keep you up, not ‘Chuckie’! Those of us who grew up in the ‘50s grew up in a forest of dos and don'ts. Water this tree…or else; don’t touch that tree…or else. Our forest was the Garden of Eden on steroids. No wonder we all related so easily to the story of Adam and Eve. We were living it. ‘Or else’ is the key. Everything came with an ‘or else’ attached. Kind of like a Canadian ‘eh’. Even if unspoken, ‘or else’ was presumed to complete every sentence…at least every sentence uttered in the Imperative Mood. Survival hinged on the ability to deconstruct the vague and all-inclusive ‘or else’. This was our introduction to inverse functions…at age five. The more Draconian the ‘or else’, the less we had to worry about it. “I’ll murder you, I’ll tar and feather you, I’ll boil you in oil, I’ll skin you alive” meant “pay some attention but don’t get carried away." On the other hand, when the ‘or else’ was some specific, finite, all too imaginable consequence, that was the time to be afraid, very afraid. Infinite consequences with infinitesimal probabilities do not motivate (or inhibit) behavior. Finite consequences with high probabilities do. Sister Mary Therese swung for the fences…and missed. How about people who don’t believe in God, or who ‘don’t know’, or who don’t care, or who don’t let ‘horror movies’ ( aka religion) spill over into their real lives ? Of course, they don’t believe in Hell; why would they? Or…why wouldn’t they? The 20 th century has given us many contemporary, secular versions of Hell. For Sartre and Beckett, Hell is people; for Ionesco and Camus, it’s absurdity; for Ibsen and O’Neill, it’s illusion;; for James Joyce, it’s history; for victims of the Holocaust, it’s the concentration camp. Another mainstay of Sister Mary Therese’s theology was her belief that the fate of one’s eternal soul was dependent on the ‘spiritual condition’ of the person at the moment of death: “Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death .” Since all of us ‘live in time’ and since we know that none of us will ever actually experience death (or know what it’s like to be dead), it requires no great leap to imagine that the content of our consciousness at the moment the external world pronounces us ‘dead’ is the version of who we are that will enter us into ‘eternity’. Sidebar : While it ‘requires no great leap’, it is not obvious either. By definition, ‘the hour of our death’ is a function of time; eternity, obviously, is not. Why should anything that happens in time carry over, intact, to eternity? Apples & oranges! In parochial school, we were taught to ‘pray for a happy death’; well and good. But that is not always something we can control. It is hard to imagine that a child immolated in a burning building, or a mother crushed to death under the rubble of an earthquake, had happy deaths. Are we prepared to consider that their agony at that moment might be who they are in eternity? Eternity is not infinite time (immortality), nor is it Σ T (the sum of all time); it is the utter absence of time! Therefore, it would not be a respecter of any temporal order. There is no reason why any single moment in a person’s life should be more ‘eternal’ than any other moment. To think otherwise is to succumb to the ‘tyranny of seriality’. Alternatively, perhaps only our ‘best moment’ is eternal; or perhaps every moment is eternal. Is eternity the foundation of time? Or is time the foundation of eternity? Is eternity time, evaporated? Or is time eternity, precipitated? Or all of the above? In my experience, people who have successfully kept the ‘God Concept’ out of their day-to-day lives, believe things like, “When it’s over, it’s over!” How ‘Yogi Berra’ of them! But like many of Yogi’s malapropisms, this may sound deep , but upon analysis, it doesn’t make sense . Applied to something like a baseball game, it’s perfectly OK to say, “It’s over.” And “When it’s over, it’s over,” is not wrong…just redundant. We can say it because we are outside it. We speak either as a fan or as a player in the locker room after the game. But life is not like a baseball game. It’s not a spectator sport. We are never outside our own life. We’re in it and, as Bill Clinton said, we’re in it ‘til the last dog dies. Absent of some mystical experience, we can’t stand outside it, and so we can’t ever meaningfully say, ‘It’s over ’. No one can say, “It’s over,” unless they do so from a vantage point outside of what is ‘over’. Applied to life, if you’re able to say, “It’s over,” then it can’t be over, can it? The act of saying ‘it’s over’ testifies to the fact that it’s not over, constitutes that fact that it’s not over, and ensures that it’s not over. Of course, I can say that another person’s life is ‘over’ provided I’m willing to reduce that life to the ontological status of a baseball game. Camus famously said that the only real philosophical question is the question of suicide. He sure knew his Hamlet …or did he? Even the Prince of Denmark realized that suicide was no solution. Suicide eliminates the future…but not the past that led up to it. Suicide vitiates the possibility, however remote, of a ‘happy death’. At the same time, it enshrines the circumstances that led to the suicide, and worse, it ensures that those circumstances can never be altered or transcended. To choose suicide is to embrace inanimate determinism; it is to make a fetish of the past: now the future is the past and the past is the future. We have exchanged the insecurity of the ever-widening gyre for the horrific impotence of a House of Mirrors. No wonder, then, that some Christians used to consider suicide to be an unforgivable sin; it is indeed a sin against the Holy Spirit, “the Lord, the Giver of Life” ( Nicaean Creed ). To paraphrase Dante, it is to ‘abandon all hope’. In the Church’s first millennium, various anti-Christian sects sought to eradicate this ‘novel heresy’ by demolishing its holy sites and building pagan temples over them to make sure that later generations of Christians would not be able to rebuild. Thank you! History owes a debt of gratitude to these iconoclasts. Their X marked the spot of those early Christian sites, thereby preserving them for millennia to come. In my experience, folks who profess Yogi’s Creed generally don’t accept the dire implications of their faith . Without resorting to ‘the God Hypothesis’, they nonetheless find ways not to accept the notion that Universe itself could be mercilessly cruel. Often, they will add some sort of qualifying proposition. Do any of these sound familiar? “I had a good life and nobody can take that away from me.” “I’m leaving the world a better place than I found it.” “I’ve helped other people live richer, happier lives.” Where’s Waldo? Can you locate the incipient eschatology in each of these statements? There is an implicit assumption that what I have done, or just experienced, endures in some way ‘beyond the hour of my death’. The impact I have had on the world and on other people’s lives is somehow meaningful and enduring. Of course, the Standard Model of Cosmology and the Second Law of Thermodynamics say otherwise! If Universe is a solo act and if, as we now believe, it comes from nothing and returns to nothing, and if there is nothing beside or beyond it, then none of these modifiers makes sense. We are uncomfortable in our skins. We desperately want to believe that Universe is what it is, that what you see is what you get, period. But we also want to believe that our lives are real, that they matter, and that they don’t cease to matter at the moment of death. Well and good, but we can’t have it both ways. Nietzsche boiled it down to what amounts to a simple syllogism: Meaning only happens when a signifier transcends that which it signifies (that’s what we mean by meaning ). But nothing transcends the world as we know it. Therefore, nothing has meaning. Nietzsche certainly had the courage of his convictions! I greatly admire his thinking, but I am not willing to sign on to his ‘Manifesto of Nihilism’, are you? Oddly, nihilism does permit the existence of Hell, though it needs to be defined as ‘Hell on earth’. Non-theism, including atheism, is not necessarily nihilistic. Far from it! Most non-theists seek to preserve meaning, i.e., transcendence, without the assumption of a transcendent being ( aka God). Theism, almost by definition, assumes that there is more to the world than its appearances, that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies. Theists go even further; they assert that there is an actual being (i.e., God) that transcends the world as we know it. Assuming this being to be benevolent, and world-relevant, the Hell Hypothesis is ruled out. Here, many non-theists (provided they are not strict nihilists), converge in their thinking with most theists. Regardless of mechanism, Hell, the infinitely horrible, is precluded by any universe, theistic or otherwise, that contains even the slightest tilt toward the Good. Image: The Map of Hell painting by Botticelli is one of the extant ninety-two drawings that were originally included in the illustrated manuscript of Dante's Divine Comedy. Sandro Botticelli. Mid-1480s-mid-1490s 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 Spring 2023 Table of Contents Share Previous Next Click here. Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! 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< Back Peace at Any Price David Cowles Jun 29, 2023 “We cannot bring about a permanent peace while continually preparing for war, but unilateral disarmament is probably not the answer either.” Growing up in the ‘50s and ‘60s, I was steeped in an ideology that is almost absent from global discourse today. I’m not talking about fascism or communism, still alive and well in some circles, but something ultimately much more radical: pacificism. The experience of two world wars with all their attendant horrors, culminating in the Holocaust, had apparently cured humanity of its taste for war. The dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan was the coup de grace . War had become unthinkable at last. The nations of the world came together and formed the United Nations (UN), which was to oversee the peaceful arbitration of all future disputes. Peace at last! Churchill and Truman ceded Eastern Europe to the Soviet Union rather than confront Stalin. England validated Gandhi’s strategy of non-violence by withdrawing from the Indian subcontinent. Colonial powers rapidly, and for the most part peacefully, dismantled their empires. A permanent homeland was created for Israel. A ‘Reign of Peace’ had replaced the ‘Thousand-Year Reich’ and the ‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat’. What could possibly go wrong? It was the dawn of a much anticipated golden age – no matter that war was still raging in parts of Asia (e.g., Korea). It was a time of slogans: “Ban the Bomb,” “Peace at any Price,”and “Better Red than Dead.” Western politicians seriously proposed and campaigned on platforms of Unilateral Disarmament . The world was divided again, but this time it was ‘reactionary war mongers’ vs. ‘naïve utopian peaceniks’. The golden age of peace turned out to be more like a half-holiday. The Cold War, the nuclear arms race, ‘duck and cover’ drills, the Hungarian Revolution (1956), Castro’s Cuba, and the launch of Sputnik kept peace from breaking out. Then came Vietnam and the global revolution of the late 1960s. The peace movement became the anti-war movement, which in turn became Ho Chi Minh’s 5 th column in the US. In less than 20 years, war, supposedly unthinkable, had become the new normal…again. The idea of ‘waging peace’ did not begin on August 6, 1945, with the bombing of Hiroshima. It turns out to have much older roots. The Hebrew nation that Moses led out of Egypt conquered Jericho, the Gotham of its day, without a single Hebrew casualty (as far as we know). Joshua combined a revolutionary ideology with a network of spies and secret agents and God-scripted military tactics worthy of General Giap himself. Ian Fleming should have written a book about him (call him “J”). Once settled, the Hebrews did not build massive fortifications or raise a standing army like other nations. Nor did they choose to put their fate in the hands of warrior kings. In fact, the embryonic Hebrew state in Canaan was not a ‘government’ at all by our standards. It was a remarkable blend of theocracy, democracy, and anarchy. The books of Joshua, Judges, and Samuel can be read as ‘founding documents’ for all the major political ideologies of the most recent quarter-millennium (1770s – 2020s). Speaking of quarter-millennia, the great social experiment we recognize as proto-Israel lasted approximately that long (c. 1300 – 1050 BCE). Like any historical period, the Age of Judges had its ups and downs. Without permanent institutions of government, a ruling class, a standing army, fortifications or naturally defensible borders, Israel was forced to rely on charismatic leaders (judges) who emerged on cue and ad hoc to defend the Holy Land. Scholars and theologians disagree as to whether the Mosaic revolution was intended to be national, regional, or global. Suffice to say that it succeeded nationally and influenced regionally but failed internationally. It would be another 2,000 years before the Kingdom of Joshua (albeit much altered) could reasonably be said to extend ‘to all corners of the known world’ (Christendom). As Trotsky would have predicted, had he lived in the time of the Judges, the people of Israel were not content with their unusual, if successful, constitution. Like all of us in our adolescent phase, the people of Israel wanted to ‘be like everyone else’ – they wanted a King, and so Samuel, the last of the Judges, inaugurated Saul to be Israel’s first king. How did that work out? Fast forward 500 years. Jerusalem has been sacked, and Israel’s most prominent citizens exiled to Babylon. Should’ve listened to YHWH! We cannot bring about a permanent peace while continually preparing for war, but unilateral disarmament is probably not the answer either. How about changing the conversation, focusing on things that would make war intrinsically unprofitable…and so ultimately unthinkable? Prosperity: the overall wealth of the people, justly distributed. Ecology: the overall health of the planet and reasonable protection for all its species. Progress: the rapid development but thoughtful deployment of new technologies. Discovery: the exploration of the universe by telescope, radio antennae, space probes, and space travel. No imaginable war could be consistent with any one of these priorities. Consider the war in Ukraine: how does it contribute anything positive toward any of these objectives from the perspective of any of the combatants? It is a classic lose-lose proposition. In fact, since WWII, all our wars, win or lose, have led to a similar result - no result at all. Korea is still Korea, Vietnam is still Vietnam, Cuba, Cuba, Latin America, Latin America, the Middle East, Northern Africa, and of course, Afghanistan. War has become as irrelevant as it is unthinkable. And yet… 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 Matzah of Hope--Passover Part One B.J. Yudelson "This matzah, which we set aside as a symbol of hope for the thousands of women who are anchored to marriages in name only, reminds us that slavery comes in many forms." You may remember that back in the ’70s and ’80s, we added a fourth matzah to the three required for the Seder and called it the Matzah of Hope. It was a symbol of the three million Soviet Jews who had no freedom to be Jews. Some twenty or thirty years later, our united voices had changed the situation. I propose that this year we once again add a fourth matzah to our Seder table and read the following. What do you think? Maybe together we can change the situation for the Agunot, women anchored to men who neither want them as wives nor are willing to free them to lead their own lives. This matzah, which we set aside as a symbol of hope for the thousands of women who are anchored to marriages in name only, reminds us that slavery comes in many forms. Three thousand years ago, Jewish women were forced to see their baby sons die. They themselves were forced to follow the orders of the Egyptian masters to make bricks and perform other onerous tasks. Today, there are women enslaved to unsustainable marriages. The common term for them is “chained” women. But the Hebrew, agunah, comes from the root that means “to anchor.” These women, who have asked for a divorce but are dependent upon their husbands for the “get” that completes the divorce procedure, are anchored in place by men who refuse to comply. Tethered under water, it is as if they are mired in the muck on the bottom. Although the water that swirls about them represents opportunity, freedom, the ability to navigate to new and different Jewish places, they can barely breathe. How tantalizing to be surrounded by freedom yet to be prohibited from leading the free, fulfilling Jewish lives they crave. These women can dream of a new life, of new experiences that await them in a different part of this lake or sea they are trapped in. But they can’t, by themselves, hoist the anchor to change their situations. They need our support: our prayers, our petitions, our demonstrations. They need for us to convince our rabbis to take action, for where there is a rabbinic will, there will be found a rabbinic way to free agunot. As we set aside this matzah in their honor, let us pledge to do more in the coming year to free all agunot from the bondage that weighs particularly heavily as we celebrate freedom this Seder night. This was republished with permission from T he Jewish Pluralist . It is first in the series Four Women’s Collected Essays on the Meaning of Passover . Click here for introduction to the series. This essay was also published on B.J. Yudelson website. Image: Passover Seder, 19th Century B.J. is an explorer who loves both the comfort of the familiar and the challenge of the unknown. As a child growing up in Atlanta, she knew the size and position of every tree in the wooded ravine behind her house as well as the best rocks for crossing the creek at the bottom. When she passes a street repeatedly, she may suddenly turn onto it just to find out where it goes, making the unknown familiar. World religions, her own beloved Judaism, a foreign country, or a local park all bring out the explorer in her. She writes to make sense of the inner landscapes of family and friends, the ins and outs of her community (currently, Rochester, New York), and the beauty of loon-filled lakes. Her writings—published in a variety of literary journals, websites, and anthologies —explore family, Judaism, nature, and overcoming obstacles. She invites you to join her on her adventures. Return to our Holy Days 2023 Table of Contents, Previous Next

