Hell To Pay

The New Testament and even some parts of the Old Testament do teach that there will indeed be hell to pay for those who do not make things right with God.  The unexpected part, for those who are unwilling to examine what the Bible actually says without biases and other assumptions, is that hell is not the permanent home of the unsaved--they will not exist eternally as those who have received eternal life will [1].  Upon learning of this idea, evangelicals tend to eventually come to the erroneous conclusion that the cosmic death of the wicked is something so trivial that it must be false because it does not take sin seriously.  Out of the many errors and philosophical hypocrisies that evangelicals will reach for, one that is relevant to this trivialization of death is the fact that they do not really think death is trivial.  They pretend like murder is the worst thing one could do to another person and treat death in a general sense as a tragedy.

What of those who are terrified of the thought of not existing forever?  If an evangelical feels terror at the hypothetical thought of atheism being true, conflates the nonexistence of God with the nonexistence of an afterlife (atheism would not actually mean there is no afterlife, since God and an afterlife are not at all the same thing, but that can be saved for another time), and then finds comfort in the idea of the Biblical heaven because it entails their eternal existence, he or she would be a hypocrite to turn around and pretend like annihilation of the soul and body would be a trivial fate.  They fear nonexistence in one context but think it too minor in another!  If permanent death with no opportunity for restoration is a grave outcome on certain kinds of atheism, then it is a grave outcome on any kind of theism that is compatible with it.  Death is no small thing.

If evangelicals truly, consistently thought that eternal death was a trivial response to sin, they would not think nothing of the loss of all the possible joys, triumphs, and pleasures of life.  Having no ability to dwell on and delight in the pleasures of absolute certainties of logical truths, having no ability to savor relationships with other humans, animals, or God, having no ability to explore one's own mind and be connected with oneself, and having no ability to even long for a better life or strive to improve one's circumstances is a major loss.  Again, that the Bible teaches the doctrine of annihilationism does not mean that there will not be hell to pay if the Bible is true.

The payment for human sin is one's very life (Romans 6:23, Ezekiel 18:4, and so on).  How ironic it is that evangelicals admit that Paul so clearly calls the wages of sin death, and still they still pretend like the fate of every single unsaved being is eternal torment, the very thing that is the opposite of death!  Since life is permanently and wholly extinguished in response to sin, the very nature of sin is that in doing something that is evil, a person forfeits their right to coexist with God forever when they knowingly or unknowingly violate their moral obligations.  Part of the tragedy of sin and the justice of the truly Biblical hell is that the unsaved, with one subset of possible exceptions [2], are lost forever.  It is a deserved fate if Christianity is true, but even within the Christian ideological framework, it is something bittersweet.

The eternal life Genesis teaches was intended for humanity is restored through commitment to Christ.  Otherwise, life itself is at stake.  This is what hell is intended to claim from humans: the unsaved are said to die and undergo resurrection for the second death, which is the most existentially serious kind of death, after a potentially long period of suffering before being cut off from existence.  There is certainly hell to pay even according to the annihilationism evangelicals dismiss as not taking sin seriously.  In fact, it is precisely because injustice is sin and permanently killing sinners is what God has revealed as just that this popular myth cannot be true within Biblical theology.  Annihilationism takes sin exactly as seriously as it deserves to be taken--what it does not do is misrepresent what the Bible says sin deserves one way or another.  Neither lenience nor unjustly harsh punishment is part of the Biblical hell.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-truth-of-annihilationism.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2020/03/revelation-149-11.html

Christian Existentialism

At first, it may seem bizarre to a new rationalist or a longtime Christian that there is nothing logically incompatible about absurdism, a broader rationalistic skepticism, and a genuine, holistic commitment to Christianity.  Absurdism is a type of existential philosophy acknowledging the fact that it is impossible to logically prove if objective meaning exists or does not exist.  Christianity, of course, entails that there are specific moral obligations grounded in the nature of the uncaused cause and that human existence, even when marred by sin, has inherent significance.  Absurdism, however, is about epistemological limitations that prevent knowledge of whether meaning exists, or if it is only illusory perceptions of meaning and a subjective desire for it that are a part of reality.

Christianity is not just about epistemology.  Absurdism is true because the existence or nonexistence of meaning, as opposed to perceptions and longings for meaning, is unknowable.  The existence of objective values is only a possibility that cannot be proven, as it is not self-evident like the truth of reason or one's own existence, nor does it logically follow from any logical or phenomenological facts that meaning exists.  If meaning was knowable, absurdism would not accurately describe the human condition.  Christianity is different.  It is a primarily metaphysical system that can be epistemological supported without being proven in full.  This means that Christianity could be true and absurdism would still be true in that nothing more than logical clarifications of what the concept of meaning is can be known.

The only reason the compatibility of these ideas is not more widely realized is that most people are shallow, unwilling to authentically pursue truth without assumptions, and do not even try to just look to reason and concepts without focusing on other people in the process.  People and their claims are secondary in philosophy; philosophy is about truth and knowledge, as well as how different ideologies fit together and overlap, deviate from, or outright contradict the only things that must be true (logical axioms and everything that follows from them).  If more people understood even just this, then it would be more common for people to realize that absurdism and Christianity do not contradict each other and not react with confusion or denial when someone speaks of this.

Given enough time, any Christian, rationalist, or Christian rationalist will have to intellectually stare down the way that logical possibility, epistemology, and values intersect.  It is folly to think that someone could ever avoid such things and some of the many issues connected with them forever except by sheer thoughtlessness.  Existential concerns can even spring upon someone who is not prone to naturally reflect on things philosophically.  One of the differences between a typical person and a rationalist is that the former will knowingly or unknowingly make assumptions to make themselves more psychologically comfortable, and he or she may even actively flee from directly thinking about the legions of philosophical truths and issues that are an inherent part of everything.

