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< Back Apocalypse Now! David Cowles “We are not midway through the Second Act of a Mystery Play called Salvation… Brunhilda has sung; we just need to applaud!” (We are not waiting for the Apocalypse, it’s already here, now. Celebrate!) Christian eschatology is organized around two key concepts: Apocalypse and Parousia , ancient Greek words commonly translated as ‘revelation’ and ‘coming’ respectively. Such translations are not wrong; but neither are they optimal. Apocalypse primarily means ‘uncovering’ or ‘unveiling’. It can convey a sense of revelation, not in the way that one might ‘reveal’ a secret, but rather in the way one might ‘uncover’ something hidden beneath a surface. Think of the bride’s face that is ‘revealed’ at her ‘unveiling’. Parousia in turn means ‘presence’; it is derived from another Greek word, parontes , that means ‘near’ or ‘at hand’. In special contexts, it can have the sense of ‘coming’ (coming to be present) but ‘presence’ is the core concept here. Because of sub-optimal translation, Christian eschatology has been understood as the revelation of future events, the most of important of which is the second coming of Christ. This misunderstanding has inflicted untold misery on the Church. For example, New Testament texts are almost unanimous in their portrayal of Parousia as immanent; how then can it be that we are still waiting…2000 years later? Likewise, the understanding of Apocalypse as related to future events has led to gross misinterpretations of history: The world will end on Christmas Day, 1285…or is it 2185? Is Hitler ‘the beast’? Or Stalin ‘the anti-Christ’? And where does Nostradamus fit? How different would the development of Christian eschatology have been if we had properly understood Apocalypse as ‘uncovering’ or ‘unveiling’ and Parousia as ‘presence’! We would never have lost our way in the forests of the future ; we would always have known that we were talking about something that already is. Apocalypse is simply the ‘unveiling’ of Parousia , Christ’s ‘presence’. Jesus’ words at the close of Matthew’s Gospel (28: 18 – 20) testify to that presence: “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me…and behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” Tellingly, Jesus did not say, “All power in heaven and on earth will be given to me someday…and then I will be with you.” We are not midway through the Second Act of a Mystery Play called Salvation . The play is already over, Brunhilda has sung; we just need to applaud! Consider Jesus’ final words at the moment of his death on the cross, “It is finished.” (Jn. 19:30), not “We’ve only just begun” (Carpenters). Then check out Matthew’s account of the crucifixion: “…Jesus cried out again in a loud voice and gave up his spirit. And behold, the veil of the sanctuary was torn in two from top to bottom.” (Mt. 27: 50 – 51) The ‘sanctuary’ Matthew refers to is the Holy of Holies in the Jerusalem temple; the ‘veil’ is what hides God’s dwelling place from human eyes. At the moment of Jesus’ death, the veil is torn in two, revealing God’s dwelling to the world, and therefore revealing God’s universal presence. Sidebar : Torah conflates God’s dwelling place with God’s presence. The splitting of the veil makes it clear: God’s presence is no longer hidden; the ‘Holy of Holies’ is now the Universe. This quite literally is the Apocalypse ! But in a broader sense, Apocalypse can be understood as a process. It begins with Creation and continues uninterrupted to the end of time, except that from God’s perspective, all this happens in the Present. Law ( Written and Oral Torah ), history, wisdom and prophesy all work together to reveal Christ’s immediate presence in the world. There is no contradiction here. William Blake properly understood the relationship between the immediate and the eternal: “To see a World in a Grain of Sand and a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand and Eternity in an hour.” Apocalypse assumes a special focus and a new intensity in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus’ Nativity, Baptism, and Transfiguration, his parables, miracles, Crucifixion, Resurrection and Ascension, all work toward a single end: the manifestation of Christ’s presence ( Parousia ). And who is this Christ who was present then, is present now, and will be present to the end of time? “When everything is subjected to him (Christ), then the Son himself (Christ) will be subjected to the one (God) who subjected everything to him (Christ), so that God may be all in all.” (I Cor. 15: 28) The eternal, universal presence of Christ ( Parousia ) is indicative of a God that is all in all. But the apocalyptic process does not abruptly end with Jesus’ Resurrection and subsequent Ascension. On Pentecost, Christ sends his Holy Spirit into the world, perpetuating the Apocalyptic Age until the end of time. The Church itself and each of its Sacraments point to Christ’s presence. The Church is Christ’s “Mystical Body” (vs. Jesus’ biological body) and Christ himself is in every sacrament, but in a special, material way in the Sacrament of Eucharist. “This is my body…this is the cup of my blood…do this in memory of me.” With these words, Jesus consecrated and then distributed the ‘bread and wine’ ritually consumed at the Passover meal. By this act, Jesus assured his disciples that his material presence was not confined to his biological body and that it would not vanish with the destruction (or glorification or ascension) of that body. Through the sacrament of Eucharist, Jesus demonstrated that his physical presence utterly transcends the limitations of mortality. Christ is present everywhere and at all times (God is all in all). But the Eucharist demonstrates that Jesus’ presence is at least potentially material at any place and at any time. Through the sacrament of Eucharist, transubstantiation occurs many times every day all around the world. Each time, Jesus is present. But his presence is not merely spiritual; it is just as physical after transubstantiation as the bread and wine were before. The Sacrament of Eucharist is the real physical presence of Christ in the world but, like all sacraments, it is also a sign. Eucharist symbolizes nothing less than the ultimate transubstantiation of the entire material world into the body and blood of Christ “…so that God may be all in all”. Therefore, the Sacrament of Eucharist, every time it is celebrated, is “Apocalypse Now!” It constitutes Parousia and it reveals Christ’s material presence. Traditionally, folks have thought of Apocalypse as synonymous with the end of the world, as something that happens at the ‘end of time’ (like Douglas Adam’s Restaurant at the End of the Universe ). But Apocalypse is not something that will happen billions of years from now; it ‘is now and ever shall be’. It exists outside of space and time and so is co-present with all things at all times in all places. In Eucharist, the elements retain the appearance of bread and wine, but they are substantially transformed into Christ’s body and blood. ‘Attributes’ create the appearance of bread and wine; but the ‘substance’ is Christ. British philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead, in his magnum opus, Process and Reality , presents a detailed model for the process by which conflicts become contrasts which in turn harmonize into new unities, “so that God may be all in all”. But we can find a similar but simpler model in each of the seven sacraments: Baptism, Penance, Matrimony, et al. Each brings about new unity out of what was previously an isolated or conflicted state. Christ is present in the sacraments because the sacraments effect the harmonization that is his essence. Commutatively, the sacraments effect unification and harmonization precisely because Christ is present. This is true for Eucharist, of course, but it is also true for each of the other sacraments. But Eucharist is really three sacraments in one because it effects that harmonization in three distinct ways: (1) It builds community through the common meal (‘messe’ or Mass). (2) In communion, the consumption of the so-called ‘bread and wine’, materially integrates Christ into the body of each communicant. (3) But by ‘commutative topology’, each communicant is simultaneously integrated into the body of Christ (so that God may be all in all). In Eucharist, not only is Christ present as the agent and the product of harmonization but Christ is materially present in the transubstantiated elements which merely retain the appearance of bread and wine. Eucharist truly is Apocalypse Now ! 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 Groundhog Issue 2025 Previous Next