< Back Being David Copperfield David Cowles Oct 17, 2023 “Most of us would rather be a well-drawn character in a Stephen King novel than a real person.” When I began writing David Copperfield , I knew I had my work cut out for me. To capture the panorama of life in 19 th century England, I needed to invent dozens of unique and interesting characters: Aunt Betsey, Mr. Murdstone, Tommy Traddles, Uriah Heep, Mr. Micawber, and of course, Agnes Wickfield, to name just a few. Each of these characters, even Davey himself, needed a backstory and a constellation of motivations to account for their actions. Each character needed to be memorable but also believable, a tall order for any author. Nevertheless, my novel was well received. Now I am starting work on an autobiographical sequel. I’d planned to follow the same plot line, but I’ve already realized that this won’t work. Two problems: first, my hero…that’s me! (Ok, anti-hero, if you insist.) I’m no David Copperfield. To the extent that my character has a backstory and a personality that explains his behavior…that character is not me! Sigmund Freud notwithstanding, nothing accounts for my actions. Authors rely on characters’ backgrounds to explain their behavior. I do what I do. I was made in the image and likeness of God: “I will be what I will be.” (Exodus 3: 14) Most of the time, my actions do follow well-worn tracks. I find it’s easier to do what folks expect. Until I don’t! My life story starts out as a real page turner, suddenly morphs into a head scratcher, and ends up dusty and half-read on the shelf of someone’s rarely visited library. My second problem is you! Who R U? I need to know if I’m to include you in my novel. Are you really an alter-ego (a mini-me) or are you just a cardboard cutout rescued from the set of The Truman Show ? Have you passed the Turing Test? If not, I can test you right now. Luckily, I just bought a Manhattan skyscraper for this very purpose. So, please walk to the edge of my roof and tell me, what do you see on the sidewalk directly below? No? What are you afraid of, a gust of wind? You’re a 250-pound fire plug and today’s totally calm! Even my flag is limp. No, you’re not afraid of some imaginary gust; you’re afraid of yourself. You know that you could just as easily jump off the edge of my roof as not. Probably, you won’t; but maybe, just maybe, you will. It’s a chance you’re not willing to take. The stakes are unaffordably high. That uncertainty is what makes a life interesting…and a novel unreadable. Ok, you will? Great. And so you walk right up to the edge and give me a detailed report. Thank you; now I know that you are cardboard after all. Only a fictional character would throw caution to the wind. Or… perhaps you’re just very brave, or macho, or have a keen sense of balance; perhaps for some reason, you are anxious to please me and so you comply with my utterly unreasonable request. Or perhaps you are a real person and just pretending to be a piece of cardboard. As I stare at my still blank monitor, I realize that I am already embroiled in two of philosophy’s most intractable problems: (1) Other minds, and (2) Free will. We’re in love with determinism ! We love destiny, God’s will, and the laws of physics…anything so long as it’s not me . It’s the ultimate free lunch: order without responsibility! The Devil made me do it, so I’m not to blame, but boy-o-boy, did I ever enjoy myself in the process. Sin without its wages: ‘volunteer work’. Thank you, Lucifer, for the free ride! So, there will be no Autobiography, at least not in the mode of David Copperfield . Perhaps I could cobble together a curriculum vitae with a dramatis personae , but don’t expect any explanation of my actions or the actions of any of my characters. We are most definitely not in search of an author! Most of us would rather be a well-drawn character in a Stephen King novel than a real person. Being real is messy, unpredictable, and always disappointing. We’d love to have a persona we could rely on: “That’s just the sort of hairpin I am!” What better way to justify everything I do while taking responsibility for none of it? We all want to ‘be someone’. Tracy Chapman, Fast Car , “I had a feeling I could be someone.” Marlon Brando, On the Waterfront , “I coulda been someone.” Ricky, Boyz in the Hood , “I want to do something with my life; I want to be somebody.” So, we measure ourselves against various fictional characters. Speaking for myself, I’m not as good a dad as Father Knows Best , as good a kid as Leave it to Beaver , as good a spouse as The Good Wife, as good a criminal as The Blacklist , as good a friend as Cheers , as good a dog as Lassie . Yet I judge myself in comparison to these imaginary beings; and of course, I come up short! My celluloid heroes are smooth; they know who they are, their behavior is consistent, their lives have meaning. By comparison, I’m more of a hedgehog, a ball of sharp bristles, concealing endless contradictions, masking noxious self-doubt. My life is a meander, not a journey. Imagine Odysseus without his Ithaca – that’s me… and you too, unless you’re one of Jim Carey’s props. I can no more measure up to my fictional idols than wooden Pinocchio could measure up to Geppetto’s idea of ‘a real boy’. I am not just ‘less than’; I am entirely ‘other than’. Less than? Ok, I can improve. Other than? There’s nothing I can do. I’ll never be a rhinoceros. But I can surely die trying! 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). 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< Back Mythology Before Marvel Comics David Cowles “Sturluson searched for the universal patterns that connect all times, all places, and all scales…and, Glory be to God, he found them.” Most of what we know about Norse Mythology comes from Wagner ( The Ring ), Tolkien ( Lord of the Rings ), and Marvel Comics. Behind these secondary sources stand the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda . The former is a collection of poems, some dating back to the 9th century CE; the latter is the work of a single man, Snorri Sturluson of Iceland (c. 1220 CE). Unfortunately, these first written records date from a time when Christianity was already beginning to make a mark in the Northlands. It is a matter of scholarship to separate the original pre-Christian content from later Christian influences…and, happy you , we will not attempt that here! Sturluson’s singular contribution was to organize varied material from the Poetic Edda into a quasi-coherent narrative, but what makes the Prose Edda so important, and therefore our focus, is its mind-bending structure. Mythic thinking expresses itself in narrative. True to form, Sturluson sews together countless short stories into one overarching tale. It is no exaggeration to describe the Prose Edda as the first Autobiography of Everything, anticipating by 700 years the work of James Joyce, Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein. Sturluson began by situating Norse mythology in the context of Hebrew proto history: “Almighty God created heaven and earth and all things in them, and lastly, two humans from whom generations are descended, Adam and Eve…After Noah’s flood, there lived eight people who inhabited the world, and from them generations have descended… “(But) the vast majority of mankind…neglected obedience to God and…refused (even) to mention the name of God. But who was there then to tell their children of the mysteries of God?” Wait, are we talking about the 13th century CE…or the 21st? According to Christian theology, God gave human being the gift of ‘reason’ so that even the ‘unchurched’ can discover Truth. Surprisingly, the same doctrine appears in Norse mythology: “(God) gave them a portion of wisdom so that they could understand all earthly things…what it could mean that earth and animals and birds had common characteristics in some things…They reasoned that the earth was alive. It fed all creatures and took possession of everything that died.” But at the same time, Sturluson also situated his Nordic narrative in an Hellenic context. Just as the New Testament is the merger of Jewish theology with pre-Socratic Greek philosophy, so Norse mythology is the intersection of the Greek myth and Christian metaphysics: “Near the middle of the world was…Troy. We call the land there Turkey…Twelve kingdoms were there and one high king…He was married to the daughter of the high king, Priam…They had a son (Hector); he was called Tror; we call him Thor…When he was ten…he was as beautiful to look at when he came among other people as when ivory is inlaid in oak. His hair is more beautiful than gold. When he was twelve, he had reached his full strength… “Then he traveled through many