Many people--Christian apologists, secular philosophers, and laypeople alike, will inevitably say that "It is impossible to prove anything" and that the best we can offer is informed estimations of probability when pressed to defend certain propositions. But is this really true? Does it remain consistent with itself?
There indeed exists a vast difference between evidence, even strong evidence, and proof. For example, science can prove little to nothing, but it can definitely support a hypothesis or claim. Arguing that it is very probable that we aren't living in the Matrix does not prove we aren't inside it. I can't prove there are no invisible unicorns or wasps in my bedroom, and I can't prove that there is or isn't a single unified global conspiracy to suppress national autonomy.
Many positions either can't establish their first premise or they can't verify their conclusion. But there remain a great deal of things we can certainly prove.
There are many things we can prove:
1. That whether we claim to know something or know nothing we are really claiming to know something.
2. That knowing at least one thing is not just hypothetically possible but inescapable.
3. That if all people are mortal and Obama is a person, then Obama is mortal.
4. That in a given scenario one statement or explanation can seem far more probable than another.
5. That no one can argue against logic without using logic in the very argument against it.
6. That eternal conscious torment for finite sins is disproportionate [1].
7. That God cannot exist and not exist simultaneously; he either is or isn't real.
8. That it is impossible for any possible God to create a rock so large that he cannot move it, and that therefore any God that exists cannot do all things.
9. That if hurting people is generally wrong, then nothing is more evil than certain forms of physical torture.
These things can be proven to be absolutely correct and anyone who disagrees with them is incorrect and possibly intellectually impaired. We can definitely prove that some things are just how reality is and that at least that if a certain hypothetical or possible criteria is met then certain things must follow logically and inescapably.
There are many things I can prove to myself, even if not to someone else:
1. That I exist and am a conscious, thinking being that perceives.
2. That if I strike my face with what I call my hand I can feel pain.
3. That even if my senses are deceived, I still have senses and my senses are still experiencing and contacting something.
4. That I have certain moral preferences.
5. That I abhor certain vegetables.
6. That I fear cockroaches.
7. That I enjoyed preparing this post.
My own consciousness, experience, and mind prove these facts to myself alone, as other people can't know for sure if I really enjoyed preparing this post or if cockroaches frighten me, but it is possible for them to find out through various means that I am a philosopher who is very honest and transparent and that I am a Christian and therefore part of a religion that abhors deception and that I take my Christianity very seriously. They can assess the probability that I spoke honestly when I said I enjoyed preparing this and ascertain that I am almost certainly telling the truth and there is no reason to believe I lied, but they still can't know for sure if I was honest because they can't truly access my mind.
Also, I am not claiming here that everything one experiences must be exactly as one's perceptions suggest. I would never attempt to prove God's existence, for example, by appealing to my personal experience, either that of myself or someone else. A seeming feeling of God's presence cannot prove to anyone that God exists. However, my own consciousness, mental awareness and thoughts, and sensory experience undeniably prove to me myself that I exist, and while I can doubt this reality I can never do so rationally, for if I did not exist then I could not use my mind to ponder and question and doubt if I am real. I could not doubt that I am conscious and existing without first being conscious and existing to do so.
What is highly intriguing about the claim that no one can prove anything is the response when someone questions this. Usually the proponent of the claim will cite numerous examples of things we can't know for sure or that we can't prove, but, even if their attempts could succeed, the person doing this only ends up PROVING their point, which both contradicts their goal and hopelessly and thoroughly refutes their own position. This is very similar to the assertion that we can't know anything (I address something similar here [2]), an argument that clearly commits suicide the moment it leaves the sayer's mouth.
So in the end, the statement that "nothing can be proven" is just as self-refuting and intellectually pathetic as the one saying that "only science can reveal truth," or the claim that "we can't know anything for sure." Really? Can we know that for sure? Because even if we can't, then at least we know for sure that we don't know anything for sure! No one can escape from what must be true by necessity.
I've personally entered and exited a phase where I viewed everything with the highest degree of skepticism, and while I realized more than I had previously that many things are indeed unknowable or unprovable, I also recognized that not everything rests in that category. It's time others recognized this as well.
[1]. Yes, I am an annihilationist. I need to explain this more soon.
[2]. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/objectivity.html
Sunday, July 31, 2016
Wednesday, July 27, 2016
Game Review--Killzone Mercenary (PS Vita)
Finally--the shooter the Vita needed and the one it deserved. It was a privilege to play it, and now it's my honor to praise and dissect one of the greatest games for the PS Vita thus far. One of the only first-person shooters for the Vita, it stands tall as a shining example of the system's hardware capabilities.
Note that as with my review of the God of War Collection, also for the Vita, all photos that appear were taken by myself using the built-in screenshot feature for the PlayStation Vita.
Production Values
The graphics look amazing for a 2013 Vita release. The detail and pixel clarity is especially apparent when you interrogate enemy captains and hold your face right next to theirs. Since the game is in the first-person format, that means you witness their facial animation details up close. The Vita games I have played during the brief time I have owned the platform don't have terrible graphics, but this stands out from the limited selection I have played. Sound represents another valuable component to a well-crafted shooter experience. Thankfully, Killzone Mercenary delivers in that regard as well.
The overall production value is impressive, with a great depth of content and a fantastic gameplay presentation. The visuals, voice acting, and multiplayer ensure this will likely be remembered as the most impactful and masterful shooter for the system. But the polished production values do not conceal the eventual monotony of the gameplay that may bother some players.
Gameplay
With controls that exploit the twin analog sticks on the PS Vita well and awesome science fiction weaponry, the gameplay succeeds in providing an exciting and memorable experience. Touch gestures can sometimes become annoying (they are necessary to complete all melee attacks), but I didn't encounter many problems with the other controls. At last, a great handheld control system for shooters!
One of the best parts of the game is purchasing, summoning, and using special devices called Van-Guards. The player can access things like an invisibility generator, an energy shield that protects your front and deactivates when you fire your guns, a drone that can be controlled remotely, and a devastating aerial beam that vaporizes enemies. Activating a Van-Guard system called the porcupine missile launcher and tapping on the touchscreen to launch projectiles at enemies is so enjoyable that I had to mention it here. Unlocking the game's entire armory not only will use the many units of the game currency (Vektan dollars) you will obtain, it will pop a trophy that will immortalize your accomplishment for your PSN account! Cycling through all of the weapons and gadgets to test them can offer an alluring incentive to continue earning Vektan dollars and killing enemy soldiers.
The game's greatness regarding the visuals and controls, though, cannot forever delay recognition that the gameplay itself, while fun and full of incentives like trophies and alternate objectives, is generic first-person material that in and of itself will not stand above or out from other games in its genre. Without the Killzone name and some special weaponry, the gameplay would not seem distinct from that of other series. Potential players might want to know that in advance.
As you play, you earn the aforementioned Vektan dollars for various actions, including stealth bonuses, headshots, difficulty multipliers, and acquiring ammo from deceased troops. Topping off the experience, the multiplayer has a reliable server and a unique mode called Warzone, a team-based mode which varies objectives throughout five separate five minute periods. Defeating opposing players is fun and engaging, as any multiplayer shooter should be. Basically, the general gameplay is satisfying and well-executed.
Story
The story occurs alongside events from other games in the franchise, which I have not ever played. The Killzone universe revolves around a war between humans from the Interplanetary Strategic Alliance and their humanoid Helghast foes. Honestly, since I have only just introduced myself to Killzone and this game seemed to assume the player possesses familiarity with the series story and history, I don't know if the Helghast are humans or aliens that resemble humans in their anatomy and shape. They wear imposing combat suits that cover their entire bodies, even their faces, as they conceal their heads with masks with orange/reddish eyes. Because of this I did not know their actual species. Playing for the first time, I didn't see why I should or shouldn't align myself with a particular side and I noticed deep moral flaws in the leaders of both.
You play as a mercenary who enters the game working for the ISA, eventually work for the Helghast as things unfold, and conclude the game by being targeted by both factions. No, despite being a mercenary, your character is not motivated exclusively by money like some other characters are and does not defect or switch allegiances because he feels like it, but he sometimes has little actual choice in the matter due to the circumstances. The story does not have the quality of a more lengthy, unified narrative, but it's passable.
Intellectual Content
There are minor puzzles and collectibles in every mission, but nothing too sophisticated is present. While a certain NPC (non-playable character) complains about the evil of the Helghast exterminating innocent civilians and the player's character seems to develop a stronger moral sense by the finale, the ethical dilemmas and burdens of war aren't really explored very deeply. I wish the game had emphasized the destructive toll of war and the deception both sides of a conflict will often intentionally engage in for the sake of victory more than it did, but perhaps other games in the series more effectively convey this.
Conclusion
While Killzone as a franchise is simply not as overwhelmingly epic as Sony's God of War series and not as astonishingly unique as the Uncharted games also released by Sony, it still managed to excel in producing an amazing shooter for the PS Vita, a portable system that needed a truly competent shooter after the incredible disappointment that Black Ops: Declassified resulted in. Remember how I criticized that game to death in my review? Oh, what's that? You don't remember reading it? Well, here's a link [1].
As of this time, I have unlocked 36 out of the 53 trophies and hope to attain my third platinum trophy from this game. For those unfamiliar with the term, a trophy is a game achievement (like "Kill 500 enemies", "Complete all levels without dying" or "Headshot 10 enemies in a row"; these are generic fictional examples and are not actual trophies in the game) for a PlayStation console or the Vita. Before the summer ends I plan on obtaining all of the remaining achievements. As my first Killzone game, Mercenary delivered an excellent handheld first-person shooter and has become one of my favorite Vita games.
Content
1. Violence: Well, this is a Killzone game. The title itself sounds violent. There is little gore that I noticed, but plenty of killing, melee attacks, and some blood. Nothing is graphic.
2. Profanity: Characters sometimes use "d-mn" and sh-t" in their dialogue, but the profanity is not particularly strong and is not constant.
3. Nudity: The ESRB rating for the game includes "Partial Nudity" as one of the reasons it is rated M, but I did not encounter any nudity in the game. If there is any at all, it is likely not overt or very visible, as I missed it every time.
[1]. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/game-review-call-of-duty-black-ops.html
Note that as with my review of the God of War Collection, also for the Vita, all photos that appear were taken by myself using the built-in screenshot feature for the PlayStation Vita.
Production Values
The overall production value is impressive, with a great depth of content and a fantastic gameplay presentation. The visuals, voice acting, and multiplayer ensure this will likely be remembered as the most impactful and masterful shooter for the system. But the polished production values do not conceal the eventual monotony of the gameplay that may bother some players.
With controls that exploit the twin analog sticks on the PS Vita well and awesome science fiction weaponry, the gameplay succeeds in providing an exciting and memorable experience. Touch gestures can sometimes become annoying (they are necessary to complete all melee attacks), but I didn't encounter many problems with the other controls. At last, a great handheld control system for shooters!
One of the best parts of the game is purchasing, summoning, and using special devices called Van-Guards. The player can access things like an invisibility generator, an energy shield that protects your front and deactivates when you fire your guns, a drone that can be controlled remotely, and a devastating aerial beam that vaporizes enemies. Activating a Van-Guard system called the porcupine missile launcher and tapping on the touchscreen to launch projectiles at enemies is so enjoyable that I had to mention it here. Unlocking the game's entire armory not only will use the many units of the game currency (Vektan dollars) you will obtain, it will pop a trophy that will immortalize your accomplishment for your PSN account! Cycling through all of the weapons and gadgets to test them can offer an alluring incentive to continue earning Vektan dollars and killing enemy soldiers.
The game's greatness regarding the visuals and controls, though, cannot forever delay recognition that the gameplay itself, while fun and full of incentives like trophies and alternate objectives, is generic first-person material that in and of itself will not stand above or out from other games in its genre. Without the Killzone name and some special weaponry, the gameplay would not seem distinct from that of other series. Potential players might want to know that in advance.
Story
The story occurs alongside events from other games in the franchise, which I have not ever played. The Killzone universe revolves around a war between humans from the Interplanetary Strategic Alliance and their humanoid Helghast foes. Honestly, since I have only just introduced myself to Killzone and this game seemed to assume the player possesses familiarity with the series story and history, I don't know if the Helghast are humans or aliens that resemble humans in their anatomy and shape. They wear imposing combat suits that cover their entire bodies, even their faces, as they conceal their heads with masks with orange/reddish eyes. Because of this I did not know their actual species. Playing for the first time, I didn't see why I should or shouldn't align myself with a particular side and I noticed deep moral flaws in the leaders of both.
You play as a mercenary who enters the game working for the ISA, eventually work for the Helghast as things unfold, and conclude the game by being targeted by both factions. No, despite being a mercenary, your character is not motivated exclusively by money like some other characters are and does not defect or switch allegiances because he feels like it, but he sometimes has little actual choice in the matter due to the circumstances. The story does not have the quality of a more lengthy, unified narrative, but it's passable.
Intellectual Content
There are minor puzzles and collectibles in every mission, but nothing too sophisticated is present. While a certain NPC (non-playable character) complains about the evil of the Helghast exterminating innocent civilians and the player's character seems to develop a stronger moral sense by the finale, the ethical dilemmas and burdens of war aren't really explored very deeply. I wish the game had emphasized the destructive toll of war and the deception both sides of a conflict will often intentionally engage in for the sake of victory more than it did, but perhaps other games in the series more effectively convey this.
Conclusion
While Killzone as a franchise is simply not as overwhelmingly epic as Sony's God of War series and not as astonishingly unique as the Uncharted games also released by Sony, it still managed to excel in producing an amazing shooter for the PS Vita, a portable system that needed a truly competent shooter after the incredible disappointment that Black Ops: Declassified resulted in. Remember how I criticized that game to death in my review? Oh, what's that? You don't remember reading it? Well, here's a link [1].
As of this time, I have unlocked 36 out of the 53 trophies and hope to attain my third platinum trophy from this game. For those unfamiliar with the term, a trophy is a game achievement (like "Kill 500 enemies", "Complete all levels without dying" or "Headshot 10 enemies in a row"; these are generic fictional examples and are not actual trophies in the game) for a PlayStation console or the Vita. Before the summer ends I plan on obtaining all of the remaining achievements. As my first Killzone game, Mercenary delivered an excellent handheld first-person shooter and has become one of my favorite Vita games.
Content
1. Violence: Well, this is a Killzone game. The title itself sounds violent. There is little gore that I noticed, but plenty of killing, melee attacks, and some blood. Nothing is graphic.
