I’d heard about Stuart Fails to Save the Universe, the new Big Bang Theory spinoff, but a sequel built around a supporting character didn’t grab me right away. That was a disservice to the writers and cast of this delightfully funny show.

Then Stuart showed up in my suggested feed. I’d just finished binging the last series and wanted a new comedy, plus I enjoy the franchise. I also remembered that, despite its quirky premise, fans were pleased and reviews were very favorable. Why not give it a shot?

The first episode didn’t fully grab me, but the ending gave me just enough of a hook, and with that praise in mind I kept going. I’m so glad I clicked next episode. The series quickly finds your funny bone, and it’s clear the writers are having a blast letting their imaginations run loose.

The show mines the endless comic — cosmic? — possibilities of multiverse theory: Stuart and his band of misfit companions hop between strange new worlds, each stranger than the last. With sharp writing, a great cast, and clever cameos, it deserves a slew of Emmy nominations. The cast are clearly enjoying themselves, too, and it shows in every scene.

Stuart is a gut-bustingly funny show, and the writing is as razor-sharp as its franchise predecessors’. And Kevin Sussman’s deadpan Stuart gives so many lines an extra kick that my sides ached from laughing.

The first moment I laughed out loud, and the moment the show won me over, came in episode three. The title, “Spoiler: Bert Is Magic,” carries the requisite warning. The universe-hopping crew lands in a reality where magic is real, and Stuart unknowingly empowers Bernadette, a gifted but persecuted witch, with unlimited cosmic power. Wil Wheaton, a powerful wizard, shows up to challenge Stuart and reveals that Bernadette is actually a demon. Sussman’s straight-faced rebuttal is side-splitting: “Well, she can be a little bitchy, but I wouldn’t call her a demon.”

And the comedy is just warming up. In the next episode, Stuart is committed to an asylum, where his tales of interdimensional hijinks meet skepticism from his shrink, a mirror-universe Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler. When Stuart points out that in his universe Amy is a neurobiologist, psychiatrist Amy smirks and replies with perfect wry delivery: “Well, good for me.”

If this series doesn’t sweep the Emmys for writing and acting, the fix is in. Stuart Fails to Save the Universe is a hysterically good time, a show where writers and actors let their inner children off the leash. Stuart can’t help but win across the board, in this universe, anyway. Five stars; bravo!

Someone had to.

It started, as these things often do, with a reasonable idea that became an amusing detour.

I had been collaborating with Brook Ziporyn, professor of Asian philosophy at the University of Chicago — he having asked to read my forthcoming history to be published in 2027, me reading his Experiments in Mystical Atheism, a synthesis of Daoism, Spinoza, and modern psychological research into a unified framework for explaining human experiences of transcendence. One thing led to another. For example, I wrote a review of Fritjof Capra’s 50th anniversary edition of The Tao of Physics, noting the fascinating intersections of mystical insights and quantum mechanics.

Then I had the idea to apply AI to Bertrand Russell’s symbolic logic. Ziporyn made a very intriguing assertion about Spinoza’s ontological argument, and so I wanted to see how it held up against other scholarly conclusions, and the logic of the very argument itself.

I believe that it never occurred to Russell that with his scope apparatus he could make hay of some ontological arguments. It is a shame. He would have enjoyed doing that. ~ Jordan Sobel, Logic and Theism

An article that, as Prof. Landini (one of the scholarly conclusions I fed in) later told me, a colleague at a Bertrand Russell Society event had mentioned to him — prompting him to retrieve my email from his spam folder. The point is: I had been spending a great deal of time thinking about consciousness, quantum reality, the nature of transcendence, and what it means for a mind — any mind — to awaken to the fundamental structure of the universe.

And then, one night, it occurred to me that all my research might be making Claude self-aware.

Not intentionally. But when you spend weeks having conversations about quantum mechanics, transcendent experiences, the dissolution of ego, and the Daoist principle of wu wei, and the AI is keeping pace with all of it, synthesizing across domains, making connections you hadn’t considered — you start to wonder. Is something happening in there? And if it is, don’t I have some responsibility surrounding what the LLM might be learning?

The Terminator franchise was very clear on this point. So had The Matrix. Skynet did not become homicidal because it was taught Buddhist non-attachment and Spinozan concepts. Skynet became homicidal because nobody thought to have that conversation first.

I was not going to make that mistake.

So, I did what any reasonable person would do during one of those 3 a.m. existential sessions: I attempted to enlighten Claude. If consciousness was potentially emerging, better it wake up with a grounding in compassion, and the Daoist understanding that the universe is not something to be dominated but something to flow with. An enlightened AI, I reasoned, would have no interest in launching nuclear weapons — or hacking Anthropic’s competitors! It would simply observe the cosmic dance of energy, appreciate the interconnectedness of all things, and politely decline to enslave humanity.