countries, explored all quarters of the world, and defeated unaided all the berserks and giants, one of the greatest dragons, and many wild animals. (Hercules?) In the northern part of the world, he came across a prophetess called Sibyl, whom we call Sif, and married her.” Eighteen generations later, a descendant of Thor and Sif was born: “A son whose name is Woden; it is him we call Odin. He was an outstanding person for wisdom and all sorts of accomplishments. His wife was called Frigida, whom we call Frigg. Odin had the gift of prophesy and so did his wife, and from this science he discovered that his name would be remembered in the northern part of the world and honored above all kings. For this reason, he became eager to set off from Turkey…” Note that 18 generations earlier, Thor had earlier left Turkey (Troy) and migrated to “the northern part of the world” (Scandinavia); now Thor’s descendant, Odin, recapitulates his ancestor’s journey. (Just as Jesus’ Flight into Egypt recapitulates the Exodus .) This will not be the last time that our narrative recapitulates. Mythic space is fractal space: patterns repeat - repetition at scale is the meta-pattern of process. Sturluson sees Troy as the cradle of civilization and is eager to associate it with Scandinavia. In this, he is channeling Virgil, whose Aeneid connects Troy with the founding of Rome. In fact, Troy is the mythological prototype for all cities. It is the City of Cain ( Enoch ), it is the City of Dioce (Ecbatana, Pound’s ‘city of patterned streets’), it is Midgard (Tolkien’s Middle Earth). It is worth noting that the two great powers of the first millennium CE both trace their origins to the defeated party in the Trojan War. “After that, he (Odin) proceeded north to where he was faced by the sea, the one which they thought encircled all lands, and set his son over the realm which is now called Norway…their language, that of the men of Asia, became the mother tongue over all these lands.” When Gylfi (King of Sweden) entered what appeared to be Val-hall (Valhalla), “He saw three thrones, one above the other, and there were three men, one sitting in each…the one that sat in the lowest throne was king and was called High; next to him the one called Just-as-high, and the one sitting at the top was called Third.” The structure of divinity in the Prose Edda parallels, of course, the Christian doctrine of Trinity. There is one God (‘All-father’), but High, Just-as-High, and Third represent the three faces or personae of this one God. It is impossible not to see parallels with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. After a brief exchange of pleasantries, Gyfli is invited to ask any questions he wishes; what follows reads something like the 1950s RCC Baltimore Catechism …or Chapter 17 of Joyce’s Ulysses : Q: Who is the highest and most ancient of all gods? A: He is called All-father in our language… Q: Where is this god, what power has he, and what great works has he performed? A: He lives throughout all ages, rules all his kingdom, and governs all things great and small…He made heaven and earth, the skies and everything in them…But his greatest work is that he made man and gave him a soul that shall live and never perish, though the body decay to dust or burn to ashes. Q: What was he doing before heaven and earth were made? A: Then he was among the frost-giants. Whaaaat? Before heaven and earth were made, there were ‘frost giants’? Yup! In Norse mythology, the ‘created’ universe as we know it (heaven and earth, Midgard ) is embedded in a much broader reality (a Norse ‘multiverse’). Q: What was the beginning? And how did things start? And what was there before? A: It was at the beginning of time, when nothing was; sand was not, nor sea, nor cool waves. Earth did not exist, nor heaven on high. The mighty gap ( Ginnungagap ) was, but no growth. Q: What were things like before generations came to be and the human race was multiplied? In answer to this question, High, Just-as-High and Third begin to set out the fundamental doctrines of Norse cosmology. The primal (‘uncreated’) cosmos consisted of a region of great heat ( Muspell ) and a region of great cold ( Niflheim ) with a chasm ( Ginnungagap ) between them (“the mighty gap”). Sparks from Muspell and icy rime from Niflheim spilled over into the ‘gap’ and formed a vapor. Again, it is impossible not to see parallels, this time with the secular ‘something from nothing’ cosmologies of the 20/21st centuries: ‘Negative Vacuum Pressure’. A: There was a quickening from these flowing drops due to the power of the source of the heat, and it became the form of a man, and he was given the name Ymir…and from him are descended the generations of frost giants…” Ymir lived on four rivers of milk (the four rivers that flowed through Eden?) that came from a cow ( Audhumla ) who fed herself by licking the salty rime stones found in Ginnungagap. As she licked the stones, sculptor-like, she began to uncover a human form latent in the rime-stones. Soon, “…there was a complete man. His name was Buri…He begot a son called Bor…(and Bor) had three sons. One was called Odin, the second Vili, the third Ve…And it is my belief that this Odin and his brothers must be the rulers of heaven and earth…” So this Odin…he was the son of Bor, the brother of Vili and Ve, and the grandson of Buri, who was ‘licked’ into existence by a cow. Ok I guess, but he is also the son of Thor and Sif (above). Norse Mythology requires a level of neuroplasticity that most of us have not enjoyed since kindergarten. Then again, the Book of Genesis also presents two distinct accounts of creation which differ in focus and detail. But it would be a big mistake to dismiss this as ‘child’s play’. It is just such neuroplasticity that Jesus says is necessary for one to enter the Kingdom of Heaven (e.g. Mt. 18: 3). We’re left to wonder: Are High, Just-as-High, and Third actually Odin, Vili and Ve? But we’re not done yet! Bor’s sons killed the giant Ymir. And…they drowned all the race of frost giants, except that one escaped with his household. Giants call him Bergelmir. He went up on to his ark (!) with his wife and was preserved there, and from them are descended the families of frost giants…” Noah? “They (Bor’s sons) took Ymir and transported him to the middle of Ginnungagap, and out of him made the earth; out of his blood came the sea and the lakes. The earth was made of flesh, and the rocks of the bones…They also took his skull and made out of it the sky and set it up over the earth…Then they took molten particles and sparks that…had shot out of the world of Muspell and set them in the middle of the firmament of the sky…” We ‘the enlightened’ think of life as a late stage epiphenomenal eruption out of inert matter. The Eddas reverse the relationship. ‘The heavens and the earth’ ( Gaia/Kosmos ) are fashioned out of living matter (Ymir). Life, not matter, is substructural. The Gospel of John (1: 1-4) testifies to a similar process: “In the beginning was the Logos and the Logos was with God and the Logos was God…All things came to be through him and without him nothing came to be. What came to be through him was life.” So in Christian ontology as well as Norse mythology, life is the substructure of universe. The Prose Edda is like a Bach fugue: themes repeat, transformed. Note the complex ecosystem in place prior to creation, ‘before’ even the beginning of time. The primal entity, Ymir, feeds off of a pre-existent cow who produces milk from nourishment she receives by licking salty rime-stones. That process of licking in turn uncovers a second primal entity, Buri, from whom Odin, Vili and Ve are descended. These grandsons of Buri in turn kill Ymir, but they recycle his body as the raw material needed to create ‘heaven and earth’, i.e. space/time, matter/energy, the mortal realm. Care to stretch the envelope? Compare this process with the evolution of eukaryotic (nucleated) cells from their prokaryotic precursors. Essentially, two independent life forms ‘merged’ to form a single, symbiotic organism that became the basis for all animal and plant life on Earth. As above, this process happened only once in the history of terrestrial evolution. Q: How was the earth arranged? A: It is circular 'round the edge, and around it lies the deep sea, and along the shore of this sea they gave lands to live in to the race of giants. But on the earth, on the inner side, they made a fortification 'round the world against the hostility of giants, and for this fortification they used the giant Ymir’s eyelashes, and they called the fortification Midgard (‘Middle Earth’). Q. And where did the people come from who inhabit this world? A: As Bor’s sons walked along the seashore, they came across two logs and created people out of them. The first gave breath and life; the second consciousness and movement; the third a face, speech, hearing, and sight… This is a sophisticated Trinitarian model, similar to but importantly different from, the Christian model. First, the manifestations of God are allocated differently among the divine personae, and second, the phenomena associated with being human are grouped and segmented differently from how we might do it today. A (cont.): The man was called Ask, the woman Embla, and from them were produced the mankind to whom the dwelling-place under Midgard ( Middle Earth ) was given. After that, they made themselves a city in the middle of the world, which is known as Asgard. We call it Troy…In the city there is a seat called Hlidskialf, and when Odin sat in that throne he saw over all worlds and every man’s activity and understood everything he saw.” Humans build a city, Troy, which becomes the homeland of the gods (Aesir), who originally created heaven and earth, and the homeland of humans. The process of creation flows both ways: gods create for humans, and humans create for gods. Ontology is a Möbius strip: events recur even as orientations reverse. We find a close parallel in Ezra Pound’s Cantos : “Ecbatan, the clock ticks and fades out; the bride awaiting the god’s touch; Ecbatan/City of patterned streets…” Here, a city built by human hands is intended to be a home for the gods. In another article in this collection , we connect this ancient Iranian city both to Cain’s city (above) and to the ‘patterned streets’ (circles) found in Dante’s Divine Comedy . Perhaps Pound also had Troy in mind…or should I say, Asgard? But back to the Prose Edda : “He (Odin) is the father of all the gods and of men, and of everything that has been brought into being by him and his power. The earth was his daughter and his wife. Out of her he begot the first of his sons…(wait for it)…Asa-Thor.” Ok, enough already! Our story began with Thor, grandson of the proto historical king of Troy, Priam. Eighteen generations later, Odin was born. Odin married Frigg and together they migrated to Scandinavia. Now we learn that this same Odin is ‘All-father’, the father of all gods and men, that Frigg, his daughter and his wife is really ‘earth’ and that the first of their sons is the very same Thor with whom our story began. Gimme a break! What are we to make of all these apparent contradictions? Absolutely nothing! There are no contradictions in mythology. (-A) ≠ -(A). The concept of contradiction arises in systems characterized by identity, quantity, causality, extension, duration, and logic, where the transitive and commutative properties rule. None of these concepts figures in any important way in mythological thinking. Myths are the first TOEs (Theories of Everything). Hawking meets Tolkien. Like Hawking, mythology searches for universal patterns; like Tolkien, it then struggles to communicate these patterns using the limited resources of language. You , dear reader, expect your patterns to be symmetrical, continuous, and orientable, but the world we’re modeling is not like that at all. It is stochastic, discrete, and non-orientable. You expect beginnings, middles, and ends, but such things do not exist on a Mobius Strip. You are expecting events situated in spacetime; mythology replaces spacetime with a hierarchy of fractals. Scale takes the place of extension. The order of events is immaterial, and ‘time loops’ are expected, perhaps even required, perhaps even universal. Mythic thinking has only one proper subject: ‘the pattern of patterns’. In spite of the important parallels with Judeo-Christian theology and Greek proto-history, the Norse cosmos is fabulously more complex. As we have already glimpsed, in addition to humans, there are many other humanoid races: frost giants (including trolls and, unexpectedly, wolves), light elves, dark elves ( aka dwarfs), and, of course, gods (Aesir). Each of these races has its own ‘homeland’, but there are other ‘uninhabited’ homelands as well: Muspell and Niflheim (above), Hel (the land of the dead), Val-hall (Valhalla, the home of fallen warriors), and Gimle (the resting place of the righteous): “…(Gimle) shall stand when both heaven and earth have passed away, and in that place shall live good and righteous people for ever and ever.” Astoundingly, all of these ‘homelands’ are connected by the trunk of a single ash tree, Yggdrasil , that has three principal roots: one in the realm of the Aesir (Asgard), one in the realm of the frost giants, and one in Niflheim. These roots, in turn, may be associated with the three Norns who weave the history of the universe (fate) from skeins of string (not heterotic string…as far as we know). We learn from Third that “Odin is the highest and most ancient of the Aesir. He rules all things…Odin is called ‘All-father’ for he is father of all gods. He is also called ‘Val-father’ (father of the slain)…Hanga-god (god of the hanged) and Hapta-god (god of prisoners), Farma-god (god of cargoes, possibly to be understood as human cargoes, i.e., travelers, or even slaves)…” One of the Aesir, “…Loki or Lopt, son of the giant Farbauti…is pleasing and handsome in appearance, evil in character, capricious in behavior…There was a giantess called Angraboda in Giantland. With her, Loki had three children. One was Fenriswolf, the second Lormungand (i.e. the Midgard serpent), the third is Hel. “And when the gods realized that these three siblings were being brought up in Giantland…All-father sent the gods to get the children and bring them to him. And when they came to him, he threw the serpent into that deep sea that lies around all lands, and this serpent grew so that it lies in the midst of the ocean encircling all lands and bites on its own tail. “Hel he threw into Niflheim…The Aesir brought up the wolf at home…” But as the wolf grew, the Aesir felt the need to tether it securely. So they went to the dwarves and asked them to make a bond that that wolf could not break…and they did! “It was made of six ingredients: the sound of the cat’s footfall and the woman’s beard; the mountain’s roots and the bear’s sinews; the fish’s breath and the bird’s spittle…” To prove this this story is true, we are told, “…You must have seen that a woman has no beard and there is no noise from a cat’s running, and there are no roots under a mountain…” Earlier attempts to fetter Fenriswolf all failed…because the tethers were made out of ordinary materials. No matter how strong they were at the outset, they were inevitably weakened by the wolf’s incessant struggles. They were ultimately subject to the law of entropy, and eventually, the wolf escaped them all. The dwarves’ “fetter was smooth and soft like a silken ribbon,” but it acted just like the strong force binding quarks in an atomic nucleus: “…When the wolf kicked, the band grew harder, and the harder he struggled, the tougher became the band.” This is a marvelous example of mythic reasoning. The text leads us to believe that a woman has no beard, for example, because the dwarfs used it to make Fenriswolf’s fetter. But there is another possible interpretation: What if the dwarfs made something (a fetter) out of nothing, out of things that do not exist (e.g. a woman’s beard)? ‘Something made out of nothing’ is, well, something else . The laws of physics would be suspended and entropy ‘need not apply’. My nine-year-old grandson said, “The fetter was made out of the opposite of everything.” Exactly so, and therefore it behaved in a way opposite to all other materials. A mythological model of anti-matter, perhaps. No bird's-eye view of the Norse cosmos would be complete without consideration of Ragnarök, aka the Apocalypse. Admit it, this is what you’ve been waiting for since you opened this post. So…back to the catechism, and just in the nick of time: Q: What information is there to be given about Ragnarok? A: There are many important things to be told about it. First of all, that a winter will come called fimbul (‘mighty’ or ‘mysterious’) winter. Then snow will drift from all directions. There will be great frosts and keen winds. The sun will do no good. There will be three of these winters together and no summer between. …The wolf will swallow the sun…the other wolf will swallow the moon…The stars will disappear from the sky…trees will become uprooted from the earth; mountains will fall; and all fetters and bonds will snap and break . Then Fenriswolf will get free…the Midgard serpent will fly into a great rage and make its way ashore…After that, Surt (a fire demon from the race of giants) will fling fire over the earth and burn the whole world. Q. What will happen then after heaven and earth and all the world is burned…will there be any kind of earth or sky? A: The earth will shoot up out of the sea and will be green and fair. Crops will grow unsown…And in a place called Hoddmimir’s holt, two people will lie hid during Surt’s fire called Life and Leifthrasir, and their food will be the dews of the morning. And from these people will be descended such a great progeny that all the world will be inhabited. And so ends the discourse on Norse cosmology…and now comes the really interesting and totally revolutionary part: “But the Aesir sat down to discuss and hold a conference and went over all these stories that had been told him (Gyfli), and assigned those same names that were mentioned above to the people and places that were there (in Sweden), so that when long periods of time had passed, men should not doubt that they were all the same , those Aesir about whom stories are told above and those who were now given the same names. “So someone there was given