2. Profanity: Characters sometimes use "d-mn" and sh-t" in their dialogue, but the profanity is not particularly strong and is not constant.
3. Nudity: The ESRB rating for the game includes "Partial Nudity" as one of the reasons it is rated M, but I did not encounter any nudity in the game. If there is any at all, it is likely not overt or very visible, as I missed it every time.
[1]. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/game-review-call-of-duty-black-ops.html
Can Clothing Objectify?
I wanted to upload a small follow-up to my article on why the evangelical and secular concept of modesty as a certain amount of clothing someone (usually a woman in examples) must wear to not offend morality or make someone lust is bullshit that doesn't survive an objective intellectual inspection [1]. In this post, I wanted to more precisely elaborate on what true objectification is and why clothing doesn't lead to it in any way. One of the largest and most ridiculous objections to simple exposure of the human body--particularly to women wearing bikinis--is that such clothing or lack of clothing objectifies them. This is complete nonsense because no clothing or absence of it can make anyone objectify another person.
Finding someone attractive is not necessarily sexual in nature and is not objectification whatsoever, but viewing someone as ONLY their sexuality (or their athleticism or their money or their intelligence) is objectifying and very dehumanizing, as it ignores the other dimensions to the person's humanity. Focusing on or deeply admiring one aspect of someone's humanity--whether their intelligence, physical beauty, emotions, athletic capability, humor, sexuality, or anything else--is not at all identical to reducing them to just one of their many attributes and parts. Clothing and the human body can't cause anyone to objectify someone else. Claiming so is as insanely pathetic as believing that playing a difficult video game can cause someone to murder another person in a volatile fury. People possess volitional control of their actions and motivations, no matter the situation or context. Actually, I discovered an entire fallacy devoted to the belief that a person is responsible for the actions and attitudes of other people: the internal control fallacy. It's factually and rationally incorrect to blame someone's sins or behavior on another person, not to mention morally flawed.
Christians should be the first people to acknowledge and praise every aspect of being human, but throughout history they have systematically oppressed various facets of that. They have demonized sexuality and sexual desire and confused so many people with their distortions of it and their false categorizations and doctrines. They have shunned reason and rationality for fear that they might threaten their Christian positions and have tried to transform Christianity into some mystical experience that it is not. They have told people to suppress emotions because emotional expression allegedly results in instability and may "cause" someone to go astray (I am definitely not innocent of this one). Now, none of these represents the entire church at all times or locations in history, but it can be very difficult to find a person or group that correctly understands all of these components of humanity at one simultaneous time. The church does not hold a wonderful record when it comes to genuinely appreciating and supporting every dimension of human nature. Objectification comes when someone reduces a person to only one part of their humanity, but true respect for others comes when someone does not try to ignore any of these parts but instead properly views all of them.
Someone's clothing or body can't make another person objectify them. This proposition needs to be eradicated from the Christian and secular intellect for its non-conformity to reality and its severe rational and moral flaws, yet I still find Christians who insist otherwise. The absurdities voiced on the issue must end.
Finding someone attractive is not necessarily sexual in nature and is not objectification whatsoever, but viewing someone as ONLY their sexuality (or their athleticism or their money or their intelligence) is objectifying and very dehumanizing, as it ignores the other dimensions to the person's humanity. Focusing on or deeply admiring one aspect of someone's humanity--whether their intelligence, physical beauty, emotions, athletic capability, humor, sexuality, or anything else--is not at all identical to reducing them to just one of their many attributes and parts. Clothing and the human body can't cause anyone to objectify someone else. Claiming so is as insanely pathetic as believing that playing a difficult video game can cause someone to murder another person in a volatile fury. People possess volitional control of their actions and motivations, no matter the situation or context. Actually, I discovered an entire fallacy devoted to the belief that a person is responsible for the actions and attitudes of other people: the internal control fallacy. It's factually and rationally incorrect to blame someone's sins or behavior on another person, not to mention morally flawed.
 |
| Objectification is ignoring all but one dimension of someone's personhood and humanity--not exposing, viewing, appreciating, or enjoying the human body. Still, some people throw out stupid errors on the matter and promote asinine gender-specific ideas about objectification. |
Christians should be the first people to acknowledge and praise every aspect of being human, but throughout history they have systematically oppressed various facets of that. They have demonized sexuality and sexual desire and confused so many people with their distortions of it and their false categorizations and doctrines. They have shunned reason and rationality for fear that they might threaten their Christian positions and have tried to transform Christianity into some mystical experience that it is not. They have told people to suppress emotions because emotional expression allegedly results in instability and may "cause" someone to go astray (I am definitely not innocent of this one). Now, none of these represents the entire church at all times or locations in history, but it can be very difficult to find a person or group that correctly understands all of these components of humanity at one simultaneous time. The church does not hold a wonderful record when it comes to genuinely appreciating and supporting every dimension of human nature. Objectification comes when someone reduces a person to only one part of their humanity, but true respect for others comes when someone does not try to ignore any of these parts but instead properly views all of them.
Someone's clothing or body can't make another person objectify them. This proposition needs to be eradicated from the Christian and secular intellect for its non-conformity to reality and its severe rational and moral flaws, yet I still find Christians who insist otherwise. The absurdities voiced on the issue must end.
 |
| When you discover the freedom God grants to people to wear what they please and that one can admire the beauty of male and female bodies without objectifying people, you may want to leap in the air like this woman. Women especially need to be liberated from the consequences of cultural ideas of modesty and suffocating church legalism. |
[1]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-folly-of-modesty-part-1.html
Charges Of Misogyny (Part 2)
I though it time to continue my series on false accusations of misogyny in the Bible. In the same format as the previous entry in this series, I will examine four passages pointed to by critics who claim the Bible dishonors and belittles women.
--Genesis 19:4-7--"Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom--both young and old--surrounded the house. They called out to Lot, 'Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.' Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him and said, 'No, my friends. Don't do this wicked thing. Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don't do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.'"
Now, this is one of the more disturbing narratives in the entire Bible along with its parallel in Judges 19, but I'm frustrated that new atheists (unless I'm mistaken, Richard Dawkins uses this passage to "prove" that the Bible advocates evil in his hilarious failed attempt at philosophy in The God Delusion) continue to propose that God approved of or was morally neutral of Lot's heinous offer. Genesis 19 is a narrative; it is not a source of moral commands. Mosaic Law condemns rape, as the Law is the location where one will find the most important moral considerations and instructions in the entire Bible. Other passages in the Bible chronicle events like blasphemy, perjury, murder, adultery, assault, and several other accounts of rape. The presence of these documentations of history in the text doesn't indicate anything about the intrinsic rightness or wrongness of them. To discover that, one must search elsewhere in the Bible, where it becomes apparent that God abhors many of the behaviors mentioned in Scripture. Lot almost committed a grievous sin and other parts of the Bible make it undeniably clear that God despises rape of anyone.
--Exodus 21:2-4--"If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything. If he comes alone, he is to go free alone; but if he has a wife when he comes, she is to go with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free."
I have seen atheist websites that accuse the final verse of being anti-woman, but no misogyny is present. The passage simply states that if a slave receives a spouse from his or her master, if the slave's six year service elapses (Exodus 21:2, Deuteronomy 15:12) but the spouse's hasn't, only the first slave goes free at that time.
--Exodus 21:10--"If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing, and marital rights."
I suppose the atheist objection to this hinges on the fact that polygamy was allowed here, but there is nothing inherently misogynistic about this. Exodus 21:10 and the following verse actually prove that the first wife could not be neglected and that if she did not receive adequate food, necessary clothing, and marital rights (which many people think means sexual fulfillment), she could divorce her husband. After all, "If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free, without any payment of money" (Exodus 21:11). It's pretty idiotic to think that a law mandating certain rights for a wife belittles women in any way, especially when it grants her the right to divorce if her husband withholds these things and if it prioritizes women's sexual needs (which Christians and American society still struggle to acknowledge).
--Deuteronomy 22:23-24--"If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death--the girl because she was in a town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man's wife. You must purge the evil from among you."
The charge here is that Deuteronomy supports killing rape victims who don't scream for assistance. This fails for a variety of reasons. First, it does not say the man raped her, it clearly says "he sleeps with her". Second, the context further confirms that rape is not the subject here. Verse 22 focuses on consensual adultery, verses 23-24 concentrate on consensual sex with an engaged person, and verses 25-27 condemn rapists to death. Third, when Deuteronomy 22:25-27 addresses rape of a woman, it ensures she is exempted from guilt were she engaged to be married. Forced sex is not sinful for the victim, nor is any other forced sin.
--Genesis 19:4-7--"Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom--both young and old--surrounded the house. They called out to Lot, 'Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.' Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him and said, 'No, my friends. Don't do this wicked thing. Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don't do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.'"
Now, this is one of the more disturbing narratives in the entire Bible along with its parallel in Judges 19, but I'm frustrated that new atheists (unless I'm mistaken, Richard Dawkins uses this passage to "prove" that the Bible advocates evil in his hilarious failed attempt at philosophy in The God Delusion) continue to propose that God approved of or was morally neutral of Lot's heinous offer. Genesis 19 is a narrative; it is not a source of moral commands. Mosaic Law condemns rape, as the Law is the location where one will find the most important moral considerations and instructions in the entire Bible. Other passages in the Bible chronicle events like blasphemy, perjury, murder, adultery, assault, and several other accounts of rape. The presence of these documentations of history in the text doesn't indicate anything about the intrinsic rightness or wrongness of them. To discover that, one must search elsewhere in the Bible, where it becomes apparent that God abhors many of the behaviors mentioned in Scripture. Lot almost committed a grievous sin and other parts of the Bible make it undeniably clear that God despises rape of anyone.
--Exodus 21:2-4--"If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything. If he comes alone, he is to go free alone; but if he has a wife when he comes, she is to go with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free."
I have seen atheist websites that accuse the final verse of being anti-woman, but no misogyny is present. The passage simply states that if a slave receives a spouse from his or her master, if the slave's six year service elapses (Exodus 21:2, Deuteronomy 15:12) but the spouse's hasn't, only the first slave goes free at that time.
--Exodus 21:10--"If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing, and marital rights."
I suppose the atheist objection to this hinges on the fact that polygamy was allowed here, but there is nothing inherently misogynistic about this. Exodus 21:10 and the following verse actually prove that the first wife could not be neglected and that if she did not receive adequate food, necessary clothing, and marital rights (which many people think means sexual fulfillment), she could divorce her husband. After all, "If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free, without any payment of money" (Exodus 21:11). It's pretty idiotic to think that a law mandating certain rights for a wife belittles women in any way, especially when it grants her the right to divorce if her husband withholds these things and if it prioritizes women's sexual needs (which Christians and American society still struggle to acknowledge).
--Deuteronomy 22:23-24--"If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her, you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death--the girl because she was in a town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man's wife. You must purge the evil from among you."
The charge here is that Deuteronomy supports killing rape victims who don't scream for assistance. This fails for a variety of reasons. First, it does not say the man raped her, it clearly says "he sleeps with her". Second, the context further confirms that rape is not the subject here. Verse 22 focuses on consensual adultery, verses 23-24 concentrate on consensual sex with an engaged person, and verses 25-27 condemn rapists to death. Third, when Deuteronomy 22:25-27 addresses rape of a woman, it ensures she is exempted from guilt were she engaged to be married. Forced sex is not sinful for the victim, nor is any other forced sin.
Saturday, July 23, 2016
Movie Review--Saw IV
"You see, things aren't sequential. Good doesn't lead to good, nor bad to bad . . . There's no accounting for it."
--Jigsaw, Saw IV
"I promise that my work will continue. That I have ensured. By hearing this tape, some will assume that this is over, but I am still among you. You think it's over just because I am dead? It's not over. The games have just begun."
--Jigsaw via recorded tape, Saw IV
I'm ready to continue reviewing the Saw series. I regret to announce that I have not purchased or viewed all of Saw III because the only version available to buy online is the unrated edition, and I just don't want to watch it. Because of this, I have skipped right to Saw IV and I will eventually finish reviewing the remaining installments in the series film by film.
Production Values
The movie would have benefited at times from a higher quality camera, but the other production values are pretty good. I liked how Costas Mandylor (yes, just like the planet in Star Wars!) performed as Hoffman, providing a muted personality that perfectly fits what the next movie reveals about his past, and, of course, Tobin Bell's calm delivery of terrifying lines always succeeds in conveying the seemingly-rational yet twisted reasoning of Jigsaw. As usual, Charlie Clouser's classic "Zepp" theme always played during the plot's largest twist at the end remixes the most memorable part of the first film's soundtrack and preserves it for each consecutive movie.
Story
With Jigsaw killed at the finale of Saw III, the fourth movie's opening scene depicts a gruesome autopsy of John Kramer's body. When a tape is located inside Kramer, Detective Hoffman listens to its message to find that Jigsaw wanted to inform the police department that his death would not terminate the infamous games he started.
The corpse of a female detective who died in the third film is recovered under circumstances which lead the passionate Agent Strahm to believe that Jigsaw and Amanda had another accomplice. Though Hoffman objects, Strahm resolutely clings to his theory and begins searching for evidence to confirm it. After the discovery of the body and the proposal of the accomplice theory, an officer named Rigg is subdued in his home and awakens to find himself the subject of a game involving other people.
A prostitute, a rapist, and a child abuser are just some of the "contestants" Jigsaw desires for Rigg to help "save". During Rigg's timed tests, Strahm interrogates Jill Tuck, Jigsaw's former wife, and attempts to extract any possible information that could enable him to locate Rigg and cease the games.
(MAJOR SPOILER!!!!)
The final scenes of Saw IV reveal that the entire contents of the film (besides the autopsy) actually occurred directly alongside the events of Saw III and that Detective Hoffman was the unidentified person assisting John Kramer and Amanda Young.
Intellectual Content
Just like in Saw II, viewers receive more of John Kramer's backstory. While in Saw II John explained that a terminal cancer diagnosis along with an unsuccessful suicide attempt "drove" him to begin "testing" people in the hopes of igniting a passion for life, here further information is exposed. John's pregnant wife managed a recovery clinic for drug users, the rehabilitation of which can become a lengthy and frustrating process. A particular troublemaker named Cecil accidentally caused Jill to have a miscarriage and the baby, named Gideon, did not survive. After this tragic event came the cancer and suicide attempt and a divorce from Jill. Now that Jigsaw has initiated his career with his own brand of rehabilitation he selects Cecil as the first victim. The motto of his wife's clinic, "Cherish your life", was twisted into Jigsaw's justification for stalking, kidnapping, testing, and killing people. When the police find the corpse of their colleague towards the beginning, the same motto is scrawled on the wall, but instead of responding as Jigsaw would hope the officers ask aloud how they can cherish their lives when they have to encounter things like the Jigsaw Killer's depressing work on a daily basis.
