Distinguishing Dreams From Waking Experiences

In honor of the fact that it has almost been exactly a year since I first wrote about the sole way to prove to yourself that you are not presently dreaming [1], and also because I recently discussed the matter with an inquisitive friend, I decided to explain here why only the sense of touch and related senses can prove to someone that he or she is awake.  See the link below for a more thorough explanation of the entirety of the proof, as this post is mostly an elaboration on certain components of it.  Still, I will summarize the proof here.

Physical sensations necessitate that one possesses a physical body with which one experiences them.  Dreams, occurring only within a mind, do not involve external stimuli.  Thus, if my sense of touch is active, then I am not and cannot be dreaming, for my mind would be present in my body and not isolated within itself.  Other sensory perceptions can still appear in a dream, though.  A person might feel bladder pressure or hear someone calling his or her name while they sleep.  It is not as if no sensory perceptions at all can infiltrate dreams, and some may even be a part of a dream (maybe certain smells are perceived while dreaming, for instance).  However, since the distinction between a dream and a waking experience is that the former only takes place within a consciousness and the latter takes place in the external world, senses that do not correspond to outer stimuli with absolute necessity are irrelevant to addressing this subject.

The epistemological issue of whether one is dreaming or awake cannot be settled by appealing to, for example, one's sense of sight.  After all, just seeing something doesn't mean that it actually exists outside of your mind: mental images, including dreams, involve seeing something too.  If seeing something meant that the thing has to exist as an external stimulus, then hallucinations would be impossible.  But hallucinations are not impossible, and thus seeing something is not proof of anything except to oneself that one sees that thing.

What of the sense of hearing?  Again, one could hear something that is imagined.  Like with the sense of sight, the sense of hearing does not have to indicate anything about the external world.  Hearing something doesn't mean that the sounds necessarily originated from an outside object or being.  But if one experiences a physical sensation then one must have a physical body, and if one experiences a collision with a physical substance beyond one's body then one must be contacting an external, physical thing.

In order to prove that something physical exists outside of your mind (unlike immaterial things like logic and space that exist by pure necessity), you need to have some sort of physical indicator that the thing in question is there.  Senses like sight and hearing do not meet this qualification.  Only the sense of touch--and sometimes related but distinct senses like the sense of physical pain (nociception) and the sense of temperature (thermoception)--could establish that external, physical objects do exist.

A person without a sense of touch cannot know if an external world exists.  Things like seeing and hearing prove only that specific perceptions exist; physical sensations prove that the sensations, a body outside of one's mind, and (in some cases) physical stimuli outside of one's body exist.  If my mind is experiencing my sense of touch and is aware of my body, then I cannot be dreaming.  Without the sense of touch, a person could never have absolute certainty that he or she is awake, for the closest thing to a proof that he or she could attain would always be open to possible refutation.

Yes, I know with absolute certainty that I am not dreaming at this moment.  But it is not because of my sense of sight, or my sense of hearing, or any other sense which does not by necessity prove the existence of a physical stimulus; it is only because some of my senses are intrinsically physical senses that I can know a world of matter exists outside of my consciousness, inhabiting the immaterial dimension of space.  It is because a dream can only occur within a consciousness that I know my experiences in an actual external world prove to me that I am not dreaming at that moment.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/07/dreams-and-consciousness.html

The Ease Of Decrying The Public

I suspect that if I were to ask random people if they think the state of American politics is absurd, almost all of them, if not every single person, would say that the political climate is ridiculous.  Yet they would probably cite differing, exclusive reasons why they think this, amusingly.  Similarly, I would likely receive almost unanimous agreement if I asked random individuals whether or not most people display little to no rationality.  Again, this is amusing, for the reasons they would claim this would almost certainly differ to a large extent!

Wherever conflicting claims appear, at least one of them is false, and perhaps none of them are correct.  Of course, few people actually know what rationality is, and thus few people even have a right understanding of the only tool that will equip them to distinguish truth from falsity.  And yet many people are eager to nod and offer verbal agreement when someone mentions how "crazy" things are, or how "people just lack common sense these days."  Of course, "commons sense," if something besides strict logic is meant by the phrase, does not exist in any form.

When the majority of people agree that their generation is awash with stupidity, they ironically often condemn themselves just as much as they do others.  But few realize this, because intelligence is a rare commodity, though not a physical commodity, and not one that is depleted when one person indulges in it.  Almost everyone is willing to complain about stupidity and its inconvenient or destructive results, but very few actually know what it is, and what prolongs its existence!

I clearly am not saying to never decry the public, for the public truly is comprised of numerous misguided, unintelligent individuals.  I denounce the public regularly and harshly.  It is hypocritical or ignorant denouncing that I am cautioning against here.  When a person describes the public as gullible, does he or she simultaneously believe the unverified?  When a person mocks unintelligence, does he or she display it at the same time?  Many times these things are indeed the case.

It is easy for members of every generation to simply parrot what the previous one says, or what other members of the same generation say.  It is easy for many people to say that the current political landscape is crazy.  It is easy to say that most people are irrational.  And both statements are correct.  It requires far more effort, though, to understand what is absurd about contemporary politics and why it is absurd, just like it requires far more effort to understand what rationality is and in what ways most people are irrational.

Improving Articulation

Knowing the truth and expressing the truth are very distinct things.  The former is the more important of the two, for it is a prerequisite to the second and is significant even when detached from outward communication.  But expressing the truth--sharing it with others or pursing it with them--is the action that naturally follows from knowing the truth.  And expressing truths inherently involves communication of some sort.

Perhaps you already know a wide spectrum of valuable information and can prove what the truth of a matter is, but you still want to be swifter and more precise with your words.  There is no set of activities that are absolutely certain to boost your ability to articulate things with the utmost speed and clarity, but there are certainly activities that are likely to help you develop such skills!  Conversing with others and writing, whether for yourself or for a particular external audience, are among these.

The process of regularly writing can greatly enhance one's ability to speak well.  It can hone the careful expression of particular concepts or thoughts, which can in turn aid one's conversations with others, since expression of concepts is common to both writing and speaking.  I know that writing on my blog for the past two years, considering both the frequency and the content of my writings, has certainly helped me cultivate the ability to summarize, clarify, and prove very specific points in a smaller amount of time.  Write how you want to speak, and you may find that your writing will influence how you verbally communicate.

Some people do not like writing, and there is nothing wrong with this.  However, if they find themselves wishing they were better at wielding effective articulation, writing may be the thing that can give them the abilities they desire.  Over a prolonged period of time, it could dramatically expand one's communication skills in many ways.  That either the ability to write or speak could sharpen the other is not surprising when one understands the nature of each.  Both are manifestations of language.  In order to become an optimal communicator, one must develop both.

When Women Rape Men

The story of Potiphar's wife from Genesis 39 is fairly well-known by Christians.  Potiphar's wife found herself sexually attracted to her husband's servant Joseph, contrary to evangelical myths about female sexuality, because she thought he had a beautiful body.  Instead of handling her sexual attraction in a Biblically legitimate way--like having sex with her husband, masturbating [1], or simply experiencing or enjoying her feelings for Joseph while never desiring to commit a sexual sin--she persistently demanded that Joseph commit adultery with her.

Eventually she caught him alone, seized his clothing, and repeated her demand before Joseph fled.  She then accused Joseph of trying to rape her, when perhaps the opposite was the case.  At the very least, she sexually harassed Joseph despite him clarifying that he had no interest in her advances (the belief that these rejections were a struggle for Joseph is just a fallacious and usually sexist assumption).  She may have even intended to rape him if he would not sleep with her.  Some might ask themselves, But how can a woman actually rape a man?

