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Explore Aletheia Today's Groundhog 2025 issue: where philosophy, theology, and culture intersect. From Mark’s Gospel to Parmenides, faith, and love—thought-provoking insights await! Inside Resurrection 2025 Philosophy Freedom and/or Democracy? “Who is Peter Thiel? Conservative, libertarian, or 21st century Marxist?” The Eternal Present “The Present is…a series of concentric circles, with its axis perpendicular to linear spacetime…” Theology Is There ‘True Religion’? “We confuse a person’s right to express a hairbrained idea with the notion that that idea should be taken seriously.” Credo Ut Intelligam (Believe Me, I understand.) "I first believed, and only then, and only on the foundation of that belief, did I come to understand." Miracles “…Everything that happens happens only once…there is nothing under the Sun that is not new! Being and novelty are synonymous.” Ephesians 2:10 “In this one verse…St. Paul proposes a radically new model of what it means to be a human being.” Culture & The Arts How is the Cosmos Like DNA? “Most humans share about 96% of their DNA coding with common swine; politicians share 98%.” I Led 5 Lives “Everyone is right in their own eyes; therefore everyone else must always be wrong. Sound familiar? No wonder the world’s in a perpetual state of war!” Spirituality Quantum Theology Causation cascades through the cosmos until... New Life Through Pain "New life brings with it the joy of unquenchable hope, but a careless memory forgets that, like childbirth, new life comes only through great trial and, at times, pain." Hidden Hope in Spring’s Awakening Though hidden, life prepares for emergence in spring. Everyday Resurrections: The Divine Pattern of Healing and Transformation "Do you know that as a human being created in the image of God, you can experience everyday resurrections as part of God's pattern of healing and transformation?" 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 Sacred Pause of Autumn Deborah Rutherford "In our spiritual rest, we draw near to God and bask in His presence in prayer, our Bibles, and His beautiful creation." Then He arose and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, "Peace, be still!" And the wind ceased and there was a great calm. Mark 4:39 NKJV My husband and I were captivated by the first fall leaves that descended gracefully as the wind picked up. Like all storms, this one came and went, shaking the globe, and the leaves fell like snow in autumn. At that precise moment, I sensed a profound invitation from the Lord and all His creation to step out of the glass globe—our windowed house—and into the open. This invitation was not just to feel the cool air on our faces or pick up a leaf, but to experience a "sacred pause." This is where we can step back from the storms of life, whether brooding, gales, or on the horizon, with complete confidence that just as Jesus rebuked the wind and calmed the sea, He can do the same for us. This sacred pause is a moment where we take a break from the busyness and demands of life and instead relish quiet communion, drawing near to our Creator. It is a time to reflect, feel the Creator's touch and caress, and partake in the beauty of autumn. This intentional pause for deep connection and meditation with God strengthens and refreshes us. Autumn is the perfect season to pursue wonder. Did you know that God has been pausing since He first created the world? In Genesis 1:31, we read: "Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day" (NKJV). Yes, during God's six days of creation, He paused daily to look at His creation and delighted in it: • God paused. • God looked at His creation. • God delighted in His creation. God invites us to delight with Him in this sacred pause. Unsurprisingly, God's creations, including us, bring Him immense joy. This is how much God loves us. Isn't autumn a unique and perfect opportunity to slow down and partake in the sacred pause with God? To share in His delight and seek His wonder? God created us to have a relationship and fellowship with Him and to enjoy His creations. Our participation is welcomed and vital for revitalizing and refreshing our weary, storm-ridden souls. There will be times soon enough when we must step back into our daily routines, but in this interlude, we will be refreshed and strengthened for the ebbs and tides of life. In autumn, the Lord beckons us to draw near to Him and all of creation in a celebration. Are we not awestruck when we wake to vibrant hues painted on the sunrise? Every day, as we walk outside, a new leaf glimmers gold, followed by reds and oranges. The air is fragrant with fresh pine and foliage, while our kitchens simmer with spices and warming stews. The beauty of this lovely season is a testament to God's majesty and creation. We must pause with our Creator in autumn's celebration—how can we not! Here, we recognize that we are more than to-do lists, jobs, troubles, and schedules; we are, in fact, a part of creation itself. By pausing, we find we are in step with creation. I do not know about you, but I would rather be a part of the creation dance than apart from it. Our porch party lights are the stars twinkling in the sky. The feast is laid out in the fields, and the orchestra is the flocks of migrating birds going home. Oh, we belong too, and I find this so comforting and reassuring, don't you? We are part of our Creator's beautiful symphony. Autumn is the time of year when the Lord invites us to pause with Himself and creation. In this pause, we reconnect with our Creator and all of creation. As the warmth of summer fades and cooler temperatures arrive, all creation begins a transformation. This collaboration between the Creator and the created has been ongoing since the beginning of time, and we are an integral part of it. At this time of year, nature transforms to prepare to rest for winter; shouldn't we do the same? In Psalm 46:10, the psalmist writes, "Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” (NKJV). Here again, God is inviting us to pause with Him. In this sacred pause, we experience God's presence and sovereignty in creation. When we draw near to God, He draws near to us. "Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded" (James 4:8 NKJV). A pause may seem counterproductive with all the delights of the fall season or our day-to-day demands, but that is precisely why God asks us to be still, to draw near to Him—to pause. Here in this sacred pause, we savor God's goodness and delight in what He has prepared for us. There is a place for us at His bountiful table. In all this, God prepares and strengthens us for approaching situations, transformation, and new blooms. But just as nature needs a rest, so do we. In our spiritual rest, we draw near to God and bask in His presence in prayer, our Bibles, and His beautiful creation. But how do we pause with the Creator and embrace autumn's beauty? Here are some ways to pause, reflect, and connect with God and nature this autumn: • Pray and reflect as you read your Bible. Ask God questions like: Do I need to let go of anything? What is my growth and transformation in this season? Am I depleted from life's tempests, and how can I be strengthened and refreshed, Lord? • Step out into creation by going on a nearby hike, visiting a pumpkin patch, or attending a fair (I love seeing all the farm animals at our fair). • Rejoice in the fields' harvest and reflect on your own harvest. Taste the harvest foods, such as apples, pumpkins, and blackberries. • Listen to the music of the wind, the rustling leaves, bird songs, and the crackling of campfires. • Observe the stars at night and feel the universe singing a beautiful song. Immerse yourself in the beauty of autumn, and let it resonate within you. • Gather to celebrate and give thanks to the Lord. Open your home for long, lingering conversations, dinners, and candlelight. • Look for the unexpected blessings, and you will find them. Since the beginning of time, this sacred pause has coaxed