Jigsaw repeatedly mentions the "salvation" of his victims as his goal, the word clearly a synonym for the rehabilitation his traps ostensibly bring. When Rigg restrains a particular offender so he can engage in his own personal test, a tape alerts him that he must give the man the "tools of his salvation". In one of the last scenes, Rigg finally realizes that during the full 90 minutes of his game Jigsaw kept explaining that the actual redemption or "salvation" of those in the traps was never within his control. Apparently, John viewed the tests as necessary to present someone with the adrenaline required to decide if they wanted to pursue and appreciate life but the effort amounts to nothing if the participant does not volitionally choose to change during or because of the experience.
"The rules were clear. You were warned. Tonight, you faced your obsession. They had to save themselves. Their salvation was out of your hands. Time was on your side, but your obsession wouldn't let you wait."
This movie seems to mark the distinct point at which Jigsaw's traps are no longer implied to be the depraved schemes of a torturer and a murderer, as here the games are instead portrayed more as the disciplinary measures of a moral giant saddened by the corruption of society and someone who truly hopes for the reformation of the victims' lives. John plays God, and he is actually a comparatively patient and loving one-- at least he believes he is.
Conclusion
The beginning of a second Saw trilogy, Saw IV does not release its grip on the concepts that have always attracted people to the series. By this point other horror franchises may become stale, unimaginative, parody, silly, or they lose continuity and purpose. Not so here. Even with Jigsaw dead the games truly continue, the scope of John Kramer's post-mortem intentions only just beginning to be revealed. The extensive complexity of the Saw films becomes even more apparent and the conclusion prepares the franchise for the fifth entry with the revelation of an unexpected successor to Jigsaw. For fans of Saw, Saw IV does not falter in the presentation of its premise.
Content
1. Violence: Alright, I didn't watch the full autopsy because I just don't like certain levels of gore, but what I glimpsed was fairly graphic. Two men fight each other in the first trap, a prostitute almost has her scalp pulled off, a rapist uses a mechanism to pierce one of his eyes (quickly though), a man must press his face into knives to release his restraints, and two blocks of ice descend to crush and vaporize a man's head.
2. Profanity: As expected, there is much profanity. Usually it comes in condensed bursts, but "f-ck" seemed to be the favorite.
--Jigsaw, Saw IV
"I promise that my work will continue. That I have ensured. By hearing this tape, some will assume that this is over, but I am still among you. You think it's over just because I am dead? It's not over. The games have just begun."
--Jigsaw via recorded tape, Saw IV
I'm ready to continue reviewing the Saw series. I regret to announce that I have not purchased or viewed all of Saw III because the only version available to buy online is the unrated edition, and I just don't want to watch it. Because of this, I have skipped right to Saw IV and I will eventually finish reviewing the remaining installments in the series film by film.
Production Values
The movie would have benefited at times from a higher quality camera, but the other production values are pretty good. I liked how Costas Mandylor (yes, just like the planet in Star Wars!) performed as Hoffman, providing a muted personality that perfectly fits what the next movie reveals about his past, and, of course, Tobin Bell's calm delivery of terrifying lines always succeeds in conveying the seemingly-rational yet twisted reasoning of Jigsaw. As usual, Charlie Clouser's classic "Zepp" theme always played during the plot's largest twist at the end remixes the most memorable part of the first film's soundtrack and preserves it for each consecutive movie.
Story
With Jigsaw killed at the finale of Saw III, the fourth movie's opening scene depicts a gruesome autopsy of John Kramer's body. When a tape is located inside Kramer, Detective Hoffman listens to its message to find that Jigsaw wanted to inform the police department that his death would not terminate the infamous games he started.
The corpse of a female detective who died in the third film is recovered under circumstances which lead the passionate Agent Strahm to believe that Jigsaw and Amanda had another accomplice. Though Hoffman objects, Strahm resolutely clings to his theory and begins searching for evidence to confirm it. After the discovery of the body and the proposal of the accomplice theory, an officer named Rigg is subdued in his home and awakens to find himself the subject of a game involving other people.
A prostitute, a rapist, and a child abuser are just some of the "contestants" Jigsaw desires for Rigg to help "save". During Rigg's timed tests, Strahm interrogates Jill Tuck, Jigsaw's former wife, and attempts to extract any possible information that could enable him to locate Rigg and cease the games.
(MAJOR SPOILER!!!!)
The final scenes of Saw IV reveal that the entire contents of the film (besides the autopsy) actually occurred directly alongside the events of Saw III and that Detective Hoffman was the unidentified person assisting John Kramer and Amanda Young.
Intellectual Content
Just like in Saw II, viewers receive more of John Kramer's backstory. While in Saw II John explained that a terminal cancer diagnosis along with an unsuccessful suicide attempt "drove" him to begin "testing" people in the hopes of igniting a passion for life, here further information is exposed. John's pregnant wife managed a recovery clinic for drug users, the rehabilitation of which can become a lengthy and frustrating process. A particular troublemaker named Cecil accidentally caused Jill to have a miscarriage and the baby, named Gideon, did not survive. After this tragic event came the cancer and suicide attempt and a divorce from Jill. Now that Jigsaw has initiated his career with his own brand of rehabilitation he selects Cecil as the first victim. The motto of his wife's clinic, "Cherish your life", was twisted into Jigsaw's justification for stalking, kidnapping, testing, and killing people. When the police find the corpse of their colleague towards the beginning, the same motto is scrawled on the wall, but instead of responding as Jigsaw would hope the officers ask aloud how they can cherish their lives when they have to encounter things like the Jigsaw Killer's depressing work on a daily basis.
Jigsaw repeatedly mentions the "salvation" of his victims as his goal, the word clearly a synonym for the rehabilitation his traps ostensibly bring. When Rigg restrains a particular offender so he can engage in his own personal test, a tape alerts him that he must give the man the "tools of his salvation". In one of the last scenes, Rigg finally realizes that during the full 90 minutes of his game Jigsaw kept explaining that the actual redemption or "salvation" of those in the traps was never within his control. Apparently, John viewed the tests as necessary to present someone with the adrenaline required to decide if they wanted to pursue and appreciate life but the effort amounts to nothing if the participant does not volitionally choose to change during or because of the experience.
"The rules were clear. You were warned. Tonight, you faced your obsession. They had to save themselves. Their salvation was out of your hands. Time was on your side, but your obsession wouldn't let you wait."
This movie seems to mark the distinct point at which Jigsaw's traps are no longer implied to be the depraved schemes of a torturer and a murderer, as here the games are instead portrayed more as the disciplinary measures of a moral giant saddened by the corruption of society and someone who truly hopes for the reformation of the victims' lives. John plays God, and he is actually a comparatively patient and loving one-- at least he believes he is.
Conclusion
The beginning of a second Saw trilogy, Saw IV does not release its grip on the concepts that have always attracted people to the series. By this point other horror franchises may become stale, unimaginative, parody, silly, or they lose continuity and purpose. Not so here. Even with Jigsaw dead the games truly continue, the scope of John Kramer's post-mortem intentions only just beginning to be revealed. The extensive complexity of the Saw films becomes even more apparent and the conclusion prepares the franchise for the fifth entry with the revelation of an unexpected successor to Jigsaw. For fans of Saw, Saw IV does not falter in the presentation of its premise.
Content
1. Violence: Alright, I didn't watch the full autopsy because I just don't like certain levels of gore, but what I glimpsed was fairly graphic. Two men fight each other in the first trap, a prostitute almost has her scalp pulled off, a rapist uses a mechanism to pierce one of his eyes (quickly though), a man must press his face into knives to release his restraints, and two blocks of ice descend to crush and vaporize a man's head.
2. Profanity: As expected, there is much profanity. Usually it comes in condensed bursts, but "f-ck" seemed to be the favorite.
Thursday, July 21, 2016
Disagreement And Subjectivity
It is not uncommon for people to argue that because an issue is disputed that there is no objective truth about that issue. Arguments adopting this form are especially frequent among moral relativists, who believe that the fact that almost every individual person holds differing moral views proves that there are no universal moral facts.
I will demonstrate the logical form of these arguments with a syllogism:
1. If people disagree on what is beautiful, beauty is subjective and only a matter of opinion.
2. People disagree on what is beautiful.
3. Therefore beauty is subjective and only a matter of opinion.
As you can see, the first premise is severely flawed. It does not logically follow that because people disagree about beauty that beauty is a matter of subjective opinion and that there is not an objective standard of beauty, even if it is one that no humans can know about. I want to acknowledge the full range of disagreement on various matters and show that the lack of consensus proves only that people don't agree, nothing more.
Moral Disagreement
A very common position among secular people is that disagreement on moral matters obviously means that ethics are entirely subjective and that what is morally right for one person is not morally right for another. People can't agree on where to derive morals from--society, tradition, empathy, conscience, consensus, religious texts, or somewhere else. There are people who believe differing actions are absolutely or always evil, and there are some who think even murder, rape, or extreme abuse can be justified. There is little if any consensus on ethics.
And even if everyone agreed on what acts or attitudes are objectively right and wrong, we can't even agree on what constitutes those acts or attitudes. People will argue about what the definitions of malice, generosity, murder, rape, justice, objectification, arrogance, forgiveness, and mercy are.
But just because people disagree about what makes something right or wrong does not mean there are no objective morals or that morality is only a comforting illusion imprinted on us by society, evolution, or personal preference.
Theological Disagreement
People disagree on every theological detail possible. When it comes to theistic worldviews, some people believe in one deity who possesses more traditional attributes (monotheism; Christianity, Judaism, and Islam), some people believe in many gods with one predominant deity (henotheism), some believe in many anthropomorphic gods (like the polytheism found in Greek mythology, for example), some believe in an impersonal creator entity (deism), other people believe humans can become gods, and some think that God is male, others that God is female.
Different manifestations of these positions can overlap with each other or blend elements from various theistic views. When pressed for verification of their theological bents, some will claim that God exists but cannot be proven or accessed through reason, which is a retreat into fitheism (theological beliefs all or mostly accepted on blind faith), and others will defend God's existence through logical proofs, which is called theistic rationalism. Even within these more specific branches of theism, people dispute whether or not God is omnipotent or omniscient, whether or not God's sovereignty or human free will controls more of human behavior or any at all, the criterion for entrance into the afterlife if one exists, and the grounds for knowing or learning that a god or gods exist.
I have categorized theological disagreement here separately from scriptural disagreement because theology is broader than merely Christian doctrine. Polytheists and deists adopt theological stances that have nothing to do with traditional theism or Christianity, yet they still adhere to a particular theology.
But just because all of these people disagree does not mean that there is no God or that nothing about God's existence can be known, verified, or falsified.
Scriptural Disagreement
Christians dispute every possible topic. Gender roles, the creation narrative, the validity of Mosaic Law, the requirements of salvation, the process of sanctification, the role of reason, God's nature, moral issues, and eschatology (study of end times) are just a very limited sample of the numerous issues Christians disagree about. Usually Christians haven't thought out a position well and if someone challenges them they will claim that the topic in question doesn't ultimately matter (or matter very much) and that they can all at least agree on the divinity of Christ and the need for his redemption. Yet Christians normally fail to realize that their agreement means nothing on that matter as well and that, regardless of its central importance in the Christian worldview, people obviously don't even concur on that issue (of Christ's divinity) or we wouldn't have so many splintered church denominations and offshoots and groups that other Christians accuse of being "cults".
Yes, Christians have had and still have major moral disagreements over things like capital punishment, homosexuality, premarital sex, abortion, vigilantism, torture, nudity, alcohol use, slavery, and submission to human governments. Some Christians say that the situation and context legitimize or condemn each of the actions I listed above, while some say these behaviors are always wrong. Some people think there's not enough information in the Bible to arrive at a legitimate conclusion that has any authority on the subject, and others use primarily emotional or secular reasoning to reach a conclusion on these moral issues and then try to impose their own personal view on Scripture without objectively studying it. This leads to ridiculous arguments both for and against many things.
But in the end, what Scripture says about these things is not very difficult to decipher when the full spectrum of the Bible is taken into account, nor is it easy to miss if one studies the Bible objectively and without assumptions.
But just because Christians disagree heavily on the meaning of the Bible does not mean that the Bible's words have no meaning or that no one can learn the positions it objectively teaches.
Conclusion
This fallacy of assuming that there is no truth where knowledge remains inaccessible or where humans cannot all concur on an answer is one of the most destructive misuses of logic in our era. Disagreement does not prove that the subject of the dispute is subjective or unknowable; it just proves that people disagree. Nothing is true because people agree it is (appeal to popularity), yet a truth is not unknowable or nonexistent just because people cannot agree on it.
There is not a single statement or belief that is not controversial, and this only highlights the mandatory need for reason to illuminate truth and separate facts from errors. Feelings are malleable and subjective, societal beliefs contradict each other, and anything can be assumed. But reason remains inflexible, objective, universal, and enlightening, and it can lead us to discover immutable facts about the reality we inhabit.
I will demonstrate the logical form of these arguments with a syllogism:
1. If people disagree on what is beautiful, beauty is subjective and only a matter of opinion.
2. People disagree on what is beautiful.
3. Therefore beauty is subjective and only a matter of opinion.
As you can see, the first premise is severely flawed. It does not logically follow that because people disagree about beauty that beauty is a matter of subjective opinion and that there is not an objective standard of beauty, even if it is one that no humans can know about. I want to acknowledge the full range of disagreement on various matters and show that the lack of consensus proves only that people don't agree, nothing more.
Moral Disagreement
A very common position among secular people is that disagreement on moral matters obviously means that ethics are entirely subjective and that what is morally right for one person is not morally right for another. People can't agree on where to derive morals from--society, tradition, empathy, conscience, consensus, religious texts, or somewhere else. There are people who believe differing actions are absolutely or always evil, and there are some who think even murder, rape, or extreme abuse can be justified. There is little if any consensus on ethics.