I can think of several obvious scenarios.  A woman could exploit an intoxicated man (as Lot's daughters exploited his state of drunkenness), hold him at gunpoint, or blackmail him, to list just three situations where a woman could have sex with a man against his will or without his consent.  If a man sleeps with an intoxicated woman, my culture would react in an uproar, and rightly so; but if a text as familiar to Christians as the Bible can contain such a clear example of a woman sleeping with an intoxicated man without the readers condemning this just as strongly, then any Christians who overlook this are guilty of egregious sexism.  The mockery some direct towards male victims of female sexual harassment is just as much of a moral abomination as the trivialization of sexual harassment inflicted upon women by men.  All rape, including rape of men by women, deserves death [2].

The Bible also contains a story of women succeeding in raping a man, and not merely attempting to.  In Genesis 19, before the story of Potiphar's wife, one can read of Lot's daughters getting him drunk with the explicit intention to have sex with him so that they could become pregnant.  Why is the fact that women raped a man dismissed or ignored?  It's not because the text is ambiguous, because it is not.  It is because the abuse of men by women is often denied, trivialized, or met with apathy.

To say that women cannot rape men betrays a laughable ignorance of logic.  The Bible itself plainly denies such a myth just by offering the stories that it does, although somehow the ramifications of these stories go unmentioned by almost everyone.  The fact that many theologians ignore these ramifications is not because they are not obvious in the text.  It is because erroneous stereotypes (all stereotypes are irrational by nature) are embraced by evangelical Christendom that these aspects of the stories are not commonly taught.

I have mentioned in a different post that if I were to retell the story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife without providing the genders of the figures, many people would likely assume that the aggressor was a man, and that the victim was a woman.  This is because of the willingness of most people to make assumptions, not because reality actually stands behind them!  The idea that a sin is gender-specific, whether that sin is rape or something else, is as destructive as it is stupid.  The Bible describes at least one example of a female-male rape and one example of a woman sexually harassing a man, maybe going so far as to attempt to rape him.  Basic exegesis illuminates these facts.

Logic, people.  It is very fucking helpful.


[1].  Though logic easily shows that masturbation does not have to be accompanied by thoughts of a specific person or of anyone at all, there is still nothing sinful about thinking of a certain person while masturbating.  Masturbation and sexual attraction, regardless of one's marital status and the marital status of the person the attraction is experienced for, are not sinful on their own, so the combination of them cannot be sinful (Deuteronomy 4:2), even if in masturbating a person intentionally focuses on the fact that the attraction is to someone who is not his or her spouse.  Sexual attraction is not lust, as I have proven elsewhere multiple times.  Besides, it is impossible for a person to lust after a single person because of the way the Bible defines lust, and Joseph was single.

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/06/misunderstanding-bible-on-rape.html

Parents Are Not Monarchs

A person's age does not make them knowledgeable, worthy of deference, or sound thinkers.  This is obvious to any rational mind.  It is likewise logically apparent that having children does not make one a good or intelligent person.  Thus, a rational mind will not think that the state of being a parent says anything about the intellectual, spiritual, or moral authority of a person.  But this is not how many Christians treat parents!  The timing of this post is ironic.  Though I have been meaning to write about this subject for some time, I have recently heard about how John Piper, a thoroughly inept thinker as it is, actually said that until his children know better he is God to them.

What an asinine statement!  Parents are not deities.  Parents are not monarchs.  They should not be extended any special exemption from criticism simply because they have children, even from criticism by their own children.  Whoever is right has the right to speak.  This is not what is taught by most Christians, of course.

Parents never have the authority to determine moral facts.  They cannot make something obligatory or sinful by saying it is anymore than a government can do the same.  This does not stop many parents I have known from teaching their children blatant errors, imposing legalism on them, and reacting to criticism from their children as if being a parent automatically makes them correct.  Retreating behind the pathetic assertion that "We are just doing what we think is right," they continue to pretend like parenthood gives them an immunity from having their errors refuted.

Conservative Christians, ironically, would likely label a government tyrannical if it did to them what they might do to their children--that is, micromanage their lives where there are no divine laws.  Conservative evangelicals are often full of hypocrisy, and the realm of parenting is no exception.  A large number of parenting practices advocated by some Christians--almost always the conservative type--are arbitrary, irrational, and extra-Biblical, reflecting nothing more than the meaningless preferences of fallacy-prone parents.  Whether the practices pertain to dating, entertainment, or a myriad of other things, they are held up as good, meaningful, or intelligent, when they are nothing but the product of ignorance and stupidity.

Parents are clearly obligated to teach their children to abide by the commands of Yahweh (Deuteronomy 4:9).  To go beyond this, and demand that their children submit to extra-Biblical preferences, is itself a sin (Deuteronomy 4:2).  When they step outside of their own obligations to teach their children the truth, and not fictions of their liking, they are not defended by Scripture or reason.

No one--not a member of a government, a parent, a spouse, a friend, or a stranger--has the right to demand that a person abstain from something that is not sinful, irrespective of his or her feelings.  Why the hell is this so difficult for many to admit?  Parents are not monarchs--not that monarchs have any authorities in their own arena that parents do not also have in theirs.  Not even monarchs have the right to demand that others abide by their mere preferences.  Their wills are not inherently authoritative.  As such, wherever they err they should be opposed.  A parent should never impose fallacious constructs or legalism on his or her children.

Flirtatious Friendships

Flirting among opposite gender friends, in the relationships where it does appear, does not diminish the legitimacy of those relationships in any way.  It is asinine to think that all opposite gender friendships will inevitably reach a point where one party flirts with the other (whether or not it even conveys romantic or sexual interest), but as I have refuted the bullshit idea that men and women cannot or should not be friends, whatever their respective marital statuses, multiple times before, I am not focusing on that now.  It's time to explain how actual flirtation is in no way a definite sign that two people want to date, marry, or sleep together.

Some people may enjoy having an element of romantic uncertainty, flirtation, or sexual attraction in a friendship with someone of the opposite gender, though some may not.  The process might serve as a confidence-booster, a manner of bonding, or a type of practice with a willing participant.  As long as both parties are aware of what it does and doesn't mean, it can be entirely self-contained and affect nothing whatsoever about the rest of the friendship.  Why is this so difficult for some people to grasp?

The presence of flirting or even overt sexual attraction in a male-female friendship does not mean that it is not a friendship, or that either party wants it to become more than just a friendship.  To think otherwise is to merely assume.  Defining such a relationship as something other than a friendship commits the no true Scotsman fallacy, arbitrarily redefining something to avoid a certain conclusion.  Of course flirtation and deep, genuine friendship are compatible, even if uncommon!

Flirtation can look very different when conducted by different people.  Since flirting is acting like one is romantically or sexually attracted to someone, the same action might be flirting in the case of one person and not be flirtatious at all in the case of another.  Real attraction of a romantic or sexual kind might not actually be present, as flirting is not necessarily about communicating actual attraction or long-term interest.  It can provide a lighthearted, exciting, pleasurable pastime, and it is certainly not sinful in itself [1].  A mistake made by some is to overemphasize the presence or significance of flirtation when it is present.

Some of the most popular errors regarding the subject are that no men and women who are actual friends would ever flirt with each other and that all men and women who are friends will eventually flirt.  Both beliefs are incorrect.  Friends might never flirt, but flirting may only mean that two friends are just having fun or trying to boost their confidence and nothing more.  If it is present in a relationship, then the intention behind the flirting is determined solely by the one doing it.


[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-morality-of-flirting.html

The Frequency Of Miracles

A recent conversation about miracles led to me remembering a video I saw long ago, one showing William Lane Craig explain why appearances of Jesus might actually turn people away from theism and Christianity (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IBIsLTQ-GKQ).  Craig argues that God is interested in establishing relationships with humans instead of just proving his existence to them--which is true according to Christianity, but there is a major irony in what he says.  As one might expect, Craig does not bring it up in the video.

The irony is that to have a legitimate relationship with God 1) you must believe that he exists and 2) God must also actually exist, and in order to know that your belief is not arbitrary or false you must be capable of proving it, so the idea that miraculous appearances of Jesus in the modern world would likely be counterproductive is nonsense!  Of course more direct appearances of Jesus, or some other miraculous phenomena, could serve as great contemporary evidence for Christianity.

