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< Back Some Thing or No Thing David Cowles “Whatever is, is self-aware, and what is self-aware, is!” Why are there some things rather than no things ? To be clear: no thing is not ‘nothing’. ‘No thing’ simply refers to the absence of things . (Likewise, ‘something’ doesn’t necessarily entail the existence of some things .) It is not a given that being be ‘thingy’, i.e. lumpy…it just is! Riddle : How is the universe like salt water taffy? Answer : Undifferentiated taffy (something) is subject to a simple twist that separates some thing (one piece) from something (continuous taffy flow). Note : I learned this at The Goldenrod in York Beach, Maine, not at CERN. On a cosmological scale, a similar ‘twisting’ is what makes ‘something’ some thing . A ‘twist’ occurs whenever a thing intersects itself, i.e. interacts with itself. We call such a twist, ‘recursion’. It is the dawn of self-awareness and the spark of identity. Twist is key; we’ll come back to ‘twist’ later in our tale. When an entity acts upon itself, like when a baby touches its toes, it is, therefore and thereby, self-aware . Awareness is like a mirror. Recursion makes space reflective, but such recursion is enabled or prevented by the underlying topology of space itself. To be is to be self-aware. Self-awareness is a function of the recursive twist that defines a particular region of spacetime as some thing . Self-awareness is what culls some thing out of something – like a certain taffy-twisting machine I know. Humor me. Pretend for a moment that an electron is not self-aware. Does that mean it doesn’t exist? Of course it exists! But without self-awareness, it is not some thing . It is something but not some thing . Its being is undifferentiated, like the taffy flow. How could that be? Well, for example, such an electron could be thought of as a graduated undulation (you might call it a ‘wave’) in the electro-magnetic field – i.e. not a ‘thing’ in the sense of something with a distinct location in space and time: focus not locus . Cosmos ‘before’ creation: “formless…empty…darkness” (Genesis 1:1) It is nothing , but what is nothing? If ‘nothing’ was a sterile receptacle, that would be something, i.e. a limitation imposed on the creative process, an obstacle, a barrier. But nothing is not that; nothing does not preclude or hinder in any way the emergence of something. What we mistake as ‘nothing and something’ is really just ‘potentiality and actuality’. Prior to Creation, there was nothing, neither light nor dark…or same thing, there was both light and dark. Out of pure potentiality, the primal creative act gathered light and separated it from dark: “the first day” - the primal, prototypical distinction, i.e. distinction itself. Over the next 5 days, the Cosmos interacting with itself (evolution) triggered an avalanche of things (dry land, celestial bodies, living organisms, etc.). Our world is a colloidal conglomerate of things (light) differentiated from each other by…nothing (dark). The world we experience is ‘what’s gathered’ and not what’s not. We see ‘things’ directly; we can only infer the influence of the residual ‘nothing’ that makes those ‘things’ possible. A sterile receptacle would be something – a negative something but something nonetheless. It would restrict genesis , introduce friction into the creative process. Empty space, on the other hand, is truly nothing; and therefore it is a compatible environment for the emergence of things . Western philosophy has been infected by the disease of Dualism . We have imagined that all awareness, including self-awareness, requires ‘one who is aware’ and one who is the object of such awareness. Call it mind/body, body/soul, ego/id… But once we say 1 = 2, it’s game over! We cannot make progress in these areas until we change the paradigm. 1 ≠ 2…but 2 = 1. (The commutative property never applies IRL. No two events are ever interchangeable.) Among others, Alfred North Whitehead demonstrated that what we perceive as two ‘states’ (observer/observed) is really just a single ‘process’. Instead of two related ‘entities’ we have one entity with two poles. Yes, the world is ‘bi-polar’…in the full psychiatric sense of the word. Whatever is, is self-aware, and what is self-aware, is! No, I will not get sucked into a debate with you over what is or isn’t self-aware. Do you believe that you are the only self-aware entity in the universe? Cheers! Do you believe that only human beings can be self-aware? Bully! Or are you willing to extend self-awareness to primates and parrots, bees and barracuda, fungi and forests? How about the 30 trillion cells that make up our bodies? Bacteria? Mitochondria? Molecules, atoms, electrons, quarks, gluons? How about your favorite AI PA? I couldn’t care less. Enjoy yourself! But know this: Whatever you do call self-aware , you also call a ‘thing’ and whatever you call a ‘thing’, you also call self-aware ! Sidebar : I saw the dentist today and we discussed the possibility of capping a couple of my teeth. One tooth might require a root canal. I asked for an explanation, but I hardly heard a word. I stopped listening as soon as the dentist said, “The nerve naturally pulls away from stress and irritation; that’s why, as we age, our dental roots tend to recede into our gums.” So the nerves in my teeth are sufficiently self-aware to get the heck out of the way when I’m chomping down on them. Of course, you’re thinking, “A nerve doesn’t have to be self-aware to react to environmental stimuli; that could just be some biochemical reaction.” Of course, it’s a biochemical reaction. But is that reaction facilitated in some way by the nerve’s self-awareness? The world of biochemistry is non-linear and non-linearity is close to the definition of self-awareness. Consider our root: It consists of 4 different types of cells and there are more than 1,000,000 such cells in every human dental root. We need to account, not just for a flight response to stress, but for the coordinated activity of over a million cells over a