How One Young Earth Creationist Argument Implies The Universe Is Quite Ancient

The age of the universe is of absolutely no major significance to the core of rational philosophy or Christian theology.  Logical axioms, my own existence and the nature of consciousness and my individuality, the existence of an uncaused cause, and other such things are completely unaffected by how old or young the universe is.  The only people I have seen obsess over the age of the cosmos are evangelical Christians and atheists--coincidentally, two of the most unintelligent groups of people I have ever met.  One assumes that the Bible teaches that Earth (and the whole universe by extension) is not even 20,000 years old and the other teaches that it is closer to 13,000,000,000 years old based on the assumption that sensory evidence must not be misleading.

Both groups have pathetic assumptions to cling to, as either idea is logically possible in that there is no inherent contradiction in them being true, but neither of them is actually provable.  When faced with the cosmological evidence that makes it seem as if the universe is perhaps thirteen billion years old, Young Earth creationists might retreat behind the speculative concept of God creating the universe to intentionally look as if it has been in existence far longer than it has in reality, sometimes adding that this is supposed to test the "faith" of Christians.  More of an observation of a fact about logical possibility than an actual argument, this correct idea that God could have made the universe to appear much older than it is actually offers no support for the kind of creation event young Earth creationists assume happened.  

How ironic it is that a young Earth creationist who would hold to or assert this argument is intentionally or unintentionally admitting that the physical cosmos does in fact appear much older than the mere thousands of years that they say it has been around for!  While it is of course possible that anything that does not contradict the nature of logical axioms and what follows from them is possible, possibility alone does not justify belief in anything more than that something could be true.  However, for the universe to appear older than it is, it must be true that all observational evidence suggests that it is indeed far more ancient than the 6,000-10,000 years young Earth creationists attribute to it.  Moreover, since they are trying to get to a grander metaphysical issue from this appearance that the universe is ancient, they are working backwards and must leap against the cosmological evidence.

There is no evidence for this in the Bible or scientific evidence this is true, though.  On a scientific level, it can be outright contradictory to believe that a universe that seems to be "ancient" based upon sensory investigation is actually far younger based on the same results of that scientific inquiry.  Evangelical young Earth creationists would not simultaneously hold to the idea that they have scientific evidence on their side and the idea that the evidence is misleading unless they had presupposed something, namely that the first three chapters of Genesis literally exclude a world that has existed for more than several thousand years.  As much as YECs might dislike this fact, it is even possible for a literal understanding of Genesis 1-3 to be true if the cosmos is billions of years old [1].  It is just also true that there is no way to demonstrate which possibility is ultimately correct.

Sensory perceptions do not necessarily correspond to the external world as it is, and thus the logical divide between the appearance of age and age itself epistemologically proves that it is impossible to truly know the age of the universe--whether part of the universe or the whole of it.  The most one could do is analyze the evidence and recognize what seems to be the case.  There is no way to progress any further with regards to this issue than grasping logical possibilities and assessing empirical evidences that may or may not reflect the external world as it is.  Unfortunately, the extreme controversy generated by those who pretend like they can know the age of the universe means it is currently unlikely that more people will come to realize that this issue has no centrality in rationalism or Christianity.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/06/a-theory-on-age-of-universe.html

A Practical Use For Masturbation

There are multiple reasons why Christians might masturbate.  The ones who realize the Biblical innocence of the act [1], even when it is paired with sensual imagery of the opposite gender, might pleasure themselves to explore their minds and sexualities [2], celebrate God's creation of human sexuality, or to express appreciation for the body and for pleasure.  It is also one of the most fitting ways to act upon sexual desires and attractions without engaging in promiscuous or otherwise sinful behaviors: the Biblically valid solution to this that many Christians would hesitate to affirm is self-pleasuring.

Masturbation is perhaps the best way to temporarily set sexual desires aside for those who find them distracting in a way that is psychologically or spiritually harmful--something that would only be true of certain people due to the subjectivity of distraction, as sexuality itself is morally positive or neutral on its own.  Sexual self-stimulation addresses sexual impulses in a sexual way, which can relieve them for a time in ways that ignoring them or trying to focus on other matters simply cannot necessarily help with.  For Christians who feel overwhelmed by sexual desires even though they recognize that sexual desire cannot override rationality and free well--and that it is not a negative force--other strategies can easily prove pointless.

Prudery that has been buried within evangelical theology for decades dissuades many Christians from ever suggesting that Biblically nonsinful sexual acts other than marital intercourse be used to reduce or eliminate sexual impulses until a certain amount of time has passed, which makes masturbation a pleasurable but guilt-inducing experience for some Christians that engage in it.  Whatever practical or spiritual benefits they could enjoy without needless emotional obstacles is forfeited, at least in part, for the sake of asinine, legalistic traditions rejected by the Bible itself.  Evangelicals are generally conditioned to hesitate to find masturbation non-objectionable even in the context of marriage, although marriage has nothing to do with the morality of masturbation.

No one who practices self-pleasuring needs to justify masturbation by saying they need it on certain occasions to direct their attention to other matters, of course.  Masturbation is far more than a practical way to relieve sexual energy for the sake of making someone's life easier; it is a Biblically innocent way to experience the deep introspective potential of sexuality and it is an act that has far more philosophical depth than most Christians would ever realize.  There is far more that I have already said about its nonsinful nature, possible relationship to erotic media, nuances when it is carried out if thoughts of other people are involved, and lack of connection to objectification of the opposite gender.

However, the explicitly introspective and abstract ramifications of the fact that masturbation is not sinful do not nullify its practical usefulness for some people.  Not everyone considers their sexual desires to be intrusive, overwhelming, or frustrating, and some people may find the experience of constant sexual excitement pleasurable and desirable.  For Christians that do want to experience lesser sexual feelings or no sexual feelings at all in select situations, though, self-pleasuring is an avenue for sexual release that does not violate any Biblical obligations whatsoever.


[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/07/sexual-self-stimulation.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-introspective-potential-of.html

The Ultimate Act Of Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism deviates from logic at its first step.  By its very nature, morality, if it exists, is about what people are obligated to do even if they wished otherwise.  It is not primarily about achieving certain practical goals.  Indeed, sometimes an obligation to do or not do something might be objectively inconvenient for a person's subjective whims, even if there are plenty of ways to be both pragmatic and morally upright within a system of ethics like the Bible's.  Something immoral will not be made permissible or obligatory just because it could lead to practical gain and something obligatory will not be rendered morally optional just because it is difficult or inconvenient.

Again, a utilitarian moral framework is logically invalid from the beginning.  However, almost no one seems to truly understand what purely pragmatic societies would look like.  If the kind of utilitarianism in question is one aimed at creating a "utopian" society, there is but one way to force a culture into at least the external mold of rationalism--the only philosophy that is both true and intrinsically necessary to maintain a society's flourishing intentionally--although actions can never coerce a person's actual beliefs or force their allegiance to reason.  Many utilitarians want to selectively enforce conceptually mistaken pragmatist ideas of morality without ever realizing the most utilitarian idea of all is one they would almost certainly never entertain.

The ultimate act of utilitarianism is the systematic killing of all non-rationalists other than young children and those with psychological disabilities that might prevent them from developing the same level of intelligence as a psychologically stable rationalist.  Almost every solvable moral, political, and practical problem facing humanity that can be completely resolved by action would indeed be resolved by the genocide of all non-rationalists that meet the aforementioned requirements.  Furthermore, rationalists would not have to deal with the infuriating stupidity of non-rationalists who ironically think they are not misaligned with logic.

On a purely pragmatic level, this could lead to the greatest circumstances of human flourishing possible.  There would be no philosophical pettiness, moral hypocrisy, or social obstacles to every individual's embracing of logical truths.  There would be no belief in fallacies if every adult looked to reason instead of emotion, comfort, societal attitudes, or any kind of assumption.  Any irrationalists who somehow escaped the purge would likely be in such fear for their lives that they would withhold revealing their pathetic worldviews or even try to outwardly imitate the rationalists they encounter.  As far as sheer pragmatism goes, it could not get any better for rationalists than this.

There is no evidence that killing non-rationalists is morally just, and the evidence in favor of Christianity means there is evidence that it is actually unjust to kill someone outside of self-defense, legitimate warfare, or execution for a handful of capital sins.  Even aside from this, it it would be irrational to think that non-rationalists deserve to be killed by default because of the non sequitur involved, as much as some of us might wish it were not the case.  In either case, not only is utilitarianism asinine, but killing irrationalists and anti-rationalists would objectively be the best way to bring about a world filled with people who understand and embrace the truths of reason.  It is just that utilitarianism is a logically invalid moral system.