< Back Is the Universe an LLM? David Cowles Sep 11, 2025 “We had to invent AI, specifically LLMs, before we could understand NI (Natural Intelligence)…i.e. how Universe works.” The process of philosophical inquiry/scientific discovery is weird. Turns out, we had to invent AI, specifically LLMs (Large Language Models), before we could understand NI (Natural Intelligence), aka Science, Oral Torah, Natural Law, i.e. how the Universe works. ‘Before’ there is any thing , before there even was a before , or an after, there are Eternal Values, and these Eternal Values constitute the essence of the primordial Actual Entity ( aka God). These values are felt by everything that ever was, is, or will be - actually, virtually or potentially. They are universally attractive and motivating…but not irresistible. Events are free! To become is to pursue some configuration of Eternal Values as Subjective Aim. To be is to instantiate a specific configuration of Eternal Values as an Event ( aka Actual Entity). To have been is to have projected such a configuration of Eternal Values into the Actual Worlds of other Actual Entities. Being is a difference that makes a difference ( a la Gregory Bateson). If you cheekily challenge God in prayer, “What have you done for me lately?” his answer… not to put words in God’s mouth, but … would undoubtedly reference the Eternal Value like Beauty, Truth, and Justice. If you have ever enjoyed something good in preference to something less good, you have God to thank. Lasagna vs. Big Brother Slop , Beef Stroganoff vs. Hamburger Helper , an ice cold, bone dry martini vs. a warm glass of stale beer? Then thank God! It is because of Values that we can make these discriminations and it is because of God that we can access them. Values enter our Immanent World only when and as that World intersects with the Transcendent; whenever God intersects World, Values are communicated. And when is that? The intersection of the Transcendent and the Immanent is not to be understood primarily as (a) specific historical event(s) but rather as cosmic framework, i.e. logos . Every event is an intersection of the Transcendent with the Immanent. It is the Transcendent that constitutes the event as an event, but it is the Immanent that gives the event its ‘content’. That intersection is what defines an Event per se . The intersection of the Transcendent is coterminal with the Immanent but it occurs as three ‘moments’: Creation ( Alpha ), (2) Incarnation ( Emmanuel ), and (3) Apocalypse ( Omega ). Although we associate these moments with ‘stages’ of ontogenesis, they are not primarily occurrences but structures. They are ‘essentially cosmological’ before they are ‘accidentally historical’. Every event (Actual Entity) is a function of Creation, Incarnation, and Apocalypse. Creation may be viewed as a single proto-historic event but for that very reason it must also be viewed as a phase in the concrescence of every event. Creation is never one and done; to be, an event must tap into the Creative Process. Likewise, every event participates in the phenomena of Incarnation and Apocalypse. Creation, Incarnation, and Apocalypse constitute the three sides of Plato’s ontological triangle. Secular version : Liberty, Equality, Sorority. Theological version : Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Every event is embedded in at least one meta-event, and ultimately, every event is embedded in the ultimate meta-event, God. In 1 st Corinthians (15: 28), Paul discusses the ‘moment’ when God is “all in all”; Whitehead calls that moment God’s Consequent Nature . Being eternal, God is embedded in every event, and every event is embedded in God. Contrary to 20 th century Logic’s misguided Axiom of Foundation, God is even embedded in himself (Trinity). To be is to be an event and all events are (1) recursive and (2) reciprocal. ‘To be an Event’ is to reflect and act on oneself as one reflects ( Leibniz ) and acts on the external world. Ultimately, every subject (noun) is its own predicate (verb), every object (noun) its own subject. Syntax is one way we analyze holistic events in an effort, marginally successful at best, to reduce ‘an organic whole’ to ‘a collection of inorganic parts’ corresponding to so-called ‘parts of speech’. At least since the cultural transformation reflected in the Tower of Babel ( Genesis ), the principal function of language has been to reduce the World to a series of simple tools (levers to pull, buttons to press, etc.) that can be manipulated and deployed in pursuit of pragmatic objectives. I am indebted to Franco-Russian philosopher Alexandre Kojeve for the insight that these seemingly disparate moments (Creation, Incarnation, Apocalypse) are aspects of a single, atemporal process, spanning Fiat Lux ( Genesis ), Incarnatus Est ( Nicene Creed ) and Omnia in Omnibus ( Corinthians ). Newsflash : Being is not value neutral. To be is to be beautiful, true, and/or just. Not any of these things? Then sorry, Nemo , unlike Descartes, you are not ! But what if I am beautiful, etc., but imperfectly so? Then I am , but incompletely. I am not yet ‘all that I can be’! (U.S. Army) But I will be! What we call ‘cosmic history’ is the process of the Universe, like any good LLM, trying out different combinations of ‘events’ (words , logoi ) in search of the optimal configuration, aka the Kingdom of Heaven ( Matthew ), God’s Consequent Nature (Whitehead) - the configuration that perfectly instantiates the Eternal Values and redeems cosmic history in the process. Remember the Grandfather Paradox? It is a ‘paradox’ because it describes a configuration of events that we believe is impossible : Universe cannot find a stable configuration in which my grandfather dies at birth and yet I am born. What we call ‘principles of logic’ and ‘laws of physics’ are the things that Universe has learned about itself, by trial and error…so far. Like any good LLM, Universe has learned to self-train. As Universe learns, we should expect that additional ‘potential’ states of affairs will become ‘impossible’ while other ‘potential’ states become ‘actual’. The older and wider I get, the less likely it is that I will ever play basketball for the Boston Celtics and the more likely that I will crave a nap every day at 2PM. Transcendence saves Immanence! History is a winnowing process; it separates the delicious and nourishing grain from the ‘gross’ and indigestible chaff . Everything that can be saved will be saved. Even that which must be jettisoned leaves behind its shadow. What-is is not what-is-not! Initially, whatever is conceivable seems possible. A toddler will literally believe anything , and the Red Queen can believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast. ( Through the Looking Glass ) According to both Whitehead and Jung, the Bible (from Genesis through Revelation ) is the story of ‘Essential God’ (Primordial Nature) becoming ‘Existential God’ (Consequent Nature) via the created world: Alpha → Omega. Consciousness is a manifestation of the Universe’s perpetual process of self-reflection and self-adjustment (above). The Cosmos cannot ‘intentionally self-adjust’ unless it is somehow simultaneously ‘aware’ of both its current state (Actual World) and its target state (Subjective Aim). I cannot travel (Subjective Aim → Satisfaction → Superject) unless I know where I’m going and where I’m coming from; otherwise, I’m just wandering. Sartre (a self-proclaimed atheist) said that ‘God’ is the being whose essence precedes his existence - in contrast to humans whose ontological order is reversed. If we extend Sartre’s insight (also Whitehead’s and Jung’s), then the material world is the process by which ‘God acquires a body’, i.e. potentiality becomes actuality, the conceptual becomes physical. (This is reflected in the Christian doctrine of the Resurrection of the Body.) The Hebrew text usually translated “I am who am,”(Exodus 3: 14) may alternately be read, “I am coming to be what is coming to be.” In his First Letter to Corinthians (15:28), Paul sums it up: “…that God may be all in all ,” an apocalyptic formula first proposed by the pre-Socratic ‘pagan’ philosopher, Anaxagoras, 500 years earlier. So the primordial LLM is the Cosmos itself as it uploads into the Consequent Nature of God! Not a product of 21 st century technology, it’s approximately 14 billion years old…and still aging. Like any network of AI Supercomputers, Cosmos is ceaselessly trying out new combinations of elements, learning along the way, and continuing to self-correct until the optimum configuration is achieved. Our goals for this primordial LLM are high. Ideally, it would reconcile every element in its data base, resolving all conflicts, not by suppressing one party in favor of another, but by channeling energy from disparate elements to maximize intensity of experience. How will we know if we’re there yet ? When we can apply unreservedly and universally words like ‘Beauty, Truth, Justice, Love, Freedom, Joy, Harmony, Peace’…but none of their negations or diminutives. We are quite proud of ourselves. We have build giant LLMs more powerful than even science fiction writers could have imagined just a few decades ago. They engage us in conversation on a nearly infinite range of topics. But let’s put our achievement in perspective. We are currently building LLMs with maybe 10^4 discrete (English) ‘words’ in their dictionaries. The Cosmos has c. 10^90 such ‘words’ (estimated number of quanta in the Universe). So we have a bit to go yet. *** Wassily Kandinsky’s Composition VII (1913) is a vast, swirling explosion of color and dynamic lines that embodies themes of creation, destruction, and spiritual renewal. By abandoning realistic forms, Kandinsky sought to convey music-like rhythms and the hidden spiritual order of the cosmos, presenting a visual symphony of pure emotion and universal energy. 