And even if everyone agreed on what acts or attitudes are objectively right and wrong, we can't even agree on what constitutes those acts or attitudes. People will argue about what the definitions of malice, generosity, murder, rape, justice, objectification, arrogance, forgiveness, and mercy are.
But just because people disagree about what makes something right or wrong does not mean there are no objective morals or that morality is only a comforting illusion imprinted on us by society, evolution, or personal preference.
Theological Disagreement
People disagree on every theological detail possible. When it comes to theistic worldviews, some people believe in one deity who possesses more traditional attributes (monotheism; Christianity, Judaism, and Islam), some people believe in many gods with one predominant deity (henotheism), some believe in many anthropomorphic gods (like the polytheism found in Greek mythology, for example), some believe in an impersonal creator entity (deism), other people believe humans can become gods, and some think that God is male, others that God is female.
Different manifestations of these positions can overlap with each other or blend elements from various theistic views. When pressed for verification of their theological bents, some will claim that God exists but cannot be proven or accessed through reason, which is a retreat into fitheism (theological beliefs all or mostly accepted on blind faith), and others will defend God's existence through logical proofs, which is called theistic rationalism. Even within these more specific branches of theism, people dispute whether or not God is omnipotent or omniscient, whether or not God's sovereignty or human free will controls more of human behavior or any at all, the criterion for entrance into the afterlife if one exists, and the grounds for knowing or learning that a god or gods exist.
I have categorized theological disagreement here separately from scriptural disagreement because theology is broader than merely Christian doctrine. Polytheists and deists adopt theological stances that have nothing to do with traditional theism or Christianity, yet they still adhere to a particular theology.
But just because all of these people disagree does not mean that there is no God or that nothing about God's existence can be known, verified, or falsified.
Scriptural Disagreement
Christians dispute every possible topic. Gender roles, the creation narrative, the validity of Mosaic Law, the requirements of salvation, the process of sanctification, the role of reason, God's nature, moral issues, and eschatology (study of end times) are just a very limited sample of the numerous issues Christians disagree about. Usually Christians haven't thought out a position well and if someone challenges them they will claim that the topic in question doesn't ultimately matter (or matter very much) and that they can all at least agree on the divinity of Christ and the need for his redemption. Yet Christians normally fail to realize that their agreement means nothing on that matter as well and that, regardless of its central importance in the Christian worldview, people obviously don't even concur on that issue (of Christ's divinity) or we wouldn't have so many splintered church denominations and offshoots and groups that other Christians accuse of being "cults".
Yes, Christians have had and still have major moral disagreements over things like capital punishment, homosexuality, premarital sex, abortion, vigilantism, torture, nudity, alcohol use, slavery, and submission to human governments. Some Christians say that the situation and context legitimize or condemn each of the actions I listed above, while some say these behaviors are always wrong. Some people think there's not enough information in the Bible to arrive at a legitimate conclusion that has any authority on the subject, and others use primarily emotional or secular reasoning to reach a conclusion on these moral issues and then try to impose their own personal view on Scripture without objectively studying it. This leads to ridiculous arguments both for and against many things.
But in the end, what Scripture says about these things is not very difficult to decipher when the full spectrum of the Bible is taken into account, nor is it easy to miss if one studies the Bible objectively and without assumptions.
But just because Christians disagree heavily on the meaning of the Bible does not mean that the Bible's words have no meaning or that no one can learn the positions it objectively teaches.
Conclusion
This fallacy of assuming that there is no truth where knowledge remains inaccessible or where humans cannot all concur on an answer is one of the most destructive misuses of logic in our era. Disagreement does not prove that the subject of the dispute is subjective or unknowable; it just proves that people disagree. Nothing is true because people agree it is (appeal to popularity), yet a truth is not unknowable or nonexistent just because people cannot agree on it.
There is not a single statement or belief that is not controversial, and this only highlights the mandatory need for reason to illuminate truth and separate facts from errors. Feelings are malleable and subjective, societal beliefs contradict each other, and anything can be assumed. But reason remains inflexible, objective, universal, and enlightening, and it can lead us to discover immutable facts about the reality we inhabit.
The Accessibility Of Apologetics
Many people assume or feel (though neither assumptions nor feelings have ultimate epistemological value) that they could never be informed or qualified or intelligent enough to become a serious apologist. This mindset is fairly prevalent in the church, where apologetics is almost exclusively the domain of the handful of "intellectuals" at any given church and is not assigned significant importance or great visibility by the congregation. I have known Christians that have even ridiculed and attacked apologetics in defense of their fitheism (belief in God based entirely or mostly on blind faith), yet they must contradict themselves even in this. They tend to give reasons why using reasons to verify Christianity amounts to a waste of time, but the untrained mind does not notice many basic inconsistencies and flaws in an idea.
Well, every Christians is explicitly commanded to be an apologist, despite their preferences on the matter [1]. I imagine that most people who believe themselves incapable of learning and articulating apologetics would be surprised at their capacity for a clear memory and intellectual understanding. Yet people are often able to be more rational and insightful than they may think at first. Several years ago I myself would never have thought that I would invest such a great quantity of my time into studying apologetics or that I would ever learn and retain so much, yet at this point without apologetics I wouldn't even want to be a Christian. Its presence is dramatic, necessary, and stabilizing.
I think the aversion to apologetics isn't because it is inaccessible to most laypeople, but because people are intellectually lazy or lack curiosity or concern about the only things that reveal the objective meaning of life--knowledge, truth, and divine revelation. Americans in general would rather check Instagram or squander time conversing about trivial matters than apply their intellects to pursuing the grand enigmas and facts about the universe and existence, and unfortunately the church would generally prefer reciting the same few verses over prioritizing any legitimate theological or philosophical exploration. When Christians neglect apologetics, the church suffers in every regard. And the church needs to realize this.
This post may be brief, but it covers a crucial point that I needed to emphasize.
[1]. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-necessity-of-reason.html
Well, every Christians is explicitly commanded to be an apologist, despite their preferences on the matter [1]. I imagine that most people who believe themselves incapable of learning and articulating apologetics would be surprised at their capacity for a clear memory and intellectual understanding. Yet people are often able to be more rational and insightful than they may think at first. Several years ago I myself would never have thought that I would invest such a great quantity of my time into studying apologetics or that I would ever learn and retain so much, yet at this point without apologetics I wouldn't even want to be a Christian. Its presence is dramatic, necessary, and stabilizing.
I think the aversion to apologetics isn't because it is inaccessible to most laypeople, but because people are intellectually lazy or lack curiosity or concern about the only things that reveal the objective meaning of life--knowledge, truth, and divine revelation. Americans in general would rather check Instagram or squander time conversing about trivial matters than apply their intellects to pursuing the grand enigmas and facts about the universe and existence, and unfortunately the church would generally prefer reciting the same few verses over prioritizing any legitimate theological or philosophical exploration. When Christians neglect apologetics, the church suffers in every regard. And the church needs to realize this.
This post may be brief, but it covers a crucial point that I needed to emphasize.
[1]. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-necessity-of-reason.html
Tuesday, July 19, 2016
"Eye for eye"
"Eye for eye" is gravely misinterpreted by most people. Almost all scholars would agree that "eye for eye, tooth for tooth" is a severely misunderstood and misrepresented phrase, but few actually arrive at the true conclusion of the matter. One large misconception is that Jesus overturned it in Matthew 5. For an explanation of why, see here [1]. Simply put, it has nothing to do with anything except permanent physical injury in specific situations, as I will demonstrate.
--Exodus 21:22-25--"If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman's husband demands and the court allows. But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise."
--Leviticus 24:19-21--"If anyone injures his neighbor, whatever he has done must be done to him: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. As he has injured his neighbor, so he is to be injured."
First of all, this does not mean to do to someone whatever they have done to others, only that whatever serious injuries they have inflicted on others may be legally inflicted on them. There is an enormous difference, as I will show. Any legitimate theologian will notice that this, like all other punishments, must not be carried out in an act of private revenge but instead is reserved for the hands of a qualified government agent, for the same Law that says "eye for eye" also says to "not seek revenge" (Leviticus 19:18) and to bring offenses to the judges (Exodus 21:6, 22:8, Deuteronomy 25:1, etc). Civilians must not pay back someone for wrongs (Proverbs 20:22) or say "'I'll do to him as he has done to me'" (Proverbs 24:29).
Exodus 21:23-25 and Leviticus 24:19-21 are case laws. If the scenario occurs as recorded, then a particular legal action can be taken. There are laws that are not framed like this, and they do not say that "if someone does (whatever sin is referred to), do to them as they have done to others".
Here are some examples:
--Exodus 20:14--"You shall not commit adultery."
--Exodus 21:2--"If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything."
--Exodus 22:22-24--"Do not take advantage of a widow or an orphan. If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry. My anger will be aroused, and I will kill you with the sword; your wives will become widows and your children fatherless."
--Leviticus 19:14--"Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block in front of the blind, but fear your God. I am the Lord."
--Leviticus 19:18--"Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people . . ."
Things like these are universally sinful, as evidenced by the "Do not . . ." instead of the "If someone injures you, he must be injured" structure of the Lex Talionis laws in Scripture. If a husband or wife commits adultery, the betrayed spouse is absolutely not to commit adultery in return as a way to get back at the deviant spouse. If someone ridicules the deaf, he is not to be ridiculed if he loses his hearing. Some things are by nature objectively wrong and unjustifiable; God has simply revealed that cutting off a hand or foot isn't always evil. The Bible does not say never to injure someone in the same way that it says never to curse the deaf, but it says that IF someone maliciously destroys a neighbor's eye then destruction of his or her own eye is at least an option as a judicial penalty. This clearly does not apply to all things. If God wanted mirror punishment for every offense, he would have plainly stated so instead of always limiting Lex Talionis to a very specific class of injuries, and only certain injuries within that class.
For instance, if a man, say, kidnapped a man or woman and abused him or her for a few days and then raped and tied the victim to a tree, slowly flogged him or her to death with more than 100 lashes, and after he had tortured and murdered the victim he then nailed or fastened the corpse to the tree and left it exposed for a week, the Biblical punishment would not at all be a mirror representation of what the criminal inflicted on the victim. Allow me to prove my point with several verses:
--Exodus 21:16--"Anyone who kidnaps another and either sells him or still has him when he is caught must be put to death."
--Deuteronomy 24:7--"If a man is caught kidnapping one of his brother Israelites and treats him as a slave or sells him, the kidnapper must die. You must purge the evil from among you."
--"Deuteronomy 22:25-26--"But if out in the country a man happens to meet a girl pledged to be married and rapes her, only the man who has done this shall die . . . This case is like that of a man who attacks and murders his neighbor . . ."
--Deuteronomy 25:1-3--"When men have a dispute, they are to take it to court and the judges will decide the case, acquitting the innocent and condemning the guilty. If the guilty man deserves to be beaten, the judge shall make him lie down and have him flogged in his presence with the number of lashes his crime deserves, but he must not give him more than forty lashes. If he is flogged more than that, your brother will be degraded in your eyes."
--Deuteronomy 21:22-23--"If a man guilty of a capital offense is put to death and his body is hung on a tree, you must not leave his body on the tree overnight. Be sure to bury him that same day, because anyone who is hung on a tree is under God's curse. You must not desecrate the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance."
See? "Eye for eye" has nothing to do with any scenario other than someone permanently injuring or mutilating an opponent in a malicious assault. The man in the example I provided above would not be kidnapped, abused, raped, flogged to death with 100 or more lashes, and then displayed on a tree for multiple days. To do so back to him would be to violate many inflexible requirements of God's Law and would descend into unspeakable cruelty and barbarism that God never once permitted or tolerated. Since some translations of Exodus say "stripe for stripe", it is interesting that elsewhere God limits the legitimate number of stripes/strokes someone can receive. Kidnapping, degrading treatment, excessive flogging, and prolonged corpse exposure were all prohibited universally and would make horrendous criminals out of anyone who thought they could repay these evils with the same evils in the name of justice. Cutting off someone's hand may deserve removal of a hand, but kidnapping and rape and extreme torture deserve death, not more kidnapping and rape and torture.
As another example, if someone forced a person to have sex with an animal (which has occurred before, unfortunately), the penalty was not mirror punishment but death:
--Exodus 22:19--"Anyone who has sexual relations with an animal must be put to death."
--Leviticus 20:15-16--"If a man has sexual relations with an animal, he must be put to death, and you must kill the animal. If a woman approaches an animal to have sexual relations with it, kill both the woman and the animal. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads."
Deuteronomy 22:25 and basic moral reasoning prove that when someone has sin forced upon them, the victim is innocent. So a person forced to commit bestiality would not be punished, but the offender would be executed in accordance with the laws in Exodus and Leviticus and would not be forced to have sex with an animal himself or herself. This is yet another example that proves irrefutably that Lex Talionis had nothing to do with anything except select physical injuries.
Those who try to remove Lex Talionis from its context and place in Exodus 21 often overlook the passages in the very same chapter which clearly assign penalties to various assaults or injuries that do not involve returning injury or mutilation:
--Exodus 21:15--"Anyone who attacks his father or his mother must be put to death."
--Exodus 21:18-19--"If men quarrel and one hits the other with a stone or with his fist and he does not die but is confined to bed, the one who struck the blow will not be held responsible if the other gets up and walks around outside with his staff; however, he must pay the injured man for the loss of his time and see that he is completely healed."
--Exodus 21:22--"If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman's husband demands and the court allows."
--Exodus 21:26-27--"If a man hits a manservant or maidservant in the eye and destroys it, he must let the servant go free to compensate for the eye. And if he knocks out the tooth of a manservant or maidservant, he must let the servant go free to compensate for the tooth."
So it is clear that Lex Talionis never was related to assaults (which are different than mutilations, like cutting off a hand) and does not even apply to all permanent injuries. Permanent injury to a slave requires emancipation for the slave, not Lex Talionis. Any assault on one's parent(s), no matter how severe, is not punished with injury but with execution. And note Exodus 21:18-19. It is a case law just like the "eye for eye" passages. It says that a man who strikes another man must reimburse him for any lost time and injuries, not that the court will sentence him to physical assault in turn. If someone assaults another, compensation is due, not mutilation. "Eye for eye" is not the central principle of justice in Mosaic Law, despite the almost universal insistence of theologians and scholars, but is one of many context-limited principles. It is only mentioned in three locations and in six verses. There are just as many verses in Exodus 21 alone that give penalties besides injury or mutilation to various assaults and injuries as there are verses in the entire Old Testament that talk about literal Lex Talionis in limited circumstances. There are almost as many separate condemnations of kidnapping as there are passages allowing Lex Talionis, yet somehow "eye for eye" became more popular and misunderstood than other concepts spoken of just as often or far more frequently. Immediately after the phrase "eye for eye" is introduced in Exodus 21:23-25, the next verses (Exodus 21:26-27) blatantly give a scenario where someone's eye or tooth is destroyed and compensation in the form of freedom is said to be justice, not further mutilation of the offender. So why is "eye for eye" so renowned but not all of the surrounding qualifications and exemptions from it?