the temperatures down and caused the trees to transform. The harvest is ready in the fields. All these blessings, abundance, goodness, and beauty bring joy to our hearts. In our sacred pause, let us rejoice in the Lord and dare ourselves to gather and prepare candlelit dinners and have those long conversations. Let us pursue God’s wonder! This sacred pause leads to the Holy Feasts, Advent hymns, and Holy Days. As we pause to celebrate the harvest, we also plant the seeds in anticipation of the coming Christmas season. The ebb and flow of creation's seasonal pause is God's masterpiece, the beauty of life. We were created to live in creation, not apart from it. There will always be storms on the horizon—some seen, some waited for, some just dumped—but with intentional drawing near in the presence of God, we will be strengthened for the days ahead. A Sacred Pause Prayer Dear Heavenly Father, Thank you for creating me and all Your creations. How loving of You to pause, look at, and delight in me. I accept Your invitation to draw near as I read, pray, and linger in my Bible. I delight in Your creation this autumn and will pursue wonder. I yearn to be in Your Presence! Help me to slow down this season so I can rejoice in You. Help me to be still. Do not let a day pass where I do not step out into creation and delight in Your beauty and love. In this sacred pause, strengthen me, Lord, for the coming storms of life. I know You will always be with me. I rejoice in You, Lord, who brings hope in the breeze, transformation, and harvest as I gather to dwell, celebrate, and prepare my heart for You. In Jesus' name, Amen. Deborah Rutherford is a Christian wife who loves to write stories, devotionals, and poetry. She is also an award-winning makeup artist. Deborah shares her journey of faith, joy, and beauty on her blog at www.deborahrutherford.com and social media. She is a contributing writer for Aletheia Today Magazine , Kingdom Edge Magazine and Gracefully Truthful Ministries and has a devotional in the book “Shepherd on Duty: Promises of God you Can Trust ” (Arabelle Publishing) and the Calla Press, Literary Journal Spring 2023. Return to Harvest 2024 Previous Next

“It is the uniqueness of events that 'creates' spacetime; it is not spacetime that makes events unique.” < Back Who R U? - The Caterpillar David Cowles Mar 1, 2023 “It is the uniqueness of events that 'creates' spacetime; it is not spacetime that makes events unique.” I’m reading an innocuous book about DNA when I suddenly come upon a sentence that snaps my head back: “Many SNP (genetic) variants have no known consequence…but some can be crucial to who you are.” - DNA Demystified by Alan McHughen. If your head did not snap back, don’t worry; few heads would (snap or worry). But for me, this sentence is an epiphany…an epiphany of error! In fact, it would be a challenge to craft a sentence in ordinary English that was more broadly wrong than this one: “SNP variants…can be crucial to who you are.” Try, “The Patriots won every Superbowl ever played.” Wrong – it just seems that way sometimes; but this erroneous sentence is just narrowly wrong , so it doesn’t compete with McHughen’s much broader error. May I belabor the point? Telling someone they are something when they’re not is just plain cruel, even for us neo-Machiavellians. Example: In 2004, misread exit polls indicated a landslide victory for John Kerry (vs. G. W. Bush). I didn’t vote for John Kerry that year, but I have always sympathized with him. Cruel! Back to McHughen: My DNA is no part of who I am. It’s part of my world, the world I live in, but it’s not part of me : a crucial distinction. Let’s fall back on a ridiculously trite metaphor: a game of cards (doesn’t matter what game). The cards are dealt. My crowd is fond of saying, “It’s not a hand, it’s a foot.” Hand or foot, it’s what I was dealt, and it’s what I’m going to have to play. I was hoping for a “grand slam” (bridge or whist). IRL, I was hoping to play for the Boston Celtics. My hand is a jumble of 7’s and 8’s. My height is 5’ 9’’ on tip toes. I probably won’t get my grand slam, and I probably won’t play pro ball. (That doesn't mean I can’t try, but trying is not doing. I am guaranteed the unfettered right to try; I am not guaranteed positive results.) I am not those cards, and I am not this body. These are things I’ve been given to work with. So far so good, but here’s where the metaphor breaks down. In cards, I am the person behind the cards, actively playing them. IRL there is no ‘man behind the curtain’, no ‘ghost in the machine’. Let me explain. Most of the 30 trillion cells that make up my body contain a full ‘copy’ of my DNA (exception: red blood cells), but none of those cells is me. Obviously. But what about all those cells taken together? Are they me? What about the ever-evolving network of cellular interactions? Still not me. So, back to the Caterpillar’s question: “Who R U?” How about we begin with actual experience? After all, at the end of the day, there is nothing else. According to 20th century British philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead, to be is to experience and be experienced; so ‘experience’, let’s start there. So, how do you experience you ? Certainly not as the collection of cells we call a body (or a brain). But it’s not just that I am not a cell, a collection of cells, or even a network of cells. It’s that I am not even like any of these things! It’s not that I am ‘different’ from my cells; whatever I am is entirely unlike those cells. There are no parameters for comparison. A red ball is not a blue box. But we can compare them according to color, shape, utility, etc. No such comparison is possible between me and anything other than me (e.g., my cells). ( Sidebar : Imagine how long it must have taken civilization to convince our ‘best minds’ that the experience we call “I” is just a culture of unicellular organisms in a multidimensional petri dish! How do you do that? How do you make people believe something that silly? Why are we too anxious to think of ourselves as a ‘thing’; is this what Erich Fromm meant by “Escape from Freedom”?) Experience yourself. Take it in. Now nose around. Are you ‘like’ anything you hear, see, taste, smell, or touch? Of course not. You are an entirely unique phenomenon. So am I. In fact, you are not even like me …nor am I like you. Truth to tell, I have no idea what it’s like to be you, or a network of cells; I have no idea what it’s like to be anything at all or even what it’s like to be like something. I am, period. There’s nothing else. I am not even ‘experience’ itself; I experience experiencing. I am not the man behind the curtain: there is no man, there is no curtain, just Oz…and not-Oz. I am not the ghost in a machine: there is no ghost and no machine. It goes even deeper: I am that I am not something other than myself. My parents would be pleased: I am not like those boys who jumped off the bridge. Ok then, so what am I? Nothing? Precisely! Nothing, i.e., no thing. I am not a ‘thing’ and neither are you. Consider the alternative : Suppose I am like something else or, what amounts to the same thing, suppose I am something else. Either way, I am superfluous. The universe doesn’t need two of anything: “Lord, we don’t need another mountain…” The universe does not need carbon copies. To whatever extent I am something else or like something else, I am redundant, and the universe hates redundancy. “Idle hands”, you know… Being is a cosmic censor, relentlessly rooting out waste (e.g., duplication) before it can form. As a result, nothing is duplicative, nothing is superfluous. Again, according to Whitehead, to be is to be both novel and consequential. Mythology recapitulates cosmology. Being is Paradise, the Garden of Eden. (In Hebrew, Eden means ‘place of pleasure’; in Aramaic, it means ‘fruitful’.) But, as we know from Genesis , in Eden ‘one small step’ can turn into ‘one giant leap’ – out of Paradise. How so? A single instance of duplication would create a loop, and a single loop would