The issue with appearances of Jesus is not that the subjective responses of some people (their rejection of the evidence) would render these miracles counterproductive, but that a physical appearance of Jesus would not actually serve as verifiable proof of God's existence.  If some powerful being appeared to me in a physical form on a regular basis, how could I know that it is indeed Yahweh or Jesus, and not an alien, a time traveler, a sorcerer/sorceress, a shapeshifter, or even a malevolent, deceitful figure like Satan?  There is no way that I could distinguish one entity from the others merely from these visitations.

Would such encounters serve as evidence for the existence of Jesus?  Absolutely, and very strong evidence at that!  Proof?  Not at all.  Craig does not touch on this at all in the video link (though he may have at some other part of the event), instead resorting to the argument that more miracles would likely drive people away from a relationship with God.  But he sidesteps the fact that even if the ultimate goal of knowing about God should be reacting to God in the right relational manner, knowledge of God's existence and nature is still inescapably necessary to pursue that relationship legitimately to begin with.

Game Review--Call Of Duty: Ghosts (Xbox One)

"I'm not a Ghost.  I'm the man that hunts them."
--Rorke, Call of Duty: Ghosts


The strengths and weaknesses of Call of Duty: Ghosts are both pronounced and apparent.  I do not mean to call it a bad game, as it certainly has its successful qualities.  It's just that there were many missed opportunities here--including the absence of character development, the simplicity of the plot, and the generic nature of the graphics.  Some aspects are creative, and some are lacking, yet the majority of them fall somewhere in the region of mediocrity.

Production Values

Ghosts has rather bland graphics--they are not terrible, but not amazing.  They are effective enough to accentuate the gameplay without providing deep visual immersion.  The facial models on some particular characters highlight the inattention to detail.  Nothing in the game looks horrendously disfigured by the visuals, but don't expect incredible graphics.  In contrast, the audio is of a much higher quality, the voice acting being carried out splendidly.


Gameplay

--Campaign

Ghosts' campaign is a very enjoyable, if brief, experience that provides the opportunity to play in many different vehicles and visit diverse environments.  Playing as a combat dog, scuba diving, rappelling down a skyscraper, manning a helicopter turret, controlling a tank, fighting outside of a space station--the variety can help pull players into an otherwise simple plot.  The primary POV (point of view) character receives practically no character development, but the campaign's many environments pull the narrative along.  This is a campaign that will be maximally enjoyed by those who like fast-paced, varied set pieces.  The diversity of the settings is the campaign's greatest strength, as the characters themselves are flat.

--Squads/Multiplayer

A new mode called Squads allows one to play with bots or other humans in a handful of modes, such as Safeguard, where 1-4 players attempt to survive either 20 or an infinite number of waves of enemy combatants.  In Squads you can form and improve a core group of players and compete against other squads (or AI opponents) online.  As you play Squads, you can unlock points for weapon and character customization, all of which deepen the experience, and can make it easier to succeed against enemies.  Of course, the staple multiplayer returns, and ranks achieved in Squads carry over to the classic multiplayer.

--Extinction

Extinction is both similar to and quite distinct from zombie mode.  And I found it to be so damn fun!  On one hand, both involve earning spendable currency by fighting off exotic creatures, but, on the other hand, extinction's Point of Contact mode can be won; there is a finite end to it.  Alone or with three human allies, you carry around and activate a drill at alien hives, protecting it as aliens attack.  You cannot pause the game, even in solo mode, so, like with The Last of Us, there is the omnipresent possibility of danger.  A set of skill points reset each time you play Point of Contact, but completing challenges while defending the drill grants bonus points that can upgrade abilities for that session.  You can purchase permanent upgrades by spending teeth obtained from making kills or completing Point of Contact, with teeth allowing you to buy things like quicker health regeneration, an electrified knife attack, or faster revives from last stand.  As with zombie mode in Black Ops III, the leveling progression systems are separate for extinction, the campaign, and Squads/multiplayer (the traditional kind).

Story

Some spoilers are below.

The campaign focuses on a team of expert warriors called Ghosts, assigned that name due to their ferocity, which has led a surviving enemy to view the Ghosts as a supernatural force.  The story opens with a Ghost named Elias Walker speaking with his two sons Logan and Hesh, a conversation quickly interrupted by a missile strike from an orbital missile system called the ODIN.  An American space station was hijacked by a South American super-nation called the Federation (think a South American version of the European Union), and an invasion follows.

A decade later, Logan and Hesh join the Ghosts, and they find themselves becoming entangled in a plot by a former Ghost named Rorke to exterminate all members of the group.  Once someone who fought alongside Elias, Rorke was abandoned in a mission, captured by the Federation, and manipulated by the Federation into fighting on its behalf.  The remainder of the story shows how the Ghosts aid an American overthrow of the Federation invaders and seek to kill Rorke.

Intellectual Content

There is practically nothing in this game that is explicitly intellectual in nature, whereas Black Ops III's campaign at least explored a variety of significant issues.  It's still a fun game.


Conclusion

Ghosts certainly could have offered a deeper single player experience in terms of emotional connection to the characters, but it does succeed in providing a campaign that holds great variety.  Squads and extinction are great additions, but none of them had numerous hours invested into them in the way that Black Ops III did with its zombie mode and more complex campaign story.  Is it the best Call of Duty?  Far from it, but there is still uniqueness and fun to be found in Ghosts.


Content:
1. Violence: Gunshots produce mild blood effects.  Killing is an integral part of the gameplay, but gore is absent.
2. Profanity: Various soldiers use expletives throughout the campaign.

Arguments For Nihilism

It can be an appealing thing to hear someone berate nihilism, and it can be a terrifying thing to hear someone support it.  Irrespective of their beliefs about meaning, many people live in an existentially fascinating manner.  Nihilism (the belief that nothing is meaningful) is something seldom displayed in the actions of others, yet a conversation with many people might quickly uncover that they know little to nothing about the issue of meaning, however sincere they are about how they live.  The process of living out daily actions is often ironic and paradoxical, as a nihilist could still live as if some things are intrinsically meaningful, and an absurdist (a skeptic of meaning) could still live like a functional nihilist.

It is not unusual to find people who keep belief nihilism at bay with some subjective attachment to a thing like family, friendship, self-actualization, sexuality, a career, or entertainment.  None of these things are meaningful just because they supply someone with feelings of significance, of course.  Even in a nihilistic universe people could still feel like some things are meaningful, though these feelings would only amount to irrelevant, subjective perceptions.  Yet if you ask someone what they live for you will likely hear one of these things somehow get incorporated into the answer.  Relationships, pleasure, and personal goals are often what people cling to in order to find a sense of fulfillment, however incomplete that sense may be.  That most or all people treat something as valuable, logic shows, does not mean it is valuable, though.  Likewise, it does not follow from the subjectivity of perceiving some things to be personally meaningful that meaning does not exist.

The disconnect between perceptions of meaning and the metaphysical existence or nonexistence of meaning reveals that there is no such thing as a refutation of nihilism itself, only a refutation of arguments for nihilism, whether those arguments are based on the conflicting nature of claims about values, the possible elusiveness of a sense of meaning, or on atheism.  This is because there is no set of premises that are both correct and verifiable from which it follows inescapably that meaning exists, and there is no set of premises (again, correct and verifiable) from which it follows inescapably that meaning does not exist.  Thus, in refuting arguments for nihilism, one does not refute nihilism as a concept.  This is analogous to how refuting arguments for the existence of God does not refute theism itself.