A thoughtful Christian will not flee from philosophical honesty and, if they care enough about truth, will settle for commitment to Christianity based on external evidences rather than actual belief that the whole of it is true--because it cannot be proven in full.  One possible consequence of this realization is the discovery of how absurdism is true.  Perhaps they would not know the name and historical movement of absurdism, but the concepts and the truth of them could be arrived at by any rational, willing person.  No Christian who confronts this side of reality and grapples with their limitations has to give up an evidence-based commitment to Christianity in order to acknowledge the inability to prove if actual meaning exists.  The rational approach to Christian existentialism encompasses theistic absurdism even if this would bring panic and confusion to all but a handful of genuine thinkers.

Philosophy In Television (Part 16): Damien

"Your father wanted answers . . . about the Beast.  The False Messiah . . . described in the book of Revelation.  Servant of Satan.  He is to be worshipped like a king.  And then his true nature will be revealed.  He will become the greatest tyrant the world has ever seen, plunging it into darkness, plague, famine, war--the end of days . . . until he is defeated by the returned Christ at the Last Judgment."

-- Dr. Igor Reneus, Damien (season one, episode one)

"You're the second of only two prophets whose coming is foretold in the Bible.  In Isaiah 14:12, God calls you 'Son of the Morning.'  You bring the beginning of an era of enlightenment."

--Ann Rutledge, Damien (season one, episode six)

The show serving as a sequel to the original The Omen manages to do something that one might never see in any other entertainment: Damien makes its antichrist a conflicted and at times even Biblically righteous person.  Here is an antichrist who neither has planned to seize power throughout his entire life nor rushed to take advantage of entire groups willing to usher his malevolent reign in to the world stage.  Here is an antichrist who saves a child from being crushed by a train, who tries to talk a disabled veteran out of taking his own life.  Damien himself is a philosophical imbecile like the majority of developed characters in entertainment, asserting asinine or contradictory things about theism, fatalism, morality, and epistemology, but when Damien begins, the titular character is far from a selfish, overtly vile character on the level of how he treats other people.

However, there are numerous characters plotting for or against Damien's eventual ascension to the throne of the world, including some, according to his secretive guardian Ann Rutledge, who want the antichrist to come because they are Christians.  In a total betrayal of their supposed Christian moral commitments, these people want what they expect to be the worst tyrant of all time in power for the sake of bringing about God's triumph over Satan and the antichrist, yet this is to actively hope for evil to be done because good will eventually follow it!  Christianity is utterly contrary to utilitarianism, as within the Biblical worldview, a motive or deed is sinful in itself if it is genuinely wrong; there is no situation where anyone has to sin or should sin (a logical impossibility given that evil is what should not be done) except in extremely rare moral dilemmas where a person, because of stupidity or apathy, found himself/herself in a context where to either act or not act is to sin [1].

The irony is that other supposed Christians who are terrified of the antichrist arrange to have Damien murdered, something that contradicts Biblical teachings for the same reason as the goal of the so-called Christians who want the antichrist to come because of the ultimate outcome.  Both groups are guilty of the fallacies of utilitarian moral ideas.  If murder really is immoral as the Bible very plainly states, there is no situation or person to which this would not apply.  No matter how extreme the stakes are, how strongly a person feels about the matter, or the morally positive or negative consequences of a course of action, murder would be evil by nature.  Most Christians and non-Christians are not very philosophically competent, but none of the Christians in Damien represent reason, Christianity, or Christian rationalism.

This setup is made all the more ironic when Damien himself only begins to gravitate towards murder and a disregard for moral ideas--his own merely subjective moral perceptions or preferences, but moral ideas nonetheless--when he is repeatedly harassed or targeted by people of various ideological and personal allegiances.  Damien adds his own utilitarianism to his idiotic philosophical misconceptions about reality as a whole and the Bible in particular, including the idea that moral obligations as opposed to moral feelings can exist without a deity and the idea that the specific deity of the Bible causally dictates every event and human behavior.  Nevertheless, he is not alone here in embracing such ideas that are asinine whether or not Christianity is true, for there is by logical necessity no moral authority or obligation if there is no God (or if the uncaused cause does not have a moral nature) and, regardless of its veracity, the Bible does not teach theological determinism of human actions.

From the Catholic figures--and it is of course not the case that Catholicism is genuine Christianity as it is--to Damien's eager overseer Ann Rutledge, contradictory or assumption-based beliefs are regularly mentioned in Damien.  None of the typical philosophical incoherence of what characters say can lessen the uniqueness of having an antichrist who does not want to be a servant of Satan and the person who will trigger the apocalyptic events of Revelation.  The Beast is an unwilling, reluctant convert to the whims of Lucifer.  The only loosely fatalistic thing about the role of the antichrist here is that if Damien dies, another person will supposedly become the antichrist instead, yet a dagger of Megiddo with the ability to kill him allows him to choose to continue living or end his torment on Earth.  That he only gives in to his expected role after protesting the nonexistent spiritual determinism of Christian theology and human existence is one of many ways that this antichrist is far more than a cliche oppressor.  Even more significantly, the Bible's scattered references to a singular antichrist do not actually conflict with many of these traits of Damien.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-morality-of-vows.html

A Problem With Western Education Of Children

There are petty objections to public schools that have nothing to with the philosophical fact that anything of core metaphysical and epistemological significance can be reasoned out by any willing, determined person regardless of age and without prompting from educators, as well as the fact that most of the less philosophically charged things taught in schools have no need to be taught because they are irrelevant to abstract and practical needs (like learning certain elaborate mathematical formulas with no context other than being taught them for the sake of being taught them).  Some people object to public schools, or at least to how they function today, for unrelated and asinine reasons.  The real issues are left completely unreleflected upon and verbally unaddressed in many cases by them.

