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< Back Chaos David Cowles May 30, 2023 “Butterflies are beautiful, but they can keep their flapping to themselves, thank you! We already have enough environmental catastrophe to contend with.” Everyone says we live in a chaotic world , but do we? Aunt Gertrude makes the point every time she visits. Mathematicians have coined a phrase for it: The Butterfly Effect, and news organizations have turned it into a livelihood: Man bites Dog . Everyone says so, but do we? Chaos has a bad name. People equate it with Anarchy (the absence of order). They assume that events happen randomly in a chaotic world. Nothing could be further from the truth! ‘Chaotic’ and ‘random’ are antonyms, not synonyms. ( But wait for a surprise twist !) A chaotic universe is causal …to a fault! It’s Laplace on steroids. Causality is so strong that every event literally causes every other event. A perturbation of one becomes the perturbation of all. To be is to be omnipotent, but there is a trade-off: to be is also to be impotent . The more I control Dasein (that it is), the less I control Wassein (what it is). The more we can influence “the shape of things to come” (Ramones), the less power we have to make those things happen. “The nearer your destination, the more you’re slip-slidin’ away.” (Paul Simon) Have we discovered a new Uncertainty Relation a la Heisenberg…or Heidegger? In a chaotic world, everyone, every ‘thing,’ is a malevolent magician. We point our wands where we will and bring into being what may come. Every event effectively recreates the entire Universe, not ex nihilo but de nuovo . Post hoc ergo propter hoc , the bane of every aspiring logician (can one really aspire to be a logician?) is perfectly valid in a chaotic world. In a chaotic world, a butterfly flapping its wings in Borneo may indeed trigger a tornado in Topeka… and an avalanche in Anchorage or a mudslide in Malibu. Do we live in such a world? Let’s see. First, imagine that we all live on the surface of a sphere. Every event since the Big Bang can be represented as a ‘point’ on that surface. Events are positioned so that proximity reflects relevance. The relative positions of points on the sphere correspond to the causal strength of each event vis-à-vis every other event. Causal influences travel along great circles , but their impact is mitigated by the Inverse Square Law (ISL) and mediated by the events they encounter along the way. Here and now and then and there are defined by these mediated relations, woven into a fabric that we call ‘the real world.’ I could live here! Now imagine instead that every point on that sphere has a direct, unmediated connection to every other point. We just transformed our smooth spherical surface into a pock-marked cacophony of chords. Causal influences no longer ‘travel’ (they are instantaneous) and ISL no longer applies. In such a world, anything that can happen may happen; we have zero ability to predict events… or influence them. Here’s the twist I told you about earlier : a chaotic world like this behaves exactly the same way a random world would behave , even though ‘chaotic’ and ‘random’ are antonyms! I could not live here! In a chaotic world, there is no such thing as ‘intentional agency;’ therefore, ‘values’ are irrelevant, aka non-existent. Likewise, such a world has no room for God, either as the creator of heaven and earth or as the fountainhead of all value. The Power is not the Glory! All this suggests a new take on the Garden of Eden story. God created a perfect world, subject to just one limiting condition: non-recursion. The world cannot act upon itself, either by praxis or by gnosis . How could it? It’s already perfect. Any change can only be a step-down. Like isolated Q-bits in a Quantum Computer, if any element of the whole becomes aware of that whole, the wave function collapses and the whole (Eden) is shattered. According to Genesis , Adam and Eve were forbidden to eat fruit from the Tree of Knowledge because knowledge is inherently recursive. They were free to ‘eat’ though warned not to; but Eve held cheap the riches of Paradise…if they came at the price of ignorance. But Eve held cheap the riches of Paradise…if they came at the price of ignorance. At the first opportunity, she traded immortality for knowledge…and the rest, as they say, is history. No, I mean, it really is ‘history’… not ‘as they say,’ per se ! Adam and Eve “paved Paradise and put up a parking lot.” (Joni Mitchell) They traded bliss for gnosis , and so they saw that they were naked! Hallelujah, consciousness! And eternal Eden became the spatio-temporal universe we know and still love - 14 billion years later. Remember the bumper sticker: “If you can read this, thank a teacher?” Well, if you can understand this essay, thank Eve. Later, Job spoke for Eve when he ranked ‘dying without knowledge’ as life’s greatest tragedy (Job 3: 21). (I wonder how many folks today would share Job’s assessment.) Eve and Job risked everything for something we can’t give away today: knowledge! Imagine, we have to force our kids to go to school! East of Eden, it is the project of Homo Sapiens to rebuild Paradise on earth, “to build the City of Dioce” (Pound). God made a perfect world merely by willing it. For millennia, we have been trying to rebuild (Babel?) the world we lost – yup, it was that good – but unlike God, we can’t create things just by willing them. We actually have to build them, and we can only build in a non-chaotic medium like spacetime . So do we live in a chaotic world? Aunt Gertrude notwithstanding, we do not ! Butterflies are beautiful, but they can keep their flapping to themselves, thank you! We already have enough environmental catastrophes to contend with. 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 Kabbalah & The Lord’s Prayer David Cowles Jun 26, 2025 “This suggests the possibility of a new set of ‘spiritual exercises’… that could be practiced by Christians and Jews alike.” The Lord’s Prayer is the one prayer Jesus taught to his disciples – and that was only at their request. (Matthew 6: 9-13) It is just 10 lines long…but it is incredibly dense. Arguably, it is an entire ‘theology in a can’. Somewhat later, date uncertain, a spiritual practice known as Kabbalah developed within the Jewish community. Intriguingly, Kabbalah consists of 10 sefirot, 10 rungs of the spiritual ladder. Like the angels in Jacob’s dream, we move up and down these rungs as we grow (spiritually not circumferentially). It is not my intent to ‘reduce’ either one of these powerful traditions to the other. Rather, I would point to what I call Spiritual Attractors , insights developed independently but now held in common across multiple traditions. In my view, the Christian Lord’s Prayer and the Jewish Kabbalah point to a shared Spiritual Attractor. To illustrate my point and as a guide to spiritual practice across denominations, I have mapped the two traditions side by side: “Our father” ( Keter : Crown) This is the opening of the Lord’s prayer, and it establishes God/YHWH as our personal creator . Christians sometimes refer to God as their personal savior , but that has a flip side: YHWH is also our ‘personal creator’, experienced by each of us, shared by all of us. “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” ( Exodus 3: 6) Our creator is also our father. As creator , God establishes the conditions necessary for existence per se ; he is the ground of our being. But as father , God enters into a personal relationship with each of us. “Who art in heaven” ( Hochmah : Wisdom) In both traditions, the first manifestation of God is Wisdom ( Hochmah ): Sophia in the Old Testament, Logos (order) in the New. Here we learn that our father is transcendent (“in heaven”) …and therefore omniscient and eternal. “Hallowed be thy name” ( Binah : Understanding) Name is a bridge between subject and object. The slang term, handle , is apt. In Kabbalah that function is performed by Binah (Understanding), the first interface of the divine with the mundane. If wisdom is focused on Godhead, understanding is directed at the World. “Thy kingdom come” ( Tiferet : Beauty) Beauty might be defined as ‘the harmony of contrasts and the unity of harmonies’; that is the Kingdom of God - where “the leopard lies down with the goat.” (Isaiah 11: 6) “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” ( Gevurah : Strength) God projects his will into the World with “a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.” (Deut. 26: 8) “Give us this day our daily bread” ( Hesed : Love) Feeding the hungry is first among the 7 Corporal Works of Mercy. Here it is meant to represent all seven. “Our daily (or necessary) bread” refers to everything we need to survive and prosper. Service to others is how we show love, how we care: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Leviticus 19: 18) “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” ( Hod : Splendor) Forgiving others is one of the 7 Spiritual Works of Mercy. Again, this phrase is meant to incorporate the other six. This is how we care for others and how God cares for us. In the pre-Socratic tradition, the mutual granting of ‘reck’ (Anaximander/Heidegger) is the driver of ontogenesis. It is related to God’s primal creative ‘act’: Let there be light; it is the ancient equivalent of Big Bang. Hence, splendor . “Lead us not into temptation” ( Netzach : Victory) We are tempted to worship idols, sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively. The Seven Deadly Sins are the underside of the 7 Corporal and 7 Spiritual Works of Mercy (above). Lust, gluttony, greed, et al. tempt us to worship material things in preference to God. “The wages of sin is death.” (Romans 6: 23) Therefore, our liberation from sin (via forgiveness, above) is our Victory…and God’s – our triumph over mortality itself: “O death, where is your victory ?” (I Cor. 15: 55 & Hosea 13:14) “Deliver us from evil” ( Yesod : Foundation) This penultimate phrase summarizes the entire prayer and leads naturally to the final affirmation (below). This what David asked for in Psalms and what we ask of God every day in prayer. Conversely, the argument most often advanced by those who reject the Judeo-Christian world view (e.g. Bertrand Russell ) is based on God’s alleged failure to fulfill the promise implied in this verse. “Amen!” ( Malkhut : Kingdom) With one word we affirm all that has gone before and we commit ourselves, and therefore the World (Kant), to its realization as the Kingdom of God on earth, the ‘new Jerusalem’ ( Revelation ). The Amen at the end of the Lord’s Prayer is equivalent to the I do in a marriage ceremony. It acts as a renewal of our vows and it represents a renewal of God’s Covenant with the World. Why else “are there so many songs about rainbows?” (Genesis 9: 8-17 and Kermit the Frog) As mentioned above, the 10 verses of the Lord’s prayer and the 10 rungs of Kabbalah are congruent…and mutually enriching. This suggests the possibility of a new set of ‘spiritual exercises’, in the tradition of Ignatius of Loyola, that could be practiced by Christians and Jews alike: Mediate on each of the 10 sefirot in sequence…at different times each day or on successive days in a 10 day cycle. The personal rewards may be immense, and the joint practice could make a major contribution toward the ecumenical reconciliation of these two rich spiritual traditions. Give it a try! Image: Untitled. Wallace Berman. American. 1967–68. Working with a Kodak Verifax copier, Wallace Berman assembled collages centered on a hand holding a transistor radio, its blank dial overlaid with mass-media icons—a rabbit’s foot, a stopwatch, and more. By merging photocopy, radio, and print, he forged a jittery mosaic of cultural noise, yet the tiny painted Hebrew letters—his homage to mystical Kabbalah—thread spiritual resonance through the static. 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 Bertrand Russell David Cowles May 20, 2025 “His reformulation of set theory, while insightful, set back progress in this field by half a century.” It is hard to imagine anyone who contributed more, or detracted more, from recent Intellectual History than the indefatigable Bertrand Russell (BR). Co-authored with Alfred North Whitehead, Russell’s Principia Mathematica brought Issac Newton into the 20th century. Plus, BR was the first major thinker to throw a flag on ‘the calculus’. Discovered simultaneously by Newton and Leibniz c. 1700, calculus was assumed to provide the ‘final answer’ to Zeno’s pesky paradoxes. It doesn’t! Russell pointed out that calculus is a computational method useful for making calculations about real phenomena but not for modeling those phenomena per se . The idea that ‘calculus’ describes something real about the world is an example of what colleague Whitehead would have called, the fallacy of misplaced concreteness . Bottom line: Zeno lives on…and we have Russell to thank for pointing that out. Finally, BR’s tireless activism in pursuit of World Peace, while often misdirected, cannot go unmentioned. On the other hand, Russell resurrected the ‘Problem of Evil’ as a rationale for his atheism ( Why I am not a Christian ) and his reformulation of set theory, while insightful, set back progress in this field by half a century. It is these last two aspects of his legacy that concern us today and we will attempt to show that, surprisingly, the two are closely related. Russell noticed that self-referential propositions can be inherently self-contradictory. Consider, for example, the proposition: ‘All propositions are false’. There is an inherent contradiction here. If ‘all propositions are false’, then the proposition, ‘all propositions are false’ must itself be false ; and if ‘all propositions are false’ is false then some propositions must be true, which violates the premise; ergo contradiction. So, Russell MacGyvers the problem! He adds an axiom now known as the Axiom of Foundation to Set Theory; it states that sets cannot be elements of themselves. So ‘all propositions are false’ is not in fact a well-formed proposition because it designates a set, the set of all propositions, that contains itself as an element. Now if a set cannot be an element of itself, then what appears to be a self-referential proposition is not even a proper proposition. Inconveniently however, the real World does not step aside, even for Bertrand Russell. Consider, for example, the set of all mathematical objects; such a set would itself appear to be a mathematical object in which case it would be an element of itself and no contradiction results, in bold faced defiance of BR’s dictum. Some nerve! When the ideas of an intellectual clash with reality, reality is supposed to step aside. Cheeky sets! But Russell is unphased. If ‘Set A’ contains itself as an element, then ‘Set A’ cannot be a set after all. It may walk like a set and it talks like a set, but it cannot be a set. ‘Why? Because BR says so!’ In his best imitation of a 1950’s parent, Russell stifles all dissent. Surprisingly, we, like cowed children fearing a smack, sheepishly comply. But if Set A is not a set, what is it? It’s a ‘class’, obviously…do try to keep up! (If you have the feeling that you’re caught in an ‘Alice story’, you’re not wrong.) In Genesis , neither God nor man (Adam) has the power to create something just by speaking its name. That’s why Principia Mathematica had to replace Torah . Just as a simple ‘abracadabra’ in the mouth of a certified magician can turn lead into gold, so Russell, a certified logician , was able to turn absurdity into truth. Amazing how far we’ve come in 3 millennia! But ‘you cannot fool all of the people all of the time’ – A. Lincoln. From the get-go a few brave souls, living like Obi Whan Kabobi on the edge of civilization, dared to raise doubts. “I don’t see any clothes here, do you?” But it was not until the 1980s that Peter Aczel (PA) led a no holds barred assault on Russell…and vanquished him. Thanks to PA, we now understand that the Axiom of Foundation is not a necessary part of Set Theory, that we can get along just as well without it and open a huge new universe of possibility in the process. Aczel reformulated Set Theory to include self-referential sets without generating any contradiction. Sets that seemingly obey the Axiom of Foundation form a tiny subset of all sets. Analogy: a 3 year old is understandably proud; she ‘knows her numbers’, i.e. the natural numbers from 1 to some upper limit. Imagine her surprise when she discovers that Natural Numbers form a tiny subset of Real Numbers which are a tiny subset of Hyperreal Numbers, etc. While we will not get into this today, I would argue that a Universe without self-reference could not exist at all or, if it did, it would be a lifeless wasteland (because what is ‘life’ but self-reference?). Genesis : “…the earth was without form or shape, with darkness over the abyss and a mighty wind sweeping over the waters.” That’s us, according to the Axiom of Foundation. In 1908 Russell stated the rule that held logic in thrall for nearly a century: “Whatever involves all of a collection must not be one of the collection.” And so, of course, Russell could not possibly be a Christian…and the Problem of Evil has nothing to do with it. Sorry, Bertrand! Next time around, “Know thyself!” Turns out, the huge intellectual edifice known as ‘Christianity’ has its own Fundamental Axiom, but it’s the opposite of Russell’s: “There is at least one collection that is one of the collection.” In other words, there is at least one set that is a proper member of itself. I call that the Axiom of Incarnation . This is the non-negotiable foundation of Christianity: God, Being per se (Exodus 3: 14), who contains everything that is, is also a quantum of being (Jesus, the Christ) among what is. God contains God! Being at its most fundamental level is self-referential. And so a Universe is possible after all. Cosmologists claim to be able to account for the emergence of a Universe without resorting to the God Hypothesis ; maybe so! But there can be no Universe without the Axiom of Incarnation. Self-reflective sets are also recursive. The set acts on itself. Examples of recursive process abound in the stories and doctrines of Christianity. To cite just a few: ➢ “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mt. 22: 40) ➢ “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in them.” (Jn: 6: 56) ➢ “Blessed are the merciful for they will obtain mercy.” (Mt. 5: 7) ➢ “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” (Mt. 6: 12) ➢ “I am in my father, and you are in me, and I am in you.” (John 14: 20) My own sense is that the Axiom of Incarnation does not go far enough. I propose replacing the formulation above with something stronger: “A set is a collection that is one of the collection.” In other words, every proper set is a member of itself. I call this the Axiom of Trinity and I will explore it further in future posts. But we have already covered a lot of ground. Starting with Russell’s claim that no set can be a member of itself, we proposed a set, called Incarnation , that falsifies Russell’s claim. Freed from the shackles of Foundation, can we proceed from Incarnation to Trinity ? (BTW, the early Church, up to the Council of Nicaea (c. 325 CE), struggled with this same question.) Assuming Incarnation, can we prove Trinity using Set Theory? I don’t know yet. Stay tuned! *** M.C. Escher’s Drawing Hands (1948) depicts two hands sketching each other into existence, visually capturing the self-referential loop at the heart of logical paradox and the Incarnation.¹ ¹Scanned from The Magic of M. C. Escher Artist: M. C. Escher Year: 1948 Medium: Lithograph Dimensions: 28.2 cm × 33.2 cm (11.1 in × 13.1 in) Preceded by: Up and Down (1947) Followed by: Dewdrop (1948) 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 The Curse of Immortality David Cowles Sep 7, 2025 “What if it is the final moment of my life…endures forever in my consciousness?” This essay is dedicated to my grandson, Owen Rotondi, whose insights about the nature of time led me to these ideas. It is fashionable these days to criticize Zeno (5th century BCE) and to make fun of his famous paradoxes. But not to worry: This has been going on for 2400 years and we’re in good company; Plato himself was among the first. Every generation of philosophers and mathematicians has conducted its own assault on Zeno’s Castle. After all, there is no way a tortoise can beat Achilles in a road race; there is no way that an arrow shot into the air can remain resting on its bow string. Something has to be wrong; but what? At the beginning of the 17th century two unrelated mathematicians (Newton and Leibniz) simultaneously ‘demolished Zeno once and for all’ when they discovered, independently, the Calculus. Well, not quite! It took none other than Bertrand Russell 200 years later to point out that Zeno’s castle still stands, as impregnable as ever, undamaged by the Enlightenment’s assault. Flashback: I spent a year of my life in a cold sweat. I had just realized that death is not something that any of us will ever experience. Of course, we may all be dead…but you’ll never know it because ‘death’ is defined as the absence of all awareness (consciousness). You cannot be aware of being dead. I reasoned, “If I don’t die, subjectively, then I must live, also subjectively, forever.” Sounds cool, but let me assure you, it’s anything but! The me that lives forever will not be me at the time of my greatest triumphs or at my one moment of clairvoyant lucidity; it will not be me “when I ruled the world.” (Coldplay) The me that lives forever will be me as I am during the final conscious moment of my life. Before Vatican II, Roman Catholics used to pray for ‘the grace of a happy death’. Appropriately so! Today, Catholics still entreat the Mother of God, “Pray for us…at the hour (i.e. moment) of our death.” Objectively, of course, I do not really expect to live forever. I expect to die just like everyone else (and too soon). But what if, subjectively, I never die? And what if it is the final moment of my life, the pain, the confusion, the regret, the despair, the fear that endures forever in my consciousness? This universal fate is literally ‘Hell’ as it was preached in some churches before Vatican II. Suddenly, I’m back in 2nd grade, hearing for the first time about the flaming Inferno, the stench of rotting flesh and brimstone, the shrieks of the damned and the cacophony of Bedlam. My life can’t end; what would come next? I cannot imagine myself not being. Once born, I can never die…to myself. I approach death, but as a limit, not as a destination. Just as Achilles is forever racing toward, but never reaching, Zeno’s finish line, so I may be hurtling toward my death, every instant ever closer, forever. Over a Sunday feast of pulled pork, sauteed field greens and corn on the cob, Owen pointed out to me that my existential problem was simply a new version of Zeno’s famous paradox. I had not yet thought to connect my own fear of dying with Achilles’ fear of humiliation at the hands of Zeno and his pet reptile. Owen made the connection for me…and an eschatological cloud was lifted. Zeno’s paradox cannot be resolved using Arithmetic (including calculus) and the set of Real Numbers…despite 2400 years of trying. Real Numbers are ‘dense’, i.e. continuous; between any two Real Numbers there is at least one other Real Number. Every interval is continuous. There is, however, a very simple, and as far as I know uncontested, solution to Zeno’s Paradoxes! But it requires us to throw Arithmetic and the set of Real Numbers out the window…or at least to put them on a shelf. And no, I’m not just reading from some naively hopeful 4th grader’s Christmas letter to Santa. Suppose instead we approach Zeno’s dilemma assuming that the number line is not continuous but made up of a sequence of discrete units. Let’s further suppose that this set of Discrete Numbers, and the new math it inspires, adequately models the real, physical world, i.e. Zeno’s race track. No matter how small we make the distance between these units, there will come a point at which the Tortoise will run out of runway; it will no longer be possible to cover half the distance to finish line because ‘halfway to the finish line’ would put him right in the middle of the abyss of non-being. Our contestants will reach the brink of annihilation and at that moment, in a ‘quantum leap’, Achilles will find himself across the line…at last. The introduction of discrete gaps, no matter how tiny, immediately resolves Zeno’s paradox and makes arithmetic linear again. Great, but how can we justify such a move? Real Numbers are called ‘real numbers’ because they’re supposed to be real, right? How can we justify pulling a set of Discrete Numbers out of thin air? If we have to use Unreal Numbers to force the result we want, then Achilles is an unreal champion…which might be worse than simply losing. Better to be humiliated by a tortoise than to go down in history as a cheat! But Achilles is no cheat! It turns out that the physical world in Athens and in New York, on Alpha Centauri and beyond, is discrete . In fact, only ‘discrete math’ (e.g. binary computer language) can adequately model real events. Achilles runs his race and collects his trophy; let everyone hold their peace. We now know, or think we know, that spacetime is made up of very tiny discrete units. How tiny are they? About 10^-35 meters across? We call this the Planck Scale. And how small is that? It’s about 20 orders of magnitude smaller than a proton. So small! Try this : the ratio of the observable universe to your slim and trim body is the same as the ratio of a hydrogen atom to the Planck length. So very, very small, like you, but big enough! Turns out, size doesn’t matter at all ! Regardless of how small we make the unit of discontinuity, the gap between numbers, the possibility of infinite regression immediately disappears and Zeno’s paradox is resolved. So we will die both objectively and subjectively in ‘ordinary (linear) time’. Now, thanks to Owen, I can smugly dust off an iconic slogan from my preteen years: “What, me worry?” (Alfred E. Newman, Mad Magazine) Now we just need to be sure some hot shot physicist doesn’t come along to prove Planck wrong. But I’m no longer losing sleep! We have invoked the aid of Mater Dei (‘now and at the hour of our death’) and we’re told her intervention never fails. Plus the great Achiiles has never lost a road race. Even Usain Bolt could not keep up. Rumor has it, though it is unconfirmed, that Achilles ran a 3.9 40 at the NFL Combine last year. If Planck’s wrong, then the Virgin Mary is a fraud, and Achilles is the World’s Biggest Loser . So I think we’re safe. I can relax. Thank you, Owen! *** Jack Tribeman’s Rise and Fall of Immortality (2014) is a large acrylic-on-canvas painting that contrasts humanity’s spiritual ascent—overcoming instinct to achieve creativity and freedom—with its potential decline under the weight of those same powers. The dual composition reflects both the promise of boundless ingenuity and the fragility of progress, inviting viewers to question whether immortality of spirit is sustainable or destined to erode. 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 And Then... David Cowles Apr 19, 2022 This was perhaps the last time we could say, “God is in his heaven, and all is right with the world.” Back to the year 1000 AD! Millennial years are special years…I mean they only come once every thousand years or so…so they’re pretty rare. Most folks never experience a change of Millennia during their lifetimes. I did, and no doubt many of you did too. Think back to the year 2000 AD! Planes fell from the sky, the power grid collapsed, virtually all electronics, including computers, failed. Except, of course, none of these things actually happened. December 31 went, and January 1 came…thud. December 31, 999: it is likely that the majority of Western Europeans believe that the world would end in the coming hours. Huge crowds filled the Vatican and the streets of Rome; they awaited the Apocalypse. But AD 1000 is important for other reasons. Otto III, the boy king, is Emperor. Riding into battle at the age of 6, leading an army at the age of 12, crowned king of the Germans at 14 and Holy Roman Emperor at 16; Otto was still only 20 years-old in the year 1000. Otto’s lifelong tutor and mentor, Gerbert, sits on the Papal Throne, reigning as Pope Sylvester II. Gerbert was pope, but he may have been better known as the leading scientist and mathematician of his age. This was perhaps the last time we could say, “God is in his heaven, and all is right with the world.” Church and state, the sacred and the secular, science and religion, faith and curiosity all flowed together and co-existed peacefully. And then… Image: Otto III from The Gospels of Otto Thoughts While Shaving is published on Tuesdays and Thursdays. To subscribe to our newsletter, complete the form below (bottom right) and never miss a single Thought. 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 Election Day 2022 David Cowles Nov 8, 2022 “Whatever we do, each of us is commenting on the current state-of-affairs, advocating for some future state-of-affairs, or rejecting the political process altogether.” Today is the day when every citizen of the United States (age 18+) makes a declaration. Today, you and I will go to the polls and vote, one way or another, or we have already voted so that our votes can be counted tonight; or we will not vote at all. Whatever we do, each of us is commenting on the current state-of-affairs, advocating for some future state-of-affairs, or rejecting the political process altogether. In preparation for today’s vote, Aletheia Today (AT) published two Thoughts While Shaving (TWS) last week, both reflecting on Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, and focusing on Lincoln’s call for government ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people’: The Gettysburg Address Gettysburg Too Today, in consideration of the hurt and anger that today’s results will inevitably generate, it might make sense to return to Mr. Lincoln one more time: “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” 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 The Death of "God?" David Cowles Sep 27, 2022 “I had not known that God’s alleged demise had been elevated to the status of a fact.” As far as I know, Friedrich Nietzsche was the first responder to arrive on the scene. In any event, he was the first to pronounce: “God is Dead. TOD (time of death): 1882.” (The Gay Science) Nietzsche’s meme has echoed through Western philosophy, theology, and culture ever since 20th century positivists, logical or otherwise, and some existentialists (e.g., Sartre, Camus) joined his choir to sing his now famous Requiem for God in C major. In the 1960s, liberal theologians added their own postmortem notes (Death of God Theologies). A little later, John Lennon composed his own music for the divine requiem: he marginalized God (“God is a concept by which we measure our pain”) and then celebrated God’s absence with his generational anthem, Imagine . Then about a year ago, a work colleague of 20-plus years turned my world upside down. She offhandedly referred to ‘the past’ as “back when we used to believe in God…” Before that, I had not known that God’s alleged demise had been elevated to the status of a fact. Unfortunately, ‘God’ has become a four-letter word in academic circles and at my local bar. Nothing can tank a career faster than ‘God talk.’ Short of hungry lions, we might as well be back in Christianity’s first centuries. Secularism has become the new McCarthyism. I will continue to pray to ‘God’ in my private devotions, of course, but is it time to retire that moniker from the public forum? “No way,” you say? Ok, but what if we could do so without sacrificing a single one of our beliefs? “If your eye offends you, pluck it out!” Is it time for us to excise a part of our exoskeleton to facilitate our mission to evangelize? One thing is certain, as long as we cling to the form (‘God’) instead of proclaiming the substance (Faith, Hope and Love), we will continue to lose ground in the culture war. There is a long tradition supporting this point of view. As far back as the Exodus, Jews were forbidden to articulate the divine name (YHWH). St. Paul’s success is ‘selling’ Christianity to the Greek-speaking world was in large part due to his remarkable ability to put old wine in new skins. Paul never protected form (e.g., physical circumcision) to the detriment of substance (spiritual circumcision). Paul spoke to the Greeks in their own language. At Antioch, he proclaimed Christ to be their unknown god. Thus, he made dialog and, eventually, conversion possible. Most recently, 1960s radicals fondly chanted the names of their heroes in the streets: “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh”…until the Beatles (1968) warned us: “But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow.” The Jews had good reason to keep the divine name under wraps. YHWH is an abbreviation for “I am who am.” The name itself embodies our most fundamental belief. Compare that with our word, God, a Germanic word (Gott) that entered Old English through the Dutch (God). Its Sanskrit root, ghue, means to invoke. This is not Yahweh, Elohim, el Shaddai, Adonai, or Emmanuel. ‘God’ is derived from a Sanskrit root that was originally applied to the deity, Indra. Are we willing to sacrifice the future of Christianity for a Hindu deity? The concept of God is, well, everything; but the Aryan name, ‘God,’ has no real significance. Words like this naturally come and go in the evolution of language. What if we could articulate a cosmology, completely consistent with orthodox Christology, that avoids such ‘flash point’ language? In Old Testament times, different theologies co-existed. These early TOEs (Theories of Everything) underwent a process of natural selection: the fittest survived…and thrived. How does one apply the concept of ‘fitness’ to a cosmology? A cosmology is ‘fit’ to the extent that it accounts for the relevant experiences and satisfies the existential needs of its adherents. Today, many people worship Yahweh, Emmanuel, Allah; few worship Moloch…or even the great Jupiter. The Semitic deity has demonstrated remarkable fitness over continents, millennia, and a broad spectrum of human cultures. In the 21st century, we need to build on this success by demonstrating that Apostolic Christology is congruent with contemporary cosmology. We cannot be held back from this important task by a word with pagan roots and deeply disturbing modern connotations. God evokes the Crusades, the Inquisition, the religious wars, Sister Mary Martha’s rattan, and the recent church child abuse scandals; the word has, to a large extent, lost its positive connotations. We have the words of everlasting life (Psalm 19 et al.); who wouldn’t want to hear them? We don’t need to create barriers by focusing our energy on the defense of a single word, even if that word is God. 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 Barry Goldwater David Cowles Jun 11, 2024 “When people show you who they are, believe them.” – Maya Angelou If you’re not as old as me – how could you be? – you might not remember Barry Goldwater, Senator from Arizona (1953 – 1987) and Republican nominee for President (1964). You may be forgiven. While we are used to presidential elections being decided by margins of less than 3%, Goldwater managed to lose by 23%. After a bruising but successful primary campaign, Senator Goldwater walked into San Franciso’s ‘Cow Palace’, buoyant with optimism, preparing to proclaim a new era in American history. Goldwater brought the convention to its feet with a message that will live forever in the annals of political rhetoric: Extremism in the defense of Liberty is no vice… Moderation is the pursuit of Justice is no virtue! The nation’s founding documents celebrate as divinely conferred the rights to ‘Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness’. Nowhere in these documents will you find reference to any qualifiers, such as: … But don’t kill the goose that lays the golden eggs (Don’t mess with success…or Texas), And never, ever tip over a money changer’s applecart. Yet, since the Gilded Age, the Populist critique of US culture has focused on the ‘extra-constitutional’ role of the State in the preservation of the socio-economic ‘status quo’ ( aka ‘inequality’). It’s ok to nibble around the edges with various schemes of social reform, designed to shore up support for the system ; but it’s ok only to the extent that such lofty ideals don’t compromise society’s actual guiding principles, as personified by money changing geese. Somehow, Goldwater missed the memo! Taking a page straight out of Jesus’ revolutionary handbook ( aka the Gospels), he strode into San Francisco’s Cow Palace and proclaimed a Jubilee (i.e. a redistribution of economic power)…this time in America. I said earlier that Goldwater’s electrifying speech brought the Republican Convention to its feet. I neglected to mention that about 1/3rd of these feet were headed for the exits. As soon as the Senator delivered his iconic lines, Nelson Rockefeller, then Governor of New York and subsequently US VP, led a delegate walk-out. From that point on, Goldwater’s candidacy was effectively doomed. We didn’t realize it at the time, but he would never fully recover from Rockefeller’s bovine theatrics . But what’s interesting here is not so much the vagaries of U.S. presidential politics, but the unstated, yet clearly implied, ideology of the peripatetic dissenters: Liberty should be defended… And Justice should be pursued, Both in moderation. “When people show you who they are, believe them” – Maya Angelou. By their actions, Rocky’s Roadsters (and the many others who doomed the Goldwater campaign) betrayed what was most literally a pact with the devil. How so? Liberty and Justice, along with Beauty and Truth, are Divine Values. They constitute God’s essence. They’re what it’s like to be God. While these values are often compromised in our everyday lives, such compromises can never be ‘justified’. Call them what they are: ‘accommodations at the expense of Liberty and Justice’. 1964 saw the public proclamation of a new, apparently successful, social ethic. Liberty and Justice were ‘reclassified’ as preferred states of affairs rather than absolute imperatives. They are now just two factors, among many others, to be considered in the formation of public policy. ‘Liberty & Justice’ (Goldwater ’64) must never be allowed to replace ‘Peace & Prosperity’ (Eisenhower ‘52). Is this ringing any bells? Does it call to mind any other times in the life of this nation when absolute Liberty was considered too extreme and true Justice could only be pursued incrementally ? Abolitionism in the 1850’s? Civil Rights in the 1960’s? Today, we are so obsessed with the vilification of all things ante-bellum that we miss some key points. Pro-slavery politicians weren’t against either Liberty or Justice per se – far from it! They simply believed that these Values needed to be ‘understood in context’ and ‘realized gradually’. True, we cannot reasonably expect total Liberty or perfect Justice prior to the Eschaton. However, that does not relieve us of our responsibility to advocate and defend these values without compromise. There is no Scriptural or Constitutional sanction for any waiver . Torah does not say, “You shall not kill unless it is convenient.” So what’s the upshot of our little morality play: Goldwater’s campaign crashed and burned, as noted, and the country descended into a second civil war. But Phoenix (Arizona, get it?) rose from the ashes. In 1980 Ronald Reagan, who had played an important role in Goldwater’s 1964 campaign, was elected president – in a landslide! In fact, 1980 nearly flipped ‘64 on its head. And whatever you may think of President Reagan, you will agree that the country has not been the same since. Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Why Am I a Christian? David Cowles Apr 29, 2025 “I am a Christian because of just 15 words” Bertrand Russell was a mathematician, logician, philosopher, and political activist; sadly, he is most widely known for his best-selling polemic , Why I am not a Christian , which amounts to a tired rehash of the Problem of Evil. Not that evil is not a problem, philosophically and otherwise; but the subject has been delt with exhaustively by everyone from Moses (original sin) to Leibniz (best of all possible worlds) to Rabbi Kushner ( Why Bad Things Happen to Good People ). Russell offers nothing new and, as we shall see later, the Problem of Evil has a simple, two-word solution. My own view draws on these traditions. Susceptibility to Evil is the price Universe pays for its radical independence. Genesis says, “God created the heavens and the earth.” (1: 1) God did not wish them, dream them, imagine them, construct them, or manufacture them, but created them. As a result, the World evolves freely (in a value-oriented space). The much more important question is, “ How is it that there Good? ” A medieval Irish poet, traditionally St. Dallan, summed it up, “Naught is all else to me save that Thou (God) art.” In other words, without a transcendent source and measure of Good, precisely nothing has any value. “God saw that it was good.” (1: 10b) God, who is Good per se , the source of Good in the world, is also the ‘ concept by which we measure the good ’. (Apologies to John Lennon) When we say, ‘God is good’, we are using good as a noun, not as an adjective. Unexpectedly, Nietzsche agrees with Dallan: “One belongs to the whole, one is in the whole – there exists nothing which could judge, measure, compare, condemn our being, for that would be to judge, measure, compare, condemn the whole… But nothing exists apart from the whole!” ( Twilight of the Idols ) No God, no Good qua ‘good’! Atheists are fond of saying, “We don’t need God to be good,” and they are absolutely right. Some would even argue that atheists are more focused on ‘being good’ than many undeservedly smug theists…and I won’t argue with that either. The problem is that we need to explain how it is that there is Good in the first place. If we are part of the Whole and if nothing exists which can judge the Whole, then Good , which requires discernment and discrimination, two types of judgment, cannot exist. You can’t be something that doesn’t exist, and according to Nietzsche, spokesperson for atheists everywhere, because there is no God, there can be no ‘Good’, at least not in the sense of a norm or value. I suppose something could be good accidentally, but we wouldn’t know it if there is no objective basis for such a judgement. What makes the good thing ‘good’ and how does it differ from something that is not so good? According to Nietzsche, nothing can be more or less good than anything else…we know “too much to argue or to judge” (Dylan). Or perhaps someone will say, “ Everything is good, the whole and all its parts.” Again, that is true, as far as it goes; to be is to participate in the Good. But again, that is a judgment. It requires something that is not strictly tied to what is, that has some distance, some perspective, and, according to Nietzsche, “There exists nothing which could judge the Whole.” Ancient Greeks and Hebrews alike, from Anaximander, the grandfather of Western philosophy, through John, the apostle ‘whom Jesus loved’, believed that the wellspring of all being is Love. “Greater love has no man (sic) than that he lay down his life for a friend.” (John 15: 13) To them, Love is not a fickle accident that occurs between two pre-existing entities: “He caught a glimpse of her across the crowded dance floor; it was love at first sight.” Rather, Love is the substructure, the logos , of everything that is. John says it best (as usual), “Without him ( logos ) nothing that came to be came to be.” (Jn. 1: 3) Of course, the World is full of situations where disordered elements self-organize to form more ordered structures (Jantsch). But this is always at the expense of increasing disorder in the environment (2nd Law of Thermodynamics). The price of local order is cosmic entropy. Even this is only possible because Order per se , the logos , pre-exists. Without Order it would be impossible to form intention or perform selection, both essential to the process of becoming . Plus, it is not at all obvious, to me anyway, that self-organizing quanta would uncover the phenomenon of Value, or generate a dimension of Virtue, in the World. Good per se must also be pre-existent. We appear to have wandered far from our topic; but not so. We are right where we need to be; I’ve simply been laying the groundwork: ‘Why I am a Christian’ boils down to just 15 words! “I am who am” (Exodus 3: 14) “In the beginning was the logos ” (John 1: 1) “God is Love” (1 John 4:16) “Jesus wept” (John 11: 35) I need to add just one assumption based on personal experience: there is ‘something’ rather than nothing! YHWH introduces himself to Moses as ‘Who am ’; if it turns out that nothing is , then we have turned onto a dead end. On the other hand, if it does turn out that there is not something but only nothing, then we’re no worse off that we were to start. We still need to account for the phenomenon and phenomena of naïve experience. So there is only one option that does not turn out to be a perpetual loop: Est! So we take Being for granted. But the ‘something’ we experience is not just any thing; it has some quite specific and counter-intuitive properties. For example, you might expect Being to be a uniform continuum or a smoothly graded hierarchy or a single quantum lacking any external relations and/or internal structure. But what I experience as being is not any of these things; it is an archipelago of entities (events) thinly networked with one another to form a whole. Furthermore, this architecture repeats on multiple scales, from atoms and molecules to cells and organisms, to societies and civilizations. Being is fractal. So I feel comfortable relying on ‘something is’ as a working hypothesis. To be is to be an entity (or an element of an entity). Every entity stands out from its background (‘I am’) and yet is continuous with that background (‘it is’). We have just turned Descartes on his head: Est ergo Sum . Am-ness is the substructure of Being as we know it, not a feature, and Am is who (not what) God is. God is the One who am and so the sine qua non of everything that is . To be is to participate in ‘Am’, which is ‘God’: “I am who am.” Before God can be ‘the creator…of all things’ ( Nicene Creed ), God must be their ‘pre-condition’. Order, logos , is co-incident with God. John goes on to say, “the logos was with God and the logos was God.” (John 1: 3) Being is ordered: ‘to be’ is to participate in ‘I am’ and ‘I am’ orders ‘what is’. Order ( logos ) is Being per se . I am because you are. I become by making room for you to become. We become, together; we are , together. Ironically, ‘to be’ is ‘not to be’. (Lie quiet, Hamlet!) Something becomes when it withdraws to make room for something else. Being is reciprocity; it is rooted in self-sacrifice. “I must become less that he (the other) may become more!” (John the Baptist re Jesus, John 3: 30). Being is not value free. Being is not neutral. On the contrary, God is good as well as Good. “Jesus ( aka the Christ, the Son of God) wept!” Of course he did. How could he not? John 11:35 is the one, only and final answer to ‘the problem of evil’ (above). We’re all in this together and God is in this with us. Being (God) is Order (Father), Love (Spirit), and Good (Son); they are all ultimately synonymous, they are God’s personae , God’s avatars, the face(s) of God in the World and so, because of just 15 words and what they signify, I am a Christian. Image: "The Mystic Nativity" by Sandro Botticelli, painted around 1500–1501 in oil on canvas, measures 108.5 cm by 74.9 cm (42.7 inches by 29.5 inches) and is housed in the National Gallery, London. Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back The Mass Shooting Epidemic David Cowles Jun 14, 2022 People who perpetrate mass shootings are searching for answers, for meaning in life… June 12th’s edition of Face the Nation included an interview with Dr. Jillian Peterson and Dr. James Densley: “Yeah, I think a lot of people are searching for a profile of a mass shooter…Who are these perpetrators? So, we built a database that includes 180 perpetrators, who killed four or more people in a public space, going back about 50 years. And we coded each of them on over 200 pieces of life, history, information to try to look for patterns in the data…And we, instead, saw a pathway to a mass shooting, and we outlined that pathway in our book called The Violence Project … Mass shooters are in crisis. These are individuals who are not living their best selves, they are questioning their place in the world…people who perpetrate mass shootings are searching for answers, [for] meaning in life… ” Sometimes we make light of folks who say, “I don’t know who I am. I’m trying to find myself,” but we do so at our peril. According to Peterson and Densley, the people most likely to engage in mass shootings are people who feel a lack of personal identity, purpose, and meaning in their lives. In Man’s Search for Meaning (1946), Victor Frankl drew on his personal experience in Nazi concentration camps to argue that ‘purpose and meaning’ are essential elements in a healthy human psyche; they provide the spiritual foundation we need if we are to survive life’s disappointments, minor and major – from being ghosted by a BFF to being unlawfully and unjustly imprisoned. In days gone by, the culture provided folks with a sense of personal identity, purpose and meaning, but to our post-Enlightenment ears, these values sound “churchy,” and we can’t have that! (I had a good friend who would not listen to any classical music for just this reason.) At the end of the first millennium A.D., belief in God (theism) was at the foundation of all intellectual activity; by the end of the second millennium, atheism (or at least agnosticism) had replaced theism as the price of admission to the academy. Truth be known, over the past 400 years, we have been involved in a collective effort to ‘God-proof’ our world. Intellectual activity, once aimed at ‘proving God,’ is now dedicated to ‘God proofing.’ Of course, I am not suggesting that folks who do not believe in God are destined to become mass murderers; I am saying that the ‘God Hypothesis’ entails three corollaries relevant to this discussion: identity, purpose, and meaning. And what of culture? Well, it’s been pretty well ‘God proofed’ too. From Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, to Wittgenstein and Ayer, to Camus and Derrida, modern philosophy has been dedicated to ‘de-mystifying’ existence. We are all ‘ontological democrats’ now. We don’t need to think about ‘bigger issues.’ Any thoughts we might have on those issues have been pre-labeled, “meaningless, childish, old fashioned, anti-scientific, etc.” But suppressing humanity’s innate thirst for meaning comes at a price. Langstone Hughes (1951): “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore – and then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over like – like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it sags like a heavy load… Or does it explode?” ( Harlem ) Thoughts While Shaving is the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine and is published every Tuesday and Thursday. Subscribe today in the option below and never miss a single Thought. 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 The Old Testament David Cowles Apr 5, 2023 “Even the most ardent atheist will find a treasure trove of information and wisdom in this anthology.” Once upon a time, nearly everyone in Europe and the Americas was either a Christian or a Jew. The smattering of atheists, agnostics, and members of other faiths did not move the needle. In those days, it was customary to read the Bible’s Old Testament, searching for spiritual guidance, ethical norms, historical details, and cosmological insights. Today…not so much! Theological Judeo-Christianity, distinguished from its Cultural and Ideological variants, is in free fall. For better or worse, most of us no longer look to the Old Testament for spirituality, ethics, history, or cosmology, and so we don’t bother with it at all. This is a mistake! Even the most ardent atheist will find a treasure trove of information and wisdom in this anthology. Recently, a contemporary British philosopher and atheist, Julian Baggini, published The Godless Gospel . In part, this book is a synthesis of the works of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John - with all references to ‘matters divine’ (e.g., God) scrubbed out. I wish this author would do the same for the Old Testament. Now that you’re here, can I give you a quick tour? I promise to have you home in less than five minutes: We’ll begin with Genesis – NOT! Even though I think a persuasive argument can be made that Genesis is at least compatible with contemporary astronomy and evolutionary biology, it’s way too much of a hot potato…and I promised to get you home. Instead, we’ll begin with the first successful and fully documented slave rebellion in Western history ( Exodus ). Job One : Escape from Pharaoh! Follow Moses and Aaron as they first ignite, then curate national and class consciousness in the Hebrew community. Then we’ll follow these newly liberated people during their 40 years of wandering in the wilderness of Sinai. This is as close as we’re ever likely to get to an historically documented version of Rousseau’s State of Nature . Our physical scientists have their precious laboratories; but what do social scientists have? They have the Sinai. With no tradition of self-government to fall back on (they were slaves), the Hebrews spent 40 years in the desert, learning to live with one another and with nature. Job Two : Devise a Social Contract ( aka a Covenant): it’s called Torah . Rousseau & Co. speculated about the choices that folks would make in the State of Nature . Why speculate? The Hebrews painstakingly recorded their entire ‘state of nature’ experience in the Pentateuch (the five books of Moses); they presented their conclusions in 613 mitzvah (rules of the road) that cover everything from the periodic redistribution of wealth to the washing of pots. It’s a masterpiece of social engineering. (Lenin & Mao, eat your hearts out!) Any study of Western political philosophy must begin here. Now the Hebrews are camped at the edge of Canaan, the promised land…but there’s a problem: How do we take possession of this land from its more numerous, more prosperous, and better armed inhabitants? A polite, ‘we’re here now, please step aside’ probably would not have worked; neither would a full-frontal assault. So Joshua devised a plan to exploit the social injustice embedded in Middle Eastern societies during the second millennium (BCE). He identified Jericho’s potentially revolutionary class and mobilized it with the promise of a new society, founded on the principles of Torah : i.e., robust human rights (including the right to property), a resilient social safety net, and periodic redistributions of wealth. It wasn’t a hard sell! Job Three : Capture the megalopolis known as Jericho, the Gotham of its day. Joshua used spies and ‘outside agitators’ to gather intelligence and sow dissent. Then over the course of seven days, he ‘acted out’ the key provisions of the Torah in history’s first recorded performance of Guerilla Theater. Ultimately, the city fell (‘its walls came tumbling down’) without a single ‘shot’ being fired. According to the Imperialist Playbook, once you conquer a country, you immediately co-opt its existing institutions. Your goal : “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” There was every reason for Israel to follow this path…but it didn’t! It stayed true to Torah and delivered on its revolutionary socio-economic agenda…unlike political parties today. Instead of seizing the reins of authority, Joshua cut them. Instead of controlling the levers of power, he smashed them. But now what? Job Four : Govern! Govern without a king, without an oligarchy, without an aristocracy, without a ruling class (lie quiet, Marx), without a legislative body. How then? With a succession of charismatic leaders, designated ad hoc as Judges; in other words, Anarchism . You’re laughing, “How long could that experiment possibly have lasted? Let’s see, the Paris Commune of 1871 lasted 71 days, but I’ll be generous, I’ll give this ‘new’ model government six months…tops.” But you would be wrong, as usual. (Is it ‘best practices’ to insult your readers? Probably not…but I promised to get you home…now in two minutes.) So let it go. Six months was not a very good guess. The correct answer: 250 years! Then what? Well, here’s where I say, “Pick up the book and see for yourself;” but I do have time left for a preview of coming attractions: Sit in on a decades-long debate between anarchists and monarchists, at the close of the period of Judges. Follow the triumphs and tragedies of Israel’s kings, ultimately leading to secession, conquest, and exile. Hear nearly two dozen ‘populist prophets’ speak truth to power. Meditate on the wisdom of Ecclesiastes , made famous by the Byrds, and of the eponymous Book of Wisdom . Revel in the gorgeous poetry of Psalms and Songs . How’d I do? Did I keep to my timeline? You’ve got some reading ahead of you. Enjoy! Image: Francis Danby, "The Delivery of Israel out of Egypt," 1825. Oil on canvas. Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston, U.K. 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 The 60-Minute Bible David Cowles Jul 8, 2025 “…If you could digest the entire Bible in just 60 minutes, might that be of interest?” In our unchurched world, there is a growing hunger to understand the Judeo-Christian world view. “What is it that has everybody in such a lather?” Of course, you could ask a Rabbi, Priest, or Minister for help, but that would likely lead to instruction in one particular ‘faith’ while you’re looking for the broadest, most inclusive possible overview. When I was 14, I determined to read the entire Bible over the summer, book by book, from Genesis through Revelation . Yup, while you were at the beach, I was in my room, busy studying. In the end, I settled for an ‘extensive sampling’, but 50 years later a business associate told me his New Year’s resolution was to read the entire Bible, end to end, before the end of that year…and he did it! I doubt many folks would be willing to commit to such a project today. But what if I could make the task a little less daunting? Instead of an entire year, or summer, what if you could digest the entire Bible in just 60 minutes? Might that be of interest? I’m not talking about a summary; I’m talking about actual Bible verses, quoted verbatim, with minimal contextual notes in between. I have selected 24 short passages from the Judeo-Christian Bible that I believe offer the sort of overview people are seeking. At a minimum, I hope you’ll come away saying, “Ah, so that’s what all the noise is about.” So enjoy! And as for the 99 hours I just saved you? You’re welcome! Most gods of the 2nd millennium BCE created the universe merely by willing it, reducing our world to the status of a wholly owned subsidiary of God, Inc. Not so YHWH, ‘God’ in the Judeo-Christian tradition: Genesis 1: 1 – 4 (Creation) Our world is not just a figment of some god’s imagination. Marx was right! The material world is real. YHWH created this world by ‘letting it be’, ‘seeing that it was good’, and then ‘separating (e.g. light from darkness) and gathering’ (e.g. water into seas). YHWH follows that pattern through all 6 stages of creation. Long before Charles Darwin, the authors of Genesis 1 produced their own, remarkably accurate, theory of evolution. We encounter YHWH again in the calling of Abraham (Abram), the Patriarch of Jews, Christians and Muslims alike and, by extension, of us all. Genesis 12: 1 – 3 (Covenant) Abraham is the Bible’s first existential hero. Responding to God’s call, he leaves family, friends, and an upper middle class lifestyle to become a nomadic immigrant in a strange land. In recognition of Abraham’s faith, trust, and courage, YHWH establishes an eternal Covenant linking Abraham and his descendants (and ultimately all human beings) to God. We resume our story on the slopes of Mt. Horeb. The Hebrew people are now slaves in Egypt. Moses, himself ‘fostered’ by members of Egypt’s extended royal family, encounters YHWH in a perpetually burning bush. Exodus 3: 1 – 6, 13 - 15 (Moses) These verses may be the most important in the entire Bible because this is where God formally introduces himself to us. He meets us in history and in the context of daily life; he tells us who he is and even lets us know his name. From here on, we’re on a first name basis with Divinity. The first 5 books of the Bible constitute Torah (The Written Law). It includes the Ten Commandments, made famous by Cecil B. DeMille and Charlton Heston. But the crux of the new Social Contract is buried in an obscure text: Leviticus 25: 1 – 13 (Jubilee) The social contract outlined here is by far the most radical social program ever conceived: a completely egalitarian re-distribution of productive wealth (Capital) every 50 years! Marx could only dream… This ‘Jubilee’ theme plays a significant part in Jesus’ ministry and in the Constitution of the early Church. Joshua entered the Promised Land with all the swagger of a newly minted presidential front-runner. Armed with a party platform developed during 40 years of wandering in the wilderness of Sinai, the Hebrews were ready to conquer Cannan, by persuasion if possible, by force if necessary. At that time, the walled city of Jericho was the unassailable ‘capital’ of Cannan. The city’s rulers were so confident that they regarded Joshua’s military maneuvers outside its walls as mere entertainment. And yet, Joshua captured the city in just 7 days and with nary an arrow fired. Joshua 6: 1 – 5, 15 – 16, & 20 (Jericho) Joshua’s weapon of choice was liturgical dance, spelling out the details of God’s ‘plan’ for Cannan! But this was only the coup de grace ; it followed a period of espionage, infiltration, agitation, and a heightened class consciousness. The Liberation of Jericho was perhaps the first recorded instance of a successful proletarian revolution. Would that the revolutionaries of 1776, 1789, 1848, 1871 and 1917 had paid more attention to Joshua. The Fall of Jericho began a 250 year period known as the time of Judges. There was no permanent or centralized government. Imagine ‘there’s no state’, John Lennon! Charismatic leaders arose ad hoc when circumstances required and were confirmed in office by popular consensus. Otherwise, YHWH ruled directly through the 613 mitzvoth of Torah and the consciences of individuals. Judges 21: 25 (Theocracy) Not that the temptations of political and military power were not everywhere. After a string of military victories, the people clamored to make Gideon their King. But in a Sherman inspiring moment, he declined: Judges 8: 22 - 23 (Theocracy) But the people were not satisfied for long. Surrounded by strong, centralized monarchies, they pined for ‘their piece of the pie’. Samuel, the last of the great Judges (his sons were disasters), delivered a passionate defense of YHWH’s rule: I Samuel 8: 10 – 18 (Theocracy) We might just as well be reading Benjamin Franklin. Unfortunately, Israel did not heed God’s warning. They chose a king, first Saul then David, and the rest, as they say, is ‘history’: Israel was divided, conquered, and exiled. “Who’d a thunk it?” ( Hairspray )… other than Samuel, and of course, YHWH. Fortunately, history had a Track B: Wisdom . By rejecting Theocracy, Israel was abandoning not only the Covenant but also the cosmology of Genesis . In its place, Israel developed a rich, proto-existentialist philosophy: Ecclesiastes 1: 1 – 11 (Wisdom) Am I reading Solomon…or Sartre? History also had a Track C: Prophesy. Covenant theology did not suddenly disappear; it remained underground, kept alive by an archipelago of prophets, speaking truth to power: Isaiah 42: 1 – 9 (Prophesy) Many of the prophets pair a searing indictment of the status quo with a utopian vision of the future, modeled on the Garden of Eden. Who were their political consultants? Anyhow, much of their teaching focuses on the coming of a Messiah and the restoration of Theocracy: Jeremiah 31: 31 – 34 (Covenant) During the tumultuous first century CE, Judaism was fractured. Numerous ‘sects’ and ‘parties’ - the Essenes and the Zealots, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the Scribes and the Sanhedrin - all competed for the hearts and minds of the faithful based on their differing interpretations of the prophets’ message. Into this cauldron stepped Jesus of Nazareth. He offered a new interpretation of Torah that built on the Wisdom and Prophetic traditions and that ultimately transformed his branch of Judaism into a separate religion, Christianity. Jesus’ public ministry begins in his hometown synagogue (Nazareth). A young man by Rabbinical standards, Jesus (age 30) has just returned from 40 days in the desert. He rises to read from Torah and infuriates his bougie audience by proclaiming a Jubilee (above), i.e. the immediate and total redistribution of all productive property. Luke 4: 16 – 21 (Jubilee) The foundational principle of Christianity, The Great Commandment, is not a Christian invention. It is simply a juxtaposition of two verses from Torah – a pairing already in circulation before Jesus’ time. Matthew 22: 35 – 40 (The Great Commandment) The Great Commandment is deceptively mundane. This is no Categorial Imperative (Kant) nor is it the Golden Rule. Jesus uses this meme to proclaim congruence among each of us, our neighbors (‘as yourself’) and God (‘like it’). Elsewhere, however, Jesus does offer a fresh interpretation, application and extension of Jewish theology, cosmology and ethics. His teachings are summarized in two lengthy New Testament passages: The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5: 1 – 7: 29) The Last Supper Discourses (John 14: 1 – 17: 26) But if you’re following the 60-minute plan, you can settle for: Matthew 5: 3 – 12 (Beatitudes) Matthew 6: 9 – 13 (Lord’s Prayer) John 15: 9 – 12 (Last Supper) The story of Jesus’ passion, crucifixion and resurrection is widely known. It is unnecessary to retell it here. However, a few things stand out and call for our special attention: Luke 22: 14 – 20 (Eucharist) Like each of us, Jesus is an historical phenomenon: one and done! But Christ also exists outside of spacetime: everywhere, all the time, all at once! Christ is both the locus of history and an event within that history and Eucharist is a physical manifestation of this reality. Jesus is fully divine and fully human, not half and half, but all and all. Being human does not mean merely physical suffering. It also entails ‘the dark night of the soul’, the overwhelming sense of despair and isolation that comes over all of us at one time or another as we stand on the edge, peering into the dark and silent abyss. This is the terrible price we pay for the total ontological freedom spelled out in Genesis . Matthew 27: 46 (Despair) Critics of Judeo-Christianity often base their views on the so-called Problem of Evil: “Why do bad things happen to good people?” Jesus’ crucifixion, despair, and death answer that argument. The ontological freedom of the created world is so complete that even God, incarnate in the world, must hit rock bottom . Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances get considerable attention in all 4 Gospels and elsewhere in the New Testament. However, one event in that narrative is particularly powerful and provocative: Luke 24: 13 – 35 (Resurrection) As suggested above, the early Church embodied Marx’ notion of ‘permanent revolution’ in the form of ‘perpetual Jubilee’, the on-going redistribution of wealth: Acts 2: 42 – 57 (Jubilee) Ultimately, Christianity is focused on the end times, the Eschaton, the Apocalypse, summarized first by St. Paul and later by John of Patmos: I Corinthians 15: 19 – 28 (Eschaton) Revelation 1: 8 & 22: 13 (Eschaton) In the end, God is all in all. Christology, the theology and cosmology of Christianity, is magnificently summarized in two brief hymns: John 1: 1 – 5 (Christology) Colossians 1: 15 – 20 (Christology) So that’s it! Did I keep my 60 minute promise? Thanks for taking this trip with me. I hope you enjoyed yourself and I hope you feel your time was well spent. 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