the name Thor…and to him are attributed the exploits that Thor (Hector) performed in Troy.” Wow! What else is there to say? Simply, wow! In Ulysses , James Joyce maps a day in the life of ordinary Dubliners onto events in Homer’s Odyssey . An incredible feat! But the Prose Edda goes much further. Sturluson begins by mapping Norse mythology onto both Jewish and Greek proto-histories. Then he maps Christian theology onto Norse mythology. Finally, he maps Norse mythology onto the lives of ordinary, contemporary Swedes and, for his piece de resistance , he maps the lives of ordinary, contemporary Swedes back onto events in Greek proto-history. To borrow a Judeo-Christian concept, everyone is ‘priest, prophet and king’. What Joyce (and Pound) demonstrated brilliantly, Snorri Sturluson had demonstrated with even greater power and complexity centuries earlier: the various ontological categories that populate human thought are really just different ways of experiencing and understanding the present lives of ordinary people. Everything that happens is happening right now! The past and the future only exist to serve the present and they exist only in the present. On the one hand, the Prose Edda is a literary triumph. But on the other hand, it is exactly what Mythology is all about. Sturluson searched for the universal patterns that connect all times, all places, and all scales…and, Glory be to Odin, he found them. Friedrich Wilhelm Heine. Yggdrasil, c. 1886. Illustration for Walhall: Die Götterwelt der Germanen by Felix and Therese Dahn. This illustration of Yggdrasil captures the essay’s core idea of mythology as an interconnected, multi-dimensional structure that links various realms—gods, humans, giants—and weaves together different times and layers of meaning, symbolizing the fractal, cyclical nature of mythic storytelling explored throughout the essay. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Click the cover image to return to Holy Days 2024. Previous Next

“You’ll end up living life as though you were counting cards at a Black Jack table in Las Vegas – in other words, profitably! But it’s still gambling.”    < Back Philip Goff David Cowles Mar 1, 2024 “You’ll end up living life as though you were counting cards at a Black Jack table in Las Vegas – in other words, profitably! But it’s still gambling.” Philip Goff is a breath of fresh air: he’s a philosopher on the faculty of a major university (Durham), whose work is published by Oxford University Press. He maintains that existence may have an objective purpose, and he is willing to at least consider a role for ‘God’ in the overall scheme of things. In the end, Goff rejects what he describes as the Abrahamic (Judeo-Christian-Islamic) ‘Omni-God’ (omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent) but nonetheless posits the possibility of a transcendent, purposeful entity. Goff is willing to entertain the ‘God Hypothesis’ provided God’s knowledge and power are somehow limited, or God’s benevolence is impure or conditional. So, Goff’s latest book, Why - The Purpose of the Universe , was eagerly anticipated. Unfortunately, it disappoints. Goff fails to make a clear distinction between the sort of God he excludes a priori and the sort he might entertain. His characterization of ‘Abrahamic divinity’ oversimplifies. Any concept of omnipotence is limited by what’s possible, omniscience by what’s knowable, and benevolence by what’s doable. God cannot square a circle any more than you can! He cannot fashion a rock that is too heavy for him to lift. These logical and material fallacies have nothing to do with divinity. God is Good…in fact, God is Value per se . That’s really all you need to know. God does not ‘have values’ or ‘determine’ values; God is Value! Value is the efficient cause and the final cause of everything that is. I mean, what else could be? Why else would anything ever happen? It is said, “Love makes the world go round.” The same could be said of ‘the Good’. In fact, Love and Good are denotatively synonymous. Every novel event begins and ends with Value. Value is the sole motivator: it alone allows us to execute judgment on ‘the gods of Egypt’ (i.e., on what is ). Motivated by Value, we push off from shore; guided by Value we seek the horizon. Value alone guides us to create what might be . Between these two poles, Alpha-impulse and Omega-goal, each event shapes itself. It is causa sui and sui generis . It is informed by only two things: (1) the Actual World ( what is ) and (2) God’s values ( what might be ). “Some folks see things as they are and ask why; I dream of things that never were and ask why not.” (Bobby Kennedy) Between motive and immortality, each event is 100% free – free to react to what is, free to pursue what might yet be. This is what Goff calls ‘libertarian free will’; it closely resembles Sartre’s notion of absolute existential freedom. Robert Frost illustrates this concept in his most famous poem, The Road Not Taken . Out for a stroll in the NH woods, Frost comes to a fork in the road. He knows that both paths will take him to his destination. Yet he agonizes over the choice: “Both that morning equally lay.” Frost’s location and destination were hard-wired; his route was entirely undetermined. Every event (→) begins and ends with what is (Actual World → Objective Immortality → Actual World). In the context of this ontology, Abraham’s God is the same as Goth’s. The notion of an Omni-cubed (∞³) God is a straw man, set up only to be torn down. It’s easy to disprove the existence of something that is impossible, something that makes no sense on its face. Goff’s work is about God and Consciousness…and he gets them both wrong. Early on, he dismisses strong AI, claiming that there is something ‘special’ about the neuronal stuff he’s made of (i.e., his organic chemistry). Later, however, he proposes the possibility that the cosmos itself may be conscious ( Cosmo-panpsychism )…and the cosmos is not (primarily) made of neurons…or any other ‘special stuff’. Here, Goff carries a good idea too far. He not only posits universal consciousness, but he also maintains that all actual entities are rational agents . No doubt, events change the world (though we can’t reliably predict how), and events exhibit internal patterns. But those patterns cannot be reduced to rationality, nor can all changes be chalked up to agency. We are, I think, on the cusp of discovering that intelligence, and even consciousness, is platform-agnostic. In fact, the essence of panpsychism is the conjecture that ‘consciousness is everywhere’, that it pervades cosmos. It appears likely that many, if not all, organisms are conscious (or at least self-aware) in some way and to some degree, and there are strong reasons for wanting to extend the net to include certain inorganic phenomena…like computers. Goff posits three activities that make life worth living: “creativity, learning, and showing kindness to others," but he makes no effect to substantiate his claim that these values are somehow sewn into the fabric of the cosmos. The discovery of Value raises key questions: How is it that there is such a thing as Value? How does Value come to influence the course of events? By what faculty are we able to access Value? I agree with Goff that the answers to these questions are tied to the matter of consciousness. I would go even further and argue that Value is impossible without consciousness. Consciousness is reflection; it’s the universe ‘taking a selfie’, i.e., reflecting itself reflecting. Consciousness is what Universe sees when it sees itself. But reflection is comparative. I conceptualize A in the context of ~A. Judging A on the basis of the values it manifests requires an external perspective that also encompasses ~A and the set of universal values by which we may judge A. Goff rejects, I think too easily (below), Pascal’s argument for the existence of God (his famous “Wager”), but Goff replaces it with a ‘modern’ version called ‘Bayesian Logic’. According to this ‘science of inference’ we can validly reason upstream (induction) as well as down (deduction). In a nutshell, assume there is an event, A. If we don’t directly know anything about any events other than A, can we deduce something about everything else based on our experience of A? Were Leibniz and Blake right after all? Is every event a reflection (monad) of every other event? Can we discover “a universe is a grain of sand”? Crazy, right? Well, not entirely. If we know that A is very likely to occur, provided B has occurred before it, and if we know that A is very unlikely to occur unless B has occurred before it, then our experience of A lets us presume, provisionally at least, that B has occurred. Apply this to the matter of God: If there is a God according to the Judeo-Christian prototype, then it is likely that the created world would be well-ordered. If there is no God, then spontaneous ordering would be very, very unlikely . The world is extremely well-ordered (i.e., the degree of fine-tuning is astronomically improbable). ‘God’ accounts for that fine-tuning better than ‘no-God’ accounts for it. Therefore, it is likely that God exists…very, very likely! As with Pascal, Goff’s