freeze the universe in an endless and barren cycle of soul-numbing repetition. If anything repeats, then nothing is, was, or will ever be. My new political party will have as its slogan: “No novelty, no being!” Consider Dante’s Divine Comedy . Unwittingly, Dante ambles into the gated community we know as ‘Hell’: Dante’s Inferno , a spiral consisting of 9 descending levels (‘circles’) with the grand prize, Satan, waiting at the inflection point, the nadir of the funnel. Dante walks through Hell, past Satan, into Purgatory and eventually up to Paradise. Now suppose that just one of those infernal ‘circles’, makes no difference which one, doubles back on itself. Dante would be trapped in Hell forever, endlessly repeating the same journey. That’s the price of a single ‘error’. That’s what’s meant by the doctrine of Original Sin . Imagine living in a never-green world, bereft of all novelty, endlessly repeating itself until the ‘crack of doom’. Compared to this, Dante’s Inferno is a trip to Six Flags. One single loop, one single repetition, and all creativity is forever banished from the realm. Fortunately, there are no such loops; the universe makes no such error. We’re some 15 billion years into it and so far, not one error. Imagine you’re married to the same person for 15 billion years and never once have a fight. That’s what we’re dealing with here. The evidence is ‘merely’ inductive, but I am willing to go out on a limb and make a leap of faith (Kierkegaard beware): there will be no such error, ever! How can that be? We appear to be protected from error by some sort of omnipotent and infallible cosmic censor . Everything that is, in so far as it is, is unique. “How do I know? Occam’s Razor tells me so.” The fact that the cosmos has a censor should give us profound hope. It would take so little to make this world a living Hell. Just one error out of googles of transcriptions et voilà , ‘everlasting fire’. The very fact that there has been no such error, and apparently won’t be, can’t be, should encourage us to hope that Hell is empty (except perhaps for the Prince of Darkness) or even non-existent (good news for Lucifer, ‘light bearer’). We are offering a free tour of Hell in this issue of ATM . Sidebar : Non-believers (e.g., Bertrand Russell, Michael Ruse) make a lot of the so-called Problem of Evil. The real problem is a Problem of Good . How do you account for the fact that at the deepest possible level, the Universe is perfect? How’d that happen? Note : This is not a ‘best of all possible worlds’ argument. (Lie quiet Leibniz, I mean that is Gottfried Leibniz, c. 1600 CE) We do not live in the best of all possible worlds – far, far, far from it; but we do live in a perfect (error free) world. Memo to YHWH : There’s no more need for flood or fire. Just allow a single transcription error to slip through and walk away. Ah, but you can’t do that, can you? You tried to with Job , but that did not end well…for you. Thank you for being you! What we call ‘spacetime’ is the physical manifestation of cosmic censorship. The uniqueness of an event’s spacetime location certifies that it is not a duplicate; my coordinates are both my ‘X’ and God’s stamp of authenticity: “Inspected by #1 ”. Many things overlap with me in spacetime, but nothing else occupies the precise region that I occupy. What is co-incident with me, is me! Shift that locus a single nanodegree et voilà , something new. But note, and this is key, it is the uniqueness of events that creates spacetime; it is not spacetime that makes events unique. Topology recapitulates ontology. So, what about this body, those cells, that DNA? None of that is me; but that doesn’t mean it’s not important. These things are part of the world I’ve inherited. My experience of the world is mediated through my genetic makeup, but I am not those genes or that world. It is not enough to say that I (ego) cannot be equated with me (id), that I am-not me. Instead, we need to say I am not-me . It is not just that there is some sort of displacement between myself as I and myself as me. Being I is not-being me . Being I is being not-me! I come to be only by negating (‘being not’) what is. This “I” is very misleading. It implies something ‘other’ than something else. In one respect, “I” is as different from everything else as anything can be; in another respect, it’s no different at all. There is no “I” apart from the world, there is no Wizard directing affairs on Oz. I-ness is embedded in the world, as it’s active negation. Ontologically speaking, ‘not’ is not an adverb or a conjunction, ‘not’ is an active voice, indicative mood verb! ~A ɛ A. ~A is the proverbial snake curled up at the core of being, A. So, “Who R U?” The caterpillar was so 19th century! He asked the quintessential question of his time, the era mislabeled as “The Enlightenment”, i.e., part of the nightmare (history) from which James Joyce says we’re struggling to awake. ‘Who R U’ is a meaningless string of vocables. I am no-who. Who-ness and I-ness are incompatible categories. Backed against a wall by his Christian and Communist critics, Jean-Paul Sartre reluctantly answered the caterpillar’s question: U R ‘Freedom’. ( Existentialism as a Humanism ) U R that you can be whoever or whatever you want to be. Whitehead coined the phrase, “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness”. To understand our genes and our experiences as ‘us’, or even as part of ‘us’, is to succumb to this fallacy. Sidebar : Your DNA and my DNA are 99.9% the same. Yet, my experience of the world is radically different from yours, even adjusting for the fact that we experience objectively different events. Not convinced? Ok, my DNA is 50% the same as a banana’s. (Many people have told me that I am ‘bananas’ but I don’t think they meant that I experience the world the same way a banana does…or maybe that’s exactly what they meant.) We were born after 1750, so we are enlightened (whether we want to be or not); some would even say we’re woke . But woke to what? To the fact that we are star-stuff, that we are cogs in a mechanical universe, that our lives are determined by the forces of physics, sociology, psychology, et al? I am the sum of my gender, my race, my culture, my nationality, my socio-economic class, my upbringing, and the remnants of a host of more or less ‘accidental’ events that constitute my life story – NOT! I am anything but these things! No, I’m serious: anything but! I am the but ! “I am the Walrus.” If I were what the world thinks I am (above), there would be no need for me to be at all. I would be superfluous, and the universe could dispense with me. Occam’s Razor would require it. At most, I could be the nodal point of forces outside my control…or ken. But an intersection of beings is not itself a being. I am, I am nobody’s copy, I am not superfluous. To paraphrase Job, “If the cosmos cancels me, it will be the loser for it.” I am the Walrus (along with all ‘others’, of course); I am the universe’s source of novelty and its wellspring of intensity. “Here I am Lord, I come to do your will.” Image: Alice in Wonderland. Walt Disney Productions. 1951 David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Return to our Spring 2023 Table of Contents Share Previous Next Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Click here. Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, September Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back Nihilism David Cowles Oct 8, 2021 Nihilism comes in two flavors: Ontological Nihilism (“Nihilism of Being”) and Ethical Nihilism (“Nihilism of Value”). Shakespeare (anticipating post-Enlightenment science: bootstrapping, heat death, entropy, etc.) would be an example of an ontological nihilist: “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.” (The Tempest) Nihilism comes in two flavors: Ontological Nihilism (“Nihilism of Being”) and Ethical Nihilism (“Nihilism of Value”). Shakespeare (anticipating post-Enlightenment science: bootstrapping, heat death, entropy, etc.) would be an example of an ontological nihilist: “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.” (The Tempest) Nietzsche (anticipating much of 20th century philosophy: Camus, Ayer, et al.), would be an example of an ethical nihilist: “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 Gods) For the Scholastic Philosophers of the Middle Ages (Aquinas, Maimonides, et al.), this dichotomy posed no problem because they regarded Being and Value (Good) as synonymous. Since ‘to be’ is self-evidently ‘good’ (as opposed to ‘not to be’ – sorry Hamlet), Being and Value were understood simply as different ways of looking at the same phenomenon. Today, however, this view has few adherents. Modern philosophers do not regard ‘being’ (or existing) as a ‘quality’ of that which is. Heidegger spoke for all of modernism when he separated his world into two elements: Dasein (that it is) and Wassein (what it is). Out of an entirely different philosophical tradition, Alfred North Whitehead anticipated Heidegger when he divided his cosmos into ‘eternal objects’ (what it is) and ‘actual entities’ (that what-it-is is). Yet Ontological and Ethical Nihilists end up in the very same place…which is ‘no place’ and ‘no thing’. Connecting Ontological Nihilism to ‘nothing’ is easy; connecting Ethical Nihilism requires an intermediate step. The Ethical Nihilist does not preclude the existence of ‘something’ per se. However, that something has no origin and no destiny. It has no purpose or meaning; and it reveals no necessary connections, no pre-ordained order. Whatever appears as ‘order’ is entirely subjective and merely accidental. It is chaos, pure and simple, and parallels the state of things prior to “Fiat Lux” (Genesis): “…without form or shape with darkness over the abyss and a mighty wind.” So perhaps we should reevaluate the views of the Scholastic philosophers. We may at least say that Value is a pre-requisite for Being. Being per se discloses Value and Value per se necessitates Being. 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 Last Atheist David Cowles Mar 4, 2025 “The hypnotic effect of science, reinforced by technology and economic growth, is starting to wear off. The patient is waking up!” Once upon a time not so very long ago, almost everyone believed in God. I mean how could you not? Look at the stars, look at the earth, look at the abundance and variety of life around you; it all can’t just happen to be this way, it can’t just happen to be at all. There has to be a God; it wouldn’t be ‘sane’ to think otherwise. Unfortunately, conviction is such matters often translates into intolerance. Prior to 1500, all serious metaphysical exploration was required to acknowledge God’s (or gods’) role. Then we became Enlightened . Over the last 500 years we have pushed out, way out, the frontiers of knowledge. Now we can account for most phenomena by linking one phenomenon to another. Over these same 500 years, we have built a new cosmic map based on these ‘explanatory’ connections. We’ve sketched out a new mappa mundi ; we’ve stitched together a new logos . With each new ‘phenomenon explained’, our felt need for divine agency diminished. While we’re not home yet, we feel we can, Moses like, see ahead to the Promised Land: in this case a TOE – a Theory of Everything, a theory of everything that does not include God. We are, after all, ourselves already on the edge of omniscience. Unlike Nietzsche, we have not killed God; more like Sartre, we have rendered God superfluous. But per Occam’s Razor, superfluity = nullity; so we are ‘Nietzscheans’ after all, albeit a kinder, gentler version. If we are not ‘there yet’, we are close to the moment when we will be able to say, “Almost no one believes in God anymore and ‘only a crazy person’ could believe in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic version of things. As for me and my tribe (Joshua) we’ll put our faith in science; it’s the only map we need.” Natural processes have replaced Divine intentions in our cosmic etiology. The phenomenal patterns that had beguiled our ‘unenlightened’ minds into a belief in God are now having precisely the opposite effect: they have convinced us that we no longer need even to entertain the God Hypothesis . The number of people identifying their religious preference as ‘atheist, agnostic or none’ has increased exponentially over the past 50 years. Even among those identifying with a particular religion, the ranks of those actively participating in faith based activities (e.g. liturgy) is thinning out, rapidly. Not too long ago, a book titled The Last Catholic in America was on the best seller list. It seemed reasonable to assume that ‘the superstition of religion’ might finally be a thing of the past for homo sapiens . In the next century, Karl, when people want opiates, they’ll get them at a pharmacy or a ‘head shop’ rather than a church. From this vantage, the Intellectual History of the West writes itself: Prior to 1500, folks ‘proved’ the necessary existence of God by appealing to the evidence of design in the World. After 1500, folks began to ‘prove’ that God was non-existent, or at least superfluous, by appealing to the exact same evidence, i.e. design. It’s all very neat and tidy, isn’t it? If only it made sense! In fact, our so-called TOE is the paradigmatic Rube Goldberg contraption. Like Ptolemy’s cosmology prior to Galileo, our logos depends on a menagerie of outlandish improbabilities. By some estimates, we have identified as many as 90 totally unexplained and apparently independent (unrelated) physical properties and mathematical constants where a deviation of less than 1% from inferred or measured values would preclude the existence of a cosmos . Now ‘only a crazy person’ could think that the current model holds. The hypnotic effect of science, reinforced by technology and economic growth, is starting to wear off. The patient is waking up! Our heartfelt conviction that an explanation of ‘the World’ can be found in that World alone is wearing thin – we are experiencing yet another crisis of faith, 500 years on! This is not a revitalized attempt to prove the existence of God by appealing to the Argument from Design; it is an effort to suggest that evidence that design is immanent in the world does not preclude a transcendent explanation. The twin mysteries of Being and Consciousness, which seemed on the verge of solution a half century ago, now seem intractable. We need a new approach, a new intellectual paradigm, a new Galileo. It’s time to take our all-terrain vehicle off-road . There is some evidence that the birth pangs of this new paradigm may be underway. A belief in God no longer automatically spells the immediate end of an academic career. Plus, a recently released study by the highly respected Pew Research suggests that the decline in religious affiliation may have leveled off: In 2000, 28% of respondents identified as ‘none’; that number rose to 31% in 2020. Now it has reverted to 28%. Over the same period, 64% identified as ‘Christian’, declining to 60%, reverting to 63%. This is not a recommendation to buy Vatican City municipal bonds. A renewed tolerance for the Transcendent does not necessarily translate into a resurgence of previously popular faiths. In fact, that will only happen, in my view, if those faiths find a way to connect their pre-Renaissance creeds with post-Enlightenment paradigms. Just as likely, new forms of spirituality will rise up and infiltrate, co-opt, or replace existing institutional religions. There are early signs that this may be happening as well. Since 2007, the number of respondents professing a non-Christian religious affiliation has almost doubled; on the other hand, less than 1% now identify as Episcopalian, the traditional religious affiliation of America’s ruling class. I make no predictions. Right now, it’s a ‘jump ball’. However, I do believe that we’ve entered an era characterized by an increasing tolerance for metaphysical speculation…and that alone is a good thing! 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.