Logic, people.  It is very fucking helpful.

Victors Documenting History: An Epistemological Red Herring

Sayings like "victors decide history" are obviously false if the intent behind the phrase is that cultural dominance literally dictates what events have and have not already happened.  However, this statement is sometimes said to express the idea that only those who come out of power struggles victorious will have the broadest influence when it comes to telling other people what they claim is history.  A stance like this might even be the foundation of someone's skepticism of historical claims, since they just assume that authorities would not be honest if it makes them appear in a negative light.  Of course, some historical figures would choose to do this, but reason exposes how these kinds of historical claims are not why such claims are unknowable.

In other words, historical events other than the fact that time and matter were brought into existence at some point--the kinds of events addressed by practically every historical text--are unprovable anyway.  No amount of consistent documentation proves that an event happened.  There is not a need to think about how a victorious culture might want to spread lies in order to appear more powerful to realize this, and it would also be a grand assumption to believe that this is the only way literally every powerful culture treats history.  While it might be a popular kind of historical skepticism in an age where governments are regarded with suspicion, it is still just a red herring that does not have to be focused on at all.

Any leader or society that does actively seek to spread misinformation as long as it benefits them is guilty of an obvious disregard for truth, which only undermines whatever illusory legitimacy they might think their formal relationship to other leaders and cultures entitles them to.  Rationalists and even those who simply find themselves enamored with history can find comfort in knowing that none of the victor's actions can change the truth about how a given war unfolded or how a given regime governed its citizens.  Clearly, it would be pragmatically useful for some people in positions of power to try to hide or twist the actual nature of their rule, but it is not as if history itself is or can be altered by this.

Historical events that have happened indeed happened even if all evidence of their occurrence was purged for the sake of egoists who care about nothing as much as their own personal power.  Now, this fact which is true by necessity does not establish that there was an ancient war between Sparta and Persia, a 1900s figure named Martin Luther King Jr., or even something as recent as a terrorist attack on two American towers on 9/11.  All that can ultimately be known about history are logically necessary truths, which of course tell us nothing about which specific things have happened since the beginning of the universe and the present day.

A political leader can attempt to deceive their populace and those of other nations all they wish; their futile stupidity has changed nothing about what has and has not actually taken place.  The core of historical epistemology is unaffected by the delusional intentions of certain tyrants and deceivers, making a fixation on how "victors write history" a mere overemphasis on something that does not even touch upon why historical documentation is actually unverifiable.  People cannot prove that a culture's recounting of its history is true for reasons that are far more important and penetrating than the fact that it is possible for leaders to use their power to promote lies.

Never Abandoning The Foundation

No matter what one thinks about or discovers, there is never a time or issue where one has ventured outside of logical axioms.  Certainly, since realizing that reason cannot be false or that there could never not be some sort of truth is, along with directly recognizing other logical axioms, the absolute beginning of all true knowledge, reflecting on anything else goes beyond focusing on just the fact that logical truths cannot be false because their falsity would contradict itself, making them true either way.  Almost any fact or issue at all involves more than just the intrinsic truth of reason or other axioms like how no one can be mistaken about believing that their mind exists.

In spite of this, it is absolutely irrational to suppose that the epistemological necessity of logical axioms is therefore a first step to be passed and only rarely looked back to.  Someone who thinks this does not understand the nature of axioms!  Precisely because axioms are the first step of philosophy and thus the foundation of all things, for without them nothing could be true or knowable, they are never truly abandoned.  These necessary truths govern all things and are never false or irrelevant in even a single case.  There is much more to rationalism than just the fact that several specific truths cannot possible be false, one of them being the very fact that there could not not be some sort of actual truth in existence (or else reality would be that there is not reality!).

No serious rationalist would treat the inherent truth of logical axioms as if they are to be tossed aside and overlooked after initially being recognized as incapable of not being true.  Indeed, they are always present even when this self-verifying nature that makes them the only possible first steps in epistemology is not at the forefront.  Yes, some truths are far more precise and lay further into the truths rationalism reveals than these, but never abandoning the foundation of axioms is a basic part of rationalism.  Furthermore, it is literally impossible to escape or avoid that which is self-verifying and thus necessarily true.  To even attempt to do so would reveal immense stupidity on the part of anyone at all who thought that this could be possible.

In fact, the laws of logic are the one thing that span all of reality--it is the one thing which establishes truths about all things.  It is also the thing that, because axioms cannot be false, no issue or aspect of reality can sidestep.  Never once are logical axioms metaphysically or epistemologically irrelevant, for everything stands or falls on them.  Only because some things are self-verifying and necessary truths is anything knowable with absolute certainty.  It is the supreme folly to disregard, deny, or trivialize the only truths that could not have been any other way no matter what contingent things about science, history, theology, or perception could have been different.  The infallible foundation of logical axioms cannot ever truly be abandoned, but a sincere seeker of truth can see this wherever their attention wanders to.

Movie Review--Priest

"Remember, to go against the church is to go against God."
--Cathedral City announcer, Priest


Yet another example of a squandered premise, Priest introduces a world of warfare between humans and vampires that is filled with religious tyranny.  Priest's worldbuilding, aesthetics, and background themes are crafted well, but the execution is rather generic.  At the very least, the vampires are not the sensual, elegant kind that has become associated with seduction, as they are slimy, animalistic creatures that do not even have any visible eyes.  However, they too are plot devices in a story that has little else other than its visuals that merit praise.


Production Values

The aesthetic tone of the movie is perhaps its strongest aspect, many of the locations showing the visual style in ways that suggest a great deal of information about the world that is not directly stated.  If only the dialogue and plot were as excellent!  Even the film's few action sequences tend to be brief and full of choppy camerawork as one cut is quickly replaced with another.  The acting is mostly better than the action, but inconsistently so.  Paul Bettany, quite a talented actor, has elevated somewhat comparable movies like Legion, but Priest does not see his best performance.  Mediocrity is also the mark of the other main performances.  Maggie Q plays a fellow Priest who is tasked with stopping Bettany's character, Karl Urban plays the primary villain, and even Brad Dourif (Wormtongue from The Lord of the Rings and Charles Lee Ray in the original Child's Play) has a minor role.  These are cast members with legitimite promise who seem to have just not been given optimal directing.


Story

As usual, several basic spoilers are below.

In the world of Priest, humans and vampires warred for years, destroying the planet and inflicting many casualties on both sides.  An elite order of Priests were trained to kill vampires, but they were disbanded as a combat class once the vampires were put on "reservations."  A family is attacked years later when a group of vampires suddenly storms their home, killing the parents and abducting their daughter.  A former Priest is contacted about the young woman's capture.  He pursues the vampires in an attempt to free her before she can be infected.


Intellectual Content

A major area called Cathedral City resembles a deteriorating, overcrowded 19th century insustrial town in England, but with a militaristic, authoritarian presence that goes far beyond the legal prescriptions of Mosaic Law.  In order to maintain power, religious leaders teach citizens that to oppose the church is to oppose God, as if traditions, social contructs, and appeals to authority are sound indicators of alignment with God.  The church is not either the Bible or God, yet the needlessly hierarchical structure of Priest's church is managed by officials who add to Biblical commands in numerous ways--ironically, this completely contradicts the Bible itself (Deuteronomy 4:2).

Only at relatively infrequent points does the film specify that the religious order it portrays is "Christianity," or more particularly a drastically distorted version of Christianity, but Western viewers will mostly have an easy time seeing the obvious similarities between the religious hierarchy in Priest and that of the Catholic Church.  Catholicism is far from sound, Biblical theology, of course, with its scores of extra-Biblical traditions and shifting nature.  This makes it all the more fitting that the religious figures in the film clearly mirror Catholic clergy.


Conclusion

For a better Paul Bettany movie with religious themes, see Legion, a film where Bethany plays an angel who defies God during an apocalyptic scenario, ironically, in the name of changing God's mind.  For all of Legion's faults, it is far more unique than Priest, which develops none of its characters beyond the minimum needed to continue the story or introduce stereotypical drama.  Paul Bettany is an actor with genuine talent, yet he, like so many other things, is sinply wasted here.


Content:
 1.  Violence:  In an animated retelling of events prior to those of the main story, humans and vampires are severed into pieces.  Later, when the live action has resumed, an axe is thrown into someone's skull, silver throwing stars are used to slice into vampires, and some antagonists are cut with blades.
 2.  Profanity:  Brad Dourif's character uses "goddamn" and "bitch" in one scene.  "Fucking" is uttered once further in.