Some Christians of the conservative evangelical variety pretend like they know that public schools are a spiritual battleground in the sense that demonic entities are literally influencing events.  The real knowable problems with the modern approach to public school are not connected to the idiotic assumption that there is some sort of Satanic conspiracy to use children in public schools as tools to "corrupt the West."  Not only does public education have nothing to do with demonic activity in and of itself no matter how ineffective or shallow it is, but there is also no evidence that this is the case even on a Christian worldview.  Hell, even people who have stupid philosophies or who practice unjust things are more than capable of doing such things on their own!

Having students get up as early as 4:00 or 5:00 AM to attend a series of classes every single day other than on weekends, during hazardous conditions, and on holidays is not necessarily directly helpful in a philosophical or job-oriented way, but it is likely to be detrimental.  There is simply no reason to tire out children on an almost daily basis for the sake of mandatory, artificially prolonged, unnecessary classes that are neither about anything of ultimate philosophical importance nor likely to be practically useful later on in the life of students.  This is the true set of problems with public education in its current form practiced in the United States.  It is overlong and does not focus on the things that, if anything at all matters, matter most--and if it was to focus on them, the problem would likely transform into the issue of most people relying on education instead of reason and introspection to spark most thoughts.

As is so often the case, the true problems with the Western-style education of children are not addressed as conservatives and liberals both erroneously tend to misdiagnose them.  The problems are irrelevant subjects or subcategories within subjects, emphasis on memorization and hearsay over truly intelligent reflection, an unnecessarily long daily or weekly structure that has some students doing almost nothing but attending school, completing assignments, participating in other school related activities, and sleeping.  Supposed conspiracies set in motion by Satan or liberals (according to some conservatives) or set in motion by a network of racists (according to some liberals) have no place in a rationalistic exploration of students' education in the public school system except to dismiss them as possible but utterly unprovable.

The Ambiguity Of Many Messianic Prophecies

Genesis 3:14-15 is often taken to predict how Jesus will triumph over Satan, who is called the serpent here, and to some extent this is a valid understanding of the verse.  However, it is sheer folly to think that the Bible is clear about what this prediction means or that one could reason out the distinctions between a first and second coming of the messianic figure from scattered verses like this one.  It is only with the New Testament that the figurative and literal elements of how Genesis 3:14-15 overlaps with the rest of Christian theology becomes clearer.  Perhaps a new reader might realize this if they have made no assumptions while reading and thinking about the passage, but many Christians forget that very little about what Messianic prophecies is anything more than vague and seemingly random on their own.

While the New Testament is utterly vague and unhelpful on its own when it comes to moral commands, as it is meant to be approached with the Old Testament in mind, the opposite is true of what each major side of the Bible says about the "Messiah" who Jesus is eventually introduced as.  At least Genesis 3:14-15 actually anticipates a Messiah with some clarity as to the topic at hand; many other prophecies that the New Testament attributes to Jesus are not even clearly prophesies.  Some, like David's expression of agony in Psalm 22, are more like descriptions of circumstances that apply to previous figures in Biblical history and happen to also parallel or match the circumstances Jesus finds himself in.  This does not mean the prophecies are false or unconnected to Jesus: they are just less precise or clear than some assume.

The Messianic prophecies are sometimes so ambiguous that many modern Christians would scarcely be able to relate them to each other and connect them with the figure of Jesus if was not for the fact that the New Testament already does this--I mean in the sense that they are just assuming that these predictions apply to Jesus because the New Testament claims this about some of them.  They are starting with the evangelical ideas about Christology, which are rooted mostly in the New Testament and have some serious flaws, and then working their way backwards instead of starting with the foundations and working forward.   It is very unlikely that the typical evangelical has ever seriously thought about the issue without having made assumptions beforehand about what the Bible teaches on the matter, and these assumptions might be seen as necessary parts of Christian theology and life, when assumptions of any kind are philosophically asinine and potentially disastrous.

Nonetheless, the prophecies Jesus appeals to truly are consistent with the idea that he is the Messiah, but it would be extremely difficult in some cases and impossible in others to actually put together a clear and detailed description of the then-future Messiah from them.  It would be easy for the typical evangelical, who blindly agrees with church tradition and thinks there might be something flawed about their theology if they dispute or distance themselves from contemporary consensus, to take for granted that these prophecies refer to Jesus.  This is far from obvious and impossible to demonstrate fully from the Old Testament texts without hindsight.  A reader unfamiliar with the claims of Christians and who does not make assumptions would not be able to rationally conclude much about the Messiah promised in Genesis 3:14-15.

The Messiah is simply a more ambiguous figure in Old Testament prophecy and eschatology than the evangelical claims about the issue would suggest.  Even though a more incompetent kind of thinker might assume that this challenges or refutes the way New Testament theology builds off of Old Testament theology, it is not a threat to the possible veracity of Christian ideas.  It is not necessary for Messianic predictions to not be vague in order for them to still be true, and specifically true in applying to Jesus.  What this does mean is that it is dishonest and irrational to believe, say, or imply that there is clear prophetic basis for expecting the type of person the New Testament presents Jesus as.  Biblical Christology can be analyzed and discovered without the aid of the unnecessary, false, or assumption-based ideas often paired with it.