period of decades. We are not talking about a single reaction of a single cell to a single stimulus. We’re not even talking about the reactions of a million single cells. We’re talking about the coordinated action of a million cells. We’re talking about a process that requires some species of communication and coordination. It might not be the Charge of the Light Brigade, but it is something – something modeled better by self-awareness than by biochemistry alone. But why? Why is the cosmos like this? It has been suggested that what we experience as ‘self-awareness’ is really just the experience we have of God as God experiences the world. In one version, we are God’s eyes, in another God’s fingers. In yet another version, ‘we’ are just the passive and accidental by-products of God’s intentional activity. Alternatively, it has been proposed that there is a yet unidentified field (X), like the EM or Higgs fields, that permeates the cosmos and interacts in various ways with various entities to generate the phenomenon of self-awareness. Want to be self-aware? Just tap into the X Field! Tired of watching yourself mess up? Just tamp down the tap…or turn it off altogether. Then there’s Leibniz (c. 1700). He kicked off a movement that understood ‘awareness’ as reflection . Leibniz himself proposed that ‘actual entities’ (i.e. Monads) might be ‘naturally reflective’. In his view, to reflect and be reflected is what it means to be. Another version of this reflection ontology borrows from topology; reflection is understood as a topological feature of the cosmos. One such model invokes non-orientable topology as follows: We are used to two sided pieces of paper, boxes with an inside and an out. We are surprised to learn in middle school that these distinctions can be made to go away with a single ‘quantum’ gesture (a simple twist). A one-sided piece of paper? A box with no inside? What will God think of next? Now, every 7th grade girl or boy is Merlin…or Happy Potter – no wand required! What a time to be alive! If I were a Klein Bottle , a 3 dimensional version of a non-orientable Mobius Ring (above), I would be inherently self-aware. With no inside or out, I’d suck at holding wine, but self-awareness would be part of my constitution. Now the mirror and its object are literally, physically one! A Mobius Ring is just a strip of paper, ‘twisted’ and then joined at its ends like Burger King’s crown. There’s that twist again! Now my two sided strip has only one side. But if I travel once around my ring, I end up back where I started…only upside down. Now I am the image of myself. I need to go around again if I want to regain my original ‘orientation’. I am self-aware because there’s only me. I no longer have two sides, two aspects. 2 = 1. Twisted! I don’t require you, dear reader, to sign onto any one of these models. Pick one that suits you or hold out for something better down the road. I do hope we can agree, however, that it is time for you to say good night to the monsters under your bed and good-bye forever to the ghost in your machine. (Gilbert Ryle) 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 Summer 2024 Previous Next

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For Aristotle, there is a real distinction between what a thing is and what a thing is like. < Back Transubstantiation for the Rest of Us Nicholas Senz Jul 13, 2022 For Aristotle, there is a real distinction between what a thing is and what a thing is like. Recently, we celebrated the great Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, colloquially known as the feast of Corpus Christi (“the body of Christ”). On this day we give special thanks for the great gift we celebrate every Mass: the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, one of the most central mysteries of our faith. Of course, the presence of Christ in the Eucharist is also one of the most mysterious mysteries of our faith. Our eyes tell us it is bread and wine before us, but our faith tells us it is the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ. The Church’s Tradition has handed down to us a word to describe this reality: transubstantiation, which says that the accidents of bread and wine remain while the substance becomes that of Christ Himself. For many, though, this term is no help: the technical philosophical explanations are just as head-scratch-inducing as the claim itself. Yet once some of the finer points are made clearer, this explanation can be quite helpful. First, a bit of background. To borrow a phrase from St. Anselm of Canterbury, our faith is always seeking understanding— fides quarens intellectum —and so we often turn to the tools of understanding, to philosophy, to contemplate the truths of the faith. The Church has found the philosophy of Aristotle in particular to be a fitting partner to the faith, so Aristotelian terms have often been employed in theological investigations. (This can be seen pre-eminently in the work of St. Thomas Aquinas.) The concept of transubstantiation is one such instance of the Church making use of Aristotelian terms: substance and accident. What do these mean? To put it simply: for Aristotle, there is a real distinction between what a thing is and what a thing is like . This is a common sense observation, but one that Aristotle builds into his systematic thought about reality. Let’s use for our example a human being. What it is, as we’ve just said, is a human being. The human being will have all kinds of different characteristics—weight, height, hair style—but essentially, before anything else, apart from any other attribute, it is first and foremost a human being. The human being’s weight could fluctuate; his height could increase or decrease with age; his hair style could change from a crewcut to dreadlocks; but those changes do not put that human being out of existence and an entirely new one into being. There is something that endures beyond all these changes: the human being himself, in his essence. We could put it this way: with all the aspects of a human being and all