“The moral value of an event lies in the act itself, not in its conformity to a set of norms and not in its consequentiality…every event is its own end!” < Back Moses, Machiavelli, and Morality David Cowles Jul 15, 2024 “The moral value of an event lies in the act itself, not in its conformity to a set of norms and not in its consequentiality…every event is its own end!” Whether it’s a copy of the 10 Commandments posted on your classroom wall or a list of ‘Daddy’s House Rules’ stuck on your refrigerator door, when you’re a kid you learn ‘morality’ as a set of rules. In fact, the foundation of Western ethics, the Torah , looks like one giant rules-based moral code – all 4 books and all 613 mitzvahs . While Judeo-Christian ethics proceeded along several different tracks, a serious challenge to rules-based morality was not mounted until c.1500 CE when Nicollo Machiavelli (1469 – 1527) proposed an alternative better suited to emerging ‘modern’ attitudes. In lieu of a system based on rules he proposed a system based on results: “The end justifies the means”. Note the sea-change: our focus has shifted from the past (experience, memory, custom, legislation, and revelation) to the future (technology, efficiency, productivity and profit). There’s at least one problem with this: the real future is nothing like the real past! We know what we know about the past in the ways that we know it. What we know about the future is different both in substance (content) and in form. And we know it in very different ways. We research the past; we predict the future. In ways I’m sure he didn’t imagine, Machiavelli played Chanticleer ; but instead of summoning the dawn, he summoned ‘the great darkness’ known as the Enlightenment. No wonder we were able to sell so many tickets to Game #8 of the 1956 World Series! By taking the ethical focus off the concrete event, the means , and shifting it to its ephemeral consequence, the end , Machiavelli provided a readymade, universal justification for every human engineered horror imaginable. Compare this to Moses: “Thou shalt not kill.” Ok, we can still fudge that with our convoluted doctrines of just war, death with dignity, reproductive freedom, self-defense, and retributive justice; but we can’t make it go away entirely. For that we needed Machiavelli: now the act of killing , like all acts, is itself morally neutral. Moral value comes from the results, the consequences of an act, not from any aspect of the act itself. That’s saying a lot! We’re not only throwing out the action per se but also its motive, its intent, and the method of its execution. So, we justify genocide, nuclear war, et al., based on imagined, long term, positive consequences. A bit hard to swallow but not to worry: 300 years later, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill would give Machiavelli a much-needed make-over. In the ‘spirit of the spin’, they reframed ‘the end justifies the means’ as ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’. Clever, but note that the focus remains on consequences rather than on acts themselves. Sidebar : Intellectual History is full of similar progressions. For example, Matthew and Luke ‘cleaned-up’ Mark to get the Gospel message ready for prime time . First year philosophy students don’t necessarily warm to Machiavelli’s rather dry presentation of his ethic. But when they hear the same message softened by Bentham and Mill and presented under its new name, Utilitarianism , they jump on board. In fact, when college students are first exposed to idea of Utilitarianism , their usual reaction is, “Of course!” This by itself should raise an eyebrow. Whenever an idea goes from inconceivable to irrefutable in a relatively short period of time, we should be en garde . We may be looking at a shift in the cultural paradigm rather than true intellectual progress. After the Bentham-Mill reformulation of Machiavelli’s ideas, acceptance spread quickly. Now Dostoevsky could say, “Now, everything is permitted,” as could Malcom X, “By any means necessary!” How did it happen that an ethic ‘unimaginable’ before 1500 became ‘obvious’ by 1800? The cultural phenomenon known as Renaissance , the ideological phenomenon known as Reformation , and the intellectual phenomenon known as Enlightenment , combined with the sociological phenomenon of Industrialization , to drag the Western world into its only true Dark Age (1700 – 1900)…the so-called Age of Reason . Hmm… Sidebar : Let me digress for just a minute to consider the Biblical tale of the Tower of Babel. Babel refers generally to the phenomena of urbanization (Cain) and industrialization, and it spotlights the adverse impact of these activities on language. Our language evolved organically out of the infamous ‘human condition’. It had to serve many functions simultaneously. Initially at least, Homo Sapiens did not have the luxury of specialized languages for different functions. The earliest languages had to be suited to interpersonal communication, philosophical reflection, and artistic expression, as well as industry and commerce. For example, many languages contain a syntactic variable we call Voice . OG Indo-European languages typically had 3 robust voices: An Active Voice well suited to the communication of information. A Passive Voice ideal for the expression of emotion. A Middle Voice suited to model the interpersonal aspects of life. Unfortunately, the Middle Voice has largely disappeared, and the Passive Voice has atrophied into a degenerative form of the Active Voice; et voila , humanity today! We’re very good at making things, period. To misquote George W. Bush, “We’re all ends, no means.” To oversimplify just a bit, Babel made the world safe for Machiavelli but Bentham made it safe for Bolshevism. How ever did we go so wrong? Turns out, the problem is not primarily an ethical issue at all; it’s an ontological one. It comes back to what we mean when we talk about an entity or an event . As our instruments have become more precise and our measurements more accurate, our notion of ‘an event’ is shrinking closer and closer to a singularity. We have stripped away motive, intention, tone, and even result from the event itself. We are left with a 4-dimensional canopy of point-like events, linked by ultra-thin filaments to form a causal web. That world exhibits a high degree of conformity, repetition and even redundancy. It is causal to the point of being deterministic . But we have so pared down the power and scope of ‘events’ that they hardly seem to matter anymore. Our focus is ‘on the big picture’ now – ongoing trends, not grand finales. But fortunately, this is not how the world works! Events are the building blocks of reality. Not that everything is an event, but whatever is not an event is ‘real’ only as it participates in an event. Events populate regions of spacetime (not necessarily contiguous) with internal structures and external relations, kind of like nation states. An even better analogy would be a human cell. Per se , it is an independent entity, but as such it supports a myriad of higher order (more general) entities like tissues, organelles, organs, the host organism itself, and who knows, the Genus Homo , Gaia or even Kosmos . Where did the morality of Machiavelli and Mill go wrong? The problem lies in a faulty conception of a consequence. If I throw a rock at a garage window and the window breaks, it’s reasonable to regard the broken window as a ‘consequence’ of the thrown ball, though the event actually encompasses the throwing gesture, the trajectory of the rock, and the breaking of the glass. We want the next moment to relate to the shattered glass in the same way the shattered glass relates to the thrown ball. But, again, that is not how the world works. Perhaps a dog will run through the garage and cut its paw leading to a trip to the vet, interrupted by an auto accident along the way. Or perhaps the ricocheting ball also knocked over a space heater causing a fire that destroyed 3 city blocks. Or perhaps nothing special happened after the window broke; under the right circumstances, it might not be discovered for weeks. We can reasonably say that the broken glass is an ‘effect’ (vary likely but not certain) of the thrown ball. We can also say that ‘accident’, ‘fire’, and ‘eh!’ are alternative, less likely effects of the broken glass. And because we got an ‘A’ in 3rd grade arithmetic, we want to be able to say that the thrown ball is the cause of the accident, fire, and eh scenarios…but we can’t. The Transitive Property (If A = B and B = C then A = C) does not hold in the real world. Put another way, causality is part of the ‘internal structure’ of an event but plays no role in its ‘external relations’. It’s impossible to know all the possible consequences, or even the one actual consequence, of any act. Every event is sui generis and causa sui . It seems that the famous Law of Cause and Effect should have broader consequences – but it doesn’t. Causality exists. The problem is that we can never specify with certainty