Movie Review--Dracula Untold

"Drink.  You will have a taste of my power.  The strength of a hundred men.  The speed of a falling star.  Dominion over the night and all its creatures.  To see and hear through their senses."

--Master Vampire, Dracula Untold

"'Why think separately of this life and the next when one is born from the last?'"

--Dracula, Dracula Untold

From the lighting and cinematography to the acting to the contrast of Christianity and vampirism lurking in the background, Dracula Untold is far from the mediocre or abysmal movie plenty of other reviews might claim.  It is extremely well-paced for a movie barely over an hour and a half with its credits, still managing in spite of the relatively short runtime to explore its lead character Vlad the Impaler, a more conflicted character this time around, and to feature multiple action scenes while slowly setting up vampire lore.  I do not hope for the upcoming vampire movie Morbius to be another Venom and thus do almost nothing significant with its potential, but MCU connections alone will probably not raise Morbius to the level of this overlooked gem of a vampire film.

Production Values

Some moments plainly rely on CGI, but the absolutely atrocious CGI of the Hobbit films that also started Luke Evans around the same time as Dracula Untold is thankfully nowhere to be found.  In fact, there are some great shots in action sequences or in moments of drama that further distance this Dracula retelling from the squandered opportunities of the Hobbit trilogy.  In one scene where the camera is shown as if it is the sight of a dying Turkish soldier, the reflection on the blade shows parts of Vlad the Impaler's rampage using his new powers.  In another scene aided by lighting, the bodies of many dead Turks impaled make for a macabre but creative shot as other Turks see the results of a previous attempt to defeat the prince of Transylvania.  There is also much more to the movie than atmospheric cinematography.

Luke Evans is not just passable, but outright excellent in his portrayal of a husband, father, and ruler who truly struggles with his past abuse at the hands of Turks and his decision to give up his former brutality.  His line delivery is much better than one might expect based on the critical reaction to Dracula Untold back in 2014.  Sarah Gadon plays his affectionate wife Mirena well too, albeit with less screen time.  She promises to fight alongside her husband to the death, shows sexual interest in him, and is instrumental in getting him to embrace his vampiric abilities; though she is not the primary character, she is actually a female character who breaks stereotypes in ways that are so naturally included that viewers might not even realize the intentional or unintentional egalitarian undertones.  For this reason alone, her role is constructed cleverly.

While Dominic Cooper makes the most of his few scenes as villain Sultan Mehmed, Charles Dance is right at home in this world as the poetic, patient vampire eager to pass on his curse so that he can be free of the cave that has trapped him for so long--and he is not even the only person involved with Game of Thrones here, as Vlad and Mirena's son Ingeras is played by Art Parkinson (Rickon Stark) and Ramin Djawadi is credited with the soundtrack.  Dance's lines and skill with presenting his dialogue stands out despite Luke Evans and the other more central actors and actresses still handling themselves superbly.  He teases the scope of the demonic forces associated with his vampirism masterfully without ever revealing much supposed information about his power, and he is not wasted whatsoever (unlike in Godzilla: King of the Monsters).

Story

Some spoilers are below.

Having survived a brutal childhood as a conscripted soldier for the Turkish army, Vlad the Impaler has turned away from his past deeds to become a more just leader.  Shortly before the Turkish Sultan Mehmed demands another 1,000 Transylvanian boys to fight on his behalf, he finds that some sort of creature residing in a mountain lair has killed Turks.  Vlad refuses to hand over his son and kills Turkish soldiers, hoping that this being will somehow help him withstanding the war that is all but certain.  The vampire offers him a chance to gain regenerative healing and superhuman strength on the condition that if he indulges his new desire for human blood instead of resisting for three days, he will release the vampire from the cave, and Vlad will eventually become its pawn in a metaphysical power struggle.

Intellectual Content

Not a sadistic man at all at first, Dracula is more of a complicated, thoughtful person here.  There are enough moments where he speaks of his worldview that its loose structure can be understood.  Vlad says, for instance, that feeling nothing while impaling his victims years ago was a "greater crime than the act itself," something that is logically impossible.  Feeling or not feeling any particular emotion during any thought or action cannot make someone righteous or depraved because unless someone has total control over that feeling (or lack of it), only their beliefs, basis for beliefs, intentions, and actions on light of those beliefs be rational or irrational, just or unjust.  Though he does not elaborate on the mistaken connection he might assume between moral judgment for emotions and his professed commitment to Christianity--which is mistaken because the God of Christianity only condemns beliefs, intentions, and deeds instead of involuntary emotions (and someone who feels no urge to be just or rational and yet becomes those things anyway is a person of incredible substance)--what he does get right about Christianity is the intertwined nature of the Christian afterlife and earthly life.  Once, he states this in a context clearly relevant to Biblical ideas.  The second time, he is seemingly talking about a kind of reincarnation, although the absence of sequels means no later movie came to clarify or further elaborate on the relationship between Christianity and vampirism in this world.