The Only True Freethinkers

A true freethinker is not biased for or against any idea, as he or she instead cares only for truth and how to prove that something is true.  This is what it means to avoid all assumptions, all leaps from one concept or fact to another unless the laws of logic illuminate an actual link between them.  If someone assumed that something is true or even believed in something logically self-verifying (the basic veracity of logical axioms) or otherwise logically provable for an irrelevant reason, perhaps because a person they respect believes it, they could not be a freethinker until they exchange assumptions for rationalism.  There is no other way to become what so many people would probably like to be called: a freethinker who does not care about personal preferences or social conditioning.

Being a freethinker does not necessarily mean that a person never asks other people for help or never intentionally or unintentionally encounters certain ideas through others initially.  Out of curiosity or desperation, a person can seek out what others think as they concurrently reason out other truths themselves and independently look to logic to analyze everything they are told.  This does not mean they cannot have discovered certain logical facts or philosophical frameworks on their own or that they are doomed to rely on others or appeal to authority.  It means they can be freethinkers and dive wholeheartedly into rationalism regardless of their social interactions or exposure to the ideas of the world, rational or irrational.  What a freethinker can never do without surrendering their status is believe something on a fallacious basis like subjective persuasion that someone must be telling them the truth.

Politicians, scientists, historians, pastors, authors, speakers, or friends of any kind are not what grounds truth metaphysically or what epistemologically reveals it to the willing seekers.  Reality is truth, and without reason, neither reason itself nor sensory experiences, familiar and foreign concepts alike, and introspective experiences could be understood to the slightest extent.  Certainty and clarity forever elude non-rationalists.  Moreover, reality itself is the enemy of irrationalists.  Thus, the only true freethinker, the only kind of person who truly understands at least baseline things that can be known with absolute certainty because they wield the laws of logic intentionally, is a rationalist.  No one else has even taken the first step towards truth for truth's sake except in a disjointed, incomplete manner.

The most sincere kind of freethinker is not what they are because they desire to be perceived as intelligent, deep, or helpful; they already would be these things by virtue of being a rationalist no matter how others perceive them or how they perceive themself.  Instead, shedding even cherished beliefs that are contrary to reality or unprovable, a genuine freethinker cares enough about truth to seek it and internally acknowledge it as reason leads them.  There are no epistemological shortcuts by means of assumptions, for biases and non sequiturs are disguised stupidity at best.  There are no truths that are not logically possible and there is no infallible knowledge without intentional alignment with the laws of logic themselves, not mere unexamined perceptions.  A freethinker can avoid assumptions entirely.

What Makes A Movie Feminist?

Every time modern films have a large female ensemble cast, there is likely to be someone who thinks that this characteristic of the movie alone makes it a feminist film.  The following support or hostility based off of this assumption might only influence more people to merely assume that having more than just a handful of lead actresses in a movie is all it takes to make a film feminist.  In reality, it takes a much more precise approach to a particular movie to make it fall into the feminist category, and there is nothing sexist against men or women by simply featuring a strong cast of people from the opposite gender.  This fact has rarely if ever slowed the waves of pre-release approval or loathing shown to films like Captain Marvel.

A movie like Birds of Prey or Terminator: Dark Fate is not feminist even though it is consistent with feminism by not portraying stereotypes of men and women as inherent characteristics or treating men and women as if they have differing metaphysical value.  First of all, having women comprise the lead cast members for the sake of telling a story and not for the sake of misandry does not mean a film specifically has feminist themes.  This is for the same reason that having a predominantly male cast does not mean a film has egalitarian/feminist themes.  Feminism is a philosophy, not a category of movies containing more than one or two primary characters who are a certain gender.

Second, not every movie that could at one point have been a breakthrough feminist film will be made specifically to promote gender egalitarianism at a time after egalitarian storytelling has become normalized.  Of course, certain aspects of a movie with a different philosophical or storytelling focus might still be made with egalitarian ideas in mind, and those aspects can be appreciated with gender egalitarianism is mind.  What does not follow is that having egalitarian characters or dialogue makes the film itself distinctly egalitarian any more than it follows from having blatant jokes in a movie that the genre is comedy.

Having even multiple horror scenes in a movie does not make it a horror film, and lines that directly touch upon feminism in a rational and  likewise do not define the general categories into which the story and themes fall.  Plenty of movies, video games, and books feature ideas or approaches to worldbuilding or dialogue that fall outside the scope of the primary genre or themes, strictly speaking.  This can be the case even when the works are favorable or outright welcoming to those elements that do not specifically represent the whole story.  For some reason, when it comes to particular ideas like feminism--genuine feminism that opposes all sexism against men and women alike and regards the genders as equals, allies, and friends--some people cannot recognize this fact.

So many of the current reactions to movies based simply on the gender of the casts would change if this truth was more widely understood.  In a rationalistic culture, ideological discomfort with movies over casting and character decisions would never be directed towards the gender of the performers!  It is so much easier for the already non-rationalistic public to intentionally or unintentionally side with the dimwits who seem to truly think that anything other than perfectly consistent egalitarianism describes the metaphysical nature of men and women.  The objections from misandrists that male leads are an attack on women and from misogynists that female leads are an attack on men are only latched onto by utter fools who lack rationalistic knowledge.

Fallacious Objections To Virtual Church From The Gospel Coalition

The Gospel Coalition is a blatantly evangelical group, imperiled by the philosophical errors and biases of evangelicalism.  It is to be expected that those who write for it would be guilty of the legalism, assumptions, double standards, and general fallacies that plague all evangelical thought to some degree--if someone avoided philosophical and Biblical errors like irrationalism and complementarianism, after all, they would not be evangelical in at least those areas.  The recent transition of some churches to streaming or recorded sermons during the pandemic prompted The Gospel Coalition to literally call virtual church an oxymoron [1], when it is not a contradictory concept at all.

All of what I am about to say stands in light of the fact that nowhere does the Bible prescribe meeting in a building with other Christians at a regular time of the same day every week.  The closest it comes to this is in Hebrews 10:25, where it says Christians should not avoid meeting together.  There are many ways to obey this command that have nothing to do with the arbitrary traditions of Sunday church.  For the Christians who are actually intelligent, sincere, and concerned with truth for its own sake, many churches have nothing to offer but amusement at their stupidity and regret or anger over their failures.

This is not what The Gospel Coalition is willing to admit.  For starters, the author of the attached article writes as if having one foot outside the door of a local church is equivalent to being aimless in one's exploration of Christianity.  If someone's commitment to Christianity depends on their attendance of any church, they are already an insincere, ideologically unstable person who directly allows those around them to influence their worldview instead of looking to reason and working up from the absolute certainty of logical axioms.  They are hardly the kind of person self-equipped to assess ideas on their own, which is a necessity in philosophical and theological thought.

The author also claims you do not think about fellow attendees of a church during a virtual service: ". . . you think less about your fellow members.  They don't come to mind."  This is outright false.  It is absolutely possible for people to think of fellow congregants during or in spite of virtual church services.  The extent to which a person thinks about the other people watching the livestream or recorded sermon has everything to do with their personality, circumstances, and relationship with the other people in question.  Some would struggle with this, which is not a sign of poor commitment to Christianity by any means if it is just about random people not being thought of, and some would not.

Not only are many of the churches implementing virtual sermons probably just doing so temporarily, not that church is a Biblical necessity or a sign of spiritual clarity by any means, but there is also no reason to criticize virtual sermons themselves except for reasons that reduce down to subjective dislike and personal preferences.  Only a fool literally cannot think or remain consistent in their worldview at all without others to physically see them and encourage them.  Only an insincere friend would never think at all about anyone they have truly bonded with at a church, even when they are not meeting in person.  None of these objections are more than fallacious attempts to disguise false ideas and subjective preferences as Biblically valid.

No one would pretend like the Bible requires or encourages Sunday church (no, the article never specifies church must be on Sunday, but that is the random tradition) anyway unless they were irrationally looking to tradition and the approval of those who identify as Christians instead of a basic analysis of the Bible where no assumptions are made.  All of these excuses to avoid virtual church made by The Gospel Coalition are objectively false on their own, but without the assumption (it is contrary to the Bible and thus can be nothing but an assumption) that church, and in-person Sunday church in particular, is a moral necessity for Christians, many of these excuses would likely not be raised in the first place.  The erroneous, assumption-based tenets of evangelicalism keep their adherents from true rationality and comprehension of the Bible.