any or all effects, or any and all causes, for any given event. That means that nothing causes any thing but everything causes every thing…which I think you’ll agree compromises the value of the concept itself. Furthermore, we would need to follow the chain of causes all the way back to the moment of Big Bang and extend the chain of effects all the way forward to Heat Death. Yet this is still not the real problem ! Now we need to create an algebra that assigns a scalar ‘value’ and a vector ‘weight’ to every event in the chain (above) and an operation that allows us to calculate a single, unequivocal Value for the consequence in question. That evaluation, in turn, allows me to conclude that this aggregate end does, or does not, justify the means that led up to it. Impossible! The notion of a specific, evaluable end is an illusion. Actions do have consequences, but we have no meaningful way to project those consequences or to evaluate their totality . Another way to look at this is as a ‘halting problem’: When is enough, enough? Can we ever say, “Ok, I’ve identified and evaluated all the significant consequences?” I don’t think so; and therefore, no act can ever be justified by its ‘ends’ because either (1) it has no end or (2) one and the same end is the omega point of every possible causal chain. If we reject Legalism and Utilitarianism in ethics, what’s left? The act itself. Actions are moral or immoral based on the act alone. Actions derive their value, neither from their obedience to a list of rules nor from their so-called consequences. Acts are moral or immoral on their own. But how? To grasp this core principle, we need to drill down our notion of what constitutes an event. The ever-contracting perspective of physical science is offset by the ever-expanding perspective of biological science. An ‘event’ begins as a reaction to a particular state-of-affairs. This reaction is powered by the objective, universal values that inform one way or another every event. Events are sui generis , self-aware, and self-modifying. Each event has a beginning, a middle, and an end. That end is not a ‘consequence’; it is the event itself, projected into the actual world of every logically subsequent event. The moral value of an event lies in the act itself, not in its conformity to a set of norms and not in its consequentiality. But an act is not a gesture. It begins with the first stirring of appetition and it proceeds through various phases of intent. It embodies aspects of the world it inherits, colored by its own subjectivity. Ultimately, every event is its own end! 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 . purpose and devotion. Return to our 2024 Beach Read Share Previous Next Do you like what you just read? 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< Back Choices that Lead to Deception Magesh I often ponder over what drives individuals to opt for a deceitful path rather than a righteous one. Lately, I've been contemplating the divergent decisions people make in identical situations. I often ponder over what drives individuals to opt for a deceitful path rather than a righteous one. This article delves into the opportunities presented to me and those around me, focusing on how my faith guided me towards the right choices. As a musician, I've had the privilege of performing worldwide alongside multiple Grammy Award-winning artists. Throughout my years in the music industry, I've witnessed and encountered occurrences that some may only encounter through reading. While this industry teems with opportunities, it also harbors behaviors steeped in scandal. My steadfast relationship with God shielded me from the allure of drugs, alcohol, and other negative influences. In my earlier years as an up-and-coming musician, I received a call from a prominent nightclub owner, who owned the most sought-after spot in town. This establishment drew eager crowds every night to witness local and international bands. A sudden opportunity arose when the singer of a renowned band scheduled for a Sunday performance fell ill. They asked if my band could fill in for a 9 pm show the following night, offering us a generous fee of $700—an excellent start for a budding band. Upon arriving for the soundcheck, I was astonished to find a queue forming outside the club, hours before the show commenced. The club owner, as I set up my drums, remarked, 'I hope you're ready, kid!' The audience greeted us with cheers from the first note. They had come expecting the previously scheduled band but embraced our music, talent, and positive vibe. Perhaps our backstage group prayer played a role! At the night's end, when I approached the club owner for payment, I was met by his brother, as the owner had left due to illness. Reassuring me, he handed over a brown paper bag. Only upon reaching home did I realize it contained $5,000 instead of the agreed $700. A miscommunication had occurred—his assumption being that we were the established band. I immediately contacted my older bandmate, suggesting we return the excess. Recalling Corinthians 4:2, emphasizing faithfulness in entrusted matters, I recognized this as a test from God and resolved to pass. The following day, I returned to the club, acknowledging the mistake in payment. Astonished by my honesty, the owner not only corrected the error but also offered my band a regular spot every Tuesday for five years. Although keeping the money would have been easier, the long-term benefits of doing the right thing were immeasurable. Years later, I crossed paths with the bass player who initially suggested keeping the money. He confided in me that his dishonest actions had led to being 'blacklisted' by numerous recording studios and clubs. While he didn't elaborate, it was evident his dubious behavior had consequences. In 2005, while touring with a world-renowned pop star, our band encountered a scenario at a Sydney studio. We discovered a bag containing $7,000 left behind. Without hesitation, I declared that we must act honestly, quoting not only biblical teachings but also recognizing the value of integrity. One of the band members, a young man from the Middle East, commended my wisdom in prioritizing honesty. In jest, I attributed it to Corinthians 8:21, highlighting the significance of honesty in actions. Returning the money proved fortuitous as it belonged to an Italian immigrant, his life savings inadvertently left behind. My decisions to uphold honesty were profoundly influenced by the teachings I held dear. This integrity didn't just establish me as a talented musician but also as an upright individual. It fostered invaluable relationships with tour managers, club owners, and studio staff, underscoring that success in the music industry wasn't solely grounded in talent but also in honesty. Magesh has written for “Lessonface,” “Aeyons,” “The Modern Rogue,” “Euronews,” “The Roland corporation,” “Penlight,” and “Elite Music.” He writes several monthly publications on music education. In the past, Magesh has written for parenting, humor, mental health, and travel websites as well. Return to our AI Issue Table of Contents Previous Next

< Back God is Eternal David Cowles Jan 10, 2022 According to the Trinitarian model, God is relatedness, dialogue, love. Therefore, God is process, the process that animates the spatiotemporal world and the process that constitutes His own Being. But when we think of process, we think of something that unfolds across time. God, however, is eternal; He exists outside of space and time. So how can God be both pure process and atemporal? How is that possible? According to the Trinitarian model, God is relatedness, dialogue, love. Therefore, God is process, the process that animates the spatiotemporal world and the process that constitutes His own Being. But when we think of process, we think of something that unfolds across time. God, however, is eternal; He exists outside of space and time. So how can God be both pure process and atemporal? How is that possible? You might expect that this proposition would have to be accepted on the basis of Faith alone. Fortunately for us, that is not the case. We have actual examples of atemporal process in our sensible world: the subatomic processes illustrated by Feynman Diagrams, the Collapse of Schrodinger’s Wave Function in Quantum Mechanics, the phenomenon of Non-locality (John Bell) and finally the drawings of Escher. 