Conclusion

This film would have provided a far stronger and more subtle foundation for Universal's failed Dark Universe of interconnected monster stories than the 2017 remake of The Mummy.  Luke Evans is perhaps at his best, the supporting cast actually shows its genuine talent, and the film balances the darkness of the subject matter with the PG-13 rating and the necessary story beats with the approximately 90 minute runtime.  A longer version of Dracula Untold could have addressed the religious, personal, and broader metaphysical ideas mentioned or alluded to more thoroughly, of course, but in no way does this amount to anything close to a bad movie like so many have said.  The cast, cinematography, and even the dialogue and writing possess a far higher quality than many other modern movies trying to reintroduce popular monsters in a PG-13 story.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  Hands get severed from their arms in one scene, but for the most part, the violence is limited to stabbings or slashes with bladed weapons.

Corporate Benefits

Corporate leaders such as CEOs and lower managers are not cruel or selfish by necessity, and stereotyping them negatively or positively is just as  still enough of them have disregarded the very workers they rely on to make workplace mistreatment or neglect of many workers a major societal problem.  Economics and practicality are not the core of reality, so economic and workplace problems could never be the most foundational or severe problems, but they are enormous in their ramifications all the same.  Those with extensive wealth have more cultural protection in some ways even when they exploit others.  The very necessity of working for payment, when money and other resources are required to partake in American society, can drive some workers to desperation that keeps them at certain jobs even when company or broader workplace trends oppress them.

In other cases, deceptive or underutilized aspects of some workplace environments keep them in the dark about how a corporate leader might be lying or overlooking them.  Consider the benefits offered by plenty of companies in addition to the base wages or salary, like dental insurance, health insurance (which dental insurance conceptually reduces down to, although they are treated as separate), paid time off, maternity or paternity leave, vacation days, and so on.  While it is of course more favorable for employees to have these as options even if they are only begrudgingly enforced or if other obstacles come up, even the benefits that an employee has access to are not necessarily without their artificially imposed difficulties.

Since benefits are not always extended to all employees and are sometimes reserved only for full time employees or those with particular positions, there is already one obstacle intentionally set up to using corporate benefits tied to jobs--and some companies might intentionally keep employees below the full time level of hours in order to deny them key benefits.  Another is the irritability of some managers when someone actually requests to, say, use PTO (paid time off) or parental leave.  Even though these might have been dangled as perks before hiring, suddenly an employee might find himself or herself fighting to get approved to utilize certain benefits or receiving the disdain of their employer(s).  Someone who returns from maternity or paternity leave could be treated in a hostile manner upon coming back to work, despite having done nothing one could rationally object to by simply taking parental leave for a newborn.

Benefits are promised to employees, albeit conditionally in some cases, and yet some employers--even if every single employer actually did this, it would not be a logically necessary part of being an employer--might punish or look down on people for using what was offered as an incentive to get hired.  There are only so many reasons why someone would do this, and all of them involve philosophical incompetence, perhaps in the form of the arrogance of thinking that an employee's job should be what their life revolves around instead of the other way around to the greatest extent possible.  This is the workplace equivalent of college professors who lash out when students use the allowed absences promised in a syllabus.  If you are allowed any absences--and tying class grades or passing classes to attendance is an asinine idea as it is--then it does not even matter if a person taking them is sick or just wants to use them.  In the same way, it does not even matter if someone uses PTO because they have plans beyond relaxing at home or not; they were promised such benefits before or right after employment began.

Corporate benefits have the potential to change the lives of employees or benefit them tremendously when handled right.  On their own, even a smaller range of benefits can supplement pay rather well and provide various safety nets in the case of health issues.  It is corporate mismanagement, hypocrisy, greed, or arrogance, all of which stem from irrationality, that thwarts benefits from being used to smoothly, universally benefit employees.  Promising advantages beyond basic pay is a powerful incentive that could be utilized by employers to secure worker loyalty for years if it is only not followed by arbitrary qualifications, bitterness towards employees, or a refusal to grant them (such as PTO).  Employees who are not loyal to company leadership that overlooks or maliciously antagonizes them do not owe their employers the gratefulness that could motivate someone to stay with a company.

Avoiding Arrogance In Beauty

The many myths about beauty, sensuality, and sexuality in the church and broader culture have some people go a lifetime without ever realizing the objective nonsexuality of most things people find sexually appealing.  Others might never realize that sexuality is Biblically positive until it is misused, as opposed to the other way around.  A legion of smaller myths contribute to denial of these facts, while the true danger for certain Christians that is associated with the beauty of the body is that of thinking more highly of someone because of their beauty, especially given that Western culture, for all its increasingly normalized egalitarianism, still pressures people to conform to arbitrary beauty standards.

The biggest concern for Christian men and women, then, is not the amount of skin their clothing shows or how little or how tightly their clothing covers their bodies.  As long as they are not trying to make someone lust or objectify them--even though no one can make someone covet or objectify them, some people might intend for that to happen--the most significant concern is an arrogant belief that one is superior to others because of one's appearance.  Not everyone will even struggle with this to a slight extent, and neither a sense of satisfaction in one's body nor a desire to display it for platonic or sexual admiration is arrogant, but some people might be tempted to look down on others for their bodily appearance either for mistaken philosophical reasons or emotionalistic ones.

This, ironically, is closer to what Paul is actually condemning in 2 Timothy 2:9, which is trying to use clothing to express arrogance or draw attention to oneself in a selfish way (wealth itself is not sinful, so it seems motives and context were his concerns in this verse).   The example Paul gives is of women wearing opulent clothing in a context of worshipping God with other people.  Other examples of women or men wearing clothing for sinful purposes would involve intentional arrogance--whatever is immoral for a woman to commit is likewise sinful for men, and vice versa, after all.  Nothing about 1 Timothy 2:9 truly pertains to just women.  Both men and women can falsely regard their bodies as the core part of themselves (as opposed to the consciousness that inhabits it) or recognize this is not the case and still use clothing to express a selfish concern for the bodily appearance at the expense of more significant things.