Yes, God--an uncaused cause, something that has always existed that has created other things (but not all other things [1])--exists [2], but this alone does not necessitate that meaning also exists.  If meaning exists, it can only be grounded in God, but the existence of God is not airtight proof of meaning.  The error of some declarations of theism is that they treat the existence of God as if the mere existence of any deity by necessity means that certain things are meaningful.  Ultimately, skepticism about meaning is as far as humans can advance on the level of strict logical proofs, while commitment to (not belief in) Christian theism remains warranted because of the numerous evidences, not proofs, that point towards it.  The nuances of reality may not be grasped by the majority, but reality is indeed layered with a multitude of nuances.


[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-impossibility-of-absolutely-nothing.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-uncaused-cause.html

Uniformity In Change

Browsing through a social media feed today, I came across a pathetic attempt to argue for a kind of metaphysical relativism (why do I subject myself to this shit by staying in groups full of morons?).  The argument was that since the physical world is constantly changing, nothing about reality is fixed, and thus the concept of absolute truth cannot be valid.  The impossibilities, contradictions, and fallacies in this post were impressively thorough, so I want to anonymously make an example of the poster.  All forms of relativism are self-defeating and cannot be true by nature of what they posit.  This form is no different.

Even if everything--which would include things other than the physical world, like logic--was always changing, this would necessitate that the fact that everything is changing does not change and remains universal.  This would inescapably mean, of course, that not everything changes because not everything can change!  The very claim that everything changes is false and self-refuting because it cannot be true.  Some things cannot be anything other than immutable and ceaseless.

The physical world is not the core of reality.  Logic, immaterial, omnipresent, and inviolable, lies at the core of everything, not depending on either matter or consciousness for its existence and veracity.  Logic, the existence of truth, and mathematics (which is just numeric logic) do not hinge on phenomena in the external world.  They cannot be any other way; nothing can alter or erase them.  There is always a way reality is.  A thing is always what it is.  Some things always follow from other things.  From these things other absolute certainties can be proven.  One such thing is the fact that space must exist even in the absence of matter, just as logic and truth do.  Another is that two plus two must always equal four: even if the words assigned to the numbers are arbitrary, the concept itself cannot be false.

As one can easily discover, there are other things besides logical truths that are not in a constant state of change.  My consciousness exists from one moment to the next, so yet another thing remains constant.  It does not phase in and out of existence or lucidity with each passing moment, with the elapsing of time being another thing that remains static in my experiences.  Matter still exists from one moment to the next.  Truly, one can see from facts other than logical axioms that not everything changes all the time.  With the examples in this paragraph, though, I am dealing with things that could relentlessly change, though they do not.

I also want to point out that in an ultimate sense, no one can prove that absolutely everything about the natural world is in perpetual flux.  Of course, even if this claim was both true and fully verifiable, it would still not be the case that truth itself is not fixed or that logical and mathematical truths are contingent and subject to change.  Only a highly unintelligent person would ever actually believe these things, for they are intrinsically impossible and cannot be true regardless of what else is.  There is always, necessarily and inescapably, uniformity that persists in all change, as logic cannot change and even many things that could change do not.

The Justice Of Individualism

Justice is treating a person as he or she deserves.  Treating different people differently, thus, is just if those people act differently.  That justice entails distinguishing between one individual and another is hardly difficult to establish rationally or Biblically, yet the ramifications to this are enormous.  Since justice might require that one person be treated a certain way and a different person in a another way, it follows that it is unjust to assume something about a person based upon the actions of another person.

Individualism has an ironic relationship with the American public.  On one hand, Americans might be quick to cling to the idea of personal freedom, which is an inescapably individualistic concept.  On the other hand, some of them are also often quick to preemptively judge other people in various ways on the basis of stereotypes, which is intrinsically contradictory to individualism.  The ironies and contradictions of American society are plentiful, so it is not as if these conflicting appeals to individualism and stereotypes form the only inconsistency in American society.  For instance, Americans might also love to decry ignorance, yet they are also often eager to defend stupidity by insisting that "everyone has a right to their own opinion"--a thing that is logically impossible!

I am not committing the very thing I am attacking here, though, as I am not pretending like being born into America necessitates that one will eventually gravitate towards hypocrisies and errors.  No one has to succumb to these ironies and contradictions just by living in the United States.  And it is not as if Americans, unique in time and geography, are the only ones that tend to be stupid.  These errors are all embraced purely from one of two sources, if not both: individual stupidity or societal conditioning.  I do not judge a person from a position of ignorance or assume that the person must be a certain way simply because he or she is an American (or a representative of some other group).

Many people might be tempted to treat stereotypes as quick routes to knowledge about other people--but this is ludicrous, for reason and justice demand that a person must be appraised and judged as his or her own autonomous individual, not judged by association with others, with preconceived notions guiding a conclusion.  People are autonomous, complex, and wildly unique; they will not all merely turn out to be personality clones.  And yet some persist in the fallacious pursuit of assuming things about a person based upon factors like their age, appearance, gender, ethnicity, and multiple other variables too.

Despite all the cultural forces that could motivate the preservation of stereotypes, people remain their own individual selves.  One person does not have to be like another in terms of personality.  Assumptions, always being unwarranted by their very nature, can never serve as justification for treating a person a certain way.  Therefore, it can only be inherently unjust to assume something about a person's personality or moral character, since the only way for a non-telepath to come to know someone as an individual is by getting to know that person (there is no such thing as a rational assumption to begin with).  Someone's age, gender, ethnicity, social status, and country of birth or residence cannot tell you if he or she has a certain set of personality characteristics or if he or she is a good person.  There have been legions of stereotypes based on each of these categories, and in all cases they are fallacious.

Individualism is simply true, whether someone likes it or not.  It is also just whether or not someone wants to acknowledge it.  For some, the temptation to judge a person's character, interests, tendencies, or skills from afar--by means of a non sequitur conclusion based on irrelevant information--can be quite strong.  Perhaps it feels safe.  It might be a familiar way of life.  The only way one can truly see someone's personal characteristics, worldview, and character, however, is to get to know that person as the individual that he or she is.

Defining Postmodernism

Postmodernism can be difficult to define--not because the concept itself is incomprehensible or too difficult to identify with precision, but because so many people do not understand what exactly it is.  Postmodernism is like feminism in that the core concepts of both are incredibly simple, yet many people hijack the words or misrepresent them, to the point where many people have no idea what the hell the actual concepts being referred to are.  But it it remains simple, and it also remains true despite the surrounding confusion.

Postmodernism is the belief, and the correct belief, that human history is not governed by any unifying metanarrative.  What exactly does this mean?  It means that there is no idea or set of ideas that all people have agreed upon, from which it follows that people have wildly disagreed about the nature of reality.  There has never been overarching agreement among humans regarding any issue in epistemology, ethics, theology, broad metaphysics, or science.  It follows that not everyone's claims can be simultaneously true.  Contrary positions exclude each other by nature.

From this foundation of postmodernism, a skepticism about values follows, accompanied by an emphasis on the subjectivity of human experiences.  However, postmodernism itself does not deny or contradict logic, so it is not irrationalism or relativism.  It is not a self-refuting total skepticism.  It is not a denial that truth exists.  Instead, it is the position that many claimed "truths" are social constructs that have varied from one time and culture to the next, without epistemological or metaphysical basis in reality.  And, whether one is a Christian or not, a rational mind will recognize that this much is indeed true.  This does not mean that nothing is true or that nothing can be known with absolute certainty, though.  Logical axioms--the existence of truth, that a thing is what it is, that some knowledge is possible, that some things follow from certain premises, and so on--cannot be false.  Consensus does not make them true, and cannot render them false; they are true by inherent necessity.

Christians might be tempted to claim that God's presence in history means that there is a metanarrative (a grand, overarching "narrative") that governs it, but even God's presence does not contradict anything I said in the previous few paragraphs.  Just because God has been observing all of human history does not mean that there is even a single thing that everyone has acknowledged as true, and the mere existence of God does not rescue people from epistemic limitations, the subjectivity of human experiences, or ignorance.  It must be reemphasized, though, that the subjectivity of my experiences does not mean that nothing is true or that nothing is absolutely certain, as every logical axiom I previously mentioned cannot be false, and the very fact that I have subjective experiences at all means that there is at least one conscious subject that perceives (me).  From this, I can then move on to obtaining absolute certainty about the existence of my sensory perceptions, the existence of the present moment, space, and an external world.  Any other conclusion about any matter which logic can establish is also infallibly both true and certain.  But logic still leads to skepticism about a great many things.