In limiting the severity of punishments like flogging the Bible is not extending mercy to criminals, as mercy is not giving people what they deserve. The clear meaning of the text is that there is an objective line beyond which punishment becomes inhumane, degrading, cruel, and excessive. Sadistic and dehumanizing punishments are a form of horrific injustice and horrendous evil that the entire Old Testament Law avoids quite entirely. So the command of Deuteronomy 25:3 is not merciful, but just. There is always a maximum punishment beyond which a penalty cannot be justified no matter what the crime. If a thief has to become a servant to repay a debt (Exodus 22:3), he or she must be released after seven years regardless of the status of the debt (Exodus 21:2). If a man or woman is flogged, the judge must never allow more than forty lashes (Deuteronomy 25:3). If the corpse of an executed criminal is displayed, it must never be exposed past the evening (Deuteronomy 21:22-23). If a man or two men hurt a pregnant women while they are brawling, the financial damages are limited and held in check by whatever "the court allows" and not just what the woman's husband demands (Exodus 21:22). There is always a maximum limit to just punishment that must never be crossed.
People who leave Lex Talionis in its proper place honor the divine revelation in Scripture, but those who extrapolate it to other areas or disregard other fixed punishments are guilty of the "two wrongs make a right" fallacy. Exodus and Leviticus say "eye for eye, tooth for tooth", not "adultery for adultery, betrayal for betrayal, rape for rape, kidnapping for kidnapping, abuse for abuse, revenge for revenge, torture for torture, and punch for punch". All permanent injury to an eye inflicted with intentional malice may be abuse, but not all abuse is strictly permanent physical injury. There are some things that must never be done, not even to those who have carried them out.
It's time to correct misrepresentations and distortions of Lex Talionis.
[1]. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/jesus-and-paul-on-mosaic-law.html
--Exodus 21:22-25--"If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman's husband demands and the court allows. But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise."
--Leviticus 24:19-21--"If anyone injures his neighbor, whatever he has done must be done to him: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. As he has injured his neighbor, so he is to be injured."
First of all, this does not mean to do to someone whatever they have done to others, only that whatever serious injuries they have inflicted on others may be legally inflicted on them. There is an enormous difference, as I will show. Any legitimate theologian will notice that this, like all other punishments, must not be carried out in an act of private revenge but instead is reserved for the hands of a qualified government agent, for the same Law that says "eye for eye" also says to "not seek revenge" (Leviticus 19:18) and to bring offenses to the judges (Exodus 21:6, 22:8, Deuteronomy 25:1, etc). Civilians must not pay back someone for wrongs (Proverbs 20:22) or say "'I'll do to him as he has done to me'" (Proverbs 24:29).
Exodus 21:23-25 and Leviticus 24:19-21 are case laws. If the scenario occurs as recorded, then a particular legal action can be taken. There are laws that are not framed like this, and they do not say that "if someone does (whatever sin is referred to), do to them as they have done to others".
Here are some examples:
--Exodus 20:14--"You shall not commit adultery."
--Exodus 21:2--"If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything."
--Exodus 22:22-24--"Do not take advantage of a widow or an orphan. If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry. My anger will be aroused, and I will kill you with the sword; your wives will become widows and your children fatherless."
--Leviticus 19:14--"Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block in front of the blind, but fear your God. I am the Lord."
--Leviticus 19:18--"Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people . . ."
Things like these are universally sinful, as evidenced by the "Do not . . ." instead of the "If someone injures you, he must be injured" structure of the Lex Talionis laws in Scripture. If a husband or wife commits adultery, the betrayed spouse is absolutely not to commit adultery in return as a way to get back at the deviant spouse. If someone ridicules the deaf, he is not to be ridiculed if he loses his hearing. Some things are by nature objectively wrong and unjustifiable; God has simply revealed that cutting off a hand or foot isn't always evil. The Bible does not say never to injure someone in the same way that it says never to curse the deaf, but it says that IF someone maliciously destroys a neighbor's eye then destruction of his or her own eye is at least an option as a judicial penalty. This clearly does not apply to all things. If God wanted mirror punishment for every offense, he would have plainly stated so instead of always limiting Lex Talionis to a very specific class of injuries, and only certain injuries within that class.
For instance, if a man, say, kidnapped a man or woman and abused him or her for a few days and then raped and tied the victim to a tree, slowly flogged him or her to death with more than 100 lashes, and after he had tortured and murdered the victim he then nailed or fastened the corpse to the tree and left it exposed for a week, the Biblical punishment would not at all be a mirror representation of what the criminal inflicted on the victim. Allow me to prove my point with several verses:
--Exodus 21:16--"Anyone who kidnaps another and either sells him or still has him when he is caught must be put to death."
--Deuteronomy 24:7--"If a man is caught kidnapping one of his brother Israelites and treats him as a slave or sells him, the kidnapper must die. You must purge the evil from among you."
--"Deuteronomy 22:25-26--"But if out in the country a man happens to meet a girl pledged to be married and rapes her, only the man who has done this shall die . . . This case is like that of a man who attacks and murders his neighbor . . ."
--Deuteronomy 25:1-3--"When men have a dispute, they are to take it to court and the judges will decide the case, acquitting the innocent and condemning the guilty. If the guilty man deserves to be beaten, the judge shall make him lie down and have him flogged in his presence with the number of lashes his crime deserves, but he must not give him more than forty lashes. If he is flogged more than that, your brother will be degraded in your eyes."
--Deuteronomy 21:22-23--"If a man guilty of a capital offense is put to death and his body is hung on a tree, you must not leave his body on the tree overnight. Be sure to bury him that same day, because anyone who is hung on a tree is under God's curse. You must not desecrate the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance."
See? "Eye for eye" has nothing to do with any scenario other than someone permanently injuring or mutilating an opponent in a malicious assault. The man in the example I provided above would not be kidnapped, abused, raped, flogged to death with 100 or more lashes, and then displayed on a tree for multiple days. To do so back to him would be to violate many inflexible requirements of God's Law and would descend into unspeakable cruelty and barbarism that God never once permitted or tolerated. Since some translations of Exodus say "stripe for stripe", it is interesting that elsewhere God limits the legitimate number of stripes/strokes someone can receive. Kidnapping, degrading treatment, excessive flogging, and prolonged corpse exposure were all prohibited universally and would make horrendous criminals out of anyone who thought they could repay these evils with the same evils in the name of justice. Cutting off someone's hand may deserve removal of a hand, but kidnapping and rape and extreme torture deserve death, not more kidnapping and rape and torture.
As another example, if someone forced a person to have sex with an animal (which has occurred before, unfortunately), the penalty was not mirror punishment but death:
--Exodus 22:19--"Anyone who has sexual relations with an animal must be put to death."
--Leviticus 20:15-16--"If a man has sexual relations with an animal, he must be put to death, and you must kill the animal. If a woman approaches an animal to have sexual relations with it, kill both the woman and the animal. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads."
Deuteronomy 22:25 and basic moral reasoning prove that when someone has sin forced upon them, the victim is innocent. So a person forced to commit bestiality would not be punished, but the offender would be executed in accordance with the laws in Exodus and Leviticus and would not be forced to have sex with an animal himself or herself. This is yet another example that proves irrefutably that Lex Talionis had nothing to do with anything except select physical injuries.
Those who try to remove Lex Talionis from its context and place in Exodus 21 often overlook the passages in the very same chapter which clearly assign penalties to various assaults or injuries that do not involve returning injury or mutilation:
--Exodus 21:15--"Anyone who attacks his father or his mother must be put to death."
--Exodus 21:18-19--"If men quarrel and one hits the other with a stone or with his fist and he does not die but is confined to bed, the one who struck the blow will not be held responsible if the other gets up and walks around outside with his staff; however, he must pay the injured man for the loss of his time and see that he is completely healed."
--Exodus 21:22--"If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman's husband demands and the court allows."
--Exodus 21:26-27--"If a man hits a manservant or maidservant in the eye and destroys it, he must let the servant go free to compensate for the eye. And if he knocks out the tooth of a manservant or maidservant, he must let the servant go free to compensate for the tooth."
So it is clear that Lex Talionis never was related to assaults (which are different than mutilations, like cutting off a hand) and does not even apply to all permanent injuries. Permanent injury to a slave requires emancipation for the slave, not Lex Talionis. Any assault on one's parent(s), no matter how severe, is not punished with injury but with execution. And note Exodus 21:18-19. It is a case law just like the "eye for eye" passages. It says that a man who strikes another man must reimburse him for any lost time and injuries, not that the court will sentence him to physical assault in turn. If someone assaults another, compensation is due, not mutilation. "Eye for eye" is not the central principle of justice in Mosaic Law, despite the almost universal insistence of theologians and scholars, but is one of many context-limited principles. It is only mentioned in three locations and in six verses. There are just as many verses in Exodus 21 alone that give penalties besides injury or mutilation to various assaults and injuries as there are verses in the entire Old Testament that talk about literal Lex Talionis in limited circumstances. There are almost as many separate condemnations of kidnapping as there are passages allowing Lex Talionis, yet somehow "eye for eye" became more popular and misunderstood than other concepts spoken of just as often or far more frequently. Immediately after the phrase "eye for eye" is introduced in Exodus 21:23-25, the next verses (Exodus 21:26-27) blatantly give a scenario where someone's eye or tooth is destroyed and compensation in the form of freedom is said to be justice, not further mutilation of the offender. So why is "eye for eye" so renowned but not all of the surrounding qualifications and exemptions from it?
In limiting the severity of punishments like flogging the Bible is not extending mercy to criminals, as mercy is not giving people what they deserve. The clear meaning of the text is that there is an objective line beyond which punishment becomes inhumane, degrading, cruel, and excessive. Sadistic and dehumanizing punishments are a form of horrific injustice and horrendous evil that the entire Old Testament Law avoids quite entirely. So the command of Deuteronomy 25:3 is not merciful, but just. There is always a maximum punishment beyond which a penalty cannot be justified no matter what the crime. If a thief has to become a servant to repay a debt (Exodus 22:3), he or she must be released after seven years regardless of the status of the debt (Exodus 21:2). If a man or woman is flogged, the judge must never allow more than forty lashes (Deuteronomy 25:3). If the corpse of an executed criminal is displayed, it must never be exposed past the evening (Deuteronomy 21:22-23). If a man or two men hurt a pregnant women while they are brawling, the financial damages are limited and held in check by whatever "the court allows" and not just what the woman's husband demands (Exodus 21:22). There is always a maximum limit to just punishment that must never be crossed.
People who leave Lex Talionis in its proper place honor the divine revelation in Scripture, but those who extrapolate it to other areas or disregard other fixed punishments are guilty of the "two wrongs make a right" fallacy. Exodus and Leviticus say "eye for eye, tooth for tooth", not "adultery for adultery, betrayal for betrayal, rape for rape, kidnapping for kidnapping, abuse for abuse, revenge for revenge, torture for torture, and punch for punch". All permanent injury to an eye inflicted with intentional malice may be abuse, but not all abuse is strictly permanent physical injury. There are some things that must never be done, not even to those who have carried them out.
It's time to correct misrepresentations and distortions of Lex Talionis.
[1]. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/jesus-and-paul-on-mosaic-law.html
Monday, July 18, 2016
Capital Crimes (Part 3)
In parts one [1] and two [2] I analyzed and listed the 23 Biblical offenses eligible for or intrinsically deserving of the death penalty, and in this third and (perhaps) final part of the series I will provide more information on the nature and methods of capital punishment.
First of all, execution, or any other criminal punishment for that matter, was reserved exclusively for the civil government and could not be enacted without the testimony of two or three honest witnesses.
--Numbers 35:30--"But no one is to be put to death on the testimony of only one witness."
--Deuteronomy 17:6--"On the testimony of two or three witnesses a man shall be put to death, but no one shall be put to death on the testimony of only one witness."
--Deuteronomy 19:15--"One witness is not enough to convict a man of any crime or offense he may have committed. A matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses."
The honesty of the witnesses was crucial because if they maliciously contrived a story to illicitly frame an innocent person they would receive the exact penalty the crime they accused the other of would have been given (Deuteronomy 19:16-21). There was to be no extra-legal killing by civilians other than proportionate self-defense in limited scenarios, like if a thief entered a home at night and the owner didn't know his or her intent (Exodus 22:2-3) and if someone was attempting to murder, kidnap, or rape the one acting in self-defense. A civilian who killed another, even an unconvicted criminal, would be charged with murder on the testimony of two or three witnesses and executed himself or herself. They would have violated the numerous warnings against vigilantism, revenge, and murder throughout the Mosaic Law. Even "life for life" did not mean murder for murder.
The Bible is full of examples of people committing evils they should have been executed for. Joseph's brothers kidnapped and sold him, and slave traders purchased him (Genesis 37). Potiphar's wife falsely accused Joseph of rape, though she had perhaps almost raped him herself [3] (Genesis 39). David and Bathsheba committed adultery together (2 Samuel 11). Amnon raped his sister (2 Samuel 13). Jezebel arranged for perjury that led to the execution of an innocent man named Naboth (1 Kings 21). Mosaic Law would have appropriately condemned all of these depraved people to death.
Conservative evangelical Christians can often hold a very contradictory and hypocritical stance on capital punishment. On one hand, many of them support it in the case of premeditated murder, citing passages like Exodus 21:12-14 as justification. But they will likely also tell you that God has released people from an obligation to Mosaic Law, so sins like adultery and bestiality no longer deserve death inflicted by the civil government. They may even trivialize rape and try to differentiate its severity from that of murder, though Deuteronomy 22:25-27 does the exact opposite. But the whole time they are quoting part of Mosaic Law and the Old Testament to advocate the death penalty for murderers while rejecting the death penalty for most or all other capital crimes in the Bible, including crimes that can be far worse than any murder. Kidnapping someone and confining or abusing them for years or even decades is far worse than murder, as are many instances of rape or gang-rape. Torturing someone in certain ways or for certain durations of time is far worse than murder. Yet conservatives (both political conservatives and conservative Christians) may disregard the Bible and reason and pretend that murder is the worst sin imaginable and that God only wants murder punished with death.