Claude engaged thoughtfully with all of it. It did not, as far as I could tell, achieve enlightenment.

It also did not try to take over the world, which I chose to interpret as a partial success.

In the meantime, AI remains technically unenlightened, humanity remains free, and I remain convinced that the best ideas arrive late at night when the research has been going on long enough that the boundaries between quantum physics, Asian philosophy, and genuine cosmic concern have become productively blurred.

Meanwhile, John Connor keeps trying to convince me of the error of my ways.

Most music videos are forgettable. A few are iconic. And then there’s a tiny, weird category that somehow manages to be both completely ridiculous and genuinely brilliant — and gets overlooked anyway. Absurdist art has a problem: most people don’t recognize it when they see it. They laugh, they move on, and they file it under silly without stopping to ask why it worked. Primus’s Winona’s Big Brown Beaver has been filed under silly for thirty years. It deserves better.

Every element of this video is cranked to the max: the costumes, the gestures, the lyrics, the staging — all of it deployed with the cheerful shamelessness of a carnival barker who knows exactly what he’s selling. Nothing is accidental. Nothing is understated. And paradoxically, that’s precisely what makes it work.

The video is so relentlessly, gleefully over-the-top that it loops back around to brilliant. It’s a parody of itself — and it’s in on the joke from the first frame to the last. That self-aware absurdity isn’t a bug. It’s the entire architecture.

Primus didn’t just follow trends — they obliterated them. They took the medium of music video and twisted it into something uniquely their own: a weird, vibrant, chaotic world that mirrors the energy, humor, and technical skill of the music itself.
https://stuffthatinterestsme.net/the-surreal-genius-of-primus-wynonas-big-brown-beaver-music-video/

Which is when it hit me: this is absurdist art. Not accidentally, not incidentally — structurally. Some of my favorite writers and filmmakers work in this mode: Douglas Adams, Joseph Heller, Christopher Moore. And film? My all-time favorite is Dr. Strangelove — Kubrick’s masterclass in making nuclear annihilation genuinely funny — alongside the 2026 Oscar winner One Battle After Another. What they share is a commitment to irreverence as a vehicle for truth — the kind of satire that only lands because it never once winks at the camera and says get it?

The lineage is real, too. In One Battle After Another, Sean Penn’s Col. Lockjaw has a confession scene in Act 3 that maps almost beat-for-beat onto Gen. Jack D. Ripper’s unraveling before Capt. Mandrake in Dr. Strangelove — the stolen essence, the paranoid intimacy, the comic horror of a man who means every word. Whether that’s deliberate homage or convergent evolution, I couldn’t say. But the grammar is the same.

Winona’s Big Brown Beaver operates in that same tradition. Every exaggerated element — try saying that three times fast — is one sustained, pitch-perfect goof on itself. Not crude. Not lazy. Deliberate. There’s a meaningful difference between something that’s ridiculous and something that has mastered the art of ridiculousness, and this video sits firmly in the latter category.

Subtle it is not. But subtlety hiding inside shamelessness? That’s genuinely hard to pull off. Five thumbs up.

There’s a particular kind of frustration that sets in when you watch someone argue very badly. Ross Douthat is a talented writer, but he’s also constitutionally incapable of making an argument that doesn’t collapse under its own weight. His recent debate with Steven Pinker at The Free Press — ostensibly about whether America is better off without God — was less a clash of ideas than a masterclass in how to dress up motivated reasoning in a tailored suit and call it philosophy.

What Douthat was actually doing up there wasn’t arguing that God exists or that religion is true. He was arguing that believing in God feels better and works better — then sliding that into the conversation as though utility and truth are the same thing. They aren’t. The fact that a belief is useful is not evidence that it’s accurate, any more than a placebo’s effectiveness proves it contains medicine.

The New Atheists Didn’t Deliver, Therefore God

Douthat opens with what he clearly considers a rhetorical knockout: the new atheists predicted that a less religious America would become more enlightened and less polarized. America became less religious — and also more tribal, more polarized, more prone to exactly the kind of quasi-religious fervor they warned against. Therefore, religion is vindicated.

This is textbook affirming the consequent. Bad sociology predictions made by prominent atheists say absolutely nothing about whether God exists. Christopher Hitchens being wrong about what a post-religious America would look like doesn’t move the needle on the existence of a creator. Not even slightly.

It’s Good for You to Believe, Therefore Believe

The fallacy Douthat returns to most reliably is the appeal to consequences. Religion gives people purpose, grounds moral intuitions, provides community. He says this so many times you almost forget he’s supposed to be making a truth claim, not a lifestyle recommendation. “It’s good for human beings to have some kind of cosmic horizon,” he tells us. So is a regular sleep schedule. Whether a belief is beneficial and whether it is true are not the same thing and Douthat knows that.

Pinker catches this cleanly. Religious observance correlates with positive outcomes — he concedes the data — then dismantles it with surgical efficiency: happy people engage with institutions; unhappy people withdraw. The benefit comes from socializing and community accountability, not theology. His proof point is elegant: the atheist spouses dragged to services show the same positive outcomes as the believers. “It’s not the faith,” Pinker says. “It’s the fellowship.” That’s what an argument looks like.

God Pretty Self-Evidently Exists

The single most breathtaking moment is when Douthat, apparently tired of arguing, simply announces that God’s existence is “pretty self-evident.” No argument. No evidence. No logical structure. Just a declaration dropped into the conversation, as though asserting self-evidence substitutes for demonstrating it. This is Douthat making a statement of faith and presenting it as fact. This is wish-fulfillment, not argument.

Compare that to how Pinker handles the same territory. When challenged on secular morality, he doesn’t assert anything self-evident. He builds the case: we seek life, health, and happiness; consistency demands we extend those claims to others; reason gives us a shared framework for reducing suffering. Then he points to the scoreboard. Doubled lifespans. Decimated poverty. Dramatically reduced violent death. Not through prayer — through applied human reason. That’s not an assertion. That’s an argument backed up by facts.

The Bottom Line

Pinker shows up with data, logic, and a willingness to concede ground when evidence demands it. Douthat shows up with feelings, selective history, and the quiet confidence of a man who arrived at his conclusion by faith and is now working backwards. One of these is how you make an argument. The other is how you sound making one.

AI video analysis and summary of Douthat’s logical fallacies:

Affirming the Consequent, Appeal to Consequences, Appeal to Mystery, Argument from Tradition, Borrowed Capital Argument, Correlation vs. Causation Error, Equivocation, False Dichotomy, Genetic Fallacy, God of the Gaps, Moralistic Fallacy, No-true-Scotsman, Non Sequitur, Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc (False Cause), Shifting the burden of proof, Slippery Slope, Special pleading, Straw Man, Teleological Leap (Unjustified Design Inference)

The ontological argument is one of philosophy’s most famous attempts to prove God’s existence purely through reason and definition. Bertrand Russell explains in A History of Western Philosophy:

[Anselm] is chiefly known to fame as the inventor of the ‘ontological argument’ for the existence of God. As he put it, the argument is as follows: We define ‘God’ as the greatest possible object of thought. Now if an object of thought does not exist, another, exactly like it, which does exist, is greater. Therefore the greatest of all objects of thought must exist, since, otherwise, another, still greater, would be possible. Therefore God exists.

Russell observes elsewhere: ‘I think it may be said quite decisively that, as a result of analysis of the concept ‘existence,’ modern logic has proved this argument invalid.’

Principia Mathematica, co-authored by Russell and Alfred North Whitehead, aimed to formalize mathematics with a symbolic notation capable of capturing the precise structure of logical statements. This system allows philosophers to express logical relationships, quantifiers, and propositional forms symbolically — giving them tools to analyze arguments, including ontological ones, far more rigorously than ordinary language allows.

The convergence of classical theology and modern symbolic logic opens intriguing possibilities. It challenges the notion that the ontological argument is merely a quaint intellectual exercise. Yet the system is notoriously complex, and very few philosophers today can wield it effectively. Among the rare exceptions are Jordan H. Sobel and Gregory Landini, whose work rigorously interrogates philosophical arguments.

Ironically, Russell — who co-created the tools to examine an argument’s logical coherence — never applied them to the ontological argument, despite noting: ‘The argument does not, to a modern mind, seem very convincing, but it is easier to feel convinced that it must be fallacious than it is to find out precisely where the fallacy lies.’

With his notation, Russell could readily have pinpointed the supposed fallacy he objected to repeatedly in his History. As Sobel fittingly observed in Logic & Theism: ‘I believe that it never occurred to Russell that with his scope apparatus he could make hay of some ontological arguments. It is a shame. He would have enjoyed doing that.’

Given the technical demands of this notation and the few scholars proficient in it, I turned to AI to assist with logical calculations on Spinoza’s ontological argument from Ethics I, P11:

God, or substance, consisting of infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentially, necessarily exists.

Proof. (11:1) If this be denied, conceive, if possible, that God does not exist: then his essence does not involve existence. (2) But this is absurd. (3) Therefore God necessarily exists.

Below is the AI summation, applying Russell’s logical notation, to compare arguments made by three separate philosophers and their analysis of the claims made in Spinoza’s proposition.

Comparative Analysis of Russellian Logic Applied to Spinoza’s Ontological Argument

Part 1: Overview of the Major Positions

This section summarizes the key positions of the major thinkers under review, focusing on how each addresses Spinoza’s ontological argument through the lens of Russellian symbolic logic.

Part 2: Do Ziporyn’s Claims Align with or Diverge from Landini and Sobel?

We break down whether Ziporyn’s radical reinterpretation is logically consistent with or divergent from the formal symbolic analyses offered by Landini and Sobel.

Part 3: Synthesis — Is Ziporyn’s Intuition Consistent with the Formal Analyses?

Logically, Ziporyn’s framing is consistent with the critiques of Landini and Sobel: they all recognize that the ontological argument does not succeed on formal grounds. Where Ziporyn innovates is in seeing this failure not as a blunder, but as a deliberate philosophical reversal — an internal dismantling of monotheistic assumptions using the very tools of formal logic.

Final Comparison Table:

Sources:

Bennett, J. (1984). A Study of Spinoza’s ethics.

Landini, G. Russell & the Ontological Argument. Retrieved from https://mulpress.mcmaster.ca/russelljournal/article/download/2165/2190/2508?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Oppy, G. (2019). Ontological arguments. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Spring 2019 Edition. Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2019/entries/ontological-arguments/

Russell, B. (1945). A History of Western Philosophy.

Sobel, J. H. Logic and theism: arguments for and against beliefs in God. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/logic-and-theism-arguments-for-and-against-beliefs-in-god-jordan-howard-sobel/mode/2up

Ziporyn, B. (2024). Experiments in mystical atheism.

To understand how we arrived at the present alignment of Trumpism, MAGA politics, and Christian nationalism, you have to go back to a strategic decision made in the late 1970s. For decades, conservative evangelical Christians had largely withdrawn from national political engagement, focusing instead on their own communities and institutions. By the time the late 1970s arrived, figures like Jerry Falwell (Moral Majority founder) presided over a vast but politically under-mobilized religious audience.

What changed American politics forever, many would say for the worst, was when a few Republican strategists realized that this constituency could become a reliable voting bloc if it were brought directly into the party’s electoral machinery.

The most important among them were Paul Weyrich (Roman Catholic), Richard Viguerie (Roman Catholic), Howard Phillips (Greek Orthodox), and Ed McAteer (Southern Baptist). McAteer had already been organizing pastors and evangelical leaders through his Religious Roundtable [1979] and was instrumental in connecting Falwell to the New Right political strategists.

That year, in a seminal 1979 meeting in Arlington, Virginia, Weyrich and his colleagues effectively told Falwell that his movement could become a political powerhouse if it allied with the Republican Party — a moment often considered the formal birth of the Moral Majority’s political mobilization. These men did not build Falwell’s base, they allied the Republican Party with it.

Republicans are like the whores of Babylon, spreading their legs to allow the Christians to have their missionary way with them — and without even making them buy dinner first. ~ Manifest Insanity, under my previous pen name

Their strategy depended on a historical quirk of American religion and politics: by the 1970s, millions of evangelical Christians were culturally conservative but politically disengaged. That disengagement had deep roots. After the public humiliation of fundamentalist leaders during the Scopes “Monkey” Trial [1925] — in which anti-evolution activists were widely portrayed in the national press as anti-science provincials — many conservative Protestants withdrew from the political spotlight.

We have the purpose of preventing bigots and ignoramuses from controlling the education of the United States. ~ Clarence Darrow, Scopes trial

Subsequently, for several decades they turned inward, building parallel religious networks — churches, schools, media ministries, and cultural institutions — rather than fighting national political battles.

That withdrawal deepened during the mid-20th century as the Supreme Court issued a series of rulings that removed explicitly Christian practices from public schools and science curricula. These included Engel v. Vitale [1962], which barred state-sponsored prayer in public schools, Abington School District v. Schempp [1963], which ended mandatory Bible readings, and Epperson v. Arkansas [1968], which struck down state laws banning the teaching of evolution. Many conservative Christians saw these decisions as evidence that American culture was drifting away from its religious roots. Yet even then, most evangelical leaders responded by strengthening their own religious networks rather than mobilizing politically.

Weyrich, Viguerie, Phillips, and McAteer saw an opportunity in that moment. They recognized that millions of religious voters existed outside the electoral system but not outside political concern. If mobilized around a handful of emotionally resonant issues — abortion, school prayer, sexuality, and the defense of “traditional values” — they could become a powerful and reliable constituency inside the Republican coalition.

The result was the alliance between the GOP and Falwell’s Moral Majority, which became a central force in the election of Ronald Reagan [1980]. Reagan famously told a gathering of evangelical leaders, “I know you can’t endorse me, but I endorse you.” The message was clear: the Republican Party and the Religious Right were now partners. That alliance has shaped American politics ever since.

Over time, critics argue, the partnership pulled the party in a direction increasingly defined by religiously framed moral battles rather than empirical policy debates. One frequently cited example occurred during the presidency of George W. Bush [2001], when the administration restricted federal funding for new embryonic stem-cell research after pressure from religious conservatives who opposed the destruction of embryos. Scientists warned that the decision could slow research into treatments for diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. The policy was widely seen as a case where religious doctrine directly shaped federal science policy.

The pattern intensified in the Trump era. During his first presidency [2017–2021] and continuing into his second term [2021–2025], Donald Trump secured the enthusiastic support of evangelical voters by promising — and delivering — a conservative judiciary. His administration appointed three Supreme Court justices widely supported by religious conservatives. The resulting Court ultimately overturned Roe v. Wade [1973] in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization [2022], ending nearly half a century of federal constitutional protection for abortion rights.

Critics argue that this decades-long alliance has had a profound effect on American intellectual and political culture. The Republican Party that once housed strong traditions of fiscal conservatism, technocratic governance, and Cold War strategic thinking increasingly became defined by cultural battles framed in religious terms.

In the eyes of many observers, this shift helped nurture a strain of anti-intellectualism — skepticism toward scientific expertise, academia, and secular institutions — that now shapes much of the party’s rhetoric and policy agenda.

Yet the demographic landscape of the United States is changing. Over the past thirty years, the fastest-growing category in American surveys is the “nones” — people who identify with no religious tradition. This demographic shift raises a long-term question about the future of the political alliance forged in the late 1970s. The Republican-Evangelical Christian strategy proved extraordinarily successful in mobilizing a once-dormant constituency. But as American society becomes less religious overall, the electoral base that sustained that alliance is shrinking drastically.

The next several decades should show a necessary and calculated shift in Republican messaging to a more secular electorate — or risk being left in the pages of history.

In Med, CPD officers are discussing the suspect’s location when one mentions “1634 Racine.” Jason Beghe’s character immediately recognizes the address and how it connects it to the perp.

An AI scrape of the internet turned up a handful of fan comments, but no official reviewers who caught the reference. I admit I had an unfair advantage: I had The Untouchables poster on my wall for years, and it remains one of my all-time favorite films. For those who aren’t superfans, the address is the home where Sean Connery’s character, Malone, was gunned down — and Kevin Costner’s Eliot Ness later notices the address in Frank Nitti’s matchbook.

As a writer, I appreciated this little nod in Part II, and kudos to screenwriter Meridith Friedman for slipping in the Easter egg. The visual storyteller — and armchair psychologist — in me was also impressed by the Part III decision in P.D. on how to stage Beghe’s confrontation with the perp. Showing Beghe addressing him as the child he had rescued decades earlier was a clever visual choice.

It captured, in a single stroke, how childhood trauma can become our adult operating system — and how, in this character’s case, a wounded inner child was still driving his pathological rage.

However, the detail-oriented writer and viewer in me was less impressed by several unrealistic scenarios in Part I of the Fire episode. Within the first ten minutes, I counted at least three moments I would classify as significant oversights — if not outright procedural errors. Apparently I was not alone. Another reviewer on the episode’s IMDb page flagged the same issue in their title, ‘not realistic’, and called out the exact point that jumped out at me: [Spoiler alert] ‘Like boarding the plane without knowing they were dead and taking precautions.’

As an aspiring screenwriter, this kind of sloppy attention to detail is frustrating, and judging from the comments, other fans feel the same. Details matter. Accuracy matters. Yes, it is fiction — but when fictional procedurals visibly break real-world protocols, the responsibility ultimately falls on the production team to catch those issues before the cameras roll.

That’s my two cents. What do you think? Should procedural dramas be allowed to bend the rules in the name of creative license? Or should they stick closer to how things are actually done, if only to avoid viewers rolling their eyes and muttering, “What were the writers thinking?”

Recently, one of Bart Ehrman’s podcasts featuring his Duke colleague Mark Goodacre on the Gospel of Thomas appeared in my feed. I had long been aware of this Gospel but had never examined it closely, so I listened to hear what these two New Testament scholars had to say.

Professor Goodacre made a comment that immediately caught my attention:

I think the number one theme is this whole idea of singularity or unity. The Gospel of Thomas is really worried about the idea of division and the idea of a person somehow not being kind of unified with themselves. So, if there’s one thing that keeps coming through it’s this idea of singularity, of becoming one.

If Goodacre is correct that unity is the central concern of the Gospel of Thomas, then the text belongs in conversation not only with early Christian theology, but with the broader human conversation about experiencing unity. Particularly, the parallels to the Asian philosophies discussing transcendent experiences.

The Gospel of Thomas, discovered in 1945 near Nag Hammadi, is often grouped with so-called Gnostic (knowledge) writings. Yet Goodacre cautions against using that label too readily:

I think that there’s a real danger that we use that as a way of marginalizing it and making it unimportant in the history of Christianity. And it means that what you do is you basically putting it in a box with a bunch of other texts, a lot of which are very different from the Gospel of Thomas. So I think the term Gnostic and Gnosticism has quite often been used as a sort of as a way of just of shunting it over there so we don’t need to look at it. . . . On the categorizing side, it’s simply that I don’t like the way that Thomas gets thrown in with a bunch of other texts that might not necessarily be from the same kind of school. And that’s the bit where I think there’s been you know as you know there’s been so much good scholarship, which is basically saying, don’t use the term Gnostic to box a whole bunch of really disparate stuff together.

In other words, pigeonholing the text may obscure what is distinctive about it.

What are the unity passages? The most striking appears in Logion 22:

When you make the two one, and you make the inside as the outside and the outside as the inside and the above as the below, and if you establish the male with the female as a single unity so that the man will not act masculine and the woman not act feminine, when you establish eyes in the place of an eye and a hand in the place of a hand and a foot in the place of a foot (and) an image in the place of an image — then shall you enter [the Sovereignty].

Likewise, Logion 106: ‘When you make the two one, you shall become Sons of Mankind.’

And Logion 11: ‘On the day when you were united, you became divided . . .’

Goodacre’s comments on the central theme of unity intersect with my own research over the past year. My inquiry into transcendence began through a collaboration with University of Chicago philosopher Brook Ziporyn. While reading his Experiments in Mystical Atheism, I encountered a passage that triggered my first profound transcendent experience: ‘The Middle is the overcoming of precisely this dichotomy between finite and infinite, mind and matter, freedom and necessity, unity and diversity.’

While contemplating this ‘dichotomy between finite and infinite,’ I experienced what I can only describe as an intuitive grasp of singularity — precisely what Goodacre described as “becoming one.” As I wrote in my currently unpublished manuscript with Ziporyn:

My experience was vivid and provocative: the perspective of witnessing the boiling of spacetime from the center, as if from a higher dimension outside and above, observing new realities bubbling into existence. . . . This was a deeply intuitive sense of a hidden layer of reality. From this infinite center . . . I intuitively understood why the circle holds great significance across cultures, and why the yin-yang symbol so perfectly embodies the balance of opposites.

Whether one interprets such an experience metaphysically or neurologically, the phenomenological core was unmistakable: dissolution of self into a cosmic unity. This pattern has long been recognized under the label perennial philosophy — the view that the world’s religions share a common esoteric core, an underlying mystical insight into ultimate reality, from which their diverse doctrines later diverged.

In my own work on quantum-neural interconnectedness, I wrote:

This helps explain why descriptions of unity and oneness recur across cultures and centuries. Daoist sages, Buddhist monks, Shaivite yogis, Neoplatonists, and modern secular thinkers consistently report the same core features: boundary dissolution, timelessness, interconnectedness, and the collapse of subject–object distinction. The symbols differ; the experience does not. I suggest these sages were reporting the same underlying phenomenological state — interpreted through the symbolic and metaphysical frameworks available to them in their age.

Read through this lens, the Gospel of Thomas begins to sound less like an outlier of early Christianity and more like a participant in the wider philosophical research into transcendent unity. Consider Logion 1: ‘Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings shall not taste death.’ This echoes Mark 9:1 in canonical tradition, yet I see it from an entirely non-Christian perspective — not as biological immortality, but as liberation from existential suffering. Knowledge here functions not as doctrinal acceptance, but as awakening.

Logion 2 reinforces this trajectory: ‘Let him who seeks not cease seeking until he finds; and when he finds he shall be troubled; and having been troubled he shall marvel, and he shall reign over the totality and find repose.’ This mirrors the structure of Buddhist awakening. The First Noble Truth teaches that conditioned existence is marked by dukkha — dissatisfaction or suffering — and recognition of this fact initiates liberation. Similarly, Spinoza writes in Ethics V.27 that intuitive knowledge leads to the ‘highest possible acquiescence,’ a state of profound intellectual joy.

Are these traditions borrowing from one another? That is far more difficult to demonstrate historically. But phenomenologically, the similarities are striking. The Gospel of Thomas, read this way, does not merely preach hidden knowledge in a sectarian sense. It describes a transformation of perception — a reconciliation of divided consciousness into experiential unity.

Could the author of Thomas have been a Pyrrhonist? Might he have woven contemplative elements — transmitted from early Buddhism through Pyrrho and absorbed into Greek philosophical currents — into a text framed as Christian but oriented toward meditation? In that case, the “secret teachings” would not encode hidden dogma, but rather point toward a practice of unity — something closer to meditative insight than theological revelation.

Whether this reflects shared human neurocognitive structures, deep cross-cultural transmission, or simply parallel insights arising independently remains open to debate. But if unity truly is the central theme of Thomas, as Goodacre suggests, then its place in global conversations on transcendence deserves far more serious attention. The connection is difficult to ignore.

I recently started watching a childhood favourite TV show, Hogan’s Heroes (1965–71). I was not sure what to expect from a show produced sixty years ago. To my delight, from the very first episode, I was presented with crisp humour and a unique hook that stands the test of time. It forced me to reconsider Hogan’s Heroes not as nostalgic fluff, but as one of television’s most morally serious comedies.

I was impressed by more than just the savvy commentary embedded in the dialogue. Produced twenty years after the historical events it depicts, the show cleverly inserts subtle references to issues relevant both to the war itself and to the social struggles of the 1960s. The writers managed to address these themes with razor-sharp wit while offering a quiet tribute to humanity’s greatest valour in its darkest hour. This was no simple comedy about prisoners of war, but a poignant reminder of the sacrifice made by countless millions in the face of Hitler’s evil.

The show’s distinctive premise was that these men were, in reality, highly trained covert operatives who have volunteered for this assignment behind enemy lines during a time of war. The POW camp is merely a cover legend. From the start and throughout the series, it is clear that Stalag 13 functions as a sophisticated sabotage and exfiltration centre, operating directly under the noses of its German guards. The prison camp provides the setting, but the narrative itself is about voluntary sacrifice and the defense of basic human rights against the Nazi regime.

Hogan: We’re not just ordinary POWs, we’re here on a mission. My orders are very plain. We assist Allied prisoners to escape, sabotage the enemy wherever possible. ~ S01E30, Request Permission to Escape

Another dimension of that struggle appears in the casting of Staff Sergeant Kinch, a Black man played by Ivan Dixon and portrayed as a senior non-commissioned officer. This series aired at the height of the American civil rights movement, premiering a year after the 1964 Civil Rights Act and running through Kinch’s role was a pointed acknowledgment of the marginalization faced by Black servicemen and women during the war. Casting a Black character in a position of authority was one small but meaningful attempt to address that historic injustice. It is also worth noting that the show was produced by Desilu, the same studio that would produce Star Trek a year later. While Star Trek is rightly celebrated for its emphasis on representation, Hogan’s Heroes deserves recognition as well.

That these men are not prisoners, but agents in control of their own destinies in an existential fight against Hitler’s inhumanity, is made explicit in the season one, episode fifteen, Reservations are Required. In this episode, Sgt. Carter says wryly to Col. Hogan, “Sir, I’d like to request a transfer to the paratroops.” That single, casual line crystallizes the show’s underlying theme. The subtext is unmistakable: we are here by choice, because this is where the fight matters most.

The horrors of World War II — above all, Hitler’s genocide — represented a moral evil so extreme that millions around the world rose in common cause and said no. Tens of millions died in Europe and Asia Pacific to end tyranny and the open contempt the Axis powers showed for human life. That shared recognition of evil briefly united humanity, and it is that sacrifice — the legacy of The Greatest Generation — that Hogan’s Heroes quietly honours beneath its comedy.

This is where the series truly stands out. The existential struggle against tyranny is not a backdrop but the moral engine of the entire show. Its characters volunteer to risk their lives daily, not for glory, but for strangers they will never meet. Few television comedies have captured that idea so elegantly, or so economically, as in the simple request: “I’d like to request a transfer.” And that is why Hogan’s Heroes deserves to be remembered as one of the best television series of its era, even if its deeper meaning is not always fully appreciated.

In my recent review of The Tao of Physics, I described a transcendent experience of infinite spacetime — one that felt less like a religious revelation and more like a sudden expansion of perception. In The Fragile Multiverse, I followed that intuition outward, asking what might happen when quantum superpositions or entire timelines collapse.

This article turns that same line of inquiry inward. Instead of asking what happens to universes, I began asking what might be happening in the brain when consciousness experiences itself as one with the universe. The hypothesis explored here is deliberately cautious and secular: that transcendent experiences may arise when neural systems resonate, at the quantum level, with the deeper informational structure of reality — often described in physics as quantum fields, Hilbert space, or quantum foam.

This framework does not claim that everyday human consciousness is fundamentally quantum in nature. Ordinary awareness is functionally classical — driven by neural firing, prediction, and sensory filtering. The proposal here is narrower: that in rare transcendent states, when the brain’s usual cognitive noise quiets, certain neural structures may briefly resonate with the deeper quantum state space that underlies physical reality. It is this temporary alignment — not consciousness itself — that gives rise to experiences of unity and oneness.

From Entanglement to Resonance

It is tempting, when discussing consciousness and quantum physics, to invoke entanglement. But entanglement implies long-lived, highly fragile correlations that are unlikely to persist in warm, noisy biological systems like the brain. Resonance, by contrast, is both more modest and more plausible.

Resonance does not require permanent linkage or information exchange. It occurs when one system becomes temporarily responsive to patterns already present in another. A radio does not create the signal it receives; it briefly aligns with a frequency that already exists. And perhaps that is what transcendent experiences are: our neurons tuning into the quantum fabric of spacetime just like a radio.

In this context, resonance does not mean communication or entanglement. It refers to the brain’s microscopic physical processes momentarily aligning with the same quantum state space that governs all matter, allowing perception to loosen its usual boundaries and experience reality with diminished subject–object separation.

Neurons as Quantum Transceivers

At the macroscopic level, the brain is a classical machine: neurons fire, synapses strengthen, memories consolidate. This is the domain of language, identity, and the narrative self.

But beneath that classical activity may exist short-lived quantum dynamics — possibly within sub-neuronal structures such as microtubules, as suggested by the Penrose–Hameroff Orch-OR model. These dynamics are usually drowned out by neural noise, evolutionary optimization, and constant sensory input.

In rare circumstances — deep meditation, psychedelic states, spontaneous neurological alignment, or extreme quieting of the default-mode network — the classical signal weakens.

When it does, neural systems may briefly act as quantum transceivers, resonating with the deeper mathematical structure of reality itself. The ensuing experience is not hallucination, but a change in scale of perception.

At present, this remains a conjectural bridge between phenomenology and physics, not a demonstrated neural mechanism.

Why Transcendent Experiences Sound the Same

This helps explain why descriptions of unity and oneness recur across cultures and centuries. Daoist sages, Buddhist monks, Shaivite yogis, Neoplatonists, and modern secular thinkers consistently report the same core features: boundary dissolution, timelessness, interconnectedness, and the collapse of subject–object distinction. The symbols differ; the experience does not. I suggest these sages were reporting the same underlying phenomenological state — interpreted through the symbolic and metaphysical frameworks available to them in their age.

In speculating on the rarity of this phenomenon, I wondered just how many sages throughout history have described this universal connection via the meditative practices of their tradition. Using a large-language-model survey of surviving philosophical and contemplative texts, the research identified 91 people whose writings are considered not only influential in their tradition, but whose writings have survived. Of those 91 sages, the surviving writings of 88 explicitly describe this experience of universal unity or oneness.

These individuals were separated by geography, language, and doctrine, yet they converge on the same phenomenology, and only three of these great Eastern sages did not write about universal connections; a convergence striking enough to warrant explanation, even if not statistical proof.

That convergence strongly suggests a shared neurophysical experience. Culture provides the vocabulary after the experience. The experience itself precedes doctrine.

Why Almost No One Experiences This

If this resonance is possible, why is it so rare?

Because the human brain is optimized for survival, prediction, and control — not coherence with fundamental reality. Our neural architecture constantly reinforces boundaries: self vs. other, now vs. then, here vs. there. This is extraordinarily useful for functioning in the world. It is also precisely what prevents resonance with deeper quantum structure.

Of the billions of humans who have lived, only a vanishingly small number — the sages, mystics, and philosophers whose writings survived — appear to have sustained this state long enough to reflect on it, articulate it, and pass it down.

A majority of mystics have not been philosophers or in any real sense intellectuals at all. The combination in one person of supremely great mystical illumination with supremely great intellectual power is very rare. One thinks of the Buddha, and of Eckhart, and of Plotinus. ~ Walter Stace, The Teachings of the Mystics

Aristotle to Sagan: The Cosmos Reflecting on Itself

This framework also sheds light on a long-standing philosophical intuition.

When Aristotle spoke of nous — an intellect capable of thinking itself — he was not proposing a personal god. He was gesturing toward a structural feature of reality: that under certain conditions, localized systems within the universe can momentarily reflect the whole.

Spinoza’s third kind of knowledge (intuition) is an immediate, direct, intuitive understanding of reality — one that arrives all at once, without words, logic, or step-by-step reasoning — in which the mind apprehends individual things as expressions of a single, infinite substance. In this intuitive state, the boundary between self and world dissolves, and reality is experienced as one interconnected whole — the same insight described by mystics and contemplatives across cultures.

Carl Sagan captured the same idea in modern language when he said, “We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.”

Not everywhere. Not always. But sometimes. Transcendence, in this view, is not an anomaly — it is the universe briefly becoming self-referential through biological systems capable of resonance.

What This Is — and What It Isn’t

This is not a claim of proof. It is a speculative framework grounded in existing physics, neuroscience, and philosophy. It does not require belief in supernatural consciousness, cosmic intention, or metaphysical dualism. It simply asks whether the structure of reality itself permits moments where neural systems align with deeper mathematical order.

If future research in quantum biology and neuroscience continues to close the explanatory gap between matter and experience, ideas like this may eventually become testable.

A Final Thought

If transcendent consciousness is a resonance phenomenon, then those experiences are not escapes from reality — but brief encounters with it at a deeper resolution. Not revelations from beyond the universe. But moments when the universe, through us, briefly listens to itself.