As long as a postmodernist does not use fallacies or hold to anything self-refuting, there is absolutely nothing problematic about his or her postmodernism.  It is just a reflection of reality.  The myths and false accusations about postmodernism that circulate in some places are just that: myths and false accusations.  Postmodernists are not necessarily irrational, evil people.  They have simply observed that people do not agree, that the human condition is full of limitations, and that many claims are social constructs.  No one can argue against these things and be a rational person simultaneously, for postmodernism itself does not present a distorted understanding of reality.

The Logical Possibility Of Miracles

Some people might consider telekenesis, the hypothetical act of
levitating a material object with one’s mind, as miraculous.  What
does it mean for something to be a miracle?

The subject of miracles can be an issue of great controversy--controversy that is only amplified by the fact that, as with most things, few truly wield rationality when they consider the matter.  As with all other inquiries, definitions must be accurate when contemplating the possibility of miracles.  A miracle is simply a suspension of a natural law.  And what, then, is a natural law?  It is a law that governs some aspect of how matter behaves.  In this context, the phrases "natural law" and "scientific law" are completely interchangeable, since they both refer to laws that describe matter-based phenomena in the external world.

There is nothing intrinsically necessary, inviolable, or universal about scientific laws to begin with.  With or without a deity, they could change in an instant.  Logic, not science, is the key to understanding possibility and impossibility.  The scientific method contains abundant limitations, including the inability to prove anything about natural phenomena in the past, the future, and even natural phenomena in the present moment outside of the minuscule parts of the external world being immediately perceived.  Consequently, anyone who looks to science to determine whether or not miracles are possible is not even using the right tool.  It is a simple matter to demonstrate that possibility and impossibility are dictated and revealed by logic, not by arbitrary, limited sensory perceptions.

The laws of logic cannot be violated--there can never be such a thing as something that is not what it is or a sound conclusion that does not follow from its premises.  A thing cannot exist and not exist simultaneously, I cannot be dreaming and awake simultaneously, I cannot be married and not married to the same person at the same time, and so on.  But these things are not miracles.  They are contradictions.  However, there is no contradiction in a material object ceasing to decay over time, gravity reversing itself when I wake up tomorrow, or water suddenly becoming incapable of freezing.  Repeated experiences with natural laws do not mean that natural laws must hold in the future or that they could not have been drastically different than they presently are.  Again, only the laws of logic must hold by necessity, not the laws of the natural world.

The mistake that some non-theists make when addressing miracles is that they erroneously conclude that miracles are logically impossible and that therefore they cannot occur, whereas Christians (and other theists by extension) might erroneously conclude that miracles are logically impossible and that they still can occur.  Miracles are possible and it is objectively impossible for even a deity to do all things; the kind of omnipotence that grants the ability to do absolutely anything is something that cannot exist whatsoever [1].

It might be surprising to some to discover that the topic of miracles is actually a tangent issue to theism itself.  Theism is simply a brute fact about reality, if one uses theism as a reference to the existence of an uncaused cause [2].  An uncaused cause exists because there cannot not be one, just like there cannot not be such a thing as logic, truth, or space.  Miracles do not need to be demonstrated to exist in order to demonstrate that a deity (an uncaused cause) exists because the existence of a deity does not in any way necessitate the existence of miracles--and vice versa.  It is intriguing to note how many people never mention this.

Miracles are inescapably possible, yet they can never occur in a way that involves contradiction, irrespective of how much either atheists or theists might object.  It does not require years of contemplation to realize these things.  They can be grasped and proven quickly.


[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/08/is-omnipotence-possible.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-uncaused-cause.html

Polyamory And Egalitarianism

Just as Christian egalitarians sometimes misunderstand objectification, sometimes they misunderstand polygamy.  They might see it as an expression of misogyny, sexist social structures, and a perversion of marriage.  Logically and Biblically speaking, none of these things are the case.  There is nothing sexist, degrading, or evil about polygamy, or polyandry, in itself.  Anyone who claims that one or the other is dehumanizing by its very nature simply does not understand what they actually are.

If a certain case of polygamy or polyandry is an expression of someone's disregard for the full humanity of the opposite gender, perhaps by thinking of the opposite gender as only useful only for marriage or sex, then the issue has to do with the way that person views other humans, not with polyamory being intrinsically dehumanizing.  An unbiblical, fallacious, incomplete recognition of the personhood of other people does not make polyamorous marriages evil.  Instead, it only means that someone with a false or incomplete understanding of personhood is gravely mistaken.

There are multiple reasons why someone might want to be in a polyamorous marriage that have nothing to do with viewing members of the opposite gender as only recipients of sexual or romantic feelings.  Some might want, to provide just one example, the deep relational intimacy that can come with marriage to be multiplied.  Others might want to have multiple sexual partners--but not at the cost of deep commitment and recognition of every other aspect of their partners' being.

It is logically invalid to pretend like polyamory, or polygamy in particular, as is usually argued, is an expression of sexism.  Some egalitarians, though they have benevolent intentions, have accepted fallacies inherited from either secular or evangelical culture, and the belief that egalitarianism contradicts polygamy is one that is objectively false.  If this were the case, God would have permitted, codified, and even at times encouraged a sin--a logical and theological impossibility (James 1:13)!

Polyamorous marriages are certainly not for everyone.  I would love to get married, but I sure as hell do not want to have multiple wives!  My desire for a monogamous marital relationship has nothing to do with polygamy being some perceived atrocity that devalues women (or with the mistaken perception that polyandry devalues men).  It is rooted in a preference that reflects my personality.  And that is all it amounts to as according to Christian theology.

The Legitimacy Of My Harshness

I have my hands metaphorically outstretched to accept anyone who wishes to join me in recognizing, discovering, and living according to reality.  Those who refuse to join me, after repeated offers, will find that I can be quite vicious with them in my words.  I will never slander people, intentionally misrepresent their claims, or deny that they still have value as bearers of God's image.  I will never call for the unjust treatment of a personal or ideological opponent (which are practically identical in my life).  But I will sometimes be downright brutal in my speech towards and about them.

Critics of my personality and intellectual forcefulness seldom, if ever, actually understand that I do care deeply about the ultimate spiritual wellbeing of others, or else I would not spend so much time talking with them about the only issues that could possibly have objective significance.  If I did not care about other people coming to the truth, I would certainly not invest anywhere near as much time into this blog as I do, if I would even have a blog to begin with.  None of this, though, changes the fact that I am indeed quite harsh at times.

Indeed, one can see by the general shift of tone present in my articles over the past (almost) two years that I am becoming increasingly hostile towards the superficial, the irrational, and the unrepentently inconsistent--in other words, towards most people.  I am often told by people who cling to errors and fallacies that I am "too harsh."  I am never malicious, dishonest, sadistic, or cruel, however.  I do not intend to harm others with my words (thought after a certain point I do intend to illustrate how irrational and selfish they are).  I do not lie about other people.  I do not take pleasure from emotionally upsetting them.  I merely love truth far more than I love most people, and I do not conceal this from anyone at all.

People are not the prize of reality.  Reality is.  Other people and human relationships do not and cannot matter more than true ideas.  If they did matter more, ironically, it would only be because certain ideas are true; the value of people depends on the truth of certain ideas, but the truth of ideas has nothing to do with other people.  True ideas are the only things that could possibly be worth condemning people over, though they are often described as if they never justify verbal bombardments of other people.  That I live in a society where people like me are told to be superficially kind, tolerant, and gentle with others concerning worldview issues is a testament to the utter stupidity of most people in my society.