The truth that serves as a positive counterpart to this is that men and women can delight in their bodies without arrogance and in the bodies of others without resentment, and this can be a deep expression of Christian ideas about creation and the goodness of sensuality until it is misused.  For men specifically, it can also be a celebration of the fact that men's bodies are no less sensual than women's and men are no less capable of wanting to feel beautiful or sexy than women.  For women specifically, it can also be a celebration of the fact that they can be free of Western emphasis on their bodies as if their value depends on how they look or if they can please others through them.  In no case does the Biblical deity condemn people for enjoying, "showing off," or admiring what he made to be platonically or sexually enticing at various times.

Thankfully, people can desire to be beautiful and to savor the beauty of others without ever thinking that beauty brings more objective metaphysical value.  The stupidity and pride of thinking oneself superior to another person because of the appearance of the outward shell is one of more dangerous things some people need to look out for when it comes to displaying the body--not because arrogance is the worst sin or motivates all sins, as both of these ideas are false, but because most of the other alleged sins associated with sensuality are not sins at all in the true Christian framework.  No one is rational, consistent, just, or worthy of affection or respect simply because of how their body looks, be it naturally or because of prolonged effort.

An Allusion To Annihilationism In Psalm 73

Psalm 73 is by no means of direct, crucial relevance to the analysis of what the Bible does and does not teach about hell.  Indeed, most of the clearest verses pertaining to hell and annihilationism, with the exception of rare verses like Ezekiel 18:4, are all found in the New Testament--hell being one of the only things the New Testament actually addresses without being vague or just repeating the content of the Old Testament.  The focus of Psalm 73 is more on a general exploration of what the author says it was like for them to ponder the success of the wicked around them and what the point of even striving to be just is.  The way it is connected to the Christian ideas about the afterlife is looser than in other places, but it is still relevant.

Psalm 73's first 18 verses summarize how the author struggled as he noticed others prospering as they engaged in unjust violence, living in arrogance and malice.  Verse 19 comes to the claim that the wicked will be destroyed.  Verse 20 goes so far as to say that the wicked will be dismissed by God in a way comparable to how dreams are no longer experienced upon waking up.  Dreams end when one is awake; while dreams and waking experiences are both features of consciousness, one cannot be dreaming while awake.  The two states of experience are exclusive.  The implication of these verses, then, is that those whom God despises (as verse 20 says) will be removed from existence.  As the later verse 27 says, speaking to and of God, "Those who are far from you will perish."

While metaphysical annihilation is sometimes treated as a punishment of trivial significance, Psalm 73 does not treat it this way.  The author becomes satisfied with this fate of the wicked and seems content to pursue righteousness wholeheartedly.  Being cut off from all ability for redemption, pleasure, contemplation, and joy is no small thing.  Since Psalm 73 starts by noting how some evil people will obtain material wealth and peace of mind in spite of their cruelty and arrogance, the implied annihilationism is clearly enough to reassure them that sin will not go unpunished.  It is still crucial to realize that the destiny of any person, whether it is subjectively favorable or unfavorable and objectively deserved or not, is not what dictates how people should live.

The very nature of a moral obligation is that regardless of the outcome, whether it is immediate or in some sort of afterlife, if one should do something, one should do it no matter what, except in rare cases where one cannot avoid sinning and one must choose the lesser evil.  What will or will not happen to someone has nothing to do with how we should live or with whether moral obligations even exist in the first place.  The possibility and nature of an afterlife is at most an additional incentive within some worldviews to do what is morally right, but only a person of weaker resolve would want to live a just life merely for the sake of potential reward after death.  Even so, the Biblical hell is plainly said to be reserved for those who violate their moral obligations, and Jesus even somewhat references a deterrence factor of hell in Matthew 10:28 when he says to fear God for his power to kill or destroy the soul.

Psalm 73 actually complements Matthew 10:28 in what it says about hell: what Psalm 73:19-20 merely implies, Matthew 10:28 explicitly states.  The unsaved are predicted to die in a permanent, cosmic sense; they are denied the eternal life granted by committing to Christ.  Though Psalm 73 is not as direct because it only alludes to this, it is related to the issue of annihilationism enough to be worth mentioning.  Even parts of the Bible that have little to do with the subject of hell still cast some light on the issue.  Some verses could only not prove annihilationism is the Biblical stance on human punishment in hell if the wording was meant in very unusual ways.  Other verses are much more subtle in how they confirm or support how it is annihilation that unsaved humans as a collective are said to face.  Psalm 73:19-20 is certainly in the latter of these categories.

The Last Duel's Confrontation With Misogyny

One of the many accomplishments of The Last Duel is its direct, uncompromising look at some of the ways women have been and even still are treated as almost subhuman when it comes to rape.  The medieval context of the story also puts certain severe distortions of Christianity at the center of the worldviews of multiple characters.  In my review of this excellent film [1], I already addressed the issue of what the Bible the characters of The Last Duel pretend they submit to actually says about rape, and it is not anything compatible with the victim blaming or gender stereotypes various characters hold to when reacting to Lady Marguerite's rape charge.  The many layers of such easily avoidable delusion that rapist and squire Jacques le Gris clings to also deserve to be focused on, as well as the errors of Marguerite's own husband.