the ways they can change, there is something that stands under those different attributes. “Stands under” in Latin is sub – stans , which gives us the word substance . All of these changeable, secondary aspects of the substance are, you might say, “attached” to the thing, but are not an integral part of the thing itself. “Attached” in Latin is accidens , which gives us the word accidents . Thus, substance refers to what a thing is, and accidents refer to what a thing is like. Thinking of things this way, we could say that there are two kinds of change a thing might normally undergo: substantial change and accidental change. In a substantial change, the thing that was ceases to be and a new thing comes to exist, as when a log burns and becomes ashes, or when a lump of dough bakes and becomes bread. Something new has come into being. Substantial changes are virtually always accompanied by accidental changes, because different kinds of things typically have different attributes. The log that was hard and brown becomes fine and black. The dough that was, well, doughy and white becomes soft and golden. Here both what a thing is and what it’s like change. It can also happen that the thing remains but its characteristics change, as when a log is chopped in half and loses mass, or when a lump of dough is sprinkled with sugar and becomes sweet. This is only accidental change. Once we distinguish the difference between these two, what happens in the mystery of the Eucharist, in transubstantiation, becomes clearer. If it’s possible for the attributes of a thing to change while that thing remains the same, it’s intelligible for the thing itself to change while the attributes remain the same. This is precisely what happens in the Eucharist: the substances of the bread and wine change, but the accidents remain the same. That is, what they are is now different, but what they are like is not. Before the Mass, the bread is small, soft, and white, and the wine is wet, aromatic, and intoxicating. After the words of consecration are prayed, all of these attributes remain, but what is on the altar is no longer bread and wine, but the very substance and presence of Jesus Christ Himself. This explanation by no means exhausts the mystery of the Eucharist. As with all the sacraments, there is something here beyond our comprehension. But while reason cannot completely encapsulate the Eucharist, reason can at least show that what we claim about the Eucharist is not unreasonable. It is mysterious, but it is not absurd. The doctrine of transubstantiation helps us to understand how the eyes of faith can see what the eyes of the body cannot. This was republished with minimal edits and with permission from catholicexchange.com. Nicholas Senz is a husband and father who tries every day to live Galatians 2:20: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me." He is Director of Religious Education at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church in Mill Valley, CA, a managing editor at Catholic Stand, and a Master Catechist. A native of Verboort, Oregon, Nicholas holds master's degrees in philosophy and theology from the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley, CA. His work has appeared at Catholic Exchange, Crisis Magazine, Homiletic and Pastoral Review, and his own blog, Two Old Books . Nicholas is a science fiction aficionado, Tolkien devotee, avid Anglophile, and consumer of both police procedurals and popcorn in large quantities, usually together. Twitter at @NickSenz . Share Previous Next Do you like what you just read? 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"Advances in neurotechnology do raise important privacy concerns. However, I believe these debates can overlook more fundamental threats to privacy." < Back Neurotech Challenges Mental Privacy: New Human Rights? Laura Cabrera Sep 1, 2023 "Advances in neurotechnology do raise important privacy concerns. However, I believe these debates can overlook more fundamental threats to privacy." Neurotechnologies – devices that interact directly with the brain or nervous system – were once dismissed as the stuff of science fiction. Not anymore. Several companies are trying to develop brain-computer interfaces, or BCIs, in hopes of helping patients with severe paralysis or other neurological disorders. Entrepreneur Elon Musk’s company Neuralink, for example, recently received Food and Drug Administration approval to begin human testing for a tiny brain implant that can communicate with computers. There are also less invasive neurotechnologies, like EEG headsets that sense electrical activity inside the wearer’s brain, covering a wide range of applications from entertainment and wellness to education and the workplace. Neurotechnology research and patents have soared at least twentyfold over the past two decades, according to a United Nations report, and devices are getting more powerful. Newer BCIs, for example, have the potential to collect brain and nervous system data more directly, with higher resolution, in greater amounts, and in more pervasive ways. However, these improvements have also raised concerns about mental privacy and human autonomy – questions I think about in my research on the ethical and social implications of brain science and neural engineering. Who owns the generated data, and who should get access? Could this type of device threaten individuals’ ability to make independent decisions? In July 2023, the U.N. agency for science and culture held a conference on the ethics of neurotechnology, calling for a framework to protect human rights. Some critics have even argued that societies should recognize a new category of human rights, “neurorights.” In 2021, Chile became the first country whose constitution addresses concerns about neurotechnology. Advances in neurotechnology do raise important privacy concerns. However, I believe these debates can overlook more fundamental threats to privacy. A glimpse inside Concerns about neurotechnology and privacy focus on the idea that an observer can “read” a