One of the most unsound criticisms I have faced is that I have or will turn people away from rationalism and Christianity with the forcefulness of my personality and the way I speak about truth.  This is a false claim, though.  I brought myself out of my own intellectual stupor years ago.  No one needs me to grasp logic, and no one needs me to prove basic truths to themselves.  Others are capable of discovering truths independent of social interactions with me or anyone else.  Thus, it follows that they cannot blame any harshness of mine for their rejection of an idea, especially since all beings with my metaphysical nature possess intellectual autonomy and free will, meaning I cannot make them do anything.  Whenever it comes to theism and Christianity in particular, it is extremely asinine for people to neglect investigating a thing because someone claiming to represent that thing treated them harshly, whether or not that treatment was just or unjust.

I will not tone down my personality or my logicality for the sake of some other person's weak intellect or misperceptions.  I have made it absolutely clear on multiple occasions that I am not anti-emotion and that misanthropy is not a baseline expression of either my worldview or my personality; I despise emotionalism and apathy towards reality.  I never aim to hurt someone emotionally, but if that occurs as a byproduct of a legitimate attack on a false worldview or the character of someone who holds to one, then so be it.  Truth matters more than people, and thus I care about truth far more than I care about my relationships with most people.

The Ad Hominem Fallacy

The ad hominem fallacy might be one of the more well known fallacies, in the sense that people are often more likely to recognize the title and its meaning than they are to know the titles of other fallacies like the non sequitur.  Sometimes confusion reigns as to what exactly an ad hominem is and isn't, despite this public familiarity with the phrase.  Harsh words, accusations of intellectual or moral deficiencies, and even insults are not ad hominems on their own; what makes something an ad hominem is how it is used in relation to other claims.

For instance, when I use harsh words (sometimes very harsh words) to refer to people who believe in self-refuting impossibilities or refuse to abandon stupid or false ideas after being presented with refutations, I am not committing the ad hominem fallacy.  If I was to say that someone is wrong on a point because he/she is a supposedly terrible person or because that person is wrong about something else, then I would be committing the ad hominem fallacy, but nothing else actually qualifies.  Just because a person is heinous or is fallacious elsewhere does not mean that he or she is also heinous or fallacious in another area.

It is not necessarily an ad hominem when someone disparages the character of another person.  In fact, condemning or exposing the poor intellectual or moral character of a person can be of great value--as long as it is not held up as the basis for a red herring or non sequitur.  Someone guilty of an intellectual or moral offense should be called out, in a very harsh manner if necessary.  But using an exposure or condemnation in a fallacious way is inherently irrational.

An ad hominem might take the following forms:

1.  George is stupid.
2.  Therefore what George is saying right now must be false.

1.  Haley was always wrong about her predictions in the past.
2.  Therefore Haley will be wrong about her latest prediction.

1.  I don't like Jacob.
2.  Therefore Jacob is not right.

Clearly, it does not follow from someone being stupid or having been wrong in the past that their most current claim is false.  No one can legitimately toss aside an idea just because the claimer has been wrong before or is typically unintelligent.  No one can legitimately discard a claim just because they don't like the person discussing the idea.  To do so would be fallacious because one would reject a concept or claim not on the basis of proof, but because of some irrelevant factor, and perhaps even a slanderous one.

Saying that Hitler can't possibly be correct about some economic or historical matter would be an example of the ad hominem fallacy.  Attacking a person in a debate while completely ignoring that person's claims would be an example of the ad hominem fallacy.  But insults, however vicious, are not in themselves ad hominems.  A charge meant as an insult might even be factually true.  However, this does not and cannot justify misrepresenting someone, asserting further deformity of character where there is none, or treating someone as if nothing they say could possibly be correct.

A Fallacious Criticism Of Bill Nye

"Bill Nye is not a real scientist because he has a degree in mechanical engineering."  Have you ever heard or read those words before?  Sadly, I have heard them, or words like them, used in arguments against Nye more than once.  I say sadly not because Nye is a beacon of rationality, but because these attacks are fallacious and misguided.  First, I will prove several facts about the relevance of degrees to knowledge.  Then I will show why accusations against Nye on the basis of his degree are ironically uninformed.

Being a professional scientist, as several seconds of critical thinking can unveil, is not incompatible with making many logical and scientific errors.  Likewise, not being a professional scientist does not mean that one is not highly knowledgeable about scientific developments.  The veracity of Nye's claims and worldview, therefore, hinge on whether or not they accurately reflect reality, not on the exact type of degree he obtained.

You can have a degree in science and not actually be a scientist--and vice versa.  A degree is not a logical requirement to understanding something intimately.  Having a degree in philosophy does not make you an intelligent, self-educated person, much less one who grasps concepts well or cares about accurately understanding reality.  I have yet to hear of a single professional or historical philosopher that did not use obvious, major fallacies.  Their backgrounds did not nullify the the fact that they are irrational.  The only people I know who are thorough rationalists are other people who, like me, simply care about reality enough to wield actual rationality in pursuit of knowledge.  There is no degree involved; there is no concern with trivial, empty formalities like appealing to a degree.

One also does not need to be a scientist or have a science-related degree of any kind to be an accurate, effective science educator.  It is entirely possible to educate people about something without having taken extensive college courses about the subject (or any college courses on it at all).  Do schoolteachers always have degrees in every matter they teach?  I have never heard anyone claim that this by necessity means that they are wrong and should not teach on those areas.  Have you?  I would expect not!

As it turns out, the BS in Nye's BS of mechanical engineering actually is an abbreviation for "Bachelor of Science," not bullshit.  What a shocking revelation!  Mechanical engineering, which deals with the design and creation of machinery, certainly involves science in some key ways.  Ensuring that a machine will operate a certain way does involve the scientific method, since logic alone cannot guarantee that a machine will behave in a specific manner.  Repeat observation is required.  A machine's success must be tested, and it is impossible to know a priori--from logic alone--that a machine-based project will be effective.  There must be scientific experimentation and observation.

People who genuinely rely on another person's degree to determine their beliefs are, to put it simply, living unintelligently.  If they intelligently appraised the matter, they would see that logic and reality, not a degree, render a claim true or untrue.  A degree has nothing to do with it.  Bill Nye might sometimes be a shit logician and a shit philosopher, and as a result his scientific claims might be erroneous at times.  But this has nothing to do with him having a degree in mechanical engineering.  It has to do with the common tragedy of intellectual incompetence.  His degree is a red herring to whether or not he is right on a given point, so it is absolutely pointless to use it as a counterpoint against him--even if his degree did have nothing at all to do with science.

Emotional Depth

There is a kind of depth other than strictly intellectual depth, and that is depth of emotion.  The human mind contains an entire world within itself, a world accessible to each individual person.  That world includes a spectrum of sentiments.  Human emotions, with their spiritual, social, sexual, existential, and personal components, are far from being shallow in themselves.  They can be vibrant, powerful, penetrating, and even have a profound effect on our physical bodies.  The depth of human emotions is easily accessible through introspection.

The potential power and depth of feelings is particularly apparent in human relationships--friendships, dating relationships, marriages, and family relationships alike.  When we form close relationships, the accompanying emotions can be so deep that we can scarcely articulate them.  Perhaps we ourselves may not even understand their full depth.  But we can experience them with great clarity in our relationships all the same.  Given that other people can trigger such deep-seated feelings within us, it is ironic that it is other people who sometimes tell us to keep our emotions silent.  Emotional depth can frighten some people.  It might even frighten those who experience it in its intensity.

Emotion itself is not a shameful, humiliating thing that we must always conceal.  Some Americans treat public displays of deep emotion as if they showcase some sort of inherent weakness.  In truth, showing them to others can require great amounts of courage, vulnerability, and strength, things which can be very necessary in relationships between non-telepathic beings.  To acknowledge both that we are emotional beings and that our emotions can be very potent is to acknowledge an important part of reality, and sometimes it can take fortitude to face reality.