[1].  https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/no-virtual-church/

Class And Gender: Only One Is A Social Construct

"Class," a set of economic categories that people fall into based upon their personal wealth, is not something that a person could fit into without at least a small society to give rise to these categories on a social level.  If people were to live in social isolation and have no contact with others, they would have no socioeconomic class.  They would still have their bodies, which have usually fall into the biological categories of male and female.  In a social context, they might be mistreated in various ways for being men or women and might have assumptions made about their psychological nature.  This could never happen if there were no people to enforce asinine gender stereotypes as if they are part of gender.

Economic classes cannot exist without social beings to create and uphold them, and currency itself is purely a social construct, but gender is a purely biological reality (that has nothing to do with psychological traits) that is not created by societies.  Anatomical and physiological differences between men and women are natural, not socially constructed, although all gender stereotypes about psychological traits are nothing but illusions embraced by irrational civilizations.  Pushing back against stereotypes of men and women is inherently rational as a goal, but there are still ways to do so for the sake of incorrect, stupid ideas.

It is becoming more popular for people in the West to actually believe that gender stereotypes are gender and that gender is a social construct separate from the physical body.  In actuality, gender stereotypes of any kind are just the red herring personality traits that irrationalistic people think are tied to one's body.  Gender is just another term for biological sex, not a certain set of personality traits or talents supposedly connected to one's genitalia and chromosomes.  Even on a linguistic level, I have yet to see people to pretend otherwise with things other than gender.  Race is rightly acknowledged to be separate from racial stereotypes, class is rightly acknowledged to be separate from classist stereotypes, and so on.

Only with gender do I regularly see people claiming that gender stereptypes and gender itself are the same thing.  Ask someone if one's personality traits determine one's social/economic class, and they might be more likely to understand why this is logically impossible than they are to admit the same is true about trying to conflate the myths of gender roles and nonphysical gender traits with gender itself.  However, what is true of one must also be true of the other.  The only difference in this aspect of the two topics is which part of someone's status as an individual--the gender of their body or their economic standing--a person is focusing on.

Consistency is a very basic but highly important part of true rationality.  Without consistency, one can only haphazardly, incoherently leap from one stance to the next without any sincere evaluation of what must be true about the whole of an issue.  It takes depth and intentionality to be consistent by design.  Otherwise, a person just happened to be consistent and does not truly possess any substance regarding their beliefs on the matter.  How someone treats things like gender, class, and race is one way to see how consistent they really are.  Will they treat both gender and class as social constructs?  Only one is a social construct, and this does not in any way validate the stereotypical traits that by nature have nothing to do with the gender of someone's body.

When Science Resembles Sorcery

Unfamiliar technology and a truly supernatural act of sorcery could be visually indistinguishable if they manifested in certain ways.  This fact has been popularized in the last decade by films like Zack Snyder's Justice League and Thor and has even shown up in places like the Baba Yaga DLC for Rise of the Tomb Raider (I analyze this theme in my review here [1]), but it has likely been pondered by many people from differing worldviews long before cinema was even invented as an artistic medium.  It is a truth relevant to how looking at something does not truly confirm if it is or is not even made of matter, made of some immaterial substance like a hallucination within one's consciousness, or made of something else that is nonphysical, much less if it even truly exists.

Certain kind of technological or even natural phenomena that take place without artificial technology could look like something that would not take place if the material world was left to itself.  Inversely, a supernatural event could have the appearance of something unfolding because of the uninfluenced laws of nature.  The spectacle would look the same as either case.  Only the exact nature of the event would differ.  How could one tell the difference?  It would be impossible: only baseline facts about how logical axioms must by necessity apply in either situation and about how only logically possible events can even take place could be known.  In other words, only logical and conceptual truths about what one sees can truly be proven.

Those in some cultures might assume this ambiguity is evidence that a given event has supernatural origins, and those in contemporary Western culture might assume that this is evidence for at least a naturalistic conception of how to use the scientific method (naturalism is false metaphysically, but someone could even recognize the immateriality of things like logic, consciousness, and space and still think that science as an epistemological approach has nothing to do with observations of supernatural phenomena), but anyone who assumes either way is a fool.  This is not evidence for supernaturalism or the splendor of nature; it is proof that visual perceptions do not prove anything at all except that someone is seeing something their sight can tell them almost nothing about when it comes to its ultimate nature.

Some events that seem scientific could turn out to be almost purely supernatural and some events that seem supernatural could ultimately be scientific.  Logic reveals that perception alone cannot prove which category something falls into.  Many people do not even appreciate just how difficult it is to prove the existence of any kind of matter without also leaping into the fallacious belief that matter cannot be fully known to exist.  That any matter at all is real is something many people take for granted on faith, as opposed to admitting that basic perception alone does not and cannot prove that any sort of physical body for one's consciousness, stimuli outside of the body, and larger environment that holdd those stimuli exists.

What can be proven quite easily is that, unless logic fully established othereise, either a supernatural or scientific nature could lurk behind an observed event or object--or even both together, intertwined as the immaterial and material are in other ways, such as how a physical body cannot have thoughts without a nonphysical consciousness to inhabit it.  The numerous technological events of everyday life seem to be material in nature, certainly, but it is always possible for a technological or broader scientific feat to only be accomplished because a law of physics like gravity has more in common with the supernatural than might be expected.  Only a slave to preferences and assumptions would believe otherwise even when corrected.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/04/game-review-rise-of-tomb-raider-season.html

Movie Review--Aliens

"Just tell me one thing, Burke.  You're going out there to destroy them, right?  Not to study, not to bring back, but to wipe them out?"

--Ellen Ripley, Aliens

Aliens famously deviates from the isolation horror of Alien by focusing on action.  With the first hour devoted to setup and the next approximately 40 minutes devoted to drama, there comes a distinct point at which the film unleashes a barrage of excellent action sequences after a long period of slow burn buildup.  More characters, more xenomorph aliens, and a more direct approach to the cautionary themes about greed all help Aliens overall.  I did find myself surprised by just how little action it has after hearing so much about how it radically shifts the series from horror to action.  This is not a complaint: the drama is still handled very well and Aliens director James Cameron clearly builds off of the template Ridley Scott offers in Alien.

Production Values

Aliens has far better special effects than the original Predator film despite only getting released one year later.  It truly has astonished me just how bad the non-practical effects are in the latter!  In Aliens, the dark areas or red light environments help make the practical effects seem all the more superb.  The physical effects work still looks competent in 2021.  Everything from the exo-skeleton loaders to the xenomorphs themselves are realized through practical effects that Cameron utilizes very well.  In particular, shots of the xenomorphs along the ceiling uncoiling themselves or crawling along upper shafts showcase a fitting in-universe aesthetic while giving more of a look at why the xenomorphs are so dangerous.  The introduction of the xenomorph queen does the same.

Sigourney Weaver stands out not just as the main character but also as the best actress in the whole movie.  Unsurprising, as this is her iconic character!  What Aliens gives her the chance to newly explore is her acting in the role of a caretaker, watching over series newcomer Newt, a young girl found in the first half.  Weaver still gets yet another chance to face the xenomorph threat on her own near the end, just as she did in Alien.  This time there are just far more xenomorphs.  When it comes to the secondary cast members, this praise would not always be merited.  In all fairness, this is partly due to the writing.  Some of the other characters just make jokes or overact (like the actor who keeps putting "man" in his sentences).  James Cameron veteran actor Michael Biehn of Terminator also gives a great but calm performance.  This is simply not a feat shared with the other supporting cast members.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

Ellen Ripley is found in stasis sleep on her vessel, having drifted through outer space for 57 years before a salvage team happened upon her.  The leadership of the company owning the Nostromo, the ship she set to self-destruct in the climax of Alien, refuses to take her warnings about the creature she faced seriously, only to ask for her help with a potentially related matter.  The moon LV-426 where the xenomorph entered the Nostromo is home to dozens of colonist families--and they have suddenly stopped communicating with the company.  Suffering from nightmares, Ripley is asked to return to the planet as an advisor to armed units.  The unit finds the settlement without human life and with signs of possible acid blood spills from xenomorphs.  Of course, evidence starts mounting that the species has a far more extensive presence than seemed to be the case to Ripley before.