Governments have employed a wide spectrum of grotesque methods of execution throughout history. People, in the name of "justice", have committed atrocities like slowly excoriating the skin from a criminal's body, torturing people to death over a period of multiple days by crucifixion, allowing insects to slowly consume a live victim, dispatching animals to torment and kill criminals, and many other unjust forms of death, all inflicting the maximum level of cruelty and humiliation they thought necessary or enjoyable to participate in. People in modern America can be of the false persuasion that all civil executions are barbarous and cruel, but they are only cruel when conducted in a sadistic and degrading manner or when applied to non-capital offenses.
So when people object to the stoning commanded in the Bible, they usually do so in ignorance of how cruel humans can truly become when they operate apart from Mosaic Law. Stoning was not as harsh as it sounds to uneducated modern people, who sometimes assume it was artificially prolonged and engineered to be as painful as possible. As the predominant method of death prescribed in Mosaic Law, it enabled the community to witness the punishment for certain evils. The Bible mentions it in passages about the punishment for sorcery (Leviticus 20:27), incorrigible disobedience to parents (Deuteronomy 21:18-21), and sex with an engaged person (Deuteronomy 22:23-24). It was usually quite brief, especially considering the way the Jews intended to carry it out.
Such extreme and gratuitous torture as found in the Gentile nations usually only results from either the elevation of deterrence to the main priority of justice or majority agreement that a particular instance of a crime is so heinous that it deserves a sadistic and prolonged punishment. The Bible already has measures in place to prevent either of these from occurring. Deterrence, while definitely present in Mosaic Law (Deuteronomy 19:20 and 21:21, for instance), is not the primary consideration in civil justice; it is more of a secondary benefit or side effect, with justice consisting almost wholly of what a crime deserves by nature of its depravity. As for sating the peoples' appetite for punishment, Exodus 23:2 commands us to not follow the crowd in doing wrong and to not allow them to persuade us to pervert justice in any fashion, whether favoritism, bribery, barbarity, or letting a wicked person go free unpunished. Anything that rests in the hands of the majority is not safe indeed. So God already prepared laws anticipating both of these abominations. If deterrence is all that matters, government agents could call for rape, sadism, complete degradation, inhumanity, punishment of relatives of the criminal, and the worst and longest of tortures. If satisfying the fluctuating emotions of a crazed mass of people is the most important part of justice, then justice is relative to the majority's desires and therefore there is no such thing as objective justice. Societal and emotional factors have led to people killing family members of a criminal, executing people for trivial or otherwise non-capital sins, and inflicting unimaginable torments on people. God, on the contrary, says that justice cannot be determined or changed by the masses, that it is immutable, that a criminal who has committed a capital crime must die instead of his or her family members (Deuteronomy 24:16), and that punishment must not be degrading, inhumane, or excessive (Deuteronomy 25:1-3).
After death, Deuteronomy 21:22-23 permitted the corpse of a capital criminal to be temporarily displayed in public. This was not intended to represent some sadistic and disrespectful act, but would serve as a potent warning to other men and women who viewed the body. It would remind them that kidnapping, slave trading, murder, negligent homicide, adultery, bestiality, striking one's parent(s), sorcery, rape, and a handful of other crimes did carry the capital sentence and would therefore help with deterrence. But even though the criminal was dead, God did not allow his or her body to remain displayed for longer than a day. This, again, separates Israel's capital punishments from those of other nations, who disregarded the corpses of enemies and offenders and would let them be mutilated, consumed by animals, and insulted by others.
Humanity normally succumbs to error by making many crimes punishable by death or by trying to eradicate capital punishment from all but one crime or from existence. In some cultures simple crimes like theft and trespassing have been punished by execution, while other societies have attempted to purge the entire concept from the legal system. God clearly expresses displeasure at both extremes and did not leave the solution obscure or unknowable. Capital punishment is most certainly an unalienable part of true justice, but its necessity and presence, like the necessity of all other forms of justice, should offer a sobering reminder of the corruption that can seize individuals and societies.
[1]. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/capital-crimes-part-1.html
[2]. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/capital-crimes-part-2.html
[3]. It is clear that Potiphar's wife had been sexually harassing Joseph for a prolonged period of time and there are numerous documented examples of female rape of males; the text of Genesis 39 definitely implies attempted rape-like behavior by Potiphar's unnamed wife. Contrary to the assumed position that unthinking people accept blindly, it is neither impossible nor entirely uncommon for a woman to sexually assault and force herself sexually on a man.
First of all, execution, or any other criminal punishment for that matter, was reserved exclusively for the civil government and could not be enacted without the testimony of two or three honest witnesses.
--Numbers 35:30--"But no one is to be put to death on the testimony of only one witness."
--Deuteronomy 17:6--"On the testimony of two or three witnesses a man shall be put to death, but no one shall be put to death on the testimony of only one witness."
--Deuteronomy 19:15--"One witness is not enough to convict a man of any crime or offense he may have committed. A matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses."
The honesty of the witnesses was crucial because if they maliciously contrived a story to illicitly frame an innocent person they would receive the exact penalty the crime they accused the other of would have been given (Deuteronomy 19:16-21). There was to be no extra-legal killing by civilians other than proportionate self-defense in limited scenarios, like if a thief entered a home at night and the owner didn't know his or her intent (Exodus 22:2-3) and if someone was attempting to murder, kidnap, or rape the one acting in self-defense. A civilian who killed another, even an unconvicted criminal, would be charged with murder on the testimony of two or three witnesses and executed himself or herself. They would have violated the numerous warnings against vigilantism, revenge, and murder throughout the Mosaic Law. Even "life for life" did not mean murder for murder.
The Bible is full of examples of people committing evils they should have been executed for. Joseph's brothers kidnapped and sold him, and slave traders purchased him (Genesis 37). Potiphar's wife falsely accused Joseph of rape, though she had perhaps almost raped him herself [3] (Genesis 39). David and Bathsheba committed adultery together (2 Samuel 11). Amnon raped his sister (2 Samuel 13). Jezebel arranged for perjury that led to the execution of an innocent man named Naboth (1 Kings 21). Mosaic Law would have appropriately condemned all of these depraved people to death.
Conservative evangelical Christians can often hold a very contradictory and hypocritical stance on capital punishment. On one hand, many of them support it in the case of premeditated murder, citing passages like Exodus 21:12-14 as justification. But they will likely also tell you that God has released people from an obligation to Mosaic Law, so sins like adultery and bestiality no longer deserve death inflicted by the civil government. They may even trivialize rape and try to differentiate its severity from that of murder, though Deuteronomy 22:25-27 does the exact opposite. But the whole time they are quoting part of Mosaic Law and the Old Testament to advocate the death penalty for murderers while rejecting the death penalty for most or all other capital crimes in the Bible, including crimes that can be far worse than any murder. Kidnapping someone and confining or abusing them for years or even decades is far worse than murder, as are many instances of rape or gang-rape. Torturing someone in certain ways or for certain durations of time is far worse than murder. Yet conservatives (both political conservatives and conservative Christians) may disregard the Bible and reason and pretend that murder is the worst sin imaginable and that God only wants murder punished with death.
 |
| If capital punishment is sometimes just, how would we know what crimes deserve the death penalty apart from divine revelation? Otherwise all we are left with are subjective human opinions and confliction perceptions. |
Governments have employed a wide spectrum of grotesque methods of execution throughout history. People, in the name of "justice", have committed atrocities like slowly excoriating the skin from a criminal's body, torturing people to death over a period of multiple days by crucifixion, allowing insects to slowly consume a live victim, dispatching animals to torment and kill criminals, and many other unjust forms of death, all inflicting the maximum level of cruelty and humiliation they thought necessary or enjoyable to participate in. People in modern America can be of the false persuasion that all civil executions are barbarous and cruel, but they are only cruel when conducted in a sadistic and degrading manner or when applied to non-capital offenses.
So when people object to the stoning commanded in the Bible, they usually do so in ignorance of how cruel humans can truly become when they operate apart from Mosaic Law. Stoning was not as harsh as it sounds to uneducated modern people, who sometimes assume it was artificially prolonged and engineered to be as painful as possible. As the predominant method of death prescribed in Mosaic Law, it enabled the community to witness the punishment for certain evils. The Bible mentions it in passages about the punishment for sorcery (Leviticus 20:27), incorrigible disobedience to parents (Deuteronomy 21:18-21), and sex with an engaged person (Deuteronomy 22:23-24). It was usually quite brief, especially considering the way the Jews intended to carry it out.
Such extreme and gratuitous torture as found in the Gentile nations usually only results from either the elevation of deterrence to the main priority of justice or majority agreement that a particular instance of a crime is so heinous that it deserves a sadistic and prolonged punishment. The Bible already has measures in place to prevent either of these from occurring. Deterrence, while definitely present in Mosaic Law (Deuteronomy 19:20 and 21:21, for instance), is not the primary consideration in civil justice; it is more of a secondary benefit or side effect, with justice consisting almost wholly of what a crime deserves by nature of its depravity. As for sating the peoples' appetite for punishment, Exodus 23:2 commands us to not follow the crowd in doing wrong and to not allow them to persuade us to pervert justice in any fashion, whether favoritism, bribery, barbarity, or letting a wicked person go free unpunished. Anything that rests in the hands of the majority is not safe indeed. So God already prepared laws anticipating both of these abominations. If deterrence is all that matters, government agents could call for rape, sadism, complete degradation, inhumanity, punishment of relatives of the criminal, and the worst and longest of tortures. If satisfying the fluctuating emotions of a crazed mass of people is the most important part of justice, then justice is relative to the majority's desires and therefore there is no such thing as objective justice. Societal and emotional factors have led to people killing family members of a criminal, executing people for trivial or otherwise non-capital sins, and inflicting unimaginable torments on people. God, on the contrary, says that justice cannot be determined or changed by the masses, that it is immutable, that a criminal who has committed a capital crime must die instead of his or her family members (Deuteronomy 24:16), and that punishment must not be degrading, inhumane, or excessive (Deuteronomy 25:1-3).
After death, Deuteronomy 21:22-23 permitted the corpse of a capital criminal to be temporarily displayed in public. This was not intended to represent some sadistic and disrespectful act, but would serve as a potent warning to other men and women who viewed the body. It would remind them that kidnapping, slave trading, murder, negligent homicide, adultery, bestiality, striking one's parent(s), sorcery, rape, and a handful of other crimes did carry the capital sentence and would therefore help with deterrence. But even though the criminal was dead, God did not allow his or her body to remain displayed for longer than a day. This, again, separates Israel's capital punishments from those of other nations, who disregarded the corpses of enemies and offenders and would let them be mutilated, consumed by animals, and insulted by others.
 |
| Although Biblical capital punishment (and other punishments) are routinely criticized or condemned by people who despise the Bible, even the execution method of stoning sometimes prescribed in, say, Deuteronomy, does not resemble the gratuitous cruelty of pagan capital punishment methods like Assyrian flaying and Roman crucifixion. Prolonged torture, forced nudity, and post-mortem humiliation of corpses are never prescribed by the Bible and are prohibited either explicitly by its laws or by extension of them. |
Humanity normally succumbs to error by making many crimes punishable by death or by trying to eradicate capital punishment from all but one crime or from existence. In some cultures simple crimes like theft and trespassing have been punished by execution, while other societies have attempted to purge the entire concept from the legal system. God clearly expresses displeasure at both extremes and did not leave the solution obscure or unknowable. Capital punishment is most certainly an unalienable part of true justice, but its necessity and presence, like the necessity of all other forms of justice, should offer a sobering reminder of the corruption that can seize individuals and societies.
[1]. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/capital-crimes-part-1.html
[2]. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/capital-crimes-part-2.html
[3]. It is clear that Potiphar's wife had been sexually harassing Joseph for a prolonged period of time and there are numerous documented examples of female rape of males; the text of Genesis 39 definitely implies attempted rape-like behavior by Potiphar's unnamed wife. Contrary to the assumed position that unthinking people accept blindly, it is neither impossible nor entirely uncommon for a woman to sexually assault and force herself sexually on a man.
The Folly Of Modesty (Part 1)
Since it's summer and people will go swimming, I had to post about the dangers of immodesty and showing skin. After all, bikinis are dangerous because they tempt people. I'm just kidding! I'm certainly not going to confirm the traditional Christian view of modesty but will obliterate it instead. I realized several things about the issue long ago and have wanted to promote the information more overtly. Since Christian and secular culture both have made it clear that female modesty is more urgent and of greater ethical concern than male modesty due to the supposed hypersexuality of males, despite the fact that men and women are both equally sexual and visual, most of this post will unfortunately focus on the task of addressing what society and the church generally think about it. In particular, since it is summer, I will sometimes concentrate on the opposition to bikinis found among Christians. Before the year ends, though, I want to separately post about the fallacies and absurdities of claiming men are "visual" and women aren't and why that is an incorrect conclusion.
Now, onward to destroy a false teaching prevalent within the evangelical church! Be warned: this is a much longer post than usual.
No Biblical Basis
--1 Timothy 2:9-11--"I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God."
Let's inspect the ONE brief passage that people who tell women to cover themselves endlessly appeal to. Christians can be quite fond of claiming that the sight of an attractive person can cause someone else to lust after them, and the danger only increases with lesser amounts of clothing. Does this passage have anything at all to do with instructing women not to wear bikinis when swimming or not to wear whatever the culture considers "appropriate"? It has nothing to do with that. First of all, the text clearly defines the modesty it refers to as having to do with not wearing "expensive clothes" or "gold", not with how much skin is exposed. Do expensive clothes or inexpensive ones cover less of the body? Clearly the inexpensive ones. Yet this is exactly what Paul is commanding people to wear. His instructions here have nothing to do with condemning attraction or teaching shame about the human body. The modesty he describes has to do with the expense of clothing, not its size.
So, despite the absence of an explicit Biblical injunction against, say, wearing bikinis, is there any reason to think that it is morally wrong for a woman to wear one? Or for a man to not wear a shirt? Or for someone to wear clothing that is otherwise adjudged revealing in some way?
No Verifiable Standard
Suppose a woman who is swimming wears a tankini--some people will label her modest and others will inevitably object. If she wears multiple layers, some people can still object. Whether she wears a bikini or not someone will accuse her of immodesty. No matter what she wears or doesn't wear (whether swimming or not)--a bikini, sleeveless shirt, shorts, pants, or dress--there will always be people who are comfortable with her clothing and those who will call her immodest or immoral because of it.
But this is bullcrap reasoning. For instance, how many inches of the legs must be covered? Ask anyone who believes in modesty why an inch or millimeter further isn't the standard. Not only will no one concur about where the line is, but they will have no explanation as to why their choice is correct but a less "modest" line isn't. In philosophy, that's called "begging the question". Issues like how much clothing someone should wear (and as I explained in another post, violence and profanity in entertainment [3]) have no objective standard and are therefore entirely up to the subjective preferences of the individual. There is no point at all in insisting otherwise. These things do not hurt people, so there is no connection between them and morality. God hates injustice, racism, murder, rape, vengeance, kidnapping, and other activities that do harm people or the offender's relationship with others or himself, but never once does he condemn innocent or harmless behaviors. For instance, I will use an example relevant to this page. When it comes to sexuality, God despises promiscuity, adultery, sexual objectification, sex trafficking, forced sex, and sex with animals; the Old Testament is clear about this. These things objectively hurt people who are made in God's image, while only a lunatic or a very uninformed person would say the same about attraction, close friendships with the opposite gender, dating, dancing, flirting, or wearing bikinis or other revealing clothing. Yes, revealing clothing has nothing to do with sexuality in and of itself anyway, but I'm making a specific point here. The Bible doesn't even mention many of these things and they do not objectively hurt people. The difference between sin and an activity for us to decide to engage in or abstain from is obvious and distinct.
Anyone who believes in a certain standard of modesty because of emotional preferences and tells others they found some objective line of modesty commits the fallacy of emotional appeal. Those who agree on a type of clothing as modest or immodest can't cite anything beyond their agreement as a reason and therefore commit the fallacy of appeal to popularity. People can't justify belief in modesty because the church has taught it for so long, because that is an appeal to tradition. Tradition doesn't make anything true.
The Human Body Not Inherently Sexual
In the movie Prometheus a character played by actress Noomi Rapace named Elizabeth Shaw removes all of her garments except for a bikini-like layer of clothing in order to allow a machine to perform an operation on her. For the entire scene and some time afterwards she wears minimal clothing, yet there is nothing sexual about her body or the tone of any frame of the scene. Many people have either forgotten or never understood that the human body and beauty by themselves do not equate to sexual things. Finding someone's body attractive, clothed or unclothed, is also not, in itself, a sexual thing at all. Enjoying and visually admiring the bodies of men and women does not automatically herald the presence of sin. A body is just a body and the exposure of one does not mean that sex will occur; admiring a body does not mean the admirer wants to have sex with the object of the admiration and does not mean that the admiration has a sexual bent. So then why do people in America often act like they believe otherwise? Simply put, because many of them just inherit false beliefs from society and then sexualize almost everything as a result.
Attraction Not Sinful
Many evangelicals attempt to justify their negative view of the human body and attraction between the two genders (people who think men are attracted to women but think the opposite is not true are deluded) by referring to Matthew 5:28, where Jesus condemns lust. Some people read into this verse that everything from looking at someone of the opposite gender to feeling attracted to anyone is dangerous or sinful. But God does not condemn attraction (Genesis 1:28, Deuteronomy 21:10-11) or the human body (Psalm 139) or almost anything else the evangelical church claims. The word used for "lust" in Matthew 5:28 refers to coveting what does not belong to oneself. So a man or woman could appreciate the beauty of someone else's spouse and enjoy deep friendship with them without lusting, but if he or she decides to wish to take the person from their spouse, sin has occurred. Some people claim that a "second look" or some other line represents when lust is crossed into, but if someone can look at another person without lusting once then they could look indefinitely or an infinite number of times without lusting.
As I proved in the preceding paragraph, attraction is not lust or sinful, and can even be something people cannot decide to experience or not. People may not be able to force themselves to feel or not feel attraction, but they have full volitional control over their physical actions and motives. And it is our actions and motives that God will judge, for only these can be corrupt. If an unmarried man or woman can enjoy the beauty of the opposite gender without sinning, then it logically follows, by necessity, that a married person can do the same. There is nothing morally wrong with a married person experiencing attraction for someone other than his or her spouse or noticing that someone else is attractive. Many people feel false guilt over this. There is nothing rational or Biblical about teaching a position contrary to the one described here and spouses should not feel threatened by this. What God does despise and what he condemns repeatedly with great severity is a spouse sexually betraying the other by committing an act of adultery (Exodus 20:14, Deuteronomy 22:22), which truly damages the relationship, and someone coveting the spouse of another person, desiring to take him or her for themselves (Exodus 20:17).
Responsibility For Sin
No one can make someone else sin. While in almost every other regard Christians understand this, they don't apply the obvious principle to the issue of female modesty. If someone has a beautiful house, is another person sinning to admire it and find it beautiful? Does admiration mean they have or will covet it? NO!!! Does the admiration become sinful just because the one admiring already has a house of his or her own? Of course not! And if someone struggled with coveting the house or car of another person, would anyone suggest that the house or vehicle be covered to at least a "suitable" degree in order to avert the coveting? We would laugh at anyone who proposed such a "solution", yet evangelical Christians fall for the same unintelligent reasoning all the time when it comes to clothing and the human body. Did Jesus tell the person being lusted after in Matthew 5:28 to wear more clothes? No, he rebuked the one lusting instead. Everyone is responsible for their own thoughts, motives, attitudes, and actions, and no one else is responsible for them at all. The exact reasoning people use to claim that a man or woman can invite lust by not wearing clothing or clothes of a certain type is the same "logic" used to blame rape on rape victims, because their clothing was "asking for it". Think that excuse will survive a confrontation with God? This is as stupid and invalid as saying that a person who mocks another individual "was asking" to be assaulted or that someone who enrages an unstable person "was asking" to be murdered, yet even mocking someone can be sinful, though revealing clothing is not. Does anyone truly believe God will agree that someone can make another person sin? Based on Exodus 21:18-19 and 21:12-14, God clearly holds people fully accountable for their assaults and murders despite whatever justification they believe they have, and he treats lust and rape no differently.
Defying these asinine positions, European countries that allow and encourage public nudity have far lower rates of sexual assault than America does. In 2010, Spain, a country that openly permits public nudity, had a rape rate of 3.4% while America had one of 27.3% the same year [4]! Only a very ignorant or fallacy-prone person would claim that bikinis or nudity or the human body in general lead to acts like rape or other sexual sins. Of course they cannot cause anyone to sin. But not only is there no possible causation, as the sight of clothing or a body cannot make anyone commit any action whatsoever (duh!), there is not even any correlation between the two (though logic renders statistics completely unnecessary here)!
Since lust and coveting are Biblically identical, allow me to use different examples. At a certain time of my life I was extremely apathetic towards other people in general. I had arrived at the conclusion, after a long period of hoping otherwise, that I couldn't make anyone change their mind or embrace reason and truth, and that correct conclusion combined with deep frustration and anger towards other people for their unreasonableness and sin led me into a horrific apathy. I could have blamed my severe apathy on the idiocy of other people. But I didn't, because I knew it would be dishonest and factually incorrect to do so. I couldn't transfer responsibility for my anger and apathy to those around me because I alone was responsible for it. Just as I was responsible for my apathy, people who lust alone hold responsibility for their sin. Modesty has no value in reducing lust, but even if that statement was not true, some men and women would still objectify and lust after each other even when "fully" clothed. Clothing does absolutely nothing to alleviate or prevent lust, and lack of clothing does absolutely nothing to contribute to sexual objectification. Many Americans sexualize everything because they've been conditioned to, not because everything is inherently sexual.
A Double Standard
Something that bothers many people is the deeply-entrenched double standard regarding modesty. Churches might enforce a pointless and legalistic modesty standard on women but not men. Why? Well, because "men are visual", of course. I hate this deplorable, false, contra-Biblical assumption. While this requires more extensive elaboration on another time, men are nowhere near as "visual" as society stereotypes them to be and women are absolutely JUST as visual as males are, in the sense that the degree of visuality of a person has nothing to do with gender, but with individual personality--and even the Bible affirms this multiple times. The church has absorbed nonsense gender roles and stereotypes from contrived societal beliefs that not all cultures have held and has incorporated them into its theology, though nowhere does the Bible teach these things, and logic and experience refute them in full. Both male and female Christians have told me that they deeply enjoy the opposite gender's beauty and sometimes reveal that they have healthy but strong sexual desires, and there is nothing wrong or unnatural about that. Unfortunately, many things like this truly deserve their own subsequent post and can't be unpacked fully here [5].
Nudity Not Sinful
Some Christians realize that if there is no standard for modesty then there is no rational or moral way to condemn nudity, and they would object to what I have explained in this post on such grounds. But a Christian who would dispute this claim must contradict what the Bible actually teaches about it. To quickly summarize (and there is far more to this than I can address here), God created humans naked and called it good (Genesis 1:31, 2:25), never prescribed judgment against simple public nudity (Deuteronomy 4:2), commanded Isaiah to remove all of his clothing and preach entirely naked for three full years (Isaiah 20:1-6), allowed public nudity in Mosaic Law (Exodus 22:26-27), and instructed Moses to make other laws that seem absurd if nudity was not involved (Deuteronomy 23:1, for example). And, of course, nudity cannot cause lust or sexual sin. However, there is not even necessarily anything morally wrong with sexualized public nudity.
I want to mention a great oddity I've encountered throughout the past few years. I've even heard and read many ironic assertions by Christians saying that the two thieves crucified alongside Jesus deserved their crucifixions (see [2]-c in the links below) right next to statements about how "extra-marital" public nudity is a sin Jesus died for. The ironic part is that the Romans crucified people after stripping them naked for maximum degradation. Such Christians are knowingly or unknowingly teaching that 1) we should do what is good, 2) justice is good, 3) the two thieves deserved to be crucified (meaning their crucifixions were just), and so 4) it was just for the sadistic Romans to strip the thieves naked and thus 5) forced public nudity was good (since justice is good). This bullshit goes unchallenged although it has major ramifications. Contradictory to what many say, Mosaic Law condemns many individual components of Roman crucifixion so outright and so explicitly that only a very ignorant or malicious person would say that the Romans who crucified men and women were anything other than some of the most cruel and wicked people to ever live. See [2] for Biblical proof of the utter injustice of Roman crucifixion from the framework of Christianity--including the forced nudity involved in it. The Bible does not teach that God condemned voluntary public nudity but the forced nudity and crucifixion of criminals was just; it teaches the exact opposite of what these fallacious fools claim!
For a more thorough explanation of this you can visit other articles where I explore this topic in greater detail [6].
Conclusion
Ultimately, people are morally free to wear or not wear whatever they wish at the beach and in their private and public activities. Any moral opposition to their choices is logically indefensible, as one can never justify such criticism from any rational argument or passage of Scripture. Nothing I have articulated and proposed here suffers from irrationality or distortion of the Bible. There are great benefits to the truths I have explained. If people realized the folly of modesty teachings, they could liberate themselves from endless legalism and speculation on the subject and could enjoy comfort with the human body instead of feeling threatened by it. They could celebrate its beauty and the natural and MUTUAL attraction between males and females, which God has never condemned. People wouldn't have to suffer the anxiety of wondering if the beauty God gave them is a curse or if they've caused someone else to sin. This is what the church needs to teach, not the absurd nonsense it has grown accustomed to in its place.
[1]. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/bible-on-gender-equality.html
[2]. See here:
A. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/12/bible-on-torture-part-1.html
B. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/12/bible-on-torture-part-2.html
C. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/12/we-are-getting-what-our-deeds-deserve.html
[3]. "And people can't object to violence and profanity as universal reasons why someone shouldn't play a game because there is no objective line that marks when something has become too violent or too riddled with profanity . . . While the Bible prohibits the actions of murder and assault and kidnapping and robbery, we cannot claim there is some way to know if visual depictions of such things go 'too far'. God has revealed no special knowledge on this matter. And no one can propose a universal standard here without committing at least one of several logical fallacies, most likely an emotional appeal. People can't agree on where the line is, and even if they did agree their consensus does not prove they are right."--
http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-artistic-legitimacy-of-gaming.html
[4]. http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Spain/United-States/Crime
[5]. I have written elsewhere on both how women are visual and how the Bible teaches that both men and women are beautiful without elevating the beauty of one gender over the other.
A. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/04/women-are-visual.html
B. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-beauty-of-both-genders.html
[6]. See here:
A. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/08/bible-on-nudity-part-1.html
B. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/02/bible-on-nudity-part-2-refutation-of.html
Now, onward to destroy a false teaching prevalent within the evangelical church! Be warned: this is a much longer post than usual.
No Biblical Basis
--1 Timothy 2:9-11--"I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God."
Let's inspect the ONE brief passage that people who tell women to cover themselves endlessly appeal to. Christians can be quite fond of claiming that the sight of an attractive person can cause someone else to lust after them, and the danger only increases with lesser amounts of clothing. Does this passage have anything at all to do with instructing women not to wear bikinis when swimming or not to wear whatever the culture considers "appropriate"? It has nothing to do with that. First of all, the text clearly defines the modesty it refers to as having to do with not wearing "expensive clothes" or "gold", not with how much skin is exposed. Do expensive clothes or inexpensive ones cover less of the body? Clearly the inexpensive ones. Yet this is exactly what Paul is commanding people to wear. His instructions here have nothing to do with condemning attraction or teaching shame about the human body. The modesty he describes has to do with the expense of clothing, not its size.
Now that I have proven that the Bible doesn't even comment on the modern evangelical "issue" of how much female clothing should cover, allow me to demonstrate why there is no standard at all and eventually why bikinis and the human body are good things. After all, just because the Bible doesn't condemn something by name doesn't mean it's morally permissible. The Bible never condemns human trafficking by that title, but it says to execute kidnappers (Exodus 21:16, Deuteronomy 24:7) and rapists (Deuteronomy 22:25-27), so obviously human trafficking is unspeakably evil since it involves two capital crimes. The Bible doesn't mention unequal gender wages, but it does demand the legal equality of both men and women (Exodus 21:20, 21:26-27, Deuteronomy 15:12-18; see [1]). Likewise, the Bible rarely condemns specific types of inhumane punishments like Roman crucifixion, but the general prohibition of all degrading forms of punishment in Deuteronomy (Deuteronomy 25:1-3), among other things (Deuteronomy 21:22-23, etc.), would indisputably condemn barbarous penalties like those used by the Romans [2].  |
| There are some who would claim these woman are sinning. However, no divine decree or logical syllogism justifies this conclusion. |
So, despite the absence of an explicit Biblical injunction against, say, wearing bikinis, is there any reason to think that it is morally wrong for a woman to wear one? Or for a man to not wear a shirt? Or for someone to wear clothing that is otherwise adjudged revealing in some way?
No Verifiable Standard
Suppose a woman who is swimming wears a tankini--some people will label her modest and others will inevitably object. If she wears multiple layers, some people can still object. Whether she wears a bikini or not someone will accuse her of immodesty. No matter what she wears or doesn't wear (whether swimming or not)--a bikini, sleeveless shirt, shorts, pants, or dress--there will always be people who are comfortable with her clothing and those who will call her immodest or immoral because of it.
But this is bullcrap reasoning. For instance, how many inches of the legs must be covered? Ask anyone who believes in modesty why an inch or millimeter further isn't the standard. Not only will no one concur about where the line is, but they will have no explanation as to why their choice is correct but a less "modest" line isn't. In philosophy, that's called "begging the question". Issues like how much clothing someone should wear (and as I explained in another post, violence and profanity in entertainment [3]) have no objective standard and are therefore entirely up to the subjective preferences of the individual. There is no point at all in insisting otherwise. These things do not hurt people, so there is no connection between them and morality. God hates injustice, racism, murder, rape, vengeance, kidnapping, and other activities that do harm people or the offender's relationship with others or himself, but never once does he condemn innocent or harmless behaviors. For instance, I will use an example relevant to this page. When it comes to sexuality, God despises promiscuity, adultery, sexual objectification, sex trafficking, forced sex, and sex with animals; the Old Testament is clear about this. These things objectively hurt people who are made in God's image, while only a lunatic or a very uninformed person would say the same about attraction, close friendships with the opposite gender, dating, dancing, flirting, or wearing bikinis or other revealing clothing. Yes, revealing clothing has nothing to do with sexuality in and of itself anyway, but I'm making a specific point here. The Bible doesn't even mention many of these things and they do not objectively hurt people. The difference between sin and an activity for us to decide to engage in or abstain from is obvious and distinct.
 |
| What standard in the Bible says that this is morally better than . . . |
 |
| this or that either is immoral? Or that this is better than . . . |
 |
| this or that either is immoral? Or that this is better than . . . |
 |
| this or that either is immoral? Or that this is better than . . . |
 |
| this or that either is immoral? Or that this is better than . . . |
 |
| this or that either is immoral? Or that this is better than . . . |
 |
| this or that either is immoral? There is no such standard described in the Bible. Biblical morality reveals the standard for things like sexual acts, justice, and interpersonal relationships. It never even hints at a moral standard for the amount of clothing someone should wear or that we have any obligation to cover our bodies. We have freedom to dress as we want. The human body is good, not evil, as are attraction and admiration of beauty. |
Anyone who believes in a certain standard of modesty because of emotional preferences and tells others they found some objective line of modesty commits the fallacy of emotional appeal. Those who agree on a type of clothing as modest or immodest can't cite anything beyond their agreement as a reason and therefore commit the fallacy of appeal to popularity. People can't justify belief in modesty because the church has taught it for so long, because that is an appeal to tradition. Tradition doesn't make anything true.
The Human Body Not Inherently Sexual
In the movie Prometheus a character played by actress Noomi Rapace named Elizabeth Shaw removes all of her garments except for a bikini-like layer of clothing in order to allow a machine to perform an operation on her. For the entire scene and some time afterwards she wears minimal clothing, yet there is nothing sexual about her body or the tone of any frame of the scene. Many people have either forgotten or never understood that the human body and beauty by themselves do not equate to sexual things. Finding someone's body attractive, clothed or unclothed, is also not, in itself, a sexual thing at all. Enjoying and visually admiring the bodies of men and women does not automatically herald the presence of sin. A body is just a body and the exposure of one does not mean that sex will occur; admiring a body does not mean the admirer wants to have sex with the object of the admiration and does not mean that the admiration has a sexual bent. So then why do people in America often act like they believe otherwise? Simply put, because many of them just inherit false beliefs from society and then sexualize almost everything as a result.
Attraction Not Sinful
Many evangelicals attempt to justify their negative view of the human body and attraction between the two genders (people who think men are attracted to women but think the opposite is not true are deluded) by referring to Matthew 5:28, where Jesus condemns lust. Some people read into this verse that everything from looking at someone of the opposite gender to feeling attracted to anyone is dangerous or sinful. But God does not condemn attraction (Genesis 1:28, Deuteronomy 21:10-11) or the human body (Psalm 139) or almost anything else the evangelical church claims. The word used for "lust" in Matthew 5:28 refers to coveting what does not belong to oneself. So a man or woman could appreciate the beauty of someone else's spouse and enjoy deep friendship with them without lusting, but if he or she decides to wish to take the person from their spouse, sin has occurred. Some people claim that a "second look" or some other line represents when lust is crossed into, but if someone can look at another person without lusting once then they could look indefinitely or an infinite number of times without lusting.
As I proved in the preceding paragraph, attraction is not lust or sinful, and can even be something people cannot decide to experience or not. People may not be able to force themselves to feel or not feel attraction, but they have full volitional control over their physical actions and motives. And it is our actions and motives that God will judge, for only these can be corrupt. If an unmarried man or woman can enjoy the beauty of the opposite gender without sinning, then it logically follows, by necessity, that a married person can do the same. There is nothing morally wrong with a married person experiencing attraction for someone other than his or her spouse or noticing that someone else is attractive. Many people feel false guilt over this. There is nothing rational or Biblical about teaching a position contrary to the one described here and spouses should not feel threatened by this. What God does despise and what he condemns repeatedly with great severity is a spouse sexually betraying the other by committing an act of adultery (Exodus 20:14, Deuteronomy 22:22), which truly damages the relationship, and someone coveting the spouse of another person, desiring to take him or her for themselves (Exodus 20:17).
Responsibility For Sin
No one can make someone else sin. While in almost every other regard Christians understand this, they don't apply the obvious principle to the issue of female modesty. If someone has a beautiful house, is another person sinning to admire it and find it beautiful? Does admiration mean they have or will covet it? NO!!! Does the admiration become sinful just because the one admiring already has a house of his or her own? Of course not! And if someone struggled with coveting the house or car of another person, would anyone suggest that the house or vehicle be covered to at least a "suitable" degree in order to avert the coveting? We would laugh at anyone who proposed such a "solution", yet evangelical Christians fall for the same unintelligent reasoning all the time when it comes to clothing and the human body. Did Jesus tell the person being lusted after in Matthew 5:28 to wear more clothes? No, he rebuked the one lusting instead. Everyone is responsible for their own thoughts, motives, attitudes, and actions, and no one else is responsible for them at all. The exact reasoning people use to claim that a man or woman can invite lust by not wearing clothing or clothes of a certain type is the same "logic" used to blame rape on rape victims, because their clothing was "asking for it". Think that excuse will survive a confrontation with God? This is as stupid and invalid as saying that a person who mocks another individual "was asking" to be assaulted or that someone who enrages an unstable person "was asking" to be murdered, yet even mocking someone can be sinful, though revealing clothing is not. Does anyone truly believe God will agree that someone can make another person sin? Based on Exodus 21:18-19 and 21:12-14, God clearly holds people fully accountable for their assaults and murders despite whatever justification they believe they have, and he treats lust and rape no differently.
 |
| Can guns cause murder? Can verbal disputes cause assault? The Bible condemns both murder (Exodus 21:12-14) and assault (Exodus 21:18-19) but it never prohibits arguments or ownership of weapons. |
Since lust and coveting are Biblically identical, allow me to use different examples. At a certain time of my life I was extremely apathetic towards other people in general. I had arrived at the conclusion, after a long period of hoping otherwise, that I couldn't make anyone change their mind or embrace reason and truth, and that correct conclusion combined with deep frustration and anger towards other people for their unreasonableness and sin led me into a horrific apathy. I could have blamed my severe apathy on the idiocy of other people. But I didn't, because I knew it would be dishonest and factually incorrect to do so. I couldn't transfer responsibility for my anger and apathy to those around me because I alone was responsible for it. Just as I was responsible for my apathy, people who lust alone hold responsibility for their sin. Modesty has no value in reducing lust, but even if that statement was not true, some men and women would still objectify and lust after each other even when "fully" clothed. Clothing does absolutely nothing to alleviate or prevent lust, and lack of clothing does absolutely nothing to contribute to sexual objectification. Many Americans sexualize everything because they've been conditioned to, not because everything is inherently sexual.
A Double Standard
Something that bothers many people is the deeply-entrenched double standard regarding modesty. Churches might enforce a pointless and legalistic modesty standard on women but not men. Why? Well, because "men are visual", of course. I hate this deplorable, false, contra-Biblical assumption. While this requires more extensive elaboration on another time, men are nowhere near as "visual" as society stereotypes them to be and women are absolutely JUST as visual as males are, in the sense that the degree of visuality of a person has nothing to do with gender, but with individual personality--and even the Bible affirms this multiple times. The church has absorbed nonsense gender roles and stereotypes from contrived societal beliefs that not all cultures have held and has incorporated them into its theology, though nowhere does the Bible teach these things, and logic and experience refute them in full. Both male and female Christians have told me that they deeply enjoy the opposite gender's beauty and sometimes reveal that they have healthy but strong sexual desires, and there is nothing wrong or unnatural about that. Unfortunately, many things like this truly deserve their own subsequent post and can't be unpacked fully here [5].
 |
| Why do adherents of modesty teachings who find women wearing bikinis morally offensive (on wholly illogical and subjective grounds, of course) not condemn men who do not wear shirts? If they think the Bible does not teach that women are visual and sexual beings just like men are. have they not read of Potiphar's wife in Genesis 39 and other Biblical passages affirming the visuality and sexuality of women? |
Some Christians realize that if there is no standard for modesty then there is no rational or moral way to condemn nudity, and they would object to what I have explained in this post on such grounds. But a Christian who would dispute this claim must contradict what the Bible actually teaches about it. To quickly summarize (and there is far more to this than I can address here), God created humans naked and called it good (Genesis 1:31, 2:25), never prescribed judgment against simple public nudity (Deuteronomy 4:2), commanded Isaiah to remove all of his clothing and preach entirely naked for three full years (Isaiah 20:1-6), allowed public nudity in Mosaic Law (Exodus 22:26-27), and instructed Moses to make other laws that seem absurd if nudity was not involved (Deuteronomy 23:1, for example). And, of course, nudity cannot cause lust or sexual sin. However, there is not even necessarily anything morally wrong with sexualized public nudity.
I want to mention a great oddity I've encountered throughout the past few years. I've even heard and read many ironic assertions by Christians saying that the two thieves crucified alongside Jesus deserved their crucifixions (see [2]-c in the links below) right next to statements about how "extra-marital" public nudity is a sin Jesus died for. The ironic part is that the Romans crucified people after stripping them naked for maximum degradation. Such Christians are knowingly or unknowingly teaching that 1) we should do what is good, 2) justice is good, 3) the two thieves deserved to be crucified (meaning their crucifixions were just), and so 4) it was just for the sadistic Romans to strip the thieves naked and thus 5) forced public nudity was good (since justice is good). This bullshit goes unchallenged although it has major ramifications. Contradictory to what many say, Mosaic Law condemns many individual components of Roman crucifixion so outright and so explicitly that only a very ignorant or malicious person would say that the Romans who crucified men and women were anything other than some of the most cruel and wicked people to ever live. See [2] for Biblical proof of the utter injustice of Roman crucifixion from the framework of Christianity--including the forced nudity involved in it. The Bible does not teach that God condemned voluntary public nudity but the forced nudity and crucifixion of criminals was just; it teaches the exact opposite of what these fallacious fools claim!
For a more thorough explanation of this you can visit other articles where I explore this topic in greater detail [6].
Conclusion
Ultimately, people are morally free to wear or not wear whatever they wish at the beach and in their private and public activities. Any moral opposition to their choices is logically indefensible, as one can never justify such criticism from any rational argument or passage of Scripture. Nothing I have articulated and proposed here suffers from irrationality or distortion of the Bible. There are great benefits to the truths I have explained. If people realized the folly of modesty teachings, they could liberate themselves from endless legalism and speculation on the subject and could enjoy comfort with the human body instead of feeling threatened by it. They could celebrate its beauty and the natural and MUTUAL attraction between males and females, which God has never condemned. People wouldn't have to suffer the anxiety of wondering if the beauty God gave them is a curse or if they've caused someone else to sin. This is what the church needs to teach, not the absurd nonsense it has grown accustomed to in its place.
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| Men and women have no objective moral obligation to cover their bodies to a certain degree at beaches or swimming pools, contrary to the fallacious ideas of many evangelical Christians. |
[1]. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/bible-on-gender-equality.html
[2]. See here:
A. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/12/bible-on-torture-part-1.html
B. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/12/bible-on-torture-part-2.html
C. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/12/we-are-getting-what-our-deeds-deserve.html
[3]. "And people can't object to violence and profanity as universal reasons why someone shouldn't play a game because there is no objective line that marks when something has become too violent or too riddled with profanity . . . While the Bible prohibits the actions of murder and assault and kidnapping and robbery, we cannot claim there is some way to know if visual depictions of such things go 'too far'. God has revealed no special knowledge on this matter. And no one can propose a universal standard here without committing at least one of several logical fallacies, most likely an emotional appeal. People can't agree on where the line is, and even if they did agree their consensus does not prove they are right."--
http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-artistic-legitimacy-of-gaming.html
[4]. http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Spain/United-States/Crime
[5]. I have written elsewhere on both how women are visual and how the Bible teaches that both men and women are beautiful without elevating the beauty of one gender over the other.
A. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/04/women-are-visual.html
B. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-beauty-of-both-genders.html
[6]. See here:
A. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/08/bible-on-nudity-part-1.html
B. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/02/bible-on-nudity-part-2-refutation-of.html
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