The idiocy of le Gris actually begins long before he rapes Lady Marguerite, starting with his hedonism--based on how we see him behave and speak, either he thinks Christianity and hedonism are compatible or he completely feigns a commitment to Christianity and thinks his subjective conscience's approval of hedonism makes it valid.  In either case, he is a fool holding to contradictory or assumed ideas.  Whichever it is, this clearly feeds into his promiscuity, and because of his blind love of pleasure, he later confuses Marguerite's repeated "No" as a "customary" way to pretend she is not already interested in committing adultery.  It is crucial that even from his perspective of the story, when the second chapter retells events as he thinks they occurred, he still plainly raped Marguerite and yet talks as if he sincerely believes he did not.

Leading up to the rape of which he is objectively mistaken about, Le Gris makes other major philosophical errors that reveal his stupidity long before he somehow gets confused about the nature of rape.  When given a warning about coveting the married Lady Marguerite, he only says his thoughts are "No less sinful than her coveting me," yet the Biblical sin of coveting would not be applicable in her case if she was contemplating adultery (she is portrayed as if she did not), as le Gris is not married and thus cannot "belong" to another woman.  He even talks as if he believes the absolutely idiotic notion that one can be deeply in love with someone of the opposite gender after only seeing or talking with them a few short times.  All the same, even according to his version of the story, his supposed love for Marguerite does not stop him from making repeated adulterous advances after she has affirmed that she is married and told him to leave her estate after he barged in uninvited.  "If you run, I will only chase you," he says to her.  It is quite clear even in the "truth according to Jaques le Gris" that le Gris is indeed an adulterous rapist who thinks married women must put on a show of resistance.  He then assumes her intentions are different than what her words suggest despite not even any evidence pointing to this as a still unverifiable possibility.

The priest he confesses what he says is merely adultery to in the following scene quotes Matthew 5:28, to which le Gris asks if love if a sin--and then the priest says that the woman, whom has not been named, must be a temptress seeking to lead him astray.  After seeing this inept theologian, le Gris is told by his friend Count Pierre that he is being accused of rape.  Even the Count, who has acted as an egoist and hedonist without a care for philosophical truths or moral concepts up until now, calls this a serious matter and asks his friend if the charges are true.  The selfish squire's response is admission that Marguerite protested as is "customary" for a lady even when she inwardly consents.  Ultimately, le Gris sees all the evidence that Marguerite did not really consent and chooses to believe it was not rape anyway, all because of an asinine stereotype that women like her have to feign resistance as if it is a game.

Another character goes so far as to, with seemingly no awareness that anyone with genitalia could be a perpetrator or victim of rape, regardless of gender or marital status, that rape is not an offense against women (overlooking marital rape and male victims, though this latter part reflects the era's more entrenched sexism against both genders), but a property offense against her male guardian.  For all of his major faults, at least Marguerite's husband Jean de Carrouges says after sex on his wedding night that he hopes the experience was pleasurable for his new wife.  It is only later in the film, when he is seen from her eyes in the chapter introduced by the phrase "The truth," that his lack of concern for how the rape of Marguerite affected her that his tendency to use other people to salvage his own reputation comes to light.  He literally has sex with Marguerite just after she tells him of what she has gone through to make sure he is the last person to have had sex with her.  Given her prior reluctance to have sex, this is also rape, though the rape perpetrated by le Gris is given more emphasis.

Jean de Carrouges does kill le Gris in the climactic duel, but even in his final moments, "There was no rape" is what he utters.  While there is never an excuse for irrationality, and the hypocrisy and epistemological assumptions--assumptions that are not even logically possible but unprovable beliefs, but assumptions in favor of ideas that can be wholly disproven by reason alone with no social or introspective experiences--of le Gris are inherently irrational, the social pressures that many people bow to can be very strong influences for those with weak resolves and an unwillingness to embrace the transcendent truths of rationalism.  Both Jacques le Gris and Jean de Carrouges exemplify how cultural forces can shape people too stupid to identify and reject biases, of either personal or societal origin, but too inwardly blind to realize the depths of their own self-imposed delusions.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2022/03/movie-review-last-duel.html

The Alcohol And Drug Double Standard: An Unbiblical Inconsistency

It is hardly surprising to many people to find that a handful of passages in the Bible do directly condemn drunkenness, and some have realized that this is not a prohibition of alcohol itself.  Many parts of the Bible, like John 2's renowned story of Jesus turning water into wine, make it clear that drinking alcohol is objectively nonsinful according to Christian morality, though not even these examples are needed to demonstrate this.  One only needs to see that alcohol is not condemned directly or by logical extension of some other thing and that adding to God's moral commands is itself a sin (Deuteronomy 4:2).  What of drugs, non-alcoholic substances that either grow naturally (such as marijuana) or that are created by combining distinct ingredients?

If one is inherently sinful, so is the other; if one can be used without succumbing to intoxication, then the other can be used in the same way given that there is nothing automatically overpowering about it.  Many people, Christians and non-Christians, accept alcohol use as being neutral or even somewhat positive until it is used as an attempted escape from very serious problems that are not being confronted or until someone gets intoxicated and harms themselves, others, or property.  Perhaps this is because alcohol is not an illegal substance and can be more openly seen as people drink it without expressing irrational motivations for doing so amd without it being mishandled and leading to something like assault or death.

As soon as any kind of drug is substituted for alcohol, some of the same people who rightly distinguish between the general use of alcohol and alcoholism suddenly despise recreational drug use and reveal their biases against drugs.  This double standard for alcohol and drug use is not found in the Bible even though some Christians act as if the Bible permits alcohol, but not intentional intoxication from alcohol, while prohibiting the use of drugs in a non-medical context.  The Bible does prohibit getting purposefully drunk, which could impair someone's alignment with reason and lead to them carrying out sinful acts they would otherwise not commit.  Apart from these potential impacts of drunkenness, it is unlikely that intoxication would even be condemned.