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 Memory and Time David Cowles May 2, 2024 “Patterns persist! More generally, 'pattern' per se persists.” A recent article (4/23/2024) by Allison Parshall in the New York Times confirmed things we’ve known since childhood…and suggested others. Ms. Parshall reviewed the results of some recent studies comparing our subjective sense of time with its objective measurements: “Study participants looked at images for varying lengths of time, and then held down a key to indicate how long they felt they were looking at the image. For images that are inherently more memorable—a person’s face, for example—participants thought they looked at them for longer than they did. And they also remembered these time-warping images better the next day.” We all know that a minute can seem to pass by in a few seconds when we’re fully engaged in some project. We also know that a minute can feel like an hour when we’re in pain or when we are waiting for something time sensitive to occur (e.g. water to boil for pasta or the bell to ring at the end of a school day). In the first case, we say that time is compressed (‘blue-shifted’); in the second, that time is dilated (‘red-shifted’). Coincidentally, we use the same terms when discussing the motions of galaxies vis-à-vis Earth. When an object is moving toward us, the wave length (time) is compressed; when the object is receding, time is dilated. So what’s new in these findings? First, the subject’s experience of time dilation/compression tends to form a pattern. By reviewing past behavior, experimenters were able to predict whether a new image would be ‘red or blue shifted’ by a given subject. More interestingly, those patterns persist across subjects. For example, experimenters found that most participants ‘red shifted’ images of human faces as well as images containing fewer but larger objects. Even color mattered. Red images, conveniently but coincidentally, tend to be red-shifted and vice versa. Most interesting, however, is the relationship between time dilation and memory. Red shifted images turned out to be more memorable than blue shifted ones. Essentially, memory is a function of felt, subjective time, rather than measured, objective time. Bottom line: patterns persist! More generally, ‘pattern’ per se persists. Ms. Parshall conjectures that the relationship between memorability and time dilation is recursive. An inherently more engaging image will trigger time dilation which in turn will make us more likely to remember that image. In turn, we are more likely to time dilate those images that most closely resemble better remembered images. The local, mental process Parshall documents is recapitulated, physically, on a cosmic scale. In the first seconds after Big Bang, the cosmos was reasonably uniform. However, slight variations, possibly attributable to Heisenberg Uncertainty, appeared in the primordial CMB (‘Cosmic Microwave Background’). Inflationary expansion amplified those variations. The universe we know and sometimes love began as the amplification of fundamental uncertainty. As the universe expanded it cooled, allowing energy to manifest as massive particles (e.g. electrons, protons, neutrons). Faint variations in the CMB became ‘seeds’ for the formation of matter. In our patch we have massive discontinuity: matter, stars, solar systems, galaxies. These would not have formed, nor would living organisms, without something to offset the indiscriminately expansive force of Big Bang. That ‘something’ is Gravity! While inflation expands space, gravity contracts it. One quantum of mass requires c² quanta of energy (e = mc²). But note, gravity does not tend toward the restoration of the primal CMB. On the contrary, the attractive force of Gravity turns micro-fluctuations in the CMB into stars, galaxies, and eventually, black holes. Gravity ‘balances’ the expansive force of Big Bang, but gravity is a function of mass. More massive objects are more attractive, so they tend to accrete more matter over time. At the moment of ‘creation’, the universe was uniform - within the limits imposed by uncertainty. The push and pull, warp and woof of process, has given us a world consisting of unimaginably massive objects (or singularities) and terrifyingly expansive space (vacuum, void). The force of cosmic expansion should be offset by the force of gravity. But instead of returning the fledgling universe to its pre-Bang state, gravity has given birth to an enormous and largely empty spacetime, pock marked by gigantically massive celestial bodies. If Big Bang is the thesis, Gravity is the antithesis. The synthesis, the world we live in, bears little superficial resemblance to either. The first comprehensive work of Christian Systematic Theology is the Gospel of John. It begins, “In the beginning was the logos .” (The Greek ‘ logos ’ is usually translated as ‘word’ – not wrong, but excessively narrow. ‘Pattern’ better captures the universality of logos .) John tells us that logos was with God, ab initio , and in fact was God. All things that come to be, including life itself, come to be through logos . As we noted above, pattern is what’s substructural…and this is why the mashed potatoes we serve on Thanksgiving are lumpy…and proud of it. 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. 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< Back How is Government Like Soft Serve Ice Cream? David Cowles Jul 5, 2022 Democracy, Oligarchy, Monarchy, Tyranny, even Anarchy, are means of government, not government itself. How is government like soft serve ice cream? – that’s easy! Government comes is just two flavors: Theocracy & Plutocracy. Democracy, Oligarchy, Monarchy, Tyranny, even Anarchy, are means of government, not government itself. God rules…or $$$ rules, period. “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Mammon (money).” (Mt. 6: 24) The story goes that Benjamin Franklin, upon leaving the Constitutional Convention, was asked by a by-stander, “What kind of government have you given us, sir?” Franklin replied, “A Republic, if you can keep it.” I imagine God having a similar conversation with Moses: “Lord, what kind of government are you giving us?” – “A Theocracy, Moses, if you can keep it.” ( Spoiler Alert : Moses did keep it and passed it on to Joshua and the Judges who followed; but in the end Israel did not keep it!) “I will be your God and you will be my people.” (Gen. 17: 7 et al.) This same covenant formula is reiterated over and over again in the Old Testament. It is Israel’s political constitution …and therefore ours as well. God’s intentions are clear. He wants to rule Israel (his people, us) directly but through the agency of the people themselves: “Government of the people, by the people…” (Lincoln) According to this view, the purpose of ‘government’ is to execute the will of God, period. There is no ‘legislative branch’ because there is no legislative function . All law has already been written for all time (Torah); from here on, it is ‘simply’ a matter of interpretation. Yahweh’s lament : “I created heaven-and-earth and endowed it with freedom. Out of Egypt, I husbanded you across Sinai into Canaan, the Promised Land. I gave you 613 statutes (Torah) guaranteed to bring you strength, health, long life, fertility, and prosperity. Knowing you’re not always the best students, I created some study aids for you, and I encouraged you to use them, even though some would call that cheating. (It is your life’s work to reopen the gates of Eden…so do it by any means necessary!) I wrote the answers on the blackboard…and on the cuffs of your shirt: I emblazoned my will across the cosmos (Nature) and I planted it in your hearts (Conscience), and yet…” In the Saini, God’s rule was mediated by Moses and Aaron and later by Joshua. After the death of Joshua, Theocracy evolved into Anarchy – but that’s not a bad thing! In fact, it was a necessary step toward rule by God through his people collectively . Without the leadership of God’s hand-picked patriarchs, a new social structure took root. To “provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare and secure the blessings of liberty,” Judges rose from the ranks. Frequently, a Judge emerged to confront a specific crisis. The Judge’s mandate to govern came from three sources: (1) the Judge’s oath to uphold God’s law (Torah) and (2) the people’s consent to be ‘judged’ and (3) the urgency of the crisis itself. This style of Theocracy worked well (for the most part) for approximately 250 years (1250 to 1000 B.C). Plutocracy, on the other hand, is defined as the rule of wealth . Wealth and power have a symbiotic relationship. Money is fungible. Wealth can be traded for power, and power can be used to amass great wealth. This is the paradigm of a ‘vicious circle.' Look around you! So, to riff on Lincoln: “ All government is government of the people, some government is government by the people, but only Theocracy is government for the people.” Theocracy is not a respecter of persons. Only from God’s vantage can we see that people are not only created equal, but are equal and will always be equal. From God’s perspective, whatever appears to us to be a ‘difference’ is “Vanity!” (Eccl. 1: 2) “Do you know who I am?” – yes, I do; you're dust and ashes. Next… We are all ‘babes,' born of the self-same womb, but in the eyes pf the world, that begins to change almost immediately. Disparities of genetic programming and social circumstances lead to differentiated levels of wealth & power; but in God’s eyes, nothing changes, ever. ‘Equality’ is eternal! Therefore, God and only God is qualified to rule. Only God can rule for the people , all the people because it is only before God that we are truly equal. To paraphrase Deuteronomy, “I set before you Theocracy and Plutocracy; therefore, choose Theocracy.” Few do! Thoughts While Shaving is the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine ( ATM) . To never miss another Thought, choose the subscribe option below. Also, follow us on any one of our social media channels for the latest news from ATM. Thanks for reading! Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back 03/17/2022 What does a person do who is no longer learning to live, no longer learning to be ‘people’, no longer living other people’s lives? Such a person ‘reflects’…she reflects on what she’s learned, on how she’s lived, and on who she’s been. Does she have something to say that hasn’t already been said by countless others? Does she have something to do that hasn’t already been done? After 75 years, you’ve earned the right to make your own unique contribution to civilization. Now if I could just figure out what that unique contribution might be… More later… -David What does a person do who is no longer learning to live, no longer learning to be ‘people’, no longer living other people’s lives? Such a person ‘reflects’…she reflects on what she’s learned, on how she’s lived, and on who she’s been. Does she have something to say that hasn’t already been said by countless others? Does she have something to do that hasn’t already been done? After 75 years, you’ve earned the right to make your own unique contribution to civilization. Now if I could just figure out what that unique contribution might be… More later… -David Previous Next

< Back Trinitarian Model David Cowles Jan 18, 2022 Last week (1/10/21) we talked about the idea that God is better understood as a ‘process’ than as a ‘person, place or thing’. Readers have asked me to clarify, and perhaps expand, on that thought. While most religions and spiritual practices share ideas, there are a few ideas that are unique to Christianity, e.g., the Trinitarian model of God. According to this model, God is one entity (or ‘substance’) expressed in three ‘persons’: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Each of these ‘persons’ is wholly and fully God; and yet God is not God without these three distinct expressions of Godhead. In the Christian view, the nature of Divinity is to be understood as the relationship among three independent persons. To add yet another layer of complexity, in the Trinitarian model The Holy Spirit is the relationship between the Father and the Son, but that relationship is in no way subordinate to the Father and Son. Rather, the Holy Spirit is a person in his own right, co-equal and co-eternal with the Father and the Son. In 325 A.D., the Council of Nicaea published the basic tenets of the Christian faith in a document now known as the Nicene Creed. This Creed reads, in part, “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son, he is worshiped and glorified.” So, God is indeed ‘process’ (i.e., relationship, dialogue, love). So, while God transcends all parts of speech, God functions more like a verb than a noun. From 1 John 4: 8 to the latest hippie bumper sticker the message is the same: “God is Love.” Most religions and spiritualities emphasize the importance of Love. Those that include the concept of God often crave God’s love. Their bumper sticker might read, “God loves!” paraphrasing the ever popular, “Jesus saves”. But a God who loves is not the same as a God who is Love! But when we think of process, we think of something that unfolds in time. God, however, is eternal (non-temporal); he exists outside of space and time. So how can God both be pure process and non-temporal? How is that possible? For the most of the Church’s history, this was a mystery that had to be accepted on Faith alone. But those of us privileged to live in the 20th and 21st centuries can see that non-temporal process is not an attribute of God alone. In fact, non-temporal processes underly the entire phenomenal world. The temporal processes that we work with every day are just the tip of a much larger, non-temporal iceberg. Specifically, I’m talking about ‘non-locality’ (Bell) and ‘the collapse of the wave function’ (Schrödinger). John Bell showed that once subatomic particles have interacted with one another they can remain entangled no matter how far apart (in space or time) they may come to be. In that case, for them there is no space or time. And it is believed that most subatomic particles in the cosmos today are ‘entangled’. Therefore, the web of non-local, non-temporal entanglement is much more fundamental and universal than the web of space-time. Likewise, Schrödinger (famous for his ‘cat’) showed that what we call ‘things’ and ‘events’ depend upon the ‘collapse’ (or resolution) of a probability function known as the ‘wave function’. Before collapse, the wave function does not exist in spacetime but rather in a dimension we know as ‘probability’. Only after the wave function has collapsed (possibly as the result of a broken ‘entanglement’, above) does it enter into spacetime (as an object or event). So, we ‘moderns’ do not have to accept the idea of God as non-temporal process based on faith alone. Rather, we have empirical examples of non-temporal processes right in our material world. Last week (1/10/21) we talked about the idea that God is better understood as a ‘process’ than as a ‘person, place or thing’. Readers have asked me to clarify, and perhaps expand, on that thought. While most religions and spiritual practices share ideas, there are a few ideas that are unique to Christianity, e.g., the Trinitarian model of God. According to this model, God is one entity (or ‘substance’) expressed in three ‘persons’: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Each of these ‘persons’ is wholly and fully God; and yet God is not God without these three distinct expressions of Godhead. In the Christian view, the nature of Divinity is to be understood as the relationship among three independent persons. To add yet another layer of complexity, in the Trinitarian model The Holy Spirit is the relationship between the Father and the Son, but that relationship is in no way subordinate to the Father and Son. Rather, the Holy Spirit is a person in his own right, co-equal and co-eternal with the Father and the Son. In 325 A.D., the Council of Nicaea published the basic tenets of the Christian faith in a document now known as the Nicene Creed. This Creed reads, in part, “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son, he is worshiped and glorified.” So, God is indeed ‘process’ (i.e., relationship, dialogue, love). So, while God transcends all parts of speech, God functions more like a verb than a noun. From 1 John 4: 8 to the latest hippie bumper sticker the message is the same: “God is Love.” Most religions and spiritualities emphasize the importance of Love. Those that include the concept of God often crave God’s love. Their bumper sticker might read, “God loves!” paraphrasing the ever popular, “Jesus saves”. But a God who loves is not the same as a God who is Love! But when we think of process, we think of something that unfolds in time. God, however, is eternal (non-temporal); he exists outside of space and time. So how can God both be pure process and non-temporal? How is that possible? For the most of the Church’s history, this was a mystery that had to be accepted on Faith alone. But those of us privileged to live in the 20th and 21st centuries can see that non-temporal process is not an attribute of God alone. In fact, non-temporal processes underly the entire phenomenal world. The temporal processes that we work with every day are just the tip of a much larger, non-temporal iceberg. Specifically, I’m talking about ‘non-locality’ (Bell) and ‘the collapse of the wave function’ (Schrödinger). John Bell showed that once subatomic particles have interacted with one another they can remain entangled no matter how far apart (in space or time) they may come to be. In that case, for them there is no space or time. And it is believed that most subatomic particles in the cosmos today are ‘entangled’. Therefore, the web of non-local, non-temporal entanglement is much more fundamental and universal than the web of space-time. Likewise, Schrödinger (famous for his ‘cat’) showed that what we call ‘things’ and ‘events’ depend upon the ‘collapse’ (or resolution) of a probability function known as the ‘wave function’. Before collapse, the wave function does not exist in spacetime but rather in a dimension we know as ‘probability’. Only after the wave function has collapsed (possibly as the result of a broken ‘entanglement’, above) does it enter into spacetime (as an object or event). So, we ‘moderns’ do not have to accept the idea of God as non-temporal process based on faith alone. Rather, we have empirical examples of non-temporal processes right in our material world. 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.