Christians should never object to the presence and intensity of emotions.  Instead, we should celebrate the range of emotionality God imbued humans with, recognizing emotional depth as legitimate and as something that God created and called very good.  It is only when emotion seeks to usurp the epistemological authority of reason or becomes bent towards a sinful end that emotion should be opposed.  When it comes to epistemology, emotion is utterly useless in all things except communicating to us what we are feeling at a given time.  This does not mean emotion has no place in out lives; it only means that emotion's place is far away from epistemology.

Nothing about emotional depth contradicts having a rational intellect, even a perfectly rational intellect, and thus there is no basis for trivializing the complexity of rich emotions.  When we minimize the extent and impact of our feelings, we ignore or deny a part of ourselves that was meant to be as it is.

Polygamy And Polyandry

It is far from abnormal for actual Biblical morality to be controversial to both secularists and evangelical Christians.  What the Bible prescribes, allows, or condemns regarding things such as capital punishment, corporal punishment, slavery, divorce, and monarchy is often greatly misunderstood by Christians and non-Christians alike.  Another such issue is polyamory.

Monogamy is the state of only having one marriage partner at a time.  Polyamory, deviating from the monogamous norm expected at large in the Western world, is the state of having multiple spouses or dating partners at one time.  Polygamy occurs when a man has more than one wife at once, and polyandry occurs when a woman has more than one husband at once.  A married person having a romantic or sexual attraction to someone else is not the same as polyamory, as someone might not act on the attraction at all, or might not act on it in a polyamorous way.  Irrespective of the Biblical morality of polygamy or polyandry, such attractions are objectively nonsinful by Biblical standards.

The Bible does condemn mass polygamy/polyandry in the case of a monarch (Deuteronomy 17:17), and it does prohibit men from marrying a woman and her sister simultaneously (Leviticus 18:18), which by logical extension forbids women from marrying a man and his brother simultaneously.  But it never condemns having multiple spouses.  The very fact that Leviticus 18:18 condemns marrying two siblings at once, and not polygamy or polyandry altogether, shows that the Bible clearly does permit polygamy and polyandry because they are not sinful.  In fact, a husband and wife could both have multiple other spouses all at the same time!  Their plurality of spouses could even be inter-married with each other.  However, a married person having extramarital sex is condemned by the Bible (for instance, see Deuteronomy 22:22).  Sleeping with another person's spouse, outside of the very unusual, specific scenario I described two sentences ago, is still inherently wrong by Biblical standards.

The idea that humanity as a whole is "wired" for either monogamy or polyamory is asinine.  One person can have a vastly different personality than another, so it is fallacious to say anything beyond affirming that some people's personalities naturally lead them to monogamous desires and some people's personalities lead them to polyamorous desires (not that everyone even desires to have a romantic, sexual, or marital relationship of any kind).  Even so, it is true that some tendencies towards monogamy in contemporary America are very likely the result of nothing but a widespread view of polyamory as taboo or immoral.

Sometimes the taboo has a religious nature, and sometimes not--though the Bible itself does not condemn polyamory as long as it occurs in a marital context and does not involve a married person engaging in extramarital sex (or marrying two siblings at once, as mentioned above).  The Bible not only never condemns this, but says to not add to its commands (Deuteronomy 4:2) and features examples of divinely-authorized polygamy (Exodus 21:9-11).  For God to even permit polygamy or polyandry must by necessity mean that they are not sinful, since a morally perfect deity cannot provide unjust or illicit legislation (James 1:13).  To add to the commands of the Bible is to violate a demand of great clarity in the book of Deuteronomy, and the New Testament is clear when it teaches that moral knowledge can only come from divine revelation (1 John 3:4, Romans 7:7).  Logic, unaided by Scripture, proves on its own that morality only exists if there is a deity with a moral nature and that humans cannot have moral knowledge apart from revelation from such a deity [1].

Individual personality/preference and cultural conditioning are what determine if someone gravitates towards monogamy or polyamory, or whether or not they are even interested in dating or marriage to begin with.  There is no divine or biological source of a universal tendency towards one or the other.  Of course, it does not follow from someone either disliking or preferring polyamory that polyamory is right or wrong.  The moral dimension to polyamory is a totally separate issue than whether or not people gravitate towards one or the other.

In the case of the secular world, stigmas against any form of polyamory rest on nothing but social consensus, subjective preferences, and arbitrary feelings.  In the case of evangelicals, the opposition to polygamy and polyandry comes from either stupidity via the acceptance of baseless secular standards or from lack of personal education about the Bible.  In both cases the objections are illogical.


[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-nature-of-conscience.html

Movie Review--Solo: A Star Wars Story

"I'm going to be a pilot.  The best in the galaxy."
--Han Solo, Solo


At first, I wasn't going to review Solo.  This is not because I did not love the movie.  I thoroughly enjoyed it!  But its lackluster box office performance has motivated me to praise the positive aspects of the movie to show my support.  Solo, though it comes slightly over five months after one of the most divisive Star Wars movies thus far, is not a bad movie.  On the contrary, it is by far the most unique offering in the series, merging Star Wars with the crime/gangster genre.  This is exactly what Disney's Star Wars films need to do to maintain variety: assign new movies their own subgenres, with some focusing on mystery, some on politics, some on direct warfare, and so on.

Photo credit: deepskyobject on Visualhunt

  /  CC BY-NC

Production Values

Despite some moments of dialogue near the beginning that might seem cringey to some viewers, the acting in Solo is largely on point.  Alden Ehrenreich, someone I had never even heard of before it was announced that he would play a young Han Solo, is surprisingly effective in his role.  His Han is not the one Harrison Ford portrays in the original trilogy.  His is more inexperienced, idealistic, and overtly passionate, leaving plenty of room for character development in potential sequels.  After all, I hear Alden might reprise his role in two subsequent films.

As Qi'ra, Emilia Clarke plays a character who is very well-realized considering that so much about her is left unknown.  Without ever actually explaining Qi'ra's past directly, Emilia offers a splendid performance, and her character turns out to be involved in one of the film's biggest surprises.  Donald Glover could probably take the lead in a stand-alone film about Lando quite easily.  His personality here is extravagant, pompous, and charming--all things one might expect from a young Lando Calrissian.  Viewers even get to see him lose the Millennium Falcon to Han in a game of sabacc (a card game)--finally.  Woody Harrelson plays a bounty hunter-type character named Tobias Beckett, and his character, along with that of some affiliated characters, help reinforce the fact that this is a movie about something no prior series film has had at its center.  Solo is ultimately a gangster movie, and characters like Harrelson's Beckett and Paul Bettany's Dryden Vos communicate that to the audience clearly.

There is a great amount of environmental diversity here.  The crime-ridden streets of Correllia, a fortified train beside a snowy series of mountains, coaxium mines, and a gravity well are just some of the varied places the characters venture to.  The gravity well scene is gorgeous, just as some other scenes or shots are, especially ones of cosmic phenomena.  A heist trip that Han, Chewbacca, Qi'ra, and Lando embark on allows viewers to see planets that have never been shown onscreen before.  Some people might not like the very different tone of Solo, but they cannot legitimately argue that the visuals are not potent and that the acting is incompetent.


Story

Some spoilers are below.

A native of the planet Correllia, Han works for a manipulative crime leader named Lady Proxima, an alien who employs children and young adults for her illegal activities in exchange for food and living quarters.  He and his girlfriend Qi'ra yearn to leave Correllia using their own space vessel, but are separated in an attempt to flee Lady Proxima's forces.  Eager to leave the planet and return when he has sufficient funds to find Qi'ra, Han enlists in the Imperial Navy, but ends up fighting as an Imperial infantryman on a foreign planet.