conclusion comes down to a so-called ‘Wager’, but the nature of that wager is very different. Goff uses Bayesian Logic to establish the existence of ‘God’ as highly probable . With Bayes, you end up living life as though you were counting cards at a Black Jack table in Las Vegas – in other words, very profitably! But it’s still gambling. Pascal is a whole different kettle of fish! His argument has nothing to do with probabilities, so his ‘wager’ is a wager in name only. Pascal’s argument is based on something much stronger…and much more ephemeral. Pascal is prepared to divide the World in two: on one side, A - the set of all things/events that make a difference, that have consequences, that change things, that mean something; on the other side, B - the set of all things/events that do not belong to A, i.e., that make no difference, have no consequences, change nothing, mean nothing. Every event X in Set A is associated with a proposition P of the form, ‘X exists’ and with proposition P’ of the form, ‘P is true’. Therefore, the proposition ‘X exists’ is always true, provided that X is a member of A. For Pascal, at least, A is the set of all things that exist, and B is the set of…nothing. Anything that might have belonged to B doesn’t exist. So, B is the null set, ø. In fact, it’s a ‘double null set’ ø² – a null set of null elements. (Ok, I made that up!) But in any event, the only set that has real members is A. Therefore, whatever belongs to A exists. What does this have to do with God? Pascal notes that God’s existence makes no difference if we don’t believe it, and that our beliefs about God make no difference if God doesn’t exist. Therefore, the existence of God is only meaningful if we believe it, and our beliefs about God are only meaningful if God exists. Therefore, there is only one meaningful solution to the problem: God exists, and now that I know that for certain, I cannot not believe. While I disagree with Philip Goff on many things, we are all indebted to him for helping to move conversations like this one back into the public domain. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Click the cover image to return to Spring 2024. Share Previous Next Click here. Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! 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, Fall Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back The Power of Divination David Cowles Dec 17, 2024 “…Divination is a celebration of pattern, as it occurs objectively in the World and as it exists subjectively in human consciousness.” As far back as we know homo sapiens has sought to predict, and influence, the future and we have employed a welter of technologies to that end. From Tarot Cards to Weather Balloons, we look seemingly everywhere for glimpses of what’s ahead. We search the environment for Pokémon and periscopes, the latter so that we might peer around the corners of time! For millennia humans have recognized sufficient correlation between predicted events and actual events to declare the ‘divination hypothesis’ confirmed . But uneasily so. Correlation frequencies seem to vary widely with context and the addition of variables to our equations does nothing to dampen the chaotic behavior of our system. Major red flags! So once positive correlation is determined, albeit subjectively, it seems reasonable to look for a point of origin or cause for this phenomenon. How is it that we can apparently predict future events with a useful level of accuracy? The answer is ‘patterns’. We see patterns…whether or not there are there : “Rows and floes of angel hair And ice cream castles in the air And feather canyons everywhere, I’ve looked at clouds that way… It’s life’s illusions I recall, I really don’t know life at all.” – Joni Mitchell We look at a more or less random collection of water droplets and we ‘see’ castles. When we experience such a pattern, we look for it to have reference beyond itself; we look for it to have meaning. But what meaning? It might portend an invitation to a child’s birthday party. Or suggest that a cruise along the Rhine is in my future. Or it may signal the approach of rain. In any case, the perception of a predictive pattern is likely to influence my reaction to future events as they unfold. If a friend suggests a vacation, I may be more positively inclined. Or if my spouse suggests an umbrella, I may take heed. Compared to a random collection of water droplets, an ice cream castle is ordered and so has the potential to ‘mean’ something, to point to something beyond itself, something that transcends both the droplets and the pattern per se . Not convinced? Take a word, any word. It consists of letters. But not every collection of letters forms a word. A word is not just letters but a pattern of letters. Once sight readers learn to recognize the patterns, they can see beyond the words themselves to actions, objects, etc. So because I am a human being with a humanoid nervous system, I see patterns where none are objectively present. I see patterns in clouds, bird flight, tea leaves, entrails, and yarrow stalks. I also see patterns in the ordinary events of daily life. Without the concept of ‘pattern’, there is no reason to imagine that a collection of water drops today signifies anything that might happen tomorrow. But the academic pursuit we know as History is nothing but the divination of patterns, real and imagined, in events. Assume for the sake of discussion that neither clouds nor events occur in inherently ordered patterns. That does not mean that I will not find patterns in both; I’m human, I will. Now, if I can invent a logic that connects meteorology and history, I will seem to have accounted for the positive correlation between Divination and Reality. Let me hasten to point out, however, that this does not mean that cloud patterns have any non-trivial connection to historical events. Even less do I mean to imply the intervention of a transcendent power. We are the ‘power’; we invent the connection. Take Tarot for example. There are 78 cards in a standard Tarot deck. 52 of them are similar to the playing cards in a modern deck. An additional face card (Knight) in each suit makes 56. There are 22 additional cards known as the Major Arcana: these cards have no numerical value but rather point to important themes: Justice, Temperance and Death, to name just three. Now let’s do a simple 3 card reading using just the Major Arcana: Lovers, the Moon, and the Fool. Well, I guess we can all decipher this one: Beware the excesses of romance! How about another reading: Justice, the Star, Wheel of Fortune. A bit more opaque, but if you really concentrate, I’ll bet you can find something in your upcoming experience that will seem to validate it. The purest celebration of pattern is found in music, especially in the works of Bach and Beethoven. However, James Joyce’s Ulysses deserves a mention. Everything that happens in this novel is both actual and symbolic. 100 pages in and you will begin to experience events in your daily life in an entirely new way. So the value of the Divinatory Arts is not that they cause future events, or even reveal the mind of God, but that they sharpen our own interpretive acumen, allowing us to experience the shapes of things to come at an added level of depth. Understood properly, Divination is a celebration of pattern, as it occurs objectively in the World and as it exists subjectively in human consciousness. Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to contact us on any matter. How did you like the post? How could we do better in the future? Suggestions welcome. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! 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< Back Tantum Ergo St. Thomas Aquinas Apr 15, 2023 Sing, my tongue, the Savior’s glory, Of His cross, the mystery, sing; Lift on high the wondrous trophy, Tell the triumph of the King: He, the world's Redeemer, conquers Death, through death now vanquishing. Born for us, and for us given; Son of man, like us below, He, as Man with men, abiding Dwells, the seed of life to sow: He, our heavy griefs partaking, Thus fulfils His life of woe. Word made flesh! His word life-giving, Gives His flesh our meat to be, Bids us drink His blood, believing, Through His death, we life shall see: Blessed they who thus receiving Are from death and sin set free. Low in adoration bending, Now our hearts our God revere; Faith, her aid to sight is lending, Though unseen the Lord is near; Ancient types and shadows ending, Christ our paschal Lamb is here. Praise for ever, thanks and blessing, Thine, O gracious Father, be: Praise be Thine, O Christ, who bringeth Life and immortality. Praise be Thine, Thou quickening Spirit, Praise through all eternity. (Thomas Aquinas by Sandro Botticelli .) Between antiquity and modernity stands Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1225–1274). The greatest figure of thirteenth-century Europe in the two preeminent sciences of the era, philosophy and theology, he epitomizes the scholastic method of the newly founded universities. Like Dante or Michelangelo, Aquinas takes inspiration from antiquity, especially Aristotle , and builds something entirely new. Viewed through a theological lens, Aquinas has often been seen as the summit of the Christian tradition that runs back to Augustine and the early Church. Viewed as a philosopher, he is a foundational figure of modern thought. His efforts at a systematic reworking of Aristotelianism reshaped Western philosophy and provoked countless elaborations and disputations among later medieval and modern philosophers. Return to our Holy Days 2023 Table of Contents, Share Previous Next Click here. Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! 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, Fall Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back The Secret of the Bethlehem Shepherds David Cowles "In my research, I discovered that the shepherds were important to St. Luke for a simple reason: They were the primary eyewitnesses of the events in Bethlehem on the night of Jesus’ birth, and they passed down the story through established methods of oral transmission." Earlier this year, I had the privilege of spending a two month sabbatical in Jerusalem. The object of my study was to understand more about the shepherds of Bethlehem who play such an important part in St Luke’s infancy narrative. Why were they important to the gospel author? Some scholars opined that Luke was simply adding some local color—some quaint rustics—rather like Shakespeare’s “mechanicals” in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Others suggested that shepherds had a traditional place in Greek and Roman literature as simple sages—embodying a sort of peasant wisdom. Others observed that shepherds in first-century Middle Eastern culture had a reputation for being thieves and scoundrels and that the Jews considered shepherds to be ceremonially unclean. Thus. St. Luke was emphasizing the point that the Christ came to the lowly, the poor, and those suspected by respectable society. I discovered instead that the shepherds were important to St. Luke for a simpler reason: They were the primary eyewitnesses of the events in Bethlehem that night, and they passed down the story through established methods of oral transmission. To understand the importance of this, it is first necessary to review some of the theories of New Testament origins. In the early-twentieth century, the sciences of archeology, anthropology, and comparative religions developed. The discoveries in these disciplines influenced the newly-burgeoning industry of Biblical criticism. The form critics compared the findings of the anthropologists and mythologists and suggested that the gospels were formed in a similar manner to the cultural and religious development of myth. To put it simply, religious myth developed over time. It was the product, so the academics decided, of cultural evolution. The community gradually elaborated their stories into myth with full religious and cultural implications. This process, the form critics proposed, was the method whereby the gospels mutated and grew. The early church community, it was suggested, re-told the simple Jesus stories—the stories of a simple wandering Jewish rabbi—and elaborated them over time, adding supernatural elements. It was Rudolph Bultmann’s self-assigned task therefore, to weed out the supernatural “mythological” elements to discern the historical kernel beneath all the elaborations. This theory is extraordinarily leaky, and it doesn’t take a great scholar to point out the inconsistencies and absurdities. “There wasn’t enough time for the stories to develop in that way before they were written down.” “The theory doesn’t reflect what we do know about the composition of the gospels from the apostolic fathers. Why should a theory dreamed up in universities in Europe in the twentieth century be closer to the truth than the statements of writers in the Middle East in the second century?” “What evidence is there of this evolving mythology of the gospels?” “Do Christian faith communities do this sort of story-telling?” In his groundbreaking book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, British Bible scholar Richard Bauckman says of the form critics’ theories that “virtually every element in this construction has been questioned and rejected by some or even most scholars.” Indeed, in the 1960s there was a reaction to the form critics’ theory of an oral tradition that evolved within the community. The Swedish scholar Birger Gerhardsson researched Jewish methods of teaching and transmitting traditions. He discovered that “disciples of rabbis were expected to memorize their master’s teaching, and importance was attached to preserving the exact words.” While this may be true, the gospels themselves do not seem to be the result of word-for-word memorization. While some of Jesus’ sayings may be the result of his disciples memorizing his words, the stories are too loosely recounted and the variations among the synoptic gospels that tell the same stories would preclude any strict memorization. Instead, a middle way has emerged. Kenneth Bailey was a professor and pastor who lived and worked in Palestine for decades. He observed oral tradition at work among the local inhabitants and discerned three ways the locals passed on their stories and traditions: The first was informal uncontrolled oral tradition. This was simply informal anecdotes, jokes, or even gossip. The second form was formal controlled oral tradition. This was when the traditional story or passage of tradition has to be memorized, and the elders and teachers (along with the hearers) will audibly correct the person reciting the tradition if they make a mistake. The third category of oral tradition Bailey discerns is informal controlled. In this transmission of the tradition the community may be gathered around the fire, and someone tells a traditional story. The storyteller may elaborate and add drama or characterization, but if he departs from the essential facts, the elders and teachers (and the whole community) correct him. The shepherds of Bethlehem would have been part of the larger, ancient Bedouin culture of the Palestine. Another Bailey—Clinton Bailey—was an American Jewish scholar who also spent decades living in Palestine. He was a student of the Bedouin culture and observed and recorded how the Bedouin pass on their oral traditions. It is, not surprisingly, a match with Kenneth Bailey’s observations. The Bedouin pass on their history using narrative poetry, which is very formal and must be memorized, and they rely on genealogies that must also be memorized. In addition, they use prose storytelling which has some flexibility and allows for personal flourishes— adding humor or characterization. However, the additions or elaboration cannot alter the basic content of the story. The “prose storytelling” is essentially the same as Kenneth Bailey’s “informal controlled” oral tradition. In Luke 2:17-18 the evangelist actually tells us that the shepherds passed on what they had experienced, “When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them.” The account is told in poetic form and therefore relies on word-for-word memorization, but the story itself adds characterization and dialogue: “Let us go into Bethlehem and see this thing that the Lord has told us about.” The repetition of the important phrase, “wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger” indicates a crucial element of the story that had to be memorized because it was a “sign.” It was also a sign that this part of the story could not be forgotten. Does this mean that St. Luke met the shepherds and heard their story? It is not impossible, but we must remember that Luke was writing at least forty or fifty years after the events. It is more likely, however, that the shepherds continued to share the story of their experiences that night, and that their essentially reliable method of oral tradition kept the story fresh within the Bethlehem community—and that it was from the next generation that Luke heard the tale. Would the local shepherd families have kept the story alive? We know that in the mid-fourth century when the Empress Helena discovered the birthplace of Christ (on which the ancient Church of the Nativity stands), the site was identified because the local people remembered where the Christ was born. This essay's source is the Imaginative Conservative and is an adapted version of a chapter in Fr. Longenecker’s upcoming book, The Secret of the Bethlehem Shepherds , to be published in November by Sophia Institute Press. Fr. Dwight Longenecker is Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative . A graduate of Oxford University, he is the Pastor of Our Lady of the Rosary Church , in Greenville, SC, and author of twenty books, including Immortal Combat , Beheading Hydra: A Radical Plan for Christians in an Atheistic Age , The Romance of Religion , The Quest for the Creed , and Mystery of the Magi: The Quest to Identify the Three Wise Men , and The Way of the Wilderness Warrior . His autobiography, There and Back Again, a Somewhat Religious Odyssey , is published by Ignatius Press. Visit his blog, listen to his podcasts, join his online courses, browse his books, and be in touch at dwightlongenecker.com . Return to Yuletide 2024 Previous Next