That the same general mind-altering nature of alcohol is shared with drugs like marijuana means that the Bible does not even have to mention drugs specifically in order for it to permit basic drug use and condemn drug intoxication by purely logical extension of what it says about alcohol.  The anti-legalism of Deuteronomy 4:2, which forbids adding to God's commands, and the logical equivalence of substance and alcohol use mean that Christian morality--the actual moral obligations and condemnations in the Bible itself, not the cultural or personal preferences lesser Christians cling to--does not exclude using certain drugs for pleasant experiences that have nothing to with a medical context.

It is contra-Biblical to condemn alcohol use itself for the sake of preventing drunkeness, and the same is true of objecting to some drugs based on how they might be used (the slippery slope fallacy at the heart of most cases of legalism) or based on the more immediately catastrophic effects of separate drugs.  The inconsistencies in the stances so many Christians claim to have with regards to alcohol and drugs do not reflect Mosaic Law or the later prophetic and New Testament elaborations on Christian morality that do not ever even conflict with the obligations revealed in Mosaic Law.  What they do reflect is asinine personal failure to look to reason or a tendency to gravitate towards popular hypocrisies of the surrounding culture.

The Need For Psychiatry Over Counseling

More conventional forms of counseling and psychological therapy have their places in the arsenal to be used against mental health problems, but there are circumstances that call for the medications and other physical treatments of psychiatry.  It is useless to seek psychological counseling when there is no pleasure, motivation, or perhaps emotion of any kind to stir up with conversation and strategic planning.  The unfortunate reality is that this is insufficient to spark one or all of these emotions when there is no psychological fire to give fuel to.  In these cases, psychiatry and the medication-based approaches that it stands on are not just the superior way to tackle mental health issues, but also the only ones likely to succeed.

Because mental health issues of many kinds are so widely misunderstood, it can be difficult for people struggling with them to be open about them with others, and it can be even more difficult to seek out psychiatric help as opposed to milder, potentially unhelpful treatments.  Just as rationalism and true Christianity are liberating in so many other ways, the two, especially combined, can transform the depth to which a person understands the potential nuances of their mental health and liberate them from failing to seek adequate psychiatric help due to social judgments that arise due to choosing assumptions over reason and introspection.

If God made aspects of the human body and mind to have specific correlations, there would be reason for Christians to celebrate the medications and physical treatments of psychiatry rather than shun them!  In fact, it would be at least borderline heretical to oppose exploiting these correlations for the sake of lessening or completely curing whatever mental health issues could be affected like this--including depression, psychosis, anxiety, emotional numbness, and anhedonia in all of their forms.  Succumbing to lasting mental illnesses that have nothing whatsoever to do with the health of one's relationship with God and others is one of the most gratuitously destructive courses of action one could possibly take.

As someone who has at times struggled intensely with a very specific, seemingly rare mental health problem other than my situational depression, which has only surfaced during an extended existential crisis and a later relational abandonment by a cherished friend, I know both intellectually and experientially that there are mental conditions that psychiatry is more equipped to address than prayer or any sort of conversation-based therapy.  Medications/drugs, treatments like increasingly safe forms of electroconvulsive therapy, and other physical solutions are always possibilities that only become more likely to not have catastrophic side effects as the health applications of neuroscience progress.

Psychiatry is not always needed over something less involved like counseling.  Indeed, if someone has depression stemming from a fixable relationship problem, talking to the person in question and resolving the issue might remove the depression completely.  It is just that some conditions are not in this category whatsoever.  Sometimes a far more potent approach is needed if any sort of change is to even be slightly sparked in the first place.  Psychiatric approaches are objectively the best way to handle mental health issues of this kind--short of some very improbable improvement coming without any kind of direct action, these approaches are the only promising way for a person to rid themselves of an affliction or make it manageable as they work to eradicate it.

Movie Review--The Last Duel

"I finally gave birth to a son who I love more than I ever could have imagined . . . and I may not live to see him grow.  This was my life.  Had I known the truth would deprive me of this love, I believe I would have done what many women before me had done.  Nothing."

--Lady Marguerite, The Last Duel

"I know you yearn to defend your name and your honor, but the common mind has no capacity for this sort of nuance . . . They see villains and heroes, that is all."

--Count Pierre, The Last Duel

One of the only masterpiece films to be released in 2021, The Last Duel is a triumph on every level.  The realistic costumes and sets, the dialogue, the characterization, and the exploration of hearsay, truth, and self-deception as pertaining to rape come together so very well that this is one of Ridley Scott's very best films.  The titular duel itself is among the greatest portrayals of a duel in cinematic history.  More importantly, at no point does the incredible care and skill of the presentation ever detract from the philosophical issues at the heart of the events, as well as the way that Scott chose to present them to the audience.  This is a movie where, unlike what is so often the case, the themes and production values are not unbalanced in that one obviously surpasses the quality of the other.  From start to finish, The Last Duel succeeds as a movie and as a mirror that shows how people can misunderstand things that are so avoidable.

Production Values

The practical effects of the costumes and physical locations are at least borderline flawless here, providing a stage that does not ever steal the focus away from the extremely talented cast and the exploration of rape and sexism--sexism against men is even hinted at in the film, but in this case, the emphasis is specifically put on how women can be treated during and after rape.  Jodie Comer, Adam Driver, and Matt Damon are outstanding in performances brimming with nuance which cuