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< Back Karma and Healthcare Bots David Cowles Sep 11, 2025 “Anything we do that affects something outside us also affects us… Reciprocity is all around us, yet we are oblivious to it.” A recent NYT post (9/2/2025) caught my eye. I have repeatedly touted the value of aggressively integrating AI into our healthcare delivery systems, at both the primary care and specialist levels: My PCP Should Be a BOT | Aletheia Today My MD Should Be a Bot | Aletheia Today I am particularly keen on the prospect of AI enhanced diagnosis. No matter how skilled they may be in other areas, not all doctors are good diagnosticians. The skills required are very different from those associated with patient care. A study published in the Lancet Gastroenterology and Hepatology found that after just three months of using an A.I. tool, designed to help spot precancerous growths during colonoscopies, doctors were significantly worse at finding the growths on their own… “This is a two-way process,” said Dr. Omer Ahmad, a gastroenterologist at University College Hospital London who published an editorial alongside the study. “We give A.I. inputs that affect its output, but it also seems to affect our behavior as well.” Of course it does! What interests me is that Dr. Ahmad seems surprised, “This is a two-way process…” Of course it is, every event is, and this has nothing to do with AI. Anything we do that affects something outside us also affects us. This truism has no exceptions whatsoever. It is impossible for physical entities to act without experiencing a reaction. Borrowing a meme from Gregory Bateson, let’s agree that an event is “a difference that makes a difference.” What else could it be? To be an ‘event’, something has to be different from what came before it and impact what comes after it. If not, it would just be an unidentifiable stretch of the ontological continuum. It is a fundamental feature of the Universe, and yet we go through life rarely keeping it in mind: “Every action entails an equal and opposite reaction” (Newton). I fire a rifle; the recoil bruises my shoulder. “What goes around, comes around” (Hippie manual from the 1960s). “Cast your bread upon the waters…” ( Ecclesiastes ) “Karma.” ( Hair ) Reciprocity is all around us, yet we are oblivious to it. We’re like fish in water? “What’s water?” From pre-school on, we are taught two systems for understanding the World: language and arithmetic. Now some say, “If you can’t express it in words or numbers then it isn’t real;” others, “If you can’t measure it, it didn’t happen;” still others go further, “The world consists solely of propositions (sentences) and algorithms (equations).” Somehow, we’ve convinced ourselves that these representations are more important, more valuable, and even more real than the phenomena they represent. We are like tourists who experience as little of a new city as possible, preferring to hang out near the Visitors’ Center, heads buried in our ‘apps and maps’. Or like those who see every sight the city has to offer…but through the viewfinder of a camera. We understand travel as the documentation of experiences we never had, a collection of representations (photos, post cards, souvenirs) designed to help us remember things we didn’t experience. Sidebar : Would Remembrance of Things Past be possible today? If Proust had taken his Nikon, or his iPhone, with him to Venice, he might never have experienced the difference between two cobblestones that made it possible for him to telescope several decades into a single event, a quantum of experience. Jean-Luc Picard can’t hold a candle to Marcel Proust. Today, the map often trumps the territory; like children following the Pied Piper, we’ll obey our GPS, even when it leads us into an abyss. Seeing (or feeling) is no longer a valid criterion for believing. Downloading is! Where once we relied on reality to verify our ideas, now we rely on our ideas to validate reality. Then, if theory conflicted with observation, we modified the theory; now, if data contradicts our pre-conceptions, we question the data. Faced with a new problem or a new data set, we are first and foremost ideologues! “Don’t worry, we’ll find a way to work anything ‘new’ into the existing, and politically appropriate, Weltanschauung .” Of course, there’s nothing wrong with mathematics or linguistics; they lie at the heart of our experience of being human. But they are not themselves experiences of the World. Protestations of poets and geeks notwithstanding, you cannot smell rhymes or hear algorithms. But back to my MD and PCP Bots. I accept that reliance on AI can dampen native acuity, but there are workarounds. For example, in my model, MD Bot is simply added to a pre-existing diagnostic team. Carbon and silicon work side by side and the efficiency (accuracy) gains pay for the extra team member many times over. But even if it turns out that there are no acceptable workarounds, I’d still make the switch to MD Bot. Almost 1/3 rd of all the money spent in the US on healthcare is spent treating symptoms that have been misdiagnosed, and that’s one club, the ‘33’, that I do not want to join. So sorry Doc, I’d sooner put my life exclusively in the claws of MD Bot rather than accept a human substitute. But I also understand that my decision will have consequences for me as well as for you and I accept that responsibility as a price I must pay to be an independent, intentional agent. “I wish you well.” *** Sir Luke Fildes’ The Doctor (1891) depicts a quiet nighttime scene in which a physician attentively watches over a gravely ill child while her anxious parents look on in the shadows. Painted with rich detail and warm light, it honors the compassion, vigilance, and moral dedication of doctors, elevating the physician’s role to that of a steadfast guardian of life 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 Lift Up Your Hearts! Faith Has a Future Regis Martin "More than 50 years ago, Joseph Ratzinger said that the life of the Church would be the outcome of her death, just as Easter Sunday was the outcome of Good Friday." ‘‘Think you, when the Son of Man comes, he will find faith upon the earth?’ (Luke 18:8) If the Lord were to come again — say, in the next half-hour — what would the Church look like to him? Would it resemble the one he founded more than 2,000 years ago? That is, in its basic and essential lineaments, would it still be One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic? How vibrant and convincing a faith would he find moving among the People of God? There are only two possibilities, aren’t there? Either the future will faithfully replicate the past as vouchsafed to us by Christ and his successors, the bishops, or certain adjustments having been made along the way to appease the spirit of the age, the Church will cease to be recognizable, despite the numbers that still nominally belong to her. But even that (have you noticed?) is changing. I mean, institutionally speaking, we are seeing a Church in freefall. Amid the spreading decadence of the West, the demographics are all moving in the opposite direction, in ways many of us had not foreseen even as recently as a generation or so ago. In other words, the march of decline continues unabated — indeed, in most First World places, it has become almost a gallop. Not even the mystique of synodality can arrest the spread. Not everyone back then, however, failed to notice the implosive forces underway. In a series of Christmas radio broadcasts made soon after he was appointed Professor of Dogmatic Theology at the University of Regensburg in 1969, the future Pope Benedict XVI had seen it all coming. The future of the Church, declared then-Father Josef Ratzinger, would not be onward and upward. There would be no parallels to match the usual, predictable ascent found in the corporate world. The Church will fall on hard times, he warned, losing much of her erstwhile power and prestige. “She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning,” he said, and continued: She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminish, so will she lose many of her social privileges. In contrast to an earlier age, she will be seen much more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decision. As a small society, she will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members. What are we to deduce from all this? That institutional extinction is imminent? That despite the promises of Christ, the Church will not finally prevail against the gates of hell? Will that be the judgment of history? That like all the other religious eruptions of the past, from the Assyrians to the Zoroastrians, her time in the sun will soon be done? And so we must just deal with it? Is that the future we are to expect? Along with the sobering recognition that, from the beginning, her pretensions have always been over the top? But hold on a minute. If those are the facts and only delusional people persist in thinking otherwise, why wasn’t that the conclusion to which Father Ratzinger’s analysis drove him? Because he comes down in a very different place. By the strangest of all paradoxes, he believed that the life of the Church would be the outcome of her death, just as Easter Sunday was the outcome of Good Friday. The way up and the way down will turn out to have been the same way. Only thus will the true nature of the Church be seen once more. That in everything that stands athwart her life, in the teeth of all the forces arrayed against her, the Church will find her essence afresh and with full conviction in that which was always at her center: faith in the triune God, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, in the presence of the Spirit until the end of the world. The springs of rejuvenating life lie very deep down, far below the findings of science and sociology, where the data are all neatly laid out like Tom Eliot’s “patient etherized upon a table.” We are not to look upon the Church as though reduced to so many numbers set out on a spreadsheet. It is precisely what cannot be seen, nor measured by busy little bean counters, that finally matters. "The Church’s future," said Ratzinger, "will issue from those whose roots are deep, who live from the pure fullness of their faith. It will not issue from those who accommodate themselves merely to the passing moment … nor will it issue from those who take the easier road, who sidestep the passion of faith, declaring false and obsolete, tyrannous and legalistic, all that makes demands upon men, that hurts them and compels them to sacrifice themselves." In a word, renewal will come from the saints, from those on whom the Church has always depended, even as they depend upon her for the grace to perdure. And when the time of trial is over, when the period of sifting ends, about which we haven’t the skill set to fix a date, real power will flow forth from her loins. Because she will then have become, says the future Pope Benedict XVI, “a more spiritualized and simplified Church.” Meanwhile, the denizens of “a totally planned world will find they themselves unspeakably lonely.” If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover her as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret. Seeing all this unfold from the vantage point of more than a half-century ago, knowing the certainty of the coming crisis and fearing the awful scale of the devastation it will bring, he nevertheless ends on a note, not just of realism, but of hope: The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is already dead … but the Church of faith … no longer the dominant social power to the extent that she was recently; but she will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man’s home, where he will find life and hope beyond death. Originally published on National Catholic Register and republished with permission from the author. Image: Amédée Varin (1818-1883), “Christ Walking on Water” (photo: Public Domain) Regis Martin Regis Martin , S.T.D., is a professor of theology and a faculty associate with the Veritas Center for Ethics in Public Life at Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio. He podcasts at In Search Of The Still Point and his latest book, Looking for Lazarus: A Preview of the Resurrection , was released in 2021. purpose and devotion. Return to our 2024 Beach Read Previous Next

< Back The Faith Chaplain Challenge In Matthew 28: 18-20, Jesus tells his followers, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” However, in the secular world, this isn't always easy, nor is it even permitted in many cases and situations. Inspired by this issue's Being a Faith Chaplain in a Secular World , tell us how you navigate not just your faith in the workplace, but also how you share your faith with others in places where your personal beliefs aren't always popular or even welcomed. Email your story (300 words or less) and we will choose one winner whose experience will be shared with our readers in our next issue. Email editor@aletheiatoday.com. Be sure to put "Faith Challenge" in the subject line. Previous Share Return to the Table of Contents, Beach Issue Next Return to the Table of Contents, June Issue

Rabbi Dr. Jon Kelsen is Dean at YCT, where he has previously taught Talmud and Pedagogy. Prior to this, Rabbi Kelsen was Rosh Kollel of the Drisha Kollel as well as an adjunct faculty member at the Pardes Institute. He received ordination from Rabbis Daniel Landes and Zalman Nehemiah Goldberg, and received his doctorate in Education and Jewish Studies at New York University as a Wexner Graduate Fellow. < Back Rabbi Dr. Jon Kelsen Contributor Rabbi Dr. Jon Kelsen is Dean at YCT, where he has previously taught Talmud and Pedagogy. Prior to this, Rabbi Kelsen was Rosh Kollel of the Drisha Kollel as well as an adjunct faculty member at the Pardes Institute. He received ordination from Rabbis Daniel Landes and Zalman Nehemiah Goldberg, and received his doctorate in Education and Jewish Studies at New York University as a Wexner Graduate Fellow. Parshat Emor: Making it All Count

Philosophy, theology, and science merge in Aletheia Today, the magazine for people who believe in God and science. Process philosophy, scripture study, and critical essays bring science and faith together with western philosophers like Alfred North Whitehead and Jean-Paul Sartre. Deep dives into the meaning of the Old Testamant, the New Testament, and where the Bible fits into modern-day society. Is God real? Does Heaven exist? Find your answers to life's questions at Aletheia Today. Inside This Issue The Great Convergence Science & the Yellow Submarine – Part II In this issue of ATM, we will finish our journey. We will visit all the remaining “seas” (I promise), plus Pepperland itself. So, hang on tight! The Nature of Time Confining events within a single order of magnitude reinforces our tendency to categorize events as past, present, or future. After all, if a quantum of experience can be no more than one second long, almost everything must seem past or future from that perspective. Philosophy Imagine! Ridding the world of values comes at a very great price: “…they paved Paradise and put up a parking lot!” Parmenides I Who says there was no Facebook before Zuckerberg? It was just called ‘philosophy.’ Speaking Piraha The hidden grammar censor in our Euro-brains whispers inaudibly, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Why did the speaker place ‘tall’ and ‘basketball’ in the same sentence, unless they are somehow connected?” A major fallacy that comes with a huge price tag. Seen or Unseen, why the Background Matters If a tiny thread had the power to ruin a movie, what in my own life, deep in the background, bears such importance to my bigger picture? And if it’s so important, why isn’t it front and center? Theology Corinthians How is it that God can perform the miracle of Incarnation? Or to put it more accurately, how is it that God is the miracle of Incarnation. The Final Psalms Ultimately, the Kingdom of Heaven is the transfiguration of the historical realm into the eternal realm, according to God’s values. Culture & The Arts Learn to Swym “Language Endures. We Don’t” – now that is a bumper sticker! Social Dynamics Pulling that off was more artistic in his opinion than any of the “new age” stuff out there pushing the envelope. Tweens, Teens, & Young Adults Alice In Looking-glass world, there’s plenty of there and then, but not a whiff of here and now. Xiako Can't Count So, what’s up with the Piraha? How can they get by without numbers? Spirituality Judas Taught Me the Beatitudes This nasty turn unnerved me, so I gathered myself together and drew a table with my comfortable beatitudes on one side and my uncomfortable ones on the other... BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different Land is imbued with holiness, which means that, like God, it is beyond human measures of usefulness or control. The Serenity Prayer Is the Sermon ‘in the can’ after all? Prayer to Combat Disillusionment in Faith Readers React What's the buzz about? Our readers' reactions to Aletheia Today... Additional Reading Can't get enough of Aletheia Today's content? Check out the books that inspire our magazine.

< Back The Haiku Challenge Haiku is a traditional form of Japanese poetry usually consisting of 17 syllables, arranged in three lines of five, seven, and five syllables, respectively. Starting with our Special Beach Issue, each issue of ATM will include Haiku, selected by our editors from submissions by you, our loyal readers. Please send us your Haiku to editor@aletheiatoday.com. Be sure to put “Haiku Challenge” in the subject line, and your seventeen-syllable poem may be shared with the world. (You can read more about haikus and see examples in Haiku Corner in this issue of AT Magazine.) Previous Share Return to the Table of Contents, Beach Issue Next Return to the Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back Meggie Gates Contributor Meggie Gates is a freelance writer living in Chicago, Illinois. In the past, their work has appeared in the Chicago Reader , Southside Weekly , and Vulture Magazine . You can find more of their work or what karaoke bar they're singing at this weekend here. How the Saints Taught Me Feminism

< Back Cordoba 999 David Cowles Dec 6, 2022 “…the city had 260,000 residential units, 80,000 shops, 13,000 looms, 5,000 mills, and 4,000 open air markets… the central library contained over 400,000 volumes (allegedly more than the library at Alexandria before the conflagration.)” It is customary to trash the Middle Ages (500 – 1500 CE). Historians used to refer to this period as the ‘Dark Ages’, and when we wish to describe an incident of extreme violence, we call it going medieval . There is some truth to this characterization, but as we shall soon see, not much . For example, it is true that both the per capita GDP and the literacy rate declined precipitously after the Fall of Rome (476). But these things did not happen in a vacuum. The last 100 years of the Roman Empire had been a ‘feeding frenzy’ as Northern tribes broke through Rome’s defenses, invaded Italy, and sacked Rome, denuding her of her wealth. The economy of the late Roman Empire was undoubtedly bloated. It was a ‘bubble economy’, based in large part on plunder and slavery. It was unsustainable. To make matters worse, the period from 500 to 800 CE was a period of ‘climate change’; drought ravaged the agricultural economy. Then, the advent of Islam in the 7 th century closed the Mediterranean to ‘international’ commerce and put military pressure on Europe’s southern borders. A perfect storm! The meteoric rise of Christianity didn’t help…at least not at first. These pesky goodie-two-shoes were uncomfortable with slavery, had little taste for war, and failed to place ‘personal wealth’ on its proper pedestal. They were, in a word, more concerned with the economy of heaven than they were with the economy on earth. What’s the Federal Reserve to do? All in all, it was undoubtedly a tough 300 years! “A great time to visit, but…” By the coronation of Charlemagne in 800 CE, however, Europe was once again in growth mode, and with growth comes opportunity. The world is being reborn; get in on the ground floor! This is going to be bigger than Microsoft and Apple combined. So begins a 700-year period of progress: social, economic, and intellectual. This was the golden age of Middle Earth, before the Twilight of the Gods , Götterdämmerung ( aka Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment). Shorn of Roman authority, society clearly needed to reorganize, top to bottom, to reflect the new facts on the ground. The resulting feudal system is a work of ‘cosmic genius’…but that’s not the subject of this article. Hint : stay tuned to ATM and TWS for more! Sadly, this cannot be a complete account of the achievements of the Middle Ages; but rather than risk ‘damning with faint praise’, I will limit myself to a single data point: Welcome to Cordova, 999. It is widely assumed that urbanization was a late and ‘imperfect’ development in Medieval history, so let’s just test that hypothesis. Take the money you saved by cancelling your first-class ticket to Lhasa and travel in coach to Cordova, Spain. (Cordova is a more expensive destination because to get there, you need to travel more than 1,000 years… as well as 5,000 miles.) The year is 999, the midpoint of feudal society’s ‘middle age’. Are you expecting a sleepy village with pack animals roaming the streets and residents lounging in precious shade? Disabuse yourself! In 999, Cordova had a population of at least 500,000. To put this in context, that’s more people than live right now in Miami, Atlanta, Cleveland, or St. Louis. To serve this massive population, the city had 260,000 residential units, 80,000 shops, 13,000 looms, 5,000 mills, and 4,000 open air markets. Lest you think this teeming metropolis neglected public works, Cordova had 300 public baths, wide, paved streets, lit every evening by oil lamps, an underground sewerage system, and raised sidewalks to facilitate pedestrian traffic. Farmers relied on irrigation and crop rotation to optimize yield. Nor did Cordova neglect the life of the mind. It has been said that books were more highly prized there than jewels; the central library contained over 400,000 volumes (allegedly more than the library at Alexandria before the conflagration.) “Ok, this is amazing. How come everyone doesn’t know about it this?” It is said that history is written by the winners. True, but more than that, history is written by the would-be winners. The first spin-doctors were historians. The primary purpose of ‘History’ is to provide the now current social order with an appropriate ‘origin story’, one that explains and justifies the world that is . History is first and foremost Mythology. Marx said that the purpose of Philosophy is not to explain the world, but to change it. He might have said the same of History. History has a dual function: to justify the world that is and to shape the world to come. History is Propaganda! 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 Deborah Rutherford Contributor Hi. I am Deborah Rutherford, a Christian wife, passionate about Jesus and her family. I am currently a writer, makeup artist, and sometimes singer. You can find me on my blog at www.deborahrutherford.com. The Sacred Pause of Autumn Embracing the Sacred Season of Summer: Who Will You Be at the End of Summer The Dance of Autumn Prayer for Resting in God's Timing, Ways, and Rhythm

< Back Self, Inc. David Cowles “You’re the CEO of Self, Inc…What’s your mission statement?” You can’t open a business today without a Mission Statement. Before you manufacture a single widget or serve a single burger, you have to tell the world all the good things you’re going to do for it: “Our mission is You , our customer, so we will always deliver a quality product at a fair price. We are committed to maintaining a healthy environment through sustainable business practices and a carbon neutral footprint. We cherish diversity. We offer all members of our business family a competitive, living wage, a generous package of workplace benefits, and opportunities for personal and professional growth.” How’d I do? Around the turn of the century (yes, we can say that now and mean 2000, not 1900), it was fashionable for self-helpers to proclaim, “You are the CEO of Self, Inc.” It’s not wrong. So, M/M CEO, what’s your mission statement? “I just want to be happy, And I want my life partner to be happy too. I want my kids to have happy childhoods, And satisfying adult lives. And, of course, I deserve to be happy too.” Well, sorry, but I won’t be buying any stock in your IPO. Apparently, you didn’t get Life’s memo. I think you should sit down for this. Ready? “No one is happy…and no one is ever going to be happy!” It’s not that life is so terrible (unless it is); it’s because happiness is not a thing. For the most part, life is just life. And life doesn’t make anyone happy. It’s not supposed to! That’s not what life is; that’s not its purpose. Does water make a fish happy? Or does it just enable it to be a fish? When you were very, very small, someone whispered in your ear, “The purpose of life is happiness.” Unlike other whispers, this one took. I mean, why not be happy? As if! No one chooses to be truly miserable, yet all of us are miserable, at least some of the time. Then what is happiness? The absence of misery? Ok – but do we require something more – like ecstasy (not the drug) or euphoria or contentment…? So according to your mission statement, the purpose of life is your happiness. When you say that, do you mean that’s the purpose of all life…or just your life? All life? Then you’re a megalomaniac. Just your life? Then you’re pathetic. Sorry, but you’ve been given the great gift (grift?) of life…and you plan to spend it, How? Crouched in a corner, wrapped in cotton batten, mumbling, “Please don’t hurt me,” until it’s all mercifully over? I’m not on board. If Happiness is my Summum Bonum and if Life is what makes me happy, then “Woe is me!” Life ends, so Happiness must end, and ‘ Bonum ’ must vanish. Good that vanishes certainly can’t be Summum Bonum . If your goal in life is your own personal happiness, then either (1) you are unhappy today, or (2) you are afraid of being unhappy tomorrow. Either way, your happiness is incomplete; so the search for personal happiness is in fact a symptom of unhappiness . I’ve just arrived at Heathrow. “Sir, what is the purpose of your trip? Business or pleasure?” “Business!” I answer, it transforms my restless wandering into an arrow headed trajectory. Now a purpose accomplished can undoubtedly generate a sense of self-satisfaction akin to happiness; but it was not the purpose of my trip. The purpose of my trip was to do business; happiness might be my reaction if the business goes well. Suppose I had answered, “Pleasure!” instead. Pleasure is me drinking real ale on the lawn of a pub called, “The Apple and the Butterfly”, eating steak and kidney pie with a glass of port at lunch, visiting the Tate Modern, and strolling Kew Gardens. Would these pleasures make me happy? “Of course,” you say, automatically. But maybe not! Pleasure and happiness do not always go hand in hand, do they? Happiness is a measure of my success in accomplishing my purpose, but it cannot be that purpose. The instant we make our happiness our purpose, we manifest our unhappiness. Happiness then is a one word oxymoron. Say it, “Happiness!” There, you did it, congratulations, now you’re an ‘Oxy Moron’. Put that on a T-shirt! Purpose does not emerge over the course of an event (it may self-modify); it wraps around the event. Purpose must be present ab initio . There are no purposeless acts, no matter how much we’d like to convince ourselves otherwise. Ultimately, the success of any event, its ‘satisfaction’, is a measure of the degree to which the event fulfilled its purpose. Purpose motivated the event, organized the environment, and energized the action; now it measures the outcome. In the terminology of Alfred North Whitehead, happiness is a subjective form that may accompany an event. It’s not the event itself; it is not the purpose of the event; it’s not the event’s subjective aim . It is not any part of the event itself, nor is it part of the event’s superject (its ‘objective immortality’). Essentially, it’s a superfluous artifact of consciousness, much like the appendix in human physiology. Jack and Jill went up a hill to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and wore a frown, but Jill was filled with laughter. Was the water fetched? Check. Did Jack and Jill both perform as expected? Check. Then how do their moods figure in? Every event has a unique purpose that entails a novel mix of Beauty, Truth, and Justice. So now at last, the sales pitch you’ve been waiting for: Will you hire me to rewrite your mission statement? I was thinking of something along these lines: “Make me a channel of (your) Peace, A conduit of Beauty, Truth, and Love.” Let me know what you think. Or have you heard something like this before? 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. 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< Back Bible Read Backwards David Cowles What would happen if we read the Old Testament in reverse order? From back to front. What if we began with Malachi and ended with Genesis? We are accustomed to reading the Old Testament (OT) ‘in order,’ i.e., from Genesis through Malachi, from the Torah (Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, traditionally ascribed to Moses) through the Prophets. The modern Bible groups the 46 books of OT into four categories: five books of Law (Torah), 16 books of History, seven books of Wisdom, and 18 books of Prophecy. Read this way, the Old Testament tells a coherent story. First (Torah): Creation (Genesis), Liberation (Exodus), Theocracy (Leviticus). Second (History): The transition from Covenant (Exodus) to Theocracy (Leviticus) to Anarchy (Judges) to Monarchy (Samuel) to Tyranny (Kings, Chronicles, et al.), and ultimately to Captivity (Daniel, Ezekiel) in Babylon (c. 600 – 500 B.C.). Third (Prophecy): Even before the exile, social discontent was cresting in Israel and Judea. Power and wealth were concentrated in the hands of a few, and the authority of the state was frequently abused for personal gain. Prophets emerged. They condemned the immorality, the corruption, and the tyranny that had taken over Israel and Judea. They were the revolutionaries of their time. Today, we recognize the same prophetic spirit in St. Paul, Mohammed, Martin Luther, Karl Marx, Martin Luther King…and even Barry Goldwater (“Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue”). Fourth (Wisdom): The prophets’ specific condemnation of the historical situation in which they found themselves is paralleled by the Wisdom Writers’ general condemnation of secular ideology. Both offer a critique of the status quo; both offer a vision of a better future. The period between the repatriation of the Judeans and the birth of Jesus was rich in ‘Wisdom Literature.’ Wisdom material stretches back to Job, David, and Solomon and forward to the time of Jesus, perhaps even including some books of the New Testament (e.g., John, Ephesians, Hebrews, Revelation). Repatriation following the Babylonian Exile gave the Hebrews a chance to start over – a revolutionary’s dream. Just as the first Israelites had formed a social structure ex nihilo in the Wilderness of Sanai, so their descendants would now have an opportunity to do the same. But how? Pick up where they’d left off c. 600 B.C? No way! Return to the values, practices, and social structures characteristic of Israel’s glory days? Way! Since 1776, we have learned a great deal about revolutionary theory and praxis. This period (250 years) will be characterized by future historians not only as the Age of Science, Reason and Technology, but also as the Age of Revolution. We have learned, for example, that all revolutions require three things: (A) A searing indictment of things as they are (status quo). (B) A clear vision of a better world to come (utopia). (C) A practical program to get from point A to point B. Sidebar : Indictment and vision are not just prerequisites for revolution; they are prerequisites for everything, i.e., for all ‘actual entities,’ all events. After all, revolution is an event! All novelty is a reaction against what is, coupled with a vision of what might be. An event builds toward that vision by incorporating other actual entities along the way according to its ‘road map.’ That road map is Torah. In the words of Bobby Kennedy, prophets “see things as they are and ask why ?” (Their answer: idolatry, immorality, injustice, and exploitation.) Wisdom writers “dream of things that never were and ask why not ?” (Same answer: idolatry, immorality, injustice, and exploitation.) The Prophets and the Wisdom writers tell the same story but from different perspectives…and we need them both: the Prophets focus on the specific historical and political situation; the Wisdom writers focus on the futility of a life without God as its guiding principle. The struggle for freedom is ongoing, and it is always waged on two fronts: freedom from the prisons others build for us (prophesy) and freedom from the prisons we build for ourselves (wisdom). But what of revolutionary praxis? How do we get from A to B? This is where most revolutionary programs fail. They get the critique and the vision parts right, but they fall short when it comes to praxis. (Dictatorship of the proletariat? You’ve got to be kidding!) For us, praxis turns out to be the easy part! Long before there were critics and visionaries (prophets and wise guys), there was already a detailed political program to redeem an alienated world – it’s called Torah: 613 rules of conduct designed to promote the general welfare - health, prosperity, justice, and peace. 613 rules? What am I, eight? You call that easy? Are you kidding? 613 rules, yes; eight-years-old old, I wish; easy, you bet; kidding, not one bit! Because there’s a secret, shh! Lean in, and I’ll whisper it to you: “Torah comes with its own Cliffs Notes built in.” (If only Tolstoy, Dickens, and Thackery had been as thoughtful.) The Torah consists of 613 laws (above), 611 of them are specific laws applicable to specific things or in specific situations; 2 of them are general laws, applicable to all things and all situations. Therefore, these two general laws, collectively known as the Great Commandment (Mt. 22: 37-40), summarize the other 611 (tactics) and situate them in the context of a broader strategy: ⮚ “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” (Deut. 6: 5) ⮚ “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Lev. 19: 18b) The genius of the New Testament contribution to this discussion lies in Jesus’ insertion of six keywords between ‘Deuteronomy’ and ‘Leviticus’ (above): “And a second is like it.” There are not two general laws; there is only one, and its two ‘halves’ are mirror images of one another. “On these two commandments, hang all the law and the prophets.” (Mt. 22:40) E pluribus unum ! We have distilled the 613 commandments of the Torah down to just one: the Great Commandment. Bottom line: There is no love of God without love of neighbor, and there is no love of neighbor without love of God. To paraphrase poet John Keats, “That is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know!” The Wisdom writers and the Prophets both call on Israel to return to the ‘glory days’ of Moses, Joshua, the Judges, and King David, but they base their appeals on two very different arguments. The Wisdom writers point out the absurdity inherent in living a totally secular life. Not until the 20th century do we encounter as lucid a presentation of L’absurde as we do in Ecclesiastes (3rd century B.C.). For example: “Vanity of vanities! All things are vanity…I have seen all things that are done under the sun, and behold all is vanity and a chase after wind.” (1:2 – 2:26) It is important to note that the Hebrew word hebel , translated as ‘vanity,’ also means emptiness, futility, and absurdity. Welcome to the 20th century! We don’t need the Written Torah to tell us what’s right or wrong. It is written clearly in the patterns of nature (Oral Torah) and in our hearts. Today, we would say that the Wisdom writers based their argument on Natural Law. The Roman Catholic Church (and many other Christian denominations) embraces the Wisdom thesis: we can learn the will of God by studying nature and by listening to the ‘still small voice’ within us. The Law is written in the Pentateuch… and in the cosmos... and in our hearts. Have you seen the TV series, Young Sheldon ? Sheldon, a pre-teen boy, is growing up in an evangelical Christian family in rural Texas in the 1970s. The only problem: Sheldon does not believe in God; he believes in science. What could possibly go wrong? The Wisdom writers confronted an early version of this mindset 2,500 years before the first televisions began appearing in American living rooms. The key to Young Sheldon is the idea that religion and science are mutually exclusive. They are not! In fact, as the Wisdom writers make clear, they are two sides of one coin. The Prophets, on the other hand, based their appeal, not on nature but on revelation. God may have written his law into the fabric of the cosmos and study of the cosmos may give us some insights into the law, but there’s no need for telescopes or Bunsen burners. God revealed his law to Moses and the people in the Torah. Isaiah, Jeremiah, et al. call on the Israelites to return to the ways of their ancestors, to rediscover, acknowledge, and observe God’s law as it is revealed in Torah. Natural Law and Revelation go hand in hand. God’s Law is written macroscopically in the cosmos, microscopically in Torah, and nanoscopically in every human heart. But suppose today is a backwards day… What would happen if we read the Old Testament in reverse order? From back to front. What if we began with Malachi and ended with Genesis? The Prophets painstakingly dissect the evils of contemporary society. The Wisdom writers point out the absurdity of living one’s life according to the prevailing, secular ideology. Both the Prophets and the Wisdom writers intersperse visions of a post-revolutionary utopia, best summarized by Isaiah 11: 6 - 9: “The wolf will live with the lamb and the leopard will lie down with the kid...the nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain…” So, between the Prophets and the Wisdom writers, we have two of the elements we need for a successful revolution. We have a searing critique of things as they are and a clear and compelling vision of things as they could be. As we have learned repeatedly over the past four centuries, a purely negative critique is unlikely to succeed unless it is accompanied by an appealing vision of an alternative future. Successful revolutions are rarely based on despair; they are almost always based on hope. (That’s why we call them ‘Revolutions of Rising Expectations.’) During the periods of Prophesy and Wisdom, Israel was an absolute monarchy, but its rulers, its kings, were not cut from the same cloth as King David. To overgeneralize, they were incompetent, ineffective, greedy, and corrupt. Reading OT backwards, we move from dictatorship and tyranny to a constitutional monarchy (Solomon, David and Saul), from monarchy to what might best be called ‘benevolent anarchism’ (Judges), and finally from anarchism to Theocracy (Joshua and the Torah). The goal of every revolutionary program is the same (though often expressed in very different terms): “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” What else is there? What else could there be? Here is where praxis comes into play for individuals, as well as for nations: learn the will of God and conform to it! The contemporary revolutionary may elect to follow the 611 specific commandments of Torah or just the two general commandments (i.e., the Great Commandment). Both strategies lead to the same result: the Kingdom of God on Earth. And what is that Kingdom? Reading the Bible backwards, i.e., from Malachi 3:34 through Genesis 1:1, the Kingdom of God is the Garden of Eden! In this reading, Paradise is not a primordial state from which we fell; it is the eschaton for which we strive. So, the Old Testament is the ultimate palindrome. It is the same, whether you read it backwards or forwards. And what of the New Testament? Well, reading the New Testament (NT) in order, i.e., from Matthew through Revelation, is the same as reading the Old Testament from Malachi through Genesis. NT begins with a searing critique of Israel under Roman rule (the synoptic Gospels), and it offers its own foretaste of the Kingdom of Heaven (Revelation). And its revolutionary praxis? “Love one another as I have loved you.” (John 13: 34) David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com. Previous Next

< Back The Nature of Time David Cowles Confining events within a single order of magnitude reinforces our tendency to categorize events as past, present, or future. After all, if a quantum of experience can be no more than one second long, almost everything must seem past or future from that perspective. At first glance, our lives seem to be strings of bead-like events. No sooner have we experienced one sensation, thought, feeling, or action than another takes its place. We have a vague sense that we can string these events along a timeline and group them as past , present , or future . But on further reflection, it is clear that this idea is absurd. Events don’t succeed one another like conscripts boarding a warship; they overlap. I am all at once aware of many sensations, thoughts, feelings, and acts; it’s hardly ever clear when one stops, and another begins. Events are not points…or beads. Events have duration and different events have different durations, and the duration of one event necessarily overlaps with the duration of at least one other event. The human nervous system is attuned to events that fall within a certain range, i.e., events with a duration of somewhere between one second and one-tenth of one second. If an event has a duration of less than one-tenth of a second, we normally don’t register it at all, unless perhaps as undifferentiated background. If an event has duration of more than a second, we normally try to break it up into multiple, sequential events. Our naïve sense that events normally last a second or less has everything to do with our perceptual & cognitive apparatus and absolutely nothing to do with the nature of events themselves. Whatever the world may be, we experience it in one second bursts . There is absolutely no theoretical reason why event duration should be confined within a single order of magnitude. On the contrary, we know that there are events with durations orders of magnitude shorter than a second and there is no reason not to assume that there are other events with durations orders of magnitude longer than a second. Confining events within a single order of magnitude reinforces our tendency to categorize events as past, present, or future. After all, if a quantum of experience can be no more than one second long, almost everything must seem past or future from that perspective. We need to ask a different question: How do the myriad events that constitute our lives relate to one another? Are they always laid out more or less neatly along a timeline, like clothes drying in the sun, or are more complex species of ordering possible? It turns out that any two events may relate to one another in 6 different ways: (1) They may be tangent (i.e., sequential) (2) They may overlap . (3) One may be embedded in the other. A model universe that is connected in these three ways and only these three ways does not fully account for the phenomena of connectedness (solidarity) that we experience in everyday life, or in the laboratory, so we so must continue. In these first three modes, connectivity is a function of overlap: at a point, across a region, or in the entirety. Therefore, in these modes, connected entities do not require space or time to operate, and we do not need a concept of space or time to understand them. On the other hand, the connectivity delivered by these three modes, even working together, is fragile, and in my view, too fragile to account for the persistent and enduring universe we experience. This level of connectivity lacks redundancy (and therefore it lacks resiliency.) It can neither correct itself nor reinforce itself. The entire House of Cards is always ‘just one false negative’ away from total collapse. From here on, though, things get more interesting. The final three modes of connectivity provide the glue needed to hold our world together and allow it to function as an organism: (4) Two events (A and B) may be disjoint, but both events may overlap a common third event (C). This is the special case of relatedness that single-handedly leads to the popular notion of “past, present, future”: when three events are connected in this way, one is commonly, if arbitrarily, thought to be in the past and one in the future of the third event (the so-called present). In this mode, A and B do not overlap. Therefore, A and B do not directly influence one another. A and B both overlap C. Each potentially influences C and both are potentially influenced by C. Therefore, indirectly, A and B may influence one another after all, through the mediation of C. Let’s do a deeper dive! The phenomenon of time ‘happens’ when and only when A influences B and B influences C and no other ‘influential pathways’ are operative. No reflection, no recursion, and no reciprocity; no 3 R’s. But there is no a priori reason to assume that influences are linear. For example, influences couldrecur (as in a loop ) . A could influence B and B could influence C and C could influence A. “Karma is a b*tch!” In this model, A, B, C together constitute a self-organized unity, a triangle, an uber-event snatched from the ‘flow’ of linear time. Perhaps this is the origin of ‘societies,’ groupings of events (or entities) that function, at least sometimes, as one single coordinated entity. So-called societies include the persistent and enduring groupings we know as objects . This phenomenon is what we call recursion ; it lies at the heart of what we call identity . Or perhaps, while A is influencing B, B is busy influencing A. This phenomenon is what we call reciprocation , and it lies at the heart of what we call relationship . Finally, as A is influencing B, A may be influencing itself in the exact same way. “What I do unto others, I do unto myself.” This phenomenon is what we call reflection ; it lies at the heart of what we call growth . In this last case, A’s relation to B is also A’s relation to itself. It is the contention of this essay that events are ultimately connected like the vertices of a Platonic solid (e.g., a tetrahedron), not like points on a line. Every event (node) connects with every other event, exhibiting multiple forms of connectivity in the process. Our naïve concept of linear connectedness is valid only when confined to each individual edge of the Platonic solid, and then only when the connecting line segment is viewed as a vector. Linear connectedness, if it’s even a thing, is a very special and limiting case of the broader, more inclusive, reality. Imagine a child sketching a Tetrahedron on a piece of paper. She starts at a point (call it A) and draws a line segment (vector) from point A to point B. Then she draws another vector from point B to point C and so on until all 4 vertices are connected with each other by these vectors. So, what’s wrong with this? Well, first, does anyone really think this is how Tetrahedra come to be in nature ? Second, note that she cannot complete the Tetrahedron without (1) lifting her pencil off the page or (2) retracing (and reversing) a step. This should set off alarm bells everywhere. Nature does not lift its pencil off the page, nature does not retrace its steps, and nature does not reverse itself. (5) #5 is a more generalized version of #4. We're just extending the notions of #4 to physical fields. Now we’re talking connected and disjoint light cones instead of mere regions. If there is no single event or string of events (C) that connects the fields associated with two disjoint events (A, B), then A and B are said to be simultaneous : in the language of physics, they “lie outside each other’s light cone.” But even simultaneous events may enjoy a species of connectedness. Two events (A, B) may lie outside each other’s light cones, but both may lie in the light cone of a common third event (C). In this case, we can say that A and B are simultaneous with respect to each other but not with respect to C. (6) Finally, two events that lie outside each other’s light cones, which in turn are not mediated by any third light cone, may nonetheless constitute a single event. The two events are said to be entangled . The existence of this mode of connectivity (‘spooky action at a distance’) was a matter of conjecture until John Bell proved it in 1964. “Bell’s Theorem,” as it’s called, has since been verified experimentally by Alan Aspect (1971) and many others. Is this list of possible modes of connection exhaustive? Suppose there are two events that do not enjoy any of these modes of connectedness. What can we say about such an event pair? One thing only: we must say that no such event pair exists ! A and B do not exist for one another. Looking more closely at these modes of relatedness, we can see that they fundamentally resolve into just two modes: Serial Connectedness (#1) and Embedded Connectedness (#3). The remaining modes are hybrids of #1 and #3. This prompts further reflection. Is one mode of connectedness more fundamental, more substructural than the other? Is one a special case of the other? Does one ‘emerge’ from the other? If we could find a phenomenon that exhibited one mode of connectivity and excluded the other mode, that would go a long way toward establishing one mode as the more general, more substructural mode. I believe we can do just that: The 6th mode of connectedness allows two disjoint events (A and B) to function as a single event (C). The phenomenon of quantum entanglement described here requires as an absolute condition that the two disjoint events not connect (serially) with any other events. Any sort of serial connectedness would abort the embedding event, but without an embedding event, the two embedded events would not exist in a common universe (since they would lack any connection to one another). Therefore, without quantum entanglement, Universe as we know it would not exist. Which is what John Bell proved, QED . While we can observe the effects of quantum entanglement only under very specialized laboratory conditions, we should not conclude from that, that such events are rare. I would speculate that the Universe consists of more event pairs with “entangled connectedness” than with any other form of serial or embedded connectedness; but that is mere conjecture. In any case, the existence of entangled connectedness is sufficient to prove that serial connectivity is not a universal characteristic of all events in the Universe. Embedded connectivity, therefore, must be the more general case of connectivity, and, therefore, the sub-structural mode! Imagine that! A mode of connectedness not thought of before 1900 and unproven before 1964, turns out to be the primordial mode of connectedness across the universe. Where does this leave time ? It is a particular manifestation, linear and serial, of a much more varied concept of connectedness. That is the nature of time! David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com. Previous Next