Intellectual Content

The first Alien movie was too focused on isolation and horror to develop any grander philosophical themes beyond its basic story--and that is alright.  It is still an improvement of sorts for Aliens to let viewers see more of the explicit disregard for the lives of others that seems to characterize plenty of the members of the series company.  Lies are used to cover up a reckless pursuit of monetary gain at the expense of human lives starting at an early point, although some of them are not revealed until much later.  Films like The Lost World: Jurassic Park and Underwater have varying elements of this same emphasis on the sheer destruction that can come about when money is prized above humans.  Money itself poses no sort of danger, moral or physical, but living for money can damn a civilization just as surely as it can damn a company.

Conclusion

Aliens, as excellent as its best qualities are, is not even James Cameron's best movie, something that is quite the accomplishment!  Cameron nonetheless honors Scott's initial vision by expanding the characterization of Ripley without dismissing what came before, portraying the xenomorphs working as a group, and replicating the same fakeout calm between an explosion and an alien's sudden appearance in the finale.  Sadly, Aliens is the last entry in its franchise before the more mixed sequels that followed.  If anything, it is at its best when it shows how to continue and improve on a premise without betraying the worldbuilding and iconography that have already been established.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  One of the earliest scenes of violence (which does not even take place until more than 30 minutes into the runtime) has a baby xenomorph bursts out of a woman's chest onscreen and is quickly killed by a flamethrower.  Eventually, the xenomorphs openly attack the humans and are often shot enough to mar them quite a bit and spill acid blood on some characters.  An android also gets torn in half, releasing the milk-like artificial "blood."

 2.  Profanity:  "Damn," "shit," "bitch," "bastard," and "fuck" are heard.

The Limited Lifespan Of The Universe

The fact that an infinite sequence of events and moments would never allow the present moment and the events occuring during it to happen means both the universe and time cannot have always existed.  This makes all scientific inquiry irrelevant and unecessary, but it does not mean that there are not ways that sensory evidences will relate to this fact.  In denial of this, some posit a cyclical universe that endlessly expands and contracts without the process ever having a finite beginning point, while others posit a static universe that has simply always existed and will always exist.  Because there can be no events in the material world without time and because it is logically impossible for the past to be infinite, even if the universe was to die and be reborn in more Big Bangs, it could not have always existed.

Even aside from the logical proof of the matter, scientific advancement points in one direction when it comes to this issue.  There is scientific evidence that the cosmos had a beginning and that it will have an end.  Since logic is infallible, for only a given person's avoidable misunderstandings of reason are fallible, it would not matter if seeming empirical evidence to the contrary was discovered, for this kind of evidence could only be an illusion.  Those who are subjectively, pathetically infatuated with science are prone to dismiss this inconvenient fact.  Regardless of their own philosophical incompetence, the scientific evidence, as inherently limited and metaphysically irrelevant as scientific information is, suggests the opposite of what proponents of a universe without beginning or end would insist.

Individual objects within the universe (or multiverse, if there are indeed multiple universes after all) decay and are eventually reduced to smaller or less stable arrangements of matter according to contemporary ideas.  Literally anyone can see the evidence for this as they go about their everyday lives, whether or not they have a specific interest in matters of ultimate truth and its importance--objects like food, vehicles, and even the very natural and artificial environments that hold them break down gradually.  The only evidence-based cosmological models would agree that the same is true of the whole universe, as there is not any true sensory evidence that the current universe will eternally exist or that it will contract and be replaced by a new universe with its own version of the Big Bang.

While the idea of a chronologically finite universe with a beginning and a likely end is both true by logical necessity and consistent with scientific evidence, the idea of the universe lasting forever (which is related to but distinct from the issue of whether it began to exist) is based on nothing but speculation and preference.  All information indicates that the universe as a whole is slowly "dying" at a rate slower than celestial bodies like planets and the objects on those bodies.  The accelerating rate of cosmic inflation alone supports the idea that the universe will not suddenly begin to retract and die just to "start" anew.  A scientist or lover of science who thinks that sensory perceptions could ever trump or merely rival logical proofs is a fool, and so is someone who thinks evidence favors a cosmos that is in one way or another eternal.

The theistic ramifications of the expansion of the universe are rather stark for those who understand epistemology and metaphysics to a sufficient extent.  That is not to say thay it is in any sense self-evident that either a material world or God exists, for the only self-evident truths are the most basic epistemological facts about logical axioms.  Still, it is clear for someone willing to look to reason that there is nothing but assumptions and lies for someone to stand on if they think that a cyclical or static universe is reinforced by evidence.  Neither logic nor science--and the two are very obviously distinct--supports the notion that the cosmos has always or will always exist.

What Fear Can Reveal

Fear is not irrational, no matter what it is directed towards, as having an involuntary emotion itself is not the same as having a fallacious or erroneous belief or otherwise failing to align with the laws of logic.  This can be a very comforting truth for those who struggle with intense fears and have wondered about the exact relationship between emotions like fear and the grasp of reason.  It is at least possible for any person to experience fear to such an extent that they find solace in this truth.  Whoever experiences this might even find that the clarity of certain concepts and desires has been heightened because of it.  Tethered to desires and ideas, fear deserves to be understood for what it truly exposes in its deepest manifestations.

Fear, like love, reveals a person's priorities right before their own introspective gaze, and a person's worldview rests behind how they intellectually and behaviorally react to their priorities.  Even if they never give anyone else an indication as to what they fear, someone can directly see into their own mind and identify what things might terrify them and why.  In doing so, they can understand what they most desperately hope for, what they feel about their own self, and what they are willing to carry out.  Fright and terror even have the power to motivate someone to look to truth and their psyche in ways they might otherwise run from.  In other words, fear can drive people to a desperation that cannot be quenched by philosophical blindness as they come to face their true selves.

Whether they already know a given truth or are discovering it for the first time, they can let fear motivate them to cling to reality or let fear rot them from within.  All fear provides a chance to do either of these things.  The subjectivity of experiencing fear means that people can be frightened of different things and that they can have differing psychological reactions to the same specific concept, object, or situation.  The intrinsic nature of fear means that it does not have to be a destabilizing emotion that scares someone away from self-awareness and a love of truth; it can give someone yet another reason to seek reason and introspection.  It reveals at least part of who a person is as an individual.

Fear can reveal far more about someone than just what they are afraid of, for what someone fears can be directly related to what they most prize, desire, and hate.  Some fears can be only tangentially related to a person's core worldview and personality, yes, as is true of other emotions when experienced in specific ways, but fear has a strong potential to cast genuine light on these things.  What a person fears indicates something about what they want or what they are comfortable with.  What a person wants indicates something about their priorities.  What a person prioritizes indicates what they believe.  Belief, of course, is a stance on the truth and falsity of various concepts, something far more important than comfort or and inescapable due to its universality.

The Artistic Medium That Incorporates The Others

The components of video games make it by far the most unique kind of artistic medium possible by virtue of combining the main defining traits of other mediums.  This is not all that gaming can offer, but uniting these traits allows for an unparalleled level of worldbuilding, attention to detail, immersion, and broad narrative and philosophical storytelling.  In fact, thinking about what kinds of sensory stimulation are present in gaming easily reveals how much it has in common with other mediums of art/entertainment.  Other mediums are merely defined wholly or mostly by the individual traits that gaming includes as just a part of its nature as a medium.

Text is a vital part of many games, especially older ones that debuted before voice acting became normalized.  Even games with voice acting might still have an option for subtitles.  Cinematics and audio, as is the case with film and television, are also part of many video games.  Passive visual media that requires the viewer to just watch and listen is already a component of modern gaming as a whole.  Then there is the obvious thing that sets gaming apart from all other artistic mediums--the sometimes relentless level of interaction that is required to even play or advance to begin with.

With books, the reader must actually read unless they want to blankly turn through he pages.  With films and television/streaming, the viewer must pay attention or else they will not truly connect with the story.  Unlike reading, the visual mediums other than video games do not need users to literally go from one point to another at their own pace, and also unlike reading, the visual mediums other than video games have more potential to set up a world because of the expanded types of details that can be included.  Gaming can encompass all of this and more, telling a far lengthier and more developer tale in a single game than is usual for a single book, movie, or season of a show.

The interactivity that is inherent in gaming to at least some extent even further sets it apart as a medium.  This is not to say that strictly written or cinematic mediums tell or can be used to tell only lesser stories with a miniscule scope, undeveloped themes, and limited characters.  This is certainly not the case!  It is just that gaming is by nature a more expansive and immersive type of medium in that it literally spans more senses or kinds of input than the others do.  As such, gaming has the potential for certain kind of artistic and thematic experiences that are more unique, even if some stories are better suited for one or more films, books, or seasons of a television show.

No one who subjectively prefers other mediums to gaming automatically has an irrational stance on entertainment/art, as one can have a subjective preference for one thing while fully realizing its differences from another thing.  Some people would simply rather read or watch something and not have to actively make decisions that will affect a story, explore, solve puzzles, or succeed in combat in order to get to some other part of the experience.  It is still true that gaming alone takes the elements of all other artistic mediums, like sound, text, images, and cinematics, and merges them together while adding what the other mediums could by necessity never have without beckoning something different.

Substance Dualism In Sexuality

Sexuality spans both human consciousness and physiology, making it an integral way in which the objective distinctions between consciousness and matter can be seen.  The very personal nature of sexuality--not personal in the sense that it needs to be kept secret from others or treated as something to be withheld except among friends, but personal in the sense that it connects with the core of a person's mental characteristics--mean that it is also a very potent thing about one's being.  The fact that people generally seem to at least vaguely recognize that there are explicitly physical and nonphysical aspects of sexuality is what makes some rejections of substance dualism all the more idiotic.

Sexual thoughts, desires, attractions, and a general readiness for sexual activity on an attitudinal level are all manifestations of sexuality within a consciousness.  Without a consciousness, none of these things could be experienced.  A person's mind can be sexually excited without any physical indication of these thoughts or mental experiences.  Like any other thought or emotion, sexual thoughts and feelings (psychological feelings as in emotions, not physical sensations) are immaterial, having no tangible existence while being real all the same.  A rational person will not fight the truth that parts of sexuality appear to an individual within the nonphysical well of their intentions, emotions, and thoughts called their mind.

Arousal of the genitals, in contrast, is a physical phenomenon that may or may not occur in connection to sexual thoughts or desires.  This takes place purely on a material level, yet there would be no perception of sexual physiology if it was not for the mind already being in existence.  The body can be sexually aroused and can sexually perform without mental excitement and vice versa.  On one level, this is clear to many people from their own experiences even without intentional rationalistic thought, but it has to be specifically considered for the illustration of substance dualism to be fully absorbed.

Mind-body dualism encompasses every part of human life.  Indeed, it could not be any other way: any bodily action involves both the will and physical activity, and thoughts and perception can be present even when the body is at rest.  Sexuality is one of many ways that the differences between mind and body, these two "substances" which are always part of waking life, are both involved in the same general part of human existence.  Desires, thoughts, and physiological reactions are so clearly distinct that it takes an immense level of stupidity to mistake one for the other.

The Metaphysical Idealism Of Christian Science

In its more common usage, the word idealism refers to the pursuit of a moral or conceptual ideal.  In its more abstractly philosophical context, it refers to one of two positions: the idea that there is no such thing as a physical world, only a series of very strong sensory perceptions that make it seem like an external world exists, or the idea that whatever physical matter exists only exists because it is perceived or kept in reality by a consciousness, a mind.  Both variations are often only asserted as true by people who make the idiotic mistake of thinking that everything in existence (including the laws of logic, time, and so on) is either part of some consciousness or made of matter.

Metaphysical idealism, without this irrelevant and untrue addition, is logically possible.  That is, perhaps it is true that the matter I perceive (most of which cannot be proven to exist anyway) would not exist without my own mind or some other mind directly perceiving it, even if it seems to be the other way around.  Idealism can actually be found in some religious ideologies that readers may have heard of at least once or twice, such as Christian Science.  Christian Science--a genuinely ironic name given that the Bible contradicts its tenets and its adherents would ideally place minimal emphasis on the role of medicine in healing--holds that there is no true external world comprised of matter; this idealism is the foundation from which its ideas about prayer spring up.

According to Christian Science doctrine, prayer is the way to spiritually restore one's mind and cleanse it of the sin that brings disease, the body and the environment the body resides in considered illusions.  Sickness itself is not believed to be a physical condition, but a purely mental one, hence why prayer is supposedly the key to the purest form of healing.  In actuality, this is the only conclusion consistent with a combination of a pseudo-Christian religion and total metaphysical idealism.  The ironic part is that there is nothing Christian about denying the existence of at least some kind of material world.  As incredibly difficult as it can be to first pinpoint just how to do so, it is even possible to logically prove the existence of an external world [1].  This means that Christianity could only be true if it is consistent with this fact.

The Bible blatantly teaches that there is an actual world of matter that humans, as creatures with bodies, live in from the very start.  This makes metaphysical idealism of the kind insisting there is no material world a heresy on the Christian worldview!  Metaphysical idealism of the kind holding that matter is an illusion with no existence beyond mental perceptions is rejected as early as Genesis 1:1.  What about some of the other components of Christian science?  As Romans 8:18-25 says, it is true that Biblical theology credits sin with a general decay of our bodies that makes physical redemption necessary, which in turn can affect a person's mental life.  The difference between a Biblical stance on sickness and that of Christian Science is that not everyone who gets sick contracts the illness as punishment because of a personal sin.  Sickness could befall or not befall someone no matter their moral standing.

James 5:13-18 is one instance where the Bible does describe how some prayers could be linked with divine healing.  However, this is not the norm when it comes to Biblical prayer.  It also does not logically follow that just because prayer is spiritually healthy that whatever material effects of sickness are illusions along with all matter, though pain and exhaustion are still explicitly mental phenomena and could not be illusory even if there was no external world.  The perceptions of sickness would still have to exist within one's mind for Christian Science to even be true.  Just one contradiction of Biblical theology or one logical error would invalidate Christian Science as a unified system of ideas, and the lone way to prove that matter exists and the Bible's own affirmation of a material world already accomplish this without even getting to the faulty stance on prayer and sickness.

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

Only Words Can Define Words

Definitions are a linguistic phenomenon that would be irrelevant to all of life if it was not for the need to communicate with other beings using words.  Otherwise, concepts, truths, and experiences would be understood directly by people who are aware of them without any pressing need to pair them with words.  The deeply social nature of ordinary human life makes communication and definitions an indispensable part of human interaction.  If someone asks you to define an important word or explain what you mean by a broader sentence, it can be very helpful to have already thought about a key aspect of definitions.

You always have to use words to explain what is meant by other words.  This is the inescapable nature of a definition!  One can point to sensory objects one is referring to, one can gesture to aid a verbal explanation, and one can grasp certain ideas just by immediate thought, but none of these are examples of using definitions.  To define a word or an extended phrase, one must use other words.  It is impossible for definitions to have any other kind of linguistic description.  Thus, it is outright folly to think that the use of the same word in a definition and a separate definition clarifying what is meant by some other word within the prior definition is an automatic sign of "circular reasoning."

First of all, the concepts and their connection to each other might not be circular despite some of the same words being used to described different concepts.  Language is primarily about communication and has no ultimate necessity outside of this context.  Yes, a person can think using words, but this is neither necessary nor circular; it is just an aid to assessing an idea.  Second, using words to define words is inevitable.  This is not a sign of circularity in how one approaches a concept because the concept might be true and provable.  Using words to clarify what a person means by other words is the only way that non-telepathic beings can provide definitions.

At some point, some of the same words might show up in several linked definitions that are being used to illuminate each other.  Does this mean someone has failed to be rational or to communicate as clearly as the limitations of language allow?  Only a fool would believe so.  Unfortunately, the world is full of fools who might believe this or be goaded into believing it by others they want to ideologically fit in with.  Identifying and pointing out linguistic repetition is not always a mark of philosophical victory, refutation, or even basic comprehension of what is being communicated.  Sometimes all it means is that someone has come to a mistaken conclusion about a fact that contradicts their stances on language.

Masturbating To Select Opposite Gender Friends

Even if someone has a particular friend of the opposite gender whom they do not wish to date, flirt with, or engage in any sort of sexual activity with, they may still find it pleasurable to masturbate while thinking about the specific friend in question.  Due to cultural prudery and a variety of assumptions, using thoughts or pictures of an opposite gender friend for masturbation is often perceived as something that violates the nature of the friendship and as something that is to be expected from men, but almost never from women.  It may also be mistakenly seen as a universal phenomenon in opposite gender friendships.

There are indeed many friendships between men and women where neither party has any interest in flirting with, masturbating to, or sexually thinking about the other person, but those who do masturbate to an attractive opposite gender friend--whether or not there is actual attraction towards them--have not invalidated the friendship or taken advantage of the friend's relationship with them simply by masturbating in this way.  Perhaps the man or woman being masturbated to by their friend would prefer to not be told about any such habit their friend has, but their friendship has not been disrespected and they have not been violated as an individual.