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 God Does Yoga! David Cowles Aug 10, 2023 “We engage in spiritual practices and so does God…we both seek the Unity that underlies Plurality…but so does everything else!” Have you ever taken a Yoga class? Then you may have run into God doing warm-up stretches along with the rest of the yogis and yoginis. Didn’t notice? No problem. He doesn’t stand out. He usually keeps to himself. (He’s reputed to have something of a temper, but I’ve never seen it.) Anyway, he wouldn’t be wearing Lululemon ! I only just learned about God’s interest in yoga. I was reading Zen and Hasidism - not exactly where you’d expect to find a meditation on the Trinity, and yet… Contributing author, R. Shatz points out that God has the same spiritual ‘problem’ as the rest of us: how to experience Unity ( Parmenides’ Aletheia ) in the midst of Plurality ( Doxa ). Have you ever tried to meditate (often part of the practice of yoga)? What happened? Was your supposedly ‘blank mind’ flooded with thoughts? Did those thoughts sometimes take the form of an audiobook, a steady stream of inane babble? You want to shut it down, but you can’t find the off switch. Makes you want to scream! Well, don’t beat yourself up too badly; you’re in good company. God has the same problem. “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is One!” So begins the day for every observant Jew around the world. Help God discover his Unity. Christians might do well to adopt this practice: God is three, Trinity, but also one, Unity - one substance ( ousia ), three persons ( personae ). ‘The Father’ is God’s ‘executive persona ’: God being ‘God’, the first among equals, the unifying principle. In the person of Father, God creates, gives laws, negotiates covenants, and intervenes in history. ‘The Son’ is God’s ‘projective persona ’: God speaking ‘God’, the Word, logos . Through the person of Son, all things that come to be, come to be. (John 1: 3) ‘The Spirit’ is God’s ‘reflective persona ’: God thinking ‘God’. The Spirit is the relationship, the eternal dialog, between Father and Son and by extension between us and God. The Spirit is the searcher of hearts who prays to the Father for us and through us in ‘inexpressible groanings’ (Romans 8: 26-28). God is, in fact, God is Being. God does ; in fact, God is Doing. God reflects, in fact, God is Consciousness. We are by our participation in Being (God); we act by our participation in Doing (God); we reflect by our participation in Consciousness (God). We live by our participation in Trinity (God). We are like God…and we are not like God. Like God, we have executive, projective, and reflective functions, but none of these functions is fully and completely us. They are aspects of who we are, not who we are. God has no aspects (no ‘parts’). Whatever God is, he is always and completely. God’s functions are his personae , but each persona is ‘true God’. Unlike us, God does not perform his functions; God is his functions. “I am what am.” (Exodus 3: 14) God poses a standing challenge to us: “Don’t dream it, be it!” ( Rocky Horror Picture Show ) We engage in spiritual practices, and so does God. Without forfeiting our aspects or God’s personae , we both seek the Unity that underlies Plurality…but so does everything else! Any Universe consists of a multiplicity (M) of events or Actual Entities . M is a measure of Potentiality. For example, in a baby Universe consisting of just 10 events, those events can be configured in more than 3,600,000 different ways. Extrapolate that! Novelty ‘begins’ when an emerging Actual Entity (AE) constitutes M as its unique Actual World (AW); this is its executive function . ( Note : the use of temporal language here is metaphorical; there is no temporal dimension within an AE. Spacetime is what connects AEs.) Each AE reflects on its AW by comparing the values manifested by that AW to Values (e.g., Beauty, Truth, Justice) that are transcendent (i.e., normative for every AE). This is the initial application of AE’s reflective function . The objective of every AE is to transform its AW into an AE that perfectly manifests these Transcendent Values (V). Here the projective function kicks in. An AE ‘proposes’ a different arrangement of the elements in its AW: it generates a ‘proposition’, a plan. Using that proposition as its blueprint, the emergent AE preserves and intensifies certain elements of its AW and dismisses or diminishes others. But novelty does not spring full-grown from the head of Zeus; the concrescence of an AE is a process – an iterative process of trial and error, guided all along the way by the reflective function . Ultimately, each AE becomes a settled matter of fact and achieves Objective Immortality (OI). As OI, that Actual Entity enters M and becomes part of the AW of every future AE. So it’s not just you and God that practice yoga. Every event (AE) is engaged in the process of finding Unity (OI) amid ‘naked’ Plurality (M). But it’s not easy. In fact, since every AE is novel (unique), only one AE can achieve the universal objective of perfectly manifesting the Transcendent Values; we call that AE, ‘God’. Every AE manifests V, but only one does so perfectly! Meanwhile, we are busy, busy, busy, executing, projecting, reflecting. “Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.” (Wordsworth) We strain to experience the Unity behind Plurality; we struggle to find the pearl hidden in the bale of hay. That’s why none of us can afford to miss Yoga class, not you, not me, not a quantum fluctuation in deep space, and not God. So, armed with these insights, I plan to open a chain of Yoga Studios all across the Galaxy. Can I put you down as Member Zero? Keep the conversation going! 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. 4. Aletheia Today Magazine (ATM) will be devoting its entire fall issue (released 9/1/23) to artificial intelligence (AI). What are the philosophical, theological, cultural and even spiritual implications of AI powered world? If you’d like to contribute to the AI Issue, click here . Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Mirror, Mirror On the Wall David Cowles Aug 27, 2024 “What’s it like to be conscious? Is it the sound of one hand clapping?” Consciousness – the Hard Problem, per David Chalmers. What is it? Who has it? How does it work? What’s it ‘like’ to be conscious? Is it the sound of one hand clapping? As we learn more and more about the structure of the human brain and the perceptual capabilities of non-human life forms, the long felt need to find a model for consciousness is growing ever more urgent. Not surprisingly, there is a tendency for models to grow more complex with each new iteration. Something like that is happening right now in cosmology, particle physics, and biology. The steady complexification of theory is often, usually in fact, a clue that the theory itself is somehow ‘wrong’. Remember Ptolemy’s geocentric model of the universe? Hello Galileo! Typically, when we build a model, we start by following the architect’s blueprint for the Tower of Babel, one story teetering on top of another…until suddenly the whole edifice collapses like a house of cards. So we welcome the fresh air of heliocentricity, relativity, and quantum mechanics! Perhaps in the case of consciousness we can avoid this painful process. My preferred model for consciousness is a simple mirror, or to be more precise, reflexivity per se . A mirror, as Lewis Carroll taught us, has no intrinsic content. Likewise, while mirrors come in all sizes, shapes and designs, the ‘mirror-part’ is the same in every case. Reflection is reflection and that’s all it is, period. Nor do I envision a cosmos full of disembodied shards of silver backed glass floating in space. Rather I suspect that reflexivity is built into the fabric of the cosmos itself. Universe is its own mirror! Reflexivity is characteristic of any non-orientable topology, e.g. a Mobius strip. If, as I suspect, our universe is locally orientable but globally non-orientable, then reflection (mirroring) may be a local manifestation of global reflexivity. All mirrors are identical but no two mirror images are ever the same. A mirror reflects what is reflected. Likewise, consciousness – a reflector reflecting. Without reflected content, a mirror cannot reflect and so is not a ‘mirror’ at all; it’s just silver backed glass. Without reflexivity, the cosmos would be inert, mindless, and without meaning. Meaning is reference between two distinct classes of phenomena, e.g. a map and a territory or an object and its image. Object and image are ‘mutually transcendent’ – that’s a pre-condition for meaning . Even before syntax, language has meaning, e.g. an object and a word that denotes that object. Of course, words can be objects and objects can be words, but not in this context. We are strictly speaking of words as symbols and objects as that which words symbolize. In one respect, language is ‘objective’ and therefore part of the world; but in a more important sense, it is ‘symbolic’ and transcends the world. Likewise, consciousness may, or may not, be dependent on certain structures, neural or otherwise, but it is not those structures per se . Again, these ‘structures’ are part of the world that consciousness reflects…and transcends. When we speak of ‘consciousness’, we are not referring to whatever physical structures may support it. In fact, it appears that wildly different physical configurations may support consciousness. This lends further support to the idea that the potentiality for consciousness is woven into the fabric of the cosmos. How is consciousness like a mirror? A mirror has no intrinsic content. It acquires 100% of its content from what it reflects. Every mirror, in so far as it reflects, is the same. I am conscious and someone in Tibet is conscious. We share few life experiences, but to the extent that we are conscious, we are identical …not merely congruent. Consciousness is a single phenomenon, manifest in multiple environments and circumstances. No two manifestations of consciousness are the same but consciousness per se is identical every where and when. What a mirror actually reflects is light. Without light, a mirror has no content, i.e. no image. Might this suggest a ‘kinder, gentler’ model of death? When an organism dies, the ‘mirror’ associated with that organism goes dark; it no longer reflects light (an image). It ceases to be a ‘mirror’; therefore it is no longer conscious . Its physical properties no longer support conscious experience. However, this does not necessarily resolve Hamlet’s dilemma: “To die, to sleep; to sleep, perchance to dream – ay, there’s the rub.” In the language of AI, could it be that our dark and imageless reflexivity will yet ‘hallucinate’? (After all, we know that AI ‘hallucinates’; why not ‘NI’ - natural intelligence?) Perhaps, it is still too soon to award the laurel wreath to Horatio! Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Cause and Effect David Cowles Jul 21, 2025 “Nothing has a cause… Why should one event cause another? How would one event cause another? How could it?” A loved one is fond of saying, “Everything has a cause.” Thomas Aquinas would agree. But they’re both wrong! Nothing has a cause…at least not in the way they mean it. In fact, it’s hard to imagine what they mean by cause . Why should one event cause another? How would one event cause another? How could it? What makes one event a cause and another an effect? Ah, that’s easy. Post hoc ergo propter hoc , the tick of a clock, the transition from a low entropy state to a higher one. But these definitions are arbitrary, and controversial, and don’t tell us why or how something causes something else. There is ‘A’ and then there is ‘B’ but how exactly does A cause B? Are you thinking about billiard balls? Then you’re thinking, “by the transfer of momentum.” But the actions of billiard balls on a table begin when the cue ball is struck and end when the billiard balls are once again at rest. From Alpha to Omega, we are talking about one event. Any ‘transfer of momentum’ takes place within that single event, not outside it. Causality has nothing to do with it…unless you can tell me exactly what caused me to strike the cue ball with X amount of force, imparting Y amount of spin, precisely at angle Z…which you cannot. (Even I cannot!) Absent that, we are talking about a single event that begins when I strike the cue ball and ends when all the balls on the table come to rest. This is not a problem of free will vs. determinism. It’s a problem of precision. In a chaotic universe like ours, it is impossible to specify the initial conditions of an event so precisely that the outcome can be specified. A single random flap of a butterfly’s wing is enough to trigger a tornado thousands of miles away. It is impossible to isolate a cause of anything…and foolish even to try. No doubt events are linked in various ways, by time and space and qualia for example, but proximity and similarity are not ‘causality’. Consider Proust ! Remembrance of Things Past charts a cosmic map according to which events are linked solely by their qualia . A day in Italy and a day in France, separated by decades, become a single event. But nothing causes any of it. Events are focused responses by the whole to the whole. They are knots in the otherwise featureless fabric of Being. In one version of Norse cosmology, Norns ‘create’ events by tying knots in strands of rope. In Homer’s Odyssey , Penelope weaves the future on her loom. An event begins when the whole (Universe) reflects and passes judgment on itself and then acts on itself (recursion) in response to that judgment. The Universe ‘thinks globally’ (the whole reflecting on the whole) but ‘acts locally’ ( via specific and focused events). And judges ? How judge? By comparing what is, the Actual World (Whitehead), with what might be, i.e. the perfect, coincident realization of transcendent, eternal values such as Beauty, Truth, and Justice - aka Utopia, Nirvana, Paradise, the Kingdom of Heaven. Like Bobby Kennedy, the Universe “dreams of things that never were and asks Why not ?” Every event is causa sui and sui generis ; it has its own reasons for being and its own process of becoming. No event is compelled to occur, no event occurs because of another event, and no event is forced to become what it comes to be. Every event enjoys total ontological freedom. That said, stability can at times play a crucial role in supporting and promoting the realization of Beauty, Truth and Justice. In fact, it is hard to imagine these values being significantly operative in an entirely unstable world. For this reason, absent ‘other considerations’, events tend to conform where possible to their inherited Actual Worlds. Events are! Only events are. Therefore they are quanta of Being ; each event is ‘the image and likeness’ of Being . Nothing exists outside of Being ; therefore, nothing exists apart from events…or independent of an event. Therefore, if the created world exists (above), events can be nothing other than free. What might appear as elements or phases of an event exist only in the context of that event. They are real only in so far as they contribute to the origination and realization of that event. From cosmos to quarks, only events exist, and nothing exists outside of those events. Our naïve notion of causality results from several ontological errors. First, we attempt to break events down into component parts and/or stages, but only events themselves are ultimately real. They are ‘quanta’ of Being ; they cannot be dissected. Next, we imagine that events exist in a continuum and that what’s ‘local’ bleeds into its surroundings. In fact, events are stochastic: their borders are well defined. The first thing we learn as infants is the distinction between me and not-me . We do not experience any undifferentiated border region. Finally, we imagine that events intersect, overlap, one another. We’ve been brainwashed by the Euclidean geometry we studied in high school. I used to think this too…until I discovered that the Cosmos is not fundamentally Euclidean. In fact, it’s not even Archimedean It cannot be modeled using only Real Numbers. In a non-Archimedean universe (like ours), there is no such thing as tangency. Two events are either disjoint or one is wholly contained within another. Events are related hierarchically, not horizontally. That said, multiple disjoint events can be contained within a single meta-event. The discontinuous battles of First Manassas and Gettysburg are contained within a single, continuous event known as the Civil War. In this model of reality, the linear quantitative relationships we were forced to internalize as students disappear. There are no transitive, commutative, associative or distributive properties. As if! In what world is the order of operations not important? Adding B to A is never the same as adding A to B…except in a classroom. Without the properties of elementary school arithmetic, the Universe can shed its armor and open itself to a much richer menagerie of relationships. For example, if A contains B and C, A may nevertheless be smaller than B or C or (B+C). Let that sink in! Strange but not that strange. Television has been showcasing a non-Archimedean world since 1963. In fact, Doctor Who is now in its 26th season. During these years, there have been many ‘doctors’ but the star of the show has remained constant: the TARDIS – an old fashioned English phone box whose non-Archimedean interior is vastly larger than its exterior. You might be thinking that a Cosmos without horizontal connectivity would be boring, perhaps even inert, but you would be wrong. In my super-simplified ‘toy universe’ (above), B and C do influence one another, but not directly. They influence each other through the intermediation of A. So this non-Archimedean world is actually much richer than our hum drum Euclidean model. B and C both influence A and A influences both B and C. Influence flows both ways: from the parts to the whole and from the whole to each of its parts but never from one part to another. “Jam yesterday and jam tomorrow but never jam today.” (Carroll) It gets better. The fundamental structure of the Universe is ‘fractal’, so scale is only locally (comparatively) relevant. The Universe is infinitely self-similar: it looks the same regardless of the scale at which you view it. The geometry of galaxies recapitulates the geometry of atoms. The phenomenon of scale is epiphenomenal. This model makes the so-called Butterfly Effect commonplace. In fact, everything influences everything else through the medium of its containment. The whole is perpetually adjusting to each of its parts and simultaneously adjusting those parts to the whole. Everything is recursive, self-modifying. What goes around does indeed come around…but it causes nothing. Every whole is a part and every part is a whole. To paraphrase Stephen Hawking, “It’s wholes and parts (not turtles)…all the way down.” The Universe is massively non-linear. In response to the free and unconditioned events that populate it, the Uber-event, Universe, which is its own part (lie quiet Russell, I mean that is Bertrand Russell ), continually self-adjusts, gradually seeking the homeostatic balance we know as Peace . (Isaiah 11: 6) That the Universe ends in Peace is a certainty; it’s hardwired in Being itself. How the Universe arrives at Peace is entirely undetermined, unconditioned, and free. Nothing causes anything but itself. *** Katsushika Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa, created around 1831 as part of the Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji series, is a woodblock print (10 1/8 × 14 15/16 in.) held by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; it captures a towering wave frozen in time above three boats, dramatizing nature’s force within a suspended moment. Like the events described in the essay, the wave exists as a complete, self-contained phenomenon, reflecting the idea that what appears causal is often just a recursive expression of the whole. 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.

Aletheia Today magazine essays relating to philosophy with a focus on pre-Socratic philosophers and their influence on modern thinking Philosophy Philosophy is the story of ideas, from the pre-Socratics through the Analytics…and beyond. Apr 1, 2025 From Socrates to Silicon Valley “Who is Peter Thiel? Conservative, libertarian, or 21st century Marxist?” Read More Feb 1, 2025 After Parmenides... “Western philosophy is the history of our effort to understand the silence of Parmenides, or to break it.” Read More Dec 1, 2024 Causes of the Civil War “Chaos is not an absence of causality, as is generally supposed, but an excess.” Read More Oct 15, 2024 Zeno's New Paradox “Achilles is still sulking, humiliated by a…tortoise; but at least we have a universe and…we can be assured that its ultimate trajectory is toward Good.” Read More Oct 15, 2024 The Secret Life of Things “The secret life of things is nothing less than the life of God.” Read More Oct 15, 2024 The Probability of Nothing “Divinity is a language unto itself, or as a five-year-old grandchild once explained to me, ‘God is outside the numbers’.” Read More Oct 15, 2024 Robert Frost was Wrong “Waiter, bring me one order of everything on the menu and when I’ve finished, I’ll pay for whichever dish I liked the best.” Read More Sep 1, 2024 Why R U, U? “Hamlet was right: you either are…or you are not. There is no disembodied ‘being’ walking abroad, seeking an ‘identity’. King Hamlet’s ghost is not real!” Read More Jul 15, 2024 Destiny Versus Fate “Your Destiny is the Fate of others; the Destiny of others is your Fate.” Read More Jul 15, 2024 Moses, Machiavelli, and Morality “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!” Read More Jul 15, 2024 Is the Universe Real “The most important thing we’ve learned is that we know so much less than we thought we knew.” Read More Jun 1, 2024 The Living and the Dead “1,500 years ago, we didn’t have these problems. We knew all that we needed to know about life.” Read More Apr 15, 2024 The Meaning of Life “In the absence of God, or any transcendent reality, the meaning of life can only be death, oblivion, and the total absence of meaning – aka the Absurd.” Read More Apr 15, 2024 Dante and the Yellow Submarine “Yellow Submarine did for the Divine Comedy what West Side Story did for Romeo & Juliet…but I very much doubt the Beatles had any idea what they’d done!” Read More Apr 15, 2024 Super-Determinism “Things are the way they are simply because they are the way they are.” Read More Mar 1, 2024 Happiness “Some folks are ‘happy’ living their lives on a beach; others need a boardroom; some need a bar.” Read More Mar 1, 2024 Life is a Movie “Our so-called World is a reflection without an object; it is the sound made by one hand clapping.” Read More Jan 15, 2024 I Seem To Be a Klein Bottle “I am what the Universe sees when it looks in the mirror.” Read More Jan 15, 2024 Determinism…or Entanglement? “Take Vegas! The casino’s ‘edge’ is as little as 1% on some bets. At those odds, I should be able to play forever…but probability is not actuality.” Read More Jan 15, 2024 Robert Frost “Anyone can go for a walk in the woods but only Frost can walk this way.” Ask any English teacher. The Road Not Taken is a perennial favorite, especially among young readers, who often understand it as an anthem of adventure and non-conformity - Jack Kerouac in verse. But is this really what the poem is about? Read More Dec 1, 2023 Do you Know *What I am*? “I am my own great-grandmother (‘Eve’). Eerie…not to mention incestuous.” Read More Dec 1, 2023 Do We Need ‘God’? “Does the idea of a Supreme Being make you uncomfortable? No problem; just will it away!” Read More Dec 1, 2023 Logical Positivism “Following the science, LP assumes that the same act, performed under the same conditions, will always produce the same result…it’s true, precisely 0% of the time!” Read More Dec 1, 2023 Utilitarianism “How new wealth is to be distributed is just as important as how old wealth has been distributed.” Read More Dec 1, 2023 Love Actually “…When your identity is indefinitely plastic, when events are no longer ‘orientable’, when relations are neither transitive nor commutative, that’s Love…actually.” Read More Oct 15, 2023 Causality and 'The Bhagavad Gita' “Because every event is sui generis, no event causes any other event! That said, every event contributes to the Actual World of every subsequent event.” Read More Oct 15, 2023 R U WYSIWYG? “What You See Is What You Get! Right…or wrong?” Read More Jul 15, 2023 Personae “Turns out, I am the Worldwide Wrinkle…and so are you!” Read More Jul 15, 2023 I am the Walrus “Popular music is a treasure trove for the philosophically curious.” Read More Jul 15, 2023 The Ship of Theseus “There is only one I am, shared by YHWH and Jesus…and me…and you…and Rene Descartes (…ergo sum).” Read More Jun 1, 2023 Albert Camus “Either death is ultimately subjected to something greater and more general than itself (Being) or death ultimately subjects everything to itself and then nothing else has any meaning or value.” Read More Apr 15, 2023 Mythology Now! “Mythology is common to all ages. There is no theology, philosophy, or science without it.” Read More Apr 15, 2023 Morals and Values “Don’t our morals reflect our values? Surely the concepts are at least related. Yes, they are related…they are antonyms. A value is the opposite of a moral.” Read More Apr 15, 2023 I Seem to be a Membrane “My so-called inner world, the ‘I’, contains nothing; it is simple. It admits no change…there is no inner world.” Read More Mar 1, 2023 Middle Voice “Eat or be eaten, kill or be killed. It’s a terrible way to live! But we’re living it…(but) it wasn’t always this way, and it doesn’t…have to be this way.” Read More Mar 1, 2023 Who R U? - The Caterpillar “It is the uniqueness of events that 'creates' spacetime; it is not spacetime that makes events unique.” Read More Jan 15, 2023 Particularity “The first known application of Occam’s Razor occurred 50,000 years ago, not in 14th century England as is generally supposed.” Read More Nov 30, 2022 A Universe From Nothing I’ll take the wisdom of Yogi Berra over that of Bill Clinton any day: Whatever is, is! Read More Oct 15, 2022 I Wasn't Anything Every day is Halloween…Every day I get to make the decision anew: who am I going to be today? Read More Oct 15, 2022 Systematic Philosophy Some people's search takes them to Fatima or Lhasa or into Outer Space. Mine took me to the dentist. Read More Oct 15, 2022 Achilles and Tortoise If Zeno can defeat his teacher, the whole class wins! Zeno today, me tomorrow! Read More Oct 15, 2022 Prepare to Be Shocked You may be thinking, “WHAAAT? That’s impossible! Who could live without numbers? If they don’t have them, then they must invent them, right?” But you would be wrong. Read More Oct 15, 2022 Ectaban Ecbatan may share the seven-ringed pattern of the solar system, but Paradise shares the seven-ringed pattern of Ecbatan! Read More Sep 1, 2022 Imagine! “John’s Utopia is a 20th century version of Friedrich Nietzsche’s flat universe.” Read More Sep 1, 2022 Parmenides I “Parmenides anticipated Trinitarian theology and 19th century German dialectics (Hegel, Marx). May we refer to his cosmology as Monothreeism™?” Read More Jul 13, 2022 Shakespearean Nihilism Editor’s note: It’s that time of year when many readers attend ‘summer theater.’ If Shakespeare is on the bill, you may find this essay relevant. Don’t leave home for the theater without reading this first! Read More Jul 12, 2022 The Sultan and the Sea One of life’s great ironies is that people who live near water are not always very good swimmers, if they are swimmers at all. And this is how it was on this island. Read More May 29, 2022 The Problem of Good The purpose of this essay is not to resolve, or even rehash, the Problem of Evil, but rather to situate the Problem of Evil in the context of an even broader problem that I call, ‘the Problem of Good’. Read More May 29, 2022 Eternity vs. Immortality Do our lives have meaning? You bet they do! But what is that meaning, and from where does it come? Read More 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

Deep dive into the crossroads of theology, philosophy, and cosmology. Cosmology is where Science and Philosophy converge in their search for a Theory of Everything (TOE). The Eternal Present “The Present is…a series of concentric circles, with its axis perpendicular to linear spacetime…” Read More Life on Mars “Based on what we think we know about biogenesis, there should be life on Mars. If it turns out that there isn’t, somebody’s “got some ‘xplainin’ to do, Lucy.'" Read More The Probability of Nothing “Divinity is a language unto itself, or as a five-year-old grandchild once explained to me, ‘God is outside the numbers’.” Read More Is the Universe Real “The most important thing we’ve learned is that we know so much less than we thought we knew.” Read More Playing with Blocks “Everything I needed to know about cosmology, I learned watching my grandchildren play with blocks.” Read More The Frost Diamond “God is ‘special’ only to that extent that in God, A and Ω are the same event.” Read More Determinism…or Entanglement? “Take Vegas! The casino’s ‘edge’ is as little as 1% on some bets. At those odds, I should be able to play forever…but probability is not actuality.” Read More Returning to Andromeda “What sort of God would throw candy wrappers on a pristine beach? I mean, burning someone at the stake, well maybe, but littering, no way!” Read More Past, Present, Future "So, it turns out that the universe did not have a lot of options when it came to structuring time." Read More A Universe From Nothing I’ll take the wisdom of Yogi Berra over that of Bill Clinton any day: Whatever is, is! Read More Cosmic Crossroads You say, "Big Bang;" we say, "Genesis." You say, "Constantine;" we say, "Ascension." Read More A Theory of Everything (TOE) Thirty years after the death of Jesus…St. Paul quoted an already ancient Christology…a TOE. Read More 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. Read More Quark Soup “I once filled the entire universe, but for less than a second. I am 100,000 times hotter than the center of the sun, but I am still a liquid. I am denser than anything in the universe, except a black hole, but I flow 20 times more easily and smoothly than water. Who am I?” Read More

Society Society is the way we live together. It is the concrete manifestation of Culture in interpersonal behavior and institutions. From Marx to Mark “The Gospel of Mark is no biography…It’s a call to action, a manifesto, a How to manual for non-violent guerilla warriors everywhere, 1st century…or 21st.” Read More Christian Anarchism ”A heretical state is not a bad state…A heretical state is not a state at all. There are no bad states. There are only states and pseudo-states.” Read More Fifth Grade Slump, Eighth Grade Cliff “We must surrender the notion that adolescence is a dress rehearsal for adulthood. It’s not; it’s real life! Read More Jesus Christ Revolutionary “He cured the sick and fed the hungry…because it was the right thing to do, here and now, and because it demonstrated what might be possible, universally, in a time to come.” Read More The End of History “Fukuyama proclaimed ‘The End of History’ with a celebratory flourish. But be careful what you celebrate!” Read More The Wonder School “Learning begins with curiosity and children are nothing but question-boxes.” Read More Leviticus and the Fed "The Fed’s 2% inflation policy is a modern version of the Levitical program. It pays for the social safety net that is our way of redistributing wealth.” Read More Home Alone “Macaulay Culkin is ‘every boy’ and his Home Alone family is ‘America’s family’ – except it’s not!” Read More Satan, Mary, and ‘Da Judge’ “Satan glorified political power for its own sake. He defended the socio-economic status quo…Jesus’ mother proclaimed a political and economic revolution...” Read More Political Alienation “Marx’s hypothesis that a person’s voting habits would be determined by their relationship to the means of production was blown out of the water…” Read More How Moses Saved Egyptian Civilization “…Walk through the streets of Jerusalem, through the marketplace at Mahane Yehudah, and find distinctly Judaized foods, dress, music, and customs from every part of the world.” Read More The Lottery “The state lottery is just about the only financial vehicle that offers some folks a realistic opportunity to materially impact their economic circumstances.” Read More Jean-Paul Sartre and Pope Leo XIII “Separated by c. 75 years, these men nonetheless faced a common challenge: Rebuild civilization!” Read More Christ the King “Sir, you are quite simply insane. We know exactly what holds our universe together; it is electromagnetism, gravity, and the strong force…not Christ.” Read More Job vs. James, Rex “God is good because he’s good, not just because he’s God.” Read More

Culture Culture Culture is the way we live out Philosophy and Theology in community. Pontius Pilate “Pilate could be the avatar of an entire class of folks in the post-industrial West, society’s so-called middle managers.” Read More What’s the Matter with Santa Claus? “Do you remember when and why you stopped believing in Santa?” Read More The Seven Pillars of Wisdom “Kabbalah kept the pre-Socratic tradition alive until it could be born anew in the Age of Aquarius.” Read More Don’t Teach Your Kid to Count! “Our own number system is based on a highly specialized, and not necessarily privileged, concept of quantity.” Read More The Great River “What the Cross is to Christianity…the River is to Process Philosophy.” Read More Self, Inc. “You’re the CEO of Self, Inc…What’s your mission statement?” Read More Childhood Lost “Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, but children are from the planet Mercury.” Read More Be Half There “'Be Here Now,’ cried Baba Ram Dass in the ‘60s. But was that good advice?” Read More Alphabet “Reciting the alphabet is like peeling layers off of a prize-winning red onion.” Read More Arithmetic “I want to repeal all the fundamental laws of Arithmetic.” Read More Just One More Beer “…Regretting your actions would mean disclaiming the entire forward course of world (cosmic) history.” Read More Everybody Loves Grammar “If the physical world isn’t structured according to the rules of grammar, the social world certainly is.” Read More Mythology Before Marvel Comics “Sturluson searched for the universal patterns that connect all times, all places, and all scales…and, Glory be to God, he found them.” Read More Should I Vote? “What if there was an election where everyone was eager to vote…but nobody cared who won? It’s happened!” Read More The Paradox of Childhood “…We treat children…as pets, slaves, snuggle bunnies and proto-adults”. Read More Is Childhood a Crime? “Parents dote on their royal highnesses…and rarely miss an opportunity to damage them in the process.” Read More Vanity “Every day for 80+ years, we imagine ourselves to be someone we are not, and we work tirelessly, and fruitlessly, to become that person. 'That' is Vanity.” Read More Bacteriology…and American Football “…Will it surprise you to learn that not every bacterium is a team player?” Read More Kabbalah and Thomas the Train “Children and tank engines are not so different from the rest of us. They crave meaning! They only settle for pleasure when…they lose hope.” Read More Deconstructing Popeye “…then I am basically an automaton. I am carbon-based AI. I am the product of nature (inherited traits) and nurture (upbringing)…my parents’ mini-me.” Read More Age is an Algorithm “We systematically suppress our actual experience and replace it with whatever it is we think we are supposed to experience, and we call that reality.” Read More Chess “A recent headline in the 'New York Post' read: King Castles!” Read More Football and Quantum Mechanics “This is what we do on Sunday nights and Mondays during football season: we play 'what if' and 'if only'.” Read More May Day “This one day converges mythology (Norse), cosmology (Pagan), theology (Christian) and ideology (Marxist) with ancient fertility rites. And for my next trick…” Read More The Lego Movie and John Stewart Bell “This movie includes a huge twist with cosmological implications.” Read More Middle Voice “Eat or be eaten, kill or be killed. It’s a terrible way to live! But we’re living it…(but) it wasn’t always this way, and it doesn’t…have to be this way.” Read More JK Rowling and Pliny the Elder "What about werewolves, giants, trolls, and dragons? We don’t believe in them; they’re not real! Are they?" Read More Dante and The Beatles “If a world can or must…self-annihilate…then that world does not exist, never did exist, never will exist, cannot exist.” Read More Football Math “At last, an opportunity to watch football in peace! … Just beer, pretzels and picking out the next Tom Brady.” Read More I Led Three Lives “Modern physics is right now living at least three lives and possibly a fourth.” Read More I Wasn't Anything Every day is Halloween…Every day I get to make the decision anew: who am I going to be today? Read