Han ends up getting entangled with a criminal organization when he needs to produce a large amount of a valuable substance called coaxium for a crime boss named Dryden Vos.  Meeting Qir'a by accident, the two of them, along with another ally, recruit Lando Calrissian for the use of his ship, the Millennium Falcon, for their heist.  From there onward, the story introduces multiple revelations about various characters, even bringing in a character from another Star Wars movie that I definitely did not expect to see.  Though the story is very much a self-contained plot, it also does connect with other movies very nicely.  For instance, a character turns out to be acquiring funds for the Rebel Alliance, and multiple franchise figures are mentioned.


Intellectual Content

Several scenes in Solo briefly touch upon an issue that has never been explored in other Star Wars movies or in, to my recollection, the show The Clone Wars (I haven't yet watched Rebels): droid rights.  Lando's quasi-humanoid droid L3 condemns humans who have droids fight each other for their amusement or use droids as robotic mine slaves.  Ironically, the subject of android rights is something I wrote about recently after watching Westworld, and an actress from Westworld even appears in Solo too.  Sometimes the issue is only used for gratuitous comedy (perhaps reflecting how some people view certain individuals who loudly protest racism and sexism, things that really do need to be shut down wherever they appear), but the topic is actually very important within both the Star Wars universe and our own.  If a droid is conscious, and if there are certain ways that conscious beings--be they humans, animals, or robots--should and should not be treated, then that droid has moral rights simply by nature of being a sentient being.  Since I just wrote about the morality of the treatment of sentient machines two days ago, I will enclose a link about the matter below [1].  Those who wish to read more about the issue can follow the link.


Conclusion

The polarizing nature of The Last Jedi seems to have deterred quite a few people from giving Solo a chance--which is unfortunate, because it is the most unique Star Wars film to date.  At the very least, it illuminates a period between Revenge of the Sith and Rogue One that had not been cinematically explored previously, shows Han win the Falcon from Lando, deviates from franchise norms, and has a surprise cameo from a certain character . . . but I won't spoil the identity of this person for those who haven't watched the movie.  Solo contains well-placed acknowledgments of past Star Wars movies and events, including references to the bounty hunters Bosk and Aura Sing.  Knowledgeable fans might be very pleased by some of them!

I wish the box office performance was better, because I want to see more Star Wars films like Solo.  Despite the lack of financial success, Ron Howard presented a wonderfully distinct and self-contained movie that still is clearly a part of the established Star Wars universe.


Content:
1. Violence: As usual in a Star Wars movie, the fighting does not yield gore.
2. Profanity: There is occasional use of mild expletives.


[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/06/forgotten-evil-ethics-of-westworld.html

Misunderstanding The Bible On Rape

Unfortunately, there are great misunderstandings about what the Bible says about rape both inside and outside of the church.  According to some, the Bible does not condemn all rape outright, as, according to them, Deuteronomy 22:25-27 only condemns and prescribes execution for the rape of a woman engaged to someone else.  Some might even assert that the Bible teaches that rape of an engaged woman is wrong because it is an offense of theft against the future husband.  Even more ludicrous, some make the further claim that Deuteronomy 22:28-29 seems to instruct an unmarried, unengaged woman to marry a man who rapes her.  What . . . the . . . fuck?

These beliefs, which greatly deviate from what the Bible actually says about the matter, ignore or trivialize male victims of rape, have absolutely nothing to say about marital rape, and treat rape of an engaged or married person as if the reason it is wrong is because extramarital sex has occurred.  I will work backwards in refuting these myths, starting with the atrocious idea that the Bible tells unmarried virgin women who are raped to marry their rapists.

Heinously mistranslated in some English Bibles, Deuteronomy 22:28-29 is a parallel passage to Exodus 22:16-17; that some laws from Exodus are repeated in Deuteronomy is not surprising, considering that Deuteronomy means "second law."  Deuteronomy certainly introduces new issues and legislation, such as the passage on rape (22:25-27), the very topic of this article, though one can find some identical legislation in earlier parts of the Torah.

In Exodus 22:16-17, unmarried, unengaged men and women are permitted to sleep together if they get married afterward.  No, premarital sex is not intrinsically sinful according to the Bible.  Noncommittal and nonconsensual sex are condemned by the Bible, as are acts like adultery, bestiality, incest, and homosexual behaviors.  Exodus 22:16-17 plainly deals with consensual premarital sex.  Likewise, so does Deuteronomy 22:28-29, although verse 28 has sometimes been mistranslated.  The Hebrew word for forced sex is not present.  The Bible never instructs anyone to marry his or her rapist.  Indeed, the only Biblical response to rape is to condemn it and execute the rapist in accordance with Deuteronomy.

Deuteronomy 22:26-27 already condemns and attaches the death penalty to all rape, since it directly says that rape is like murder (22:26): all murder is evil and deserves the death penalty (Exodus 22:12).  Rape, like murder, is evil not because it "steals" from someone besides the victim, although sometimes it can cause great mental anguish friends or family members of the victim.  It is evil because it forces an unwilling participant into a sex act (not that consent alone makes a sex act morally permissible).  The reason that Deuteronomy 22:25-27 provides a case law about a man raping a betrothed woman in the countryside is because the preceding context gives multiple examples of how to handle sexual sins involving a married/engaged woman, starting with consensual adultery (Deuteronomy 22:22), moving onward to consensual sex between a man and a separately engaged woman (Deuteronomy 22:23-24), with the passage then describing a case of rape of an engaged woman.  This is why verse 25 is so precise.

The precision of verse 25 is obviously not because only the rape of an engaged or married woman is wrong, or because a separate punishment is reserved for other cases of rape.  The primary points of Deuteronomy 22:25-27 are that all rape is evil because rape abuses its victims and that a person who is forced into an otherwise sinful sex act has not sinned.  If someone has had adultery, incest, or a homosexual act forced upon them, that person is not guilty of committing a sin (22:26).  These are the things Deuteronomy 22:25-27 communicates.

As for the application of case laws, I want to point out how asinine it would be to mistake the fact that case laws deal with specific situations for confirmation that the act in question is not equally sinful in other situations.  For instance, Exodus 21:18-19 details Yahweh's command about how to legally handle a situation where one man strikes another with a stone, not in self-defense, with an illness of the victim resulting.  The assigned penalty is financial restitution to the victim.  This case law has nothing to do with the gender or marital status of the aggressor or victim, as it is about the sinfulness of a physically abusive behavior, and thus the aforementioned kind of assault is sinful irrespective of whether the perpetrator or recipient is a man or woman, married or unmarried.  All people have the same base metaphysical value and core human rights by simply being a person (Genesis 1:26-27, 5:1-2), and someone's genitalia does not render them incapable of carrying out this act.

Is it not sinful or a Biblically punishable offense for a man to assault or murder a woman?  For a woman to assault or murder a man?  For a woman to assault or murder a woman?  Absolutely not!  All infliction of physical harm and killing are sinful outside of specific, Biblically-defined contexts of justice.  Case laws in the Torah illustrate examples of particular criminal sins.  To conclude that because Exodus 21:18-19, at least in some translations, refers to a man assaulting a man, it must not be sinful or to assault a woman in the same way is to descend into immense stupidity.  The same is true of the understanding of rape this article is refuting.  All rapists deserves death according to Deuteronomy.

Why the fuck would someone, atheist, Christian, or otherwise, believe these myths about what the Bible says concerning rape?  Perhaps a lack of textual education or a lack of intelligence in interpretation would play a role.  Maybe both simultaneously.  The immorality of raping a woman has nothing to do with offending, humiliating, or "stealing" from a husband, and vice versa.  Rape is intrinsically sinful--and prescribed execution--wherever it appears and regardless of who is the victim.  Whether it occurs in a countryside, a marriage, or a prison, the Bible demands the death of the rapist.  This requirement does not vanish when the victim is unmarried, unengaged, a man, or the spouse of the rapist (see 1 Corinthians 7:3-5).  It is a universal demand.

Logic, people.  It is very fucking helpful when it comes to understanding the Bible.