Men are not more likely than women to sexualize opposite gender friends in this way, but they are more likely to be expected or encouraged to do so, just as they are more likely to discuss the matter due to cultural conditioning.  Regardless, women are not victimized if some of their male friends pleasure themselves while imagining them or looking at pictures of them, just as men are not victimized when women do the same to them.  Only if someone objectifies a friend of the opposite gender while masturbating to them is the friend actually degraded in some way.

Friendship between men and women entails only mutual affection by necessity, which means that sexual attraction does not have to conflict with a friendship at all.  Sexual attraction to a certain friend of the opposite gender can always be acted upon through masturbation if one so desires, but masturbating to select opposite gender friends--again, even looking forward to masturbating to opposite gender friends does not at all mean a person would even think of masturbating to all opposite gender friends--can be savored even without any sexual attraction to them.

Many men and women can certainly be friends without ever wishing to use mental imagery or pictures of each other as masturbation material.  However, everyone can realize that they have not done anything harmful to their friendship if they choose to masturbate to select opposite gender friends with or without sexual attraction as a motivating factor.  The familiarity a person has with their opposite gender friends, the sensuality and perceived attractiveness of their bodies, and the degree of comfort with both opposite gender friendships and sexuality as a whole are all variables that could lead someone to masturbate to opposite gender friends, and there is nothing vile about this.

Death Metal Is Not Satanic

One of the more bizarre charges against metal or rock music, especially "death metal," known for its use of a vocal style called the death growl, is that its affiliation with darker, more aggressive or horror-like imagery marks it as satanic.  These accusations are made by those who either do not understand metal music or by those who are content to slander it as long as this gives their preferences a greater social influence.  Just as first-person shooter video games and erotic literature can be targets of slander due to controversial elements, death metal receives all sorts of unfavorable attention in some circles.  This subgenre's broad lyrical and visual styles lend themselves very well to distinctively more intense themes than more mainstream kinds of music, to be sure.  It just also gets misrepresented by some outsiders.

There are certainly death metal bands that consistently use atheistic, anarchistic lyrics along with macabre imagery to convey an ideological stance (like the songs of Arch Enemy, featured below), but does imagery associated with satanic concepts make a band "satanic" by default?  No, for the same reason that lyrics that might reference Christian themes or terms does not make a song, band, or genre Christian.  The metal group Disturbed included a cross on the cover of its album Believe.  Does this imagery (which appears in an amalgam of symbols associated with other religions) make Disturbed a Christian band?  Not at all!  Just one example should make it entirely clear that borrowing imagery does not equate to the genuine personal embrace of a worldview.

Photo credit: acase1968 on VisualHunt.com

There is also the conflation of satanic imagery--images explicitly intended to connect with the figure of Satan or ideas associated with him for shock value or as personal expression--with dark, somber, or eerie visuals.  An image can be "dark" in that it shows some kind of entity or environment related to something like death, yet intentionally macabre images have no automatic overlap with the portrayal of demonic figures, whether the figures are shown out of sincere appreciation of Satan as a figure or not.  Satanic is not the same as macabre; demonic is not the same as dark!  Even an album cover or band set that shows images intended to be of demonic entities does not necessarily mean that the band believes in demons, and believing that they exist would not necessarily mean that they are being regarded fondly.

Any Christian who fears finding death metal artistically appealing--or even thematically appealing in some cases--is not in any danger of approving of demonic ideas by any means by listening to or enjoying the music!  "Satanic" and "demonic" are strong words that call for much more careful applications than some people are willing to wait for.  The charge of having a genuine worldview link to the celebration of demons is even out of place when it comes to the kind of anarchist atheism of a metal group like Arch Enemy, for an atheist would not be calling upon or unironically celebrating any demons tied to religious theism.  As outright metaphysically and epistemologically asinine as atheism is under rationalistic analysis, it is not honest to think of even this as inherently demonic in origin, much less something that is simply dark in nature.

Movie Review--The Suicide Squad

"Love them or hate them, these are your brothers and sisters for the next few days."

--Rick Flag, The Suicide Squad

"You know what I think?  I think liberty is your excuse to do whatever you want."

--Bloodsport, The Suicide Squad

James Gunn's first entry in the DCEU is actually one of its best.  Without directly referencing the specific events of 2016's Suicide Squad or contradicting them, The Suicide Squad features some of the same characters from before--Harley Quinn, Captain Boomerang, Rick Flag, and Amanda Waller, all played by the same actresses or actors.  It is clearly presented as a continuation of a terrible DCEU starting point (the 2016 movie) in a time when the latest DCEU titles are loosely connected, but its commitment to the wild nature of the story, characters, themes, and acting place it far above almost everything in the DCEU besides a handful of movies like Zack Snyder's Justice League.

Production Values

The Suicide Squad, breaking the habit of its predecessor, often has great CGI, even when it comes to Starro the Conqueror--an extraterrestrial starfish-shaped being already revealed in one of the trailers.  Plenty of late-movie shots show Starro up close, from its eye to its skin to folds in its limbs that can release miniature versions of itself.  Long before Starro is ever shown for the first time, the practical and digital effects are still excellent overall.  There are lots of scenes where, whether practical or digital, gore is at play, and most of it does not look clearly fake.  John Cena's Peacemaker costume does look more obviously artificial than many of the other costumes, but this somewhat lends itself to the over-the-top presence of Peacemaker as a philosophically delusional, comedic figure.

Cena is just one of the many newcomers to this sub-series within the DCEU, and his acting is superb all the way through.  No, not all of his lines are about comedy though the trailers highlighted some of his humor-oriented dialogue.  Some of them are very serious.  As for the more regularly serious characters, it is actually Daniela Melchior and Idris Elba, playing Ratcatcher 2 and Bloodsport respectively, that provide much of the emotional core of the story with the bond their two characters form.  This is not to say that the other main characters are lacking.  Margot Robbie actually has less screentime than she does in the first Suicide Squad, yet she makes the most out of her scenes.  She is even better realized as her character here than she is in Birds of Prey.  Fellow returning cast member Viola Davis likewise has less screentime while still delivering a performance that is even more ideal for her character.  All around, the acting is truly excellent.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

Two Task Force X teams are sent to an island near South America with the goal of destroying "Project Starfish," which is in the hands of a militaristic, anti-American regime.  Explosive implants are used as a threat to motivate total obedience to overseer Amanda Waller's commands.  Included in these teams are Harley Quinn and Captain Boomerang.  The survivors of the initial landing fight and sneak through the island until they come upon Jotunheim (where Project Starfish is held).  At this point, they have actually bonded to some degree, despite being forced into a lethal mission against their preferences.

Intellectual Content

Suicide Squad merely teased the dehumanizing elements of how Task Force X was forced to carry out a dangerous mission.  For the most part, this and other deeper themes were seemingly edited out in the extensive reshoots.  In The Suicide Squad, not only is this theme of genuine dehumanization illustrated in far more obvious and necessary ways, but this same approach to special ops missions is shown to lead to apathy about foreigners in places the American government interferes with.  After Amanda Waller uses threats of prison violence against Bloodshot's daughter to persuade him to comply with her whims, example after example of reckless or outright tyrannical American interactions with other nations is shown.  It is not that the island regime the Suicide Squad is fighting against is morally good or presented as good, but that this film is about selfish, abusive people using other selfish people as tools against, unsurprisingly, another group of selfish people.  This is unexpectedly one of the most political movies in the DCEU, and all of its main points are entirely valid.  People who are willing to treat the fellow citizens of their country selfishly and emotionalistically will very likely be willing to treat foreigners the same way.

Conclusion

Not even the arbitrary whims of Warner Bros. stop The Suicide Squad from reaching general greatness.  It is absolutely asinine that Warner Bros. would reject the "Snyderverse" for being dark only to let James Gunn have full creative control to make a film that deals with even darker things.  An R-rated movie of this type, made with full creative input of the director, getting released while so many people are still reluctant to visit theaters normally shows that Warner Bros. is obviously biased against Zack Snyder's mostly competent ideas for the DCEU given that they oppose his plans while encouraging Gunn's.  Still, that hypocrisy and idiocy is no fault of the cast and director of The Suicide Squad, which together deliver an often excellent film that capitalizes on some of the themes that the 2016 predecessor needed to delve into.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  Skulls and limbs are split apart, throats are slit, and people are lit on fire onscreen.  There is plenty of blood to be seen.  Of all the R-rated DCEU movies, which include this, Zack Snyder's Justice League, Birds of Prey, and the Ultimate Edition of Batman v Superman, this is by far the most violent, as it is genuinely graphic.

 2.  Profanity:  Words like "damn," "bastard," and "fuck" are used quite a bit.

 3.  Nudity:  A man is briefly shown with his genitals exposed.  A later shot shows a topless woman, also briefly.

The Bible: The Epistemology Of Books

The way to epistemologically approach the Bible is the same way all books one reads need to be epistemologically approached.  Being a religious text, the Bible is something many people make assumptions in favor of or against without truly understanding almost anything about logic, epistemology, or the Bible itself with any consistency or depth.  It does not matter what kinds of assumptions are made about it: they are all beliefs that stand on ignorance.  Perhaps the assumptions are true, and perhaps they are false.  No one can have knowledge about anything at all through assumptions whether the idea in question is true or false.  Cutting both into default dismissals of the Bible and belief based on faith, this fact means that the Bible, just like any other book, has to be rationalistically analyzed in order for one to know if its contents are true, false, probable, or improbable.

First, is the text making claims that are internally consistent and that do not contradict logical axioms?  If not, it does not matter what the book says or who endorses it.  Its ideas are already false at the very start if they are not consistent with both themselves necessary axioms like the inherent truth of reason.  Even if a book's claim(s) did not contradict themselves, or at least not to the greatest extent possible, this would not make them logically possible.  A consistently irrational metaphysical or epistemological concept still contradicts the laws of logic and is disqualified from the realm of mere possibility in doing so.  Not even total truth in all of a book's other claims will save a single error of this most egregious kind.

What if a book like the Bible does not have any internal contradictions--not that it never initially seems to have any contradictions, but that its claims do not truly contradict themselves when understood as they are?  Then one can more directly consider which parts of it might be necessarily true.  In other words, this entails identifying the concepts affirmed by the text that are logically provable without divine revelation or sensory experiences (whether or not someone is introduced to the idea by their own reflection or by reading the text).  An example in the Bible is the concept of substance dualism--even if there is no afterlife or if consciousness has purely material causal origins, a mind is still an immaterial thing that does not metaphysically reduce down to matter.  Biblical passages like Matthew 10:28 and James 2:26 acknowledge this despite having other ideas built around this objectively true distinction.

At this point, after the ideas in a book that could not possibly be false due to logical necessity have been recognized, there is another step one could take.  This is where epistemological limitations prevent absolute certainty of whether certain premises like Yahweh being the uncaused cause are true, but one can still have absolute certainty of what follows from various ideas that cannot be proven.  Scientific and historical evidences are now at their point of relevance in a person's rationalistic approach to a written work.  For the Bible, this is where the scientific evidence for a specific beginning point of the entire cosmos (though the logical impossibility of time and matter having always existed takes clear precedence over this empirical evidence), like the seemingly accelerating expansion of the universe, and documents referring to Biblical figures like Jesus of Nazareth or Herod Agrippa has its place.

Although the Bible has its more unique contents as a theological work that addresses historical claims, metaphysical claims, moral claims, and so on, this general approach of starting with basic consistency and moving on to logically provable truths to logically possible and then to fallible, evidence-based reinforcement is the rational way to handle any book that makes philosophical claims.  Since all claims about reality are philosophical, this means that all scientific, historical, or broader philosophical texts can be assessed like this.  The core of philosophy (logical axioms and self-awareness) and all sorts of logical truths that go beyond first principles can all be known without the aid of books.  A book that elaborates on such a truth can be helpful even though it is never epistemologically necessary.  Beyond this class of truths, the only valid way to approach a book's claims is the aforementioned sequence.

The Vagueness Of "Cultural Marxism"

"Cultural Marxism" is a popular accusatory phrase in conservative circles, a Republican equivalent to default charges of systemic racism in leftist circles even in a case where there is no such thing, especially during a time of particular political controversy.  Conservatives, vocal evangelical Christians included, tend to charge random people or ideologies as being guilty of association with "cultural Marxism" anytime that they feel threatened by something that is perceived to be connected with liberalism.  This is all that it might take to secure the support and praise of some conservatives, as they sometimes imagine that Marxism is hiding around every corner of American culture.

Some explanations of "cultural Marxism" equate the ideology with a blind attempt to categorize everyone's moral status according to their gender, race, economic class, or sexual orientation, as if a person is automatically an oppressor simply by being white or wealthy.  The liberal double standards surrounding the victimization of various demographics are utter bullshit, but so are the conservative straw men fallacies used to protect injustices and misrepresent liberals.  However, cultural Marxism, in the way that many conservatives use the phrase, is vaguely defined to the point of having almost nothing to do with actual Marxism.

It is also irrational to pretend like an ideology limited to a particular scope (such as Marxism) has two different manifestations.  Rationalism is rationalism, regardless of whether one individual or an entire culture embraces it.  The same is true of theism, atheism, capitalism, stoicism, or any other ideology, whether they are true or false.  To suppose that there is a different kind of Marxism that sprung up is to misunderstand what Marxism even is.  Of course any philosophical stance could be adopted by an entire culture or applied in a given culture in a specific way, but even this does not automatically change the ideology into a new version of itself.  It only means new people are applying it.  There is no separate ideology of "cultural rationalism," "cultural theism," "cultural stoicism," and so on.

In the same way, there is no ideology of "cultural Marxism" that is wholly distinct from "ordinary" Marxism.  Moreover, Marxism itself is about artificially eliminating class division, making the purest form of the idea about the exact opposite of what conservatives imply, if not say, that it entails. It follows that the relentless accusations of cultural Marxism from some conservatives are misleading, hollow, and thoroughly irrational.  The phrase becomes an emotionalistic set of words intended to appeal to existing rage or fear over miscellaneous ideologies that may or may not be illogical or vile.

The Amoral Nature Of Convenience

With the conveniences and genuine practical benefits of modern life comes a barrage of assertions that the technology that grants this convenience erodes patience, reducing people to a state of having little ability to make it through small difficulties or the absence of expected conveniences.  In one sense, it is not surprising that conservatives can tend to agree with this due to the inherent emphasis on tradition in how their ideas relate to life: many of the most helpful conveniences of the present day are quite recent in the grand scope of history.  Particularly when it comes to technology, Christians in America, who often align with conservatism despite its logically fallacious foundation and conflict with Biblical morality, might endorse a kind of technological legalism that views patience as an enemy of convenience.

Wanting to make your life more convenient is not a sinful goal.  For some reason, people who condemn convenience as a blemish on modern society seem to think that inconveniences of the distant past that have been overcome can be legitimately sidestepped, while more contemporary advances for convenience have gone too far.  This arbitrary division between one amoral type of convenience and another can be easily pointed out by anyone who believes that modern civilization has a moral obligation to stop evolving in ways that make convenience more and more accessible.  For those seeking examples of just how arbitrary this is, the ways this can be pointed out are thankfully plentiful.

Anyone who does not wish to travel by horse to the nearest store, send written messages by using trained pigeons, use hand-lit lamps for light after sunset, retrieve water from a well hundreds of feet from their home, or let various sicknesses pass on their own already is actually fine with convenience.  They just might not be fully aware of their own beliefs.  For them to suddenly say that the potentially immediate communication of text messages or the delivery of basic items conventionally bought at a store in person robs people of patience would be a petty mistake.  In addition to this, patience is not automatically cultivated or maintained by living inconvenient lives for the same reason impatience is not developed by living convenient lives.

Some people are naturally patient, content to wait through various trials or delays.  Other people might be naturally impatient and find themselves struggling to endure the most trivial kinds of inconveniences.  Technology cannot be validly credited with shaping either kind of person's involuntary attitude.  However, both the accomplishments and technical difficulties that can be attributed to technology could possibly affect a person's natural level of patience, even if the person himself or herself is what ultimately decides how that inner attitude will manifest.  No one can blame technology for "making" some moderners unable to handle setbacks, obstacles, and waiting periods in daily life.  Technology and whatever convenience it provides are amoral.

Technology makes human life objectively more convenient, whereas the so-called negative consequences of technology are either misunderstood benefits or misuses of something that is not harmful on its own.  This is inevitably the case no matter what kind of technology or what kind of convenient application of technology one focuses on.  If in prescribing patience the Bible meant that we should oppose ease and comfort in our lives, it would have said so (Deuteronomy 4:2).  There is only gratuitous difficulty to gain from living as if anything else is the case.  Patience can be virtuous without making an intentional refusal to embrace convenience beneficial or morally good.  The Bible says nothing that does not perfectly align with this very conclusion.