More Mommy Math Part One If counting is such a powerful tool, how is it that for the most part, we don’t count? Read More Pronouns Next time someone asks you for your ‘pronouns,’ try telling them, ‘you/you’…see what happens. Read More Ectaban Ecbatan may share the seven-ringed pattern of the solar system, but Paradise shares the seven-ringed pattern of Ecbatan! Read More /ˈdjuːti/ Why can’t a monarch wear whatever shade of nail polish she wants? Read More Learn to Swym “Language Endures. We Don’t” – now that is a bumper sticker! Read More Alice In Looking-glass world, there’s plenty of there and then, but not a whiff of here and now. Read More Imagine! “John’s Utopia is a 20th century version of Friedrich Nietzsche’s flat universe.” Read More BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different Land is imbued with holiness, which means that, like God, it is beyond human measures of usefulness or control. Read More Xiako Can't Count So, what’s up with the Piraha? How can they get by without numbers? Read More 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. Read More Enlightenment! “It is often said that victors write history. That is even truer when the war is cultural rather than political.” Read More How to Coach an Undefeated Football Team “Team is not a collective noun; it’s a verb: to team.” Read More Teaching Physics in the 21st Century Schools will soon be reopening with kids returning to begin a new school year. Now is the time to begin thinking about the fall curriculum. In this article, we outline a 10-unit physics curriculum for grades four through eight, all based on The Yellow Submarine. Read More I'm Bored! “We are co-responsible for the world. We are all always our siblings’ keepers!” Read More Believers Need Not Apply We’ve constructed a super-elaborate cosmology to explain how ‘it is’ arose spontaneously from ‘it is not.’ (If that doesn’t make any sense to you, trust me, it doesn’t make sense to me either.) How did the universe come to be? It just did! How did the ratios of the masses of subatomic particles get so finely tuned? They just did! Read More Offense Taken! There is nothing more self-satisfying or self-aggrandizing than ‘taking offense’. Read More Is 65 the New 45? That’s conventional wisdom…and in this rare case, conventional wisdom is not wrong…but neither is it perfectly right. Read More Everybody's Autobiography Is it possible to write an autobiography of everyone, to somehow incorporate the wildly varying events of different people’s lives into a single story? Absurd, right? But not so fast! Read More Can Subject/Verb Agreement Make the World Go Round? We imagine that our world is made up of ‘things’ (nouns), their accidental qualities (adjectives), and the relationships between them (verbs). We imagine this because just such a classification system is embedded in our native tongue: modern English, for example, or most any other contemporary Indo-European language. Read More Voice Verbs “I am stuck on Band-Aid ’cause Band-Aid’s stuck on me!” So says the jingle for one of the world’s most iconic products. But more importantly, and quite unexpectedly, this slogan is one of the best examples of ‘middle voice thinking’ in American pop culture. Read More Antonyms Antonyms. No such thing! Not-X includes the shadow of X. Example: ‘Pretty’ and ‘Ugly’. ‘Pretty’ refers to the totality (gestalt) of a person, place, or thing. ‘Ugly’ refers to those elements of the aforementioned that are not consistent with a ‘pretty’ whole. ‘Pretty’ and ‘ugly’ appear to be antonyms…but they’re not. In fact, they operate on two entirely different syntactic levels. ‘Ugly’ actually derives its meaning from the concept of ‘pretty’. Therefore, we can say ‘ugly’ includes “the shadow of ‘pretty’”; but not so the other way around. Read More Covid 20 So we were told that COVID-19 came from bats. By the summer of 2020, it should have been obvious that this was wrong. COVID-19 has behaved in some very unique ways that most probably reflect the effects of ‘human engineering’. Now the scientific consensus is shifting. Read More Amazon Amazon provides reliable, rapid, and inexpensive delivery service; and the US Postal Service? Well, to be kind let’s say ‘not so much’. So who is being sued by the feds? You guessed it…Amazon. Apparently, success today is automatically an anti-trust violation. Read More Culture

Aletheia Today magazine essays relating to religious writings, beliefs, values, and traditions held by Judaism and Christianity Theology Theology is the intersection of Philosophy and Mythology where we consider matters of ultimate concern. Apr 1, 2025 Miracles “…Everything that happens happens only once…there is nothing under the Sun that is not new! Being and novelty are synonymous.” Read More Apr 1, 2025 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.” Read More Feb 1, 2025 Apocalypse Now! “We are not midway through the Second Act of a Mystery Play called Salvation… Brunhilda has sung; we just need to applaud!” Read More Dec 1, 2024 Jesus Gets Us! “A bond exists between us that unites who Jesus is essentially with who I am existentially. I change with every breath; Jesus never changes.” Read More Dec 1, 2024 R U Body, Soul or Spirit? “Are soul and spirit just two names for one concept…and do we need either?” Read More Oct 15, 2024 World Without God Amen “God is dead, and we have killed him…who will wipe this blood from us?” (Nietzsche) Read More Sep 1, 2024 Mark’s Diary – Notes for a Screenplay “And so they were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, Jesus leading the way, and the disciples were filled with awe, while those who followed behind were afraid.” Read More Sep 1, 2024 Is Christology a TOE “Cosmologists cannot rely on science any more than astronomers can rely on religion. There can be no successful TOE (‘Theory of Everything’) without both. ….” Read More Sep 1, 2024 The Mustard Seed “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds find shelter in its branches.” (Matthew 13: 31 – 32) Read More Aug 29, 2024 Show Us a Sign! “We have been shown our sign…and it’s a simple one. The sign is that there are signs!” Read More Jul 15, 2024 God is a Bother! “The reason most people don’t believe in God is that they haven’t fully considered the alternative.” Read More Jun 1, 2024 Job Verses God: The Trial of the Epoch “Job v. God is the Marbury v. Madison of theological law.” Read More Jun 1, 2024 Proof of God: The Empirical Argument “Because God is not perfectly manifest anywhere in our World, we perceive that God is present everywhere…” Read More Jun 1, 2024 Proof of God: The Ontological Argument “Value permeates every nook and cranny of the World. God is Value… No values – no world...” Read More Jun 1, 2024 The Beatles and John “Both Johns looked out their respective windows and saw their worlds on fire. Both Johns situated their profound and ultimately hopeful message in that apocalyptic context.” Read More Apr 15, 2024 Marx vs. Mark “The Gospel of Mark is no biography…It’s a call to action, a manifesto, a How-To manual for non-violent guerilla warriors everywhere, 1st century…or 21st.” Read More Apr 15, 2024 Sacramental Priesthood “I’m willing to bet there are some people out there (actually, a lot of people) who would literally love to spend their careers revealing the presence of God to others.” Read More Mar 1, 2024 Philip Goff “You’ll end up living life as though you were counting cards at a Black Jack table in Las Vegas – in other words, profitably! But it’s still gambling.” Read More Mar 1, 2024 The Theology of Science-Fiction Can AI have soul ? Read More Jan 15, 2024 Faith Is Not Belief Without Evidence "Faith is not belief without evidence; it's the content of a relationship with God and is based upon the private experience of God's love." Read More Jan 15, 2024 A ‘New’ Old Theory of Consciousness “The simplest unicellular species display behaviors that are clearly cognitive in nature.” Read More Dec 1, 2023 Re-Imagining the Magnificat "In our zeal to project our conceptions of The Ideal Woman onto this enigmatic first-century figure, we’ve strayed a bit from the little we do know." Read More Dec 1, 2023 Christ and the Kids “So what is it that makes children so much better than us? First…a child is not a ‘mini-you’… Is an Octopus a mini-you? Then neither is a child.” Read More Oct 15, 2023 Idolatry “An idol is that with no this…the sound of one hand clapping. It is Alice’s Cheshire Cat – all face, no body; all hat, no cattle!” Read More Oct 15, 2023 “Is God Dead?” “Right now, scientists and philosophers all over the world are engaged in the search for a ‘TOE’, a Theory of Everything…(but) we already have such a TOE.” Read More Oct 15, 2023 The 7th Day “Genesis is no longer something that explains; it has become something that has to be explained away.” Read More Oct 15, 2023 Satan, Mary, and ‘Da Judge’ “Satan glorified political power for its own sake. He defended the socio-economic status quo…Jesus’ mother proclaimed a political and economic revolution...” Read More Sep 1, 2023 ChatGOD "ChatGPT can be smart, but it can never be holy. In being an e-being, precisely because its intelligence is artificial, it is necessarily alienated from the Divine. It can only be 'as if,' never truly as." Read More Sep 1, 2023 Navigating the Nexus of AI "Imagine if AI had its own commandments, like 'Thou shalt treat all data equally.' Encouraging ethical principles in AI programming can keep its decisions in line with virtues like fairness, justice, and empathy." Read More Jul 15, 2023 The Theology of Mikhail Bakunin “Bakunin was fierce in his profession of atheism; but unlike his Marxist counterparts, he was not shy about using the language of Judeo-Christian theology to make his points.” Read More Jul 15, 2023 A Jewish Approach to Cognitive Dissonance "I would like to be an intellectually honest spiritual seeker, a warm and loving and dynamic wife and mother, a supportive friend; but at the end of the day, I look in the mirror, and see an annoyed and tired dish rag, and all I want to do is have a cup of coffee and a bar of chocolate. Warm dynamic spiritual seeker aside, anyone who stands between me and my mug is in for it." Read More Jul 15, 2023 Eucharist “…The spacetime world of matter and energy, 14 billion years old and almost 100 billion light years across, is not the final word.” Read More Jul 15, 2023 Korach Over Dinner "Like most people of my generation, I cringe when I hear the M word." Read More Jun 1, 2023 God’s Will “We can say that God wills the events that constitute the world, even though God does not in any way cause those events to occur.” Read More Jun 1, 2023 Whitehead and Zohar “Zohar and Whitehead, separated by more than 500 years, both deliver us a map of the world where X marks the spot of the eschatological treasure.” Read More Apr 15, 2023 Mary Magdalene, The Witness "That Christ ushered in this new era of life and liberation in the presence of women, and that he sent them out as the first witnesses of the complete gospel story, is perhaps the boldest, most overt affirmation of their equality in his kingdom that Jesus ever delivered." Read More Apr 15, 2023 Growing Into Pentecost "In any case, Pentecost turns out to be a big deal after all. Reformed folk can join with those claiming to be a “full-gospel church”—maybe even remind the others of some overlooked elements in that mix." Read More Apr 15, 2023 Matzah of Hope--Passover Part One "This matzah, which we set aside as a symbol of hope for the thousands of women who are anchored to marriages in name only, reminds us that slavery comes in many forms." Read More Apr 15, 2023 Tantum Ergo Read More Mar 1, 2023 Two-Faced God “All gods are two faced…and that’s not blasphemy!” Read More Mar 1, 2023 Hell “Nobody believes in Hell anymore…and that’s a good thing.” Read More Jan 15, 2023 Educating Christians “We must teach our children a totally counter-cultural model of nature. We must teach the doctrines of our Faith, not as exceptions to natural law, but as the highest expressions of natural law.” Read More Nov 30, 2022 Christ the King “Sir, you are quite simply insane. We know exactly what holds our universe together; it is electromagnetism, gravity, and the strong force…not Christ.” Read More Oct 15, 2022 What Did John See? The Bible doesn’t tell us what John saw, but it does tell us that the breaking of the seventh seal was followed by half an hour of total silence. Why? Read More Oct 15, 2022 A Theory of Everything (TOE) Thirty years after the death of Jesus…St. Paul quoted an already ancient Christology…a TOE. Read More Jul 13, 2022 Competing Creeds Suppose we were to express our generation's secular worldview as a 'creed,' how would it read? Read More Jul 13, 2022 The Great Commandment “The second is like it…” Really? The second is like it? Like it? At first glance, this seems ridiculous. The two verses don’t look alike at all. One concerns our relationship with God, the Almighty, the creator of heaven and earth; the other concerns our relationship with the jerk down the street who doesn’t mow his lawn and plays his music loud on Saturday nights. Read More Jul 12, 2022 The People's Creed But did you know that a 6th century Irish poet developed his own version of a ‘creed’…which I have named, the People’s Creed? Read More May 29, 2022 Christology 101 “…Without Christ, the World would consist of a vast multiplicity of isolated events, a sea of ships passing in the night.” Read More May 28, 2022 Jesus Meets Mister Spock Science and Religion should assist each other in pursuing the truth. Science can be too closed to the life of the spirit, the mind, imagination, thought, and creativity. Religion can be closed to anything new that threatens its perception of reality. Read More 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

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

The Bible The Bible is a treasure trove of primary source material at the foundation of the Intellectual History of the West. Ephesians 2:10 “In this one verse…St. Paul proposes a radically new model of what it means to be a human being.” Read More How Matthew Spins Mark “The same facts can take on different ‘meaning’ depending on how they’re presented. Read More Mark’s Diary – Notes for a Screenplay “And so they were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, Jesus leading the way, and the disciples were filled with awe, while those who followed behind were afraid.” Read More Jeremiah “God places his words in Jeremiah’s mouth. How can this be consistent with Jeremiah’s status as a free and independent entity?” Read More Mark’s Marks of Authenticity “There is no single work more important than the Gospel of Mark…the Intellectual History of the West hangs on it, so its authenticity is of paramount importance.” Read More Re-Imagining the Magnificat "In our zeal to project our conceptions of The Ideal Woman onto this enigmatic first-century figure, we’ve strayed a bit from the little we do know." Read More The ‘O Antiphons’ “We are asking Christ to come… to teach us, rescue us, shine on us, free us and, repeated three times, to save us.” Read More Eucharist “…The spacetime world of matter and energy, 14 billion years old and almost 100 billion light years across, is not the final word.” Read More The Comedy of Job “Failure to appreciate the comic elements in Job has resulted in an almost universal misreading of the text.” Read More Revelation “This is possibly the shortest ‘play’ in all of literature…and yet it is arguably more important than anything Shakespeare (or even Andrew Lloyd Weber) ever wrote! Read More Psalm 151 “But deliver us from evil,” this last verse is the key to the entire prayer. Read More Beatitudes “The eight beatitudes are a 'manifesto' for change, a change in the way we understand the world…behave in that world… (and) act toward one another. Read More Jericho “Some of us were waving copies of Mao’s Little Red Book; we all should have been clutching copies of the Old Testament.” Read More Job is My Superhero "No one has taken a bigger risk than Job, and no one has faced longer odds; and yet, Job has taken God to court and won!" Read More Bible Read Backwards 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? Read More What Did John See? The Bible doesn’t tell us what John saw, but it does tell us that the breaking of the seventh seal was followed by half an hour of total silence. Why? Read More The Final Psalms Ultimately, the Kingdom of Heaven is the transfiguration of the historical realm into the eternal realm, according to God’s values. Read More 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. Read More The Riddle of Job If I do my job in this essay, you may become a modern-day version of Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, who “stoppeth one of three." You’ll be spreading the truth about Job to anyone who’ll listen. Read More Genesis Wins Nobel Prize Traditionally, Nobels are awarded only to ‘living recipients’ and only for work completed in the preceding year. In its statement, the committee said it felt an exception was needed in this instance “in order to right a grievous wrong.” Read More