person’s thoughts and feelings just from recordings of their brain activity. It is true that some neurotechnologies can record brain activity with great specificity: for example, developments on high-density electrode arrays that allow for high-resolution recording from multiple parts of the brain. Researchers can make inferences about mental phenomena and interpret behavior based on this kind of information. However, “reading” the recorded brain activity is not straightforward. Data has already gone through filters and algorithms before the human eye gets the output. Given these complexities, my colleague Daniel Susser and I wrote a recent article in the American Journal of Bioethics – Neuroscience, asking whether some worries around mental privacy might be misplaced. While neurotechnologies do raise significant privacy concerns, we argue that the risks are similar to those for more familiar data-collection technologies, such as everyday online surveillance: the kind most people experience through internet browsers and advertising, or wearable devices. Even browser histories on personal computers are capable of revealing highly sensitive information. It is also worth remembering that a key aspect of being human has always been inferring other people’s behaviors, thoughts, and feelings. Brain activity alone does not tell the full story; other behavioral or physiological measures are also needed to reveal this type of information, as well as social context. A certain surge in brain activity might indicate either fear or excitement, for example. However, that is not to say there’s no cause for concern. Researchers are exploring new directions in which multiple sensors – such as headbands, wrist sensors and room sensors – can be used to capture multiple kinds of behavioral and environmental data. Artificial intelligence could be used to combine that data into more powerful interpretations. Think for yourself? Another thought-provoking debate around neurotechnology deals with cognitive liberty. According to the Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics, founded in 1999, the term refers to “the right of each individual to think independently and autonomously, to use the full power of his or her mind, and to engage in multiple modes of thought.” More recently, other researchers have resurfaced the idea, such as in legal scholar Nita Farahany’s book “The Battle for Your Brain.” Proponents of cognitive liberty argue broadly for the need to protect individuals from having their mental processes manipulated or monitored without their consent. They argue that greater regulation of neurotechnology may be required to protect individuals’ freedom to determine their own inner thoughts and to control their own mental functions. These are important freedoms, and there are certainly specific features – like those of novel BCI neurotechnology and nonmedical neurotechnology applications – that prompted important questions. Yet, I would argue that the way cognitive freedom is discussed in these debates sees each individual person as an isolated, independent agent, neglecting the relational aspects of who we are and how we think. Thoughts do not simply spring out of nothing in someone’s head. For example, part of my mental process as I write this article is recollecting and reflecting on research from colleagues. I’m also reflecting on my own experiences: the many ways that who I am today is the combination of my upbringing, the society I grew up in, the schools I attended. Even the ads my web browser pushes on me can shape my thoughts. How much are our thoughts uniquely ours? How much are my mental processes already being manipulated by other influences? And keeping that in mind, how should societies protect privacy and freedom? I believe that acknowledging the extent to which our thoughts are already shaped and monitored by many different forces can help set priorities as neurotechnologies and AI become more common. Looking beyond novel technology to strengthen current privacy laws may give a more holistic view of the many threats to privacy, and what freedoms need defending. This essay was republished with minimal edits in cooperation with The Conversation . Laura Cabrera's interests focus on the ethical and societal implications of neurotechnology and neuroscientific advances. She has been working on projects that explore the media coverage and the attitudes of the general public toward pharmacological and novel neurosurgical interventions for the treatment of psychiatric disorders. She has also worked on the public perceptions towards the use of different modalities of neuromodifiers for enhancement purposes, as well as their normative implications. Her current work also focuses on the responsible governance of neurotechnology. Return to our AI Issue 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

The Bible isn’t a science textbook. And we shouldn’t expect it to operate as one. < Back At the Beginning of the World: Dinosaurs, Genesis, and the Gift of Science Joe Terrell Jul 13, 2022 The Bible isn’t a science textbook. And we shouldn’t expect it to operate as one. When I was ten years old, our church library ordered a book called Dinosaurs and The Bible . I couldn’t have been more excited. Like most ten-year-olds, I was a huge dinosaur nerd. When I grew up, I wanted to be a paleontologist, and I could rattle off the Latin names for all my favorite dinosaurs. The week the book arrived at our church, the pastor told the congregation their children needed to read the book – especially if they were receiving “public school education.” I was, of course, the first in line to borrow it from the church library. The crux of Dinosaurs and the Bible hinged on the idea that since God created everything in six literal days (about 10,000 years ago), dinosaurs and humans definitely co-existed at the same time in history. I devoured the book. It was filled with wild artwork, colorful charts, and scientific explanations of key Biblical passages. However, the more I read Dinosaurs and the Bible , the more uneasy I became. The first red flag was the book’s chapter about Noah’s Ark, which claimed that in order to fit dinosaurs on the ark to save them from the Great Flood, God probably helped Noah by either shrinking the dinosaurs or giving him dinosaur eggs. Okay, weird , I thought. But I can go with it . But it was the book’s final chapter about my favorite dinosaur – the Tyrannosaurus Rex – that finally tipped me over the edge. Deemed the “King of the Dinosaurs,” the T-Rex was a ferocious predator the size of a school bus. But, the book claimed that since pain and death didn’t exist prior to The Fall, the T-Rex was originally designed by God as a plant-eating reptile . The chapter even included an illustration of the T-Rex using its fearsome jaws to crack open and eat watermelons . I distinctly remember closing the book, glancing over to the plastic T-Rex toy on my nightstand, and thinking, There’s no way . I returned the book, disappointed and more than a little confused. But, like most young Christians, I buried my questions and split my scientific worldview in half . On one side, I had Adam and Eve, Noah’s Ark, and the Tower of Babel . And, on the other, I had dinosaurs, cavemen, the Ice Age, and extinction-level asteroid impacts . A secret bargain was struck between my opposing worldviews: they could peacefully coexist as long as they never overlapped . That compromise was easy to maintain in small-town East Texas. In Sunday school (and most of my high school science classes), the “theory” of evolution was regularly ridiculed and dismissed . In college, things got a bit more complicated. My degree track required a couple of science classes, so I signed up for the two easiest courses I could find – Oceanography and Geology. In my science classes, my scientific preconceptions weren’t so much as challenged as they were simultaneously and completely ignored and obliterated . Suddenly, the questions were coming at me faster than my theological framework could handle. For example, If we have fossilized evidence of interactions between Wooly Mammoths and early humans, how come we don’t have the same evidence for people and dinosaurs? If most of the fossil record is a result of a worldwide flood, why are fossils stratified across geological layers that seem to imply distinct periods of ecological diversity? Shouldn’t the bones of dinosaurs, mammals, and humans be all mixed up in the same rock layers? It takes the light from some distant stars hundreds of millions of years to reach Earth. Shouldn’t the universe be at least that old? And, as a Christian, am I supposed to ignore all the pre-human remains and artifacts we’ve uncovered that pre-date human civilization by tens of thousands of years? The two halves of my scientific worldview had finally collided and revealed several irreconcilable differences. Would I trust the infallible Word of God? Or would I backslide into the cold embrace of modern science? Weird Science When it comes to Christianity’s relationship with science and creation, there are three primary points of view (though variations exist within each): Young Earth Creationism : God created life, the universe, and everything in six literal and sequential days. The age of the Earth can be determined by counting and tracing back the genealogies in Genesis. Old Earth (Progressive) Creationism : God created everything in six literal days, but large gaps of time passed between each of the “days.” Evolutionary Creationism : God created everything, but did so through the testable and observable natural laws and processes He designed. One of the most prolific advocates for Young Earth Creationism is the evangelical ministry Answers in Genesis (AiG). Young Earth Creationists spin an alternative view of human history in which the Earth is only 10,000 years old ( a date derived from counting back on the Biblical genealogies found in Genesis ), but the catastrophic effects of the worldwide flood (as depicted in Genesis 7) creates the appearance of an old Earth . At the beginning of my crisis of faith, I was drawn to AiG for their hardline stances and conspiracy-like approach to “secular science.” But the deeper I dove in, the more I struggled. The Young Earth Creationism view appeared to be at odds with every major scientific discovery of the past century in the fields of geology, paleontology, astronomy, genetics, neuroscience, climatology, anthropology, and biology. It was a posture of constant warfare in a conflict that no one else seemed very interested in fighting anymore. In my mind, it was a battle between a middle-school Sunday School teacher who read a couple of articles on Answers in Genesis and a Geology professor with a doctorate and peer-reviewed research. But what if the battle was completely unnecessary? And what if we could stem the flow of casualties — people, like me, who felt as if they had to make an impossible choice? The Genesis Doctrine Since the beginning of time, people have been telling stories about how it all began . In the Babylonian creation story , the god Marduk kills the goddess Tiamat and forms the earth from her corpse. Humankind is later created to serve the gods and take care of the earth. But, humans get too loud and most are wiped out by a giant flood sent by the gods. In Norse Mythology , the All-Father Odin carved the first man and woman from two pieces of driftwood that floated ashore on a beach. He breathed life into the couple and named them Askr and Embla. In the Mayan creation account , the Creator Gods wanted to preserve their image in a new race of lesser beings that would also worship them. They tried making humans out of mud, but they crumbled in the sun. They tried again with wood, but these people had no soul and had to be destroyed by a flood. Finally, they tried with corn – the staple food of the Mayan culture – and it worked. In the Abrahamic religions , God brought the universe into existence and formed mankind from the dust of the Earth. The first human couple is placed in a garden paradise but is tricked by a talking snake into eating a magic fruit from a special tree. Where and when you were born (and how you were raised) determines which of these stories you would view as myths and which one you’d approach as fact. It’s important to remember that the Bible was not written with a twenty-first-century scientific worldview in mind . The idea that the earth is a globe spinning through the cosmos wasn’t on anybody’s radar for most of human history – especially during the late Bronze Age when Genesis was written and compiled by Moses. Instead, ancient Near East Cultures believed the world was a flat disc with waters above and below the earth . The land was held in place above the ocean below by ancient pillars. They had little to no concept of outer space. All celestial bodies – the sun, moon, and stars – resided below the solid dome that kept the ocean above from flooding the earth. Windows or doors in the dome would allow rain to fall and irrigate the land. To our modern ears, this sounds crazy. But, remember, these views were formed by people whose observations were limited by their geography and technology . And you can find the fingerprints of this ancient cosmological view in early Old Testament writings: In Genesis 1:6 – 8 , for example, we read about God creating a “vault” ( the King James Version reads “firmament” ) to separate “the water under the vault from the water above it.” In the Flood story, we’re told the “ springs of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of heaven were opened .” In Job, the main character says God “ shakes the earth from its place, and make its pillars tremble ” and “ walks on the vault of heaven .” Also in Job, God speaks about laying “ the earth’s foundation ” and “ shutting up the sea behind doors .” In multiple Psalms, we read about the earth’s foundations , the ocean above , and the doors of heaven . Of course, all of us read these verses as figurative or metaphorical now , but to an ancient Near East audience, they were references to a literal understanding of the natural world . So, instead of asking, “Is this story factually and scientifically correct?” a wiser and more helpful question would probably be, “ What is this ancient story trying to say? ” The Storyteller God Prior to the invention of reading and writing, tribes would pass their cultural history, myths, and wisdom from generation to generation through storytelling and oral tradition. Therefore, it was very important that these ancient stories were easy to remember and recite . And if you re-read the Genesis account with poetry (rather than science) in mind, a lot of things will start falling into place. Take, for example, the literary structure of Genesis 1: On Day One , God creates the cosmos. On Day Four , God fills the cosmos with stars, the sun, and the moon. On Day Two , God creates the sky and ocean. On Day Five , God fills the sky and ocean with birds and fish. On Day Three , God creates land and vegetation. On Day Six , God fills the land with animals and people. Do you see the pattern? In the first three days, God creates specific habitats . And three days after He creates each habitat, God fulfills its purpose . The lyrical cadence of the creation account in Genesis even includes a chorus (“ and it was good “) and an easy-to-memorize verse structure (the days of the week). Biblical scholar N.T. Wright puts this more eloquently in his book Surprised by Scripture : “The Genesis account is a highly poetic, highly complex narrative ; it’s main thrust has nothing to do with the number of 24-hour periods in which the world was made, and everything to do with the wisdom, goodness, and power of the God who made it. “ In other words, the Bible isn’t a science textbook. And we shouldn’t expect it to operate as one. The early Biblical authors didn’t live and write within a cultural vacuum. Remember, the most important historical event to happen to the Hebrew people was their deliverance from Egyptian slavery by Moses . The Hebrew people spent more than 400 hundred years enslaved in Egypt, and the Egyptian people had their own religious beliefs and mythologies. One of these Egyptian mythologies involved Apep , a large serpent who was known as the “Lord of Chaos” and an “Eater of Souls.” And then there was Wadjet , an Egyptian goddess who took the form of a snake . The Pharoah would wear a symbol of Wadjet on his crown , which indicated divine authority . So, when the Hebrew people listened to a story about the first couple being tricked by a snake, they did not think, “Oh, that’s the Devil!” Instead, they associated it with what they knew – the snake was symbolic of chaos, death, and – most importantly – slavery under the Egyptian Pharoah . Do you see how taking a story literally can actually strip it of its cultural significance and narrative power? (And that’s only one small example). What if focusing on the “How” and “When” of creation is just a textbook example of missing the point ? The Gift of Science Saint Augustine of Hippo was an early Christian philosopher from Africa who lived in the fourth century. He is considered by many to be one of the most influential Western theologians of all time. Like many intellectuals at the time, Augustine believed the world to be flat. However, one of his most famous works is The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, a commentary on the first book of the Bible. In the commentary, Augustine warned Christians against denying future scientific discoveries just because they didn’t line up with their interpretation of Scripture. He wrote “ it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel [non-Christian] to hear a Christian, while interpreting Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics ” and that Christians should “ take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation .” In A Flexible Faith , Bonnie Kristian writes, “Augustine worried that if Christians deny science, non-Christians will not be able to take our faith seriously. He warned against tying our theology too tightly to scientific theories that may become outdated as new discoveries are made .” In other words, Augustine thought that if Christians held onto pre-scientific ideas in the modern era about the natural world, it could literally prevent people from coming to know Christ . And that’s coming from someone who lived in the fourth century and thought the earth was a flat disc! To be honest, I really don’t think it matters much what Christians think about the first few chapters of Genesis (says the guy who just wrote a 3,000-word blog post on the subject). It holds little to no consequence on how we live our day-to-day lives. However, a Young Earth Creationist worldview can pre-package the assumption that science was out to undermine my faith. I thought all of “secular science” was propelled forward by the demonic goal of erasing God and spitting in the face of Christianity. And it led to a completely avoidable crisis of faith . Francis S. Collins – leader of the Human Genome Project and author of The Language of God – writes, “Science’s domain is to explore nature. God’s domain is in the spiritual world , a realm not possible to explore with the tools and language of science. It must be examined with the heart, the mind, and the soul—and the mind must find a way to embrace both realms .” You can have a high view of science and the Bible . We just have to tweak our expectations of each . It’s true that a lot of modern scientists hold atheistic or agnostic worldviews. But could that be a consequence of how Christians negatively portray the scientific community to their children? We need Christians to be at the forefront of quantum mechanics, evolutionary biology, cancer research, ecology, dietary nutrition, space exploration, climatology, and neuropsychology. Science is a gift . Along with art, it allows us the opportunity to become co-creators with God . But it is shackled with a heavy weight of responsibility. With the tools at our disposal, what type of world will we choose to create? Will we use our scientific progress to invent new ways to kill each other, pollute our planet, and exploit our natural resources for our own consumerist gain? Through science, we can heal the sick, feed the hungry, and repair the world. Through faith, we can mend the souls of the broken-hearted and the poor in spirit. United, we can bring light into the darkness – both physical and spiritual. So, let there be light . This is a republish with permission from Joe Terrell and Instrument of Mercy , a progressive Christian blog created and written by Joe Forrest. Featuring in-depth and long-form articles regarding complex and controversial issues about faith, culture, politics, and the church, the goal of Instrument of Mercy is to foster informed and constructive dialogue and encourage radical empathy among citizens of Heaven and Earth. 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. 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If a tiny thread had the power to ruin a movie, what in my own life, deep in the background, bears such importance to my bigger picture? And if it’s so important, why isn’t it front and center? < Back Seen or Unseen, the Background Matters Annie D. Stutley Aug 1, 2022 If a tiny thread had the power to ruin a movie, what in my own life, deep in the background, bears such importance to my bigger picture? And if it’s so important, why isn’t it front and center? I used to frequent film sets as background talent. It’s easy money as long as waiting hours and hours for forty-five minutes of work doesn’t bother you, and as long as you don’t have much of an ego. Chances are, as background, you’ll never be seen in the movie for more than a second, if at all. Yet, that doesn’t stop the Wardrobe and Hair and Makeup teams from pretending that you will be seen. On one project I worked repeatedly. It was ABC’s “Astronaut Wives Club,” and I played a nameless Apollo wife. I worked twelve-hour days, spending great chunks of time in Hair and Makeup. This funny old guy, Mr. Albert, was assigned to my hair and meticulously teased, pinned, and coated it with copious amounts of hairspray. I swear, I spent an hour in his chair alone, feeling pampered and important. The makeup team was just as doting, mixing my own shade of pink lipstick, a color so precisely 1963 that when they got it just right, it was marked with my name. Yet, I was just background--a mere face blur beside a whole bunch of frosted and bouffanted space wife blurs. I wasn’t integral to the picture. If I had called in sick, they would have gone on without me. Still, they treated me like I was crucial. My costumes were perfectly pressed, fitted, and maintained. Once, it was noticed that a thread was hanging from the hem of my blue shift dress just before “rolling” and a dresser was called in to snip the loose thread. The attention was a nice change from my seemingly normal existence, but I always wondered about the fuss. Would anyone have noticed that tiny thread? I returned to background work again recently, settling on one day a month to deviate from ho-humness, to people watch, and to marvel over how the most intimate scenes on film require masses of people, materials, and elbow grease to keep it intimate. I was on the set of a bar scene, one of those swanky types where the booths have deep, soft cushions, and the drinks are twenty bucks. As I have many times before on set, I watched a production assistant polishing and setting in place, with such care and accuracy, props and set decorations that no one would likely notice. Why bother polishing the glasses behind the bar? Why hide the tiniest LED wire in the glass case? It can’t possibly matter. But that P.A., Mr. Albert, the dresser with the handy scissors, and the makeup team are paid to bother. I suppose the theory is that if we, the audience, are expected to make that leap and believe that what we are watching is real, then everything has to matter. Even a loose thread and a foggy glass have the power to break the fourth wall. I didn’t get home until midnight after that shoot, having put in fourteen hours of work that will lead to my pausing the television and saying to a friend something like, “You see that elbow jutting out of that booth? That’s my elbow.” And my friend will say, “And it’s only ten feet from Hugh Jackman. That’s so cool!” But back home, entering my bathroom, I exhaled greedily, taking in all the tranquility I experience each time I enter my bathroom. When we remodeled it, I splurged on white marble floors and teal subway tile from Italy that curves upward and over onto the ceiling above the bathtub, creating a waterfall effect. Sconces flank the glass sinks, a crystal chandelier gives the false pretense that life beyond is just as luxurious, and fuzzy sea foam mats greet my feet when I step out of the shower. It is my sanctuary, an investment, and no one ever sees it but me and my little family. It is the background talent of my house, so far from my front door it is almost always missed, but detailed and doted upon as if every guest will pass through. As tired as I was from fourteen hours of sitting and standing, crossing to marks and sitting again, I stood in my secret bathroom and thought about that dumb thread. If a tiny thread had the power to ruin a movie, what in my own life, deep in the background, bears such importance to my bigger picture? And if it’s so important, why isn’t it front and center? Looking at my life in a glance, I am slapped with my most obvious elements--mother, wife, writer, editor. If I were to glance in your direction, I might see daughter, best friend, sales rep, or father, widower, small business owner. They are the leads in the story of us on a daily basis. We put effort into those images so that the narrative isn’t lost. Of course, I want everyone to know I’m a writer! I'm proud of what I edit, too. It’s who I am. But beyond our sight line is always a bigger picture. Some of it is beautiful. There’s me in my fuzzy socks, alone in the house on a Tuesday after everyone has left for the day. I’m in my orange chair with a second cup of coffee, and I’m taking ten minutes to do nothing--absolutely nothing. My life is noisy and chaotic, and I need that quiet as much as the second cup of coffee. Some of the bigger picture is ugly, though. There’s my crying myself to sleep as if my father and mother had just died that night. You won’t ever see these Annies unless you pry, ask, or happen upon them. But my story goes well beyond what I put forward. And so does yours. What flows in the background of our lives is as important to who we are as what we do put front and center. You are more than the obvious, as am I. What got us to where we are is as important to what we’re doing now. We forged friendships and relationships. We studied and excelled. We plotted and planned. We followed passions and succeeded. Our hearts were broken. We failed. We gave up. We started over completely. None of it was useless. All of it is integral to our story. We wouldn’t be us without the good and the bad. So maybe when it comes to the background in the greater picture of you and me, we aren’t investing in ourselves for other people’s further understanding of who we are. We are investing in ourselves for our own further understanding of ourselves. What’s more, maybe it’s the only way to be truly authentic. For like any good director knows, if we continuously focus solely on our featured parts, how effective is our story? In a film class I took in college, our professor showed us the shower scene in “Psycho.” As always, suspense got the best of me, and I gripped the arm of my chair and watched through partially shut eyes. Then he played us the same scene without the score. There were screams and sounds, but no music. Without the music, it was boring and just sort of gross. The music strung the emotion along, carrying the actions on its shoulders when the actions weren’t strong enough to convey the circumstances on their own. Such is whatever we hold in our background. Like the score of a movie, they carry us, sometimes swelling when placed beneath our surfaces for too long. Maybe that’s the magic of a good cry or a belly laugh? Maybe that’s proof that the background matters as much as the foreground after all. I know enough to know that most often what you see of me is purposeful. It’s how I want to be remembered and thought of, but even in my forefront there’s more. You don’t see all the struggles of motherhood, the tests of marriage, my life in cancer remission, and the times when I think it’s easier to quit writing altogether. You also don't see the triumphs of A's earned, goals achieved together, clear CT scans, and the days when I write through my personal blocks. I need all of it. I would be less effective if I were perfect because I certainly wouldn’t be me. However, there are pieces of me that no one will ever see because why would I ever want to give it all away? It’s good to have secrets. There’s a certain advantage to understanding yourself in a way no one else can. Secrets can be an unstoppable drive if nurtured properly. Like a loose thread snipped before “rolling” or a custom shade of lipstick, our background--what got us here, what keeps us here, and what makes our music swell--is worth the fuss. Even if a blur to others, we have to remain focused on our bigger picture. After all, lead actors grow tired, scripts are rewritten, and scenes are reshot. And in our own lives, when the story changes, and it will, we have to be ready for our next close-up. A version of this essay originally ran in New Orleans Magazine online and was republished on www.anniedstutley.com. It is republished here with permission from the author. Annie D. Stutley lives and writes in New Orleans, La. She edits several small publications and contributes to various print and online magazines. Her blog, " That Time You, " was ranked in the Top 100 Blogs by FeedSpot. To read more of her work, go to her website , or follow her at @anniedstutley or Annie D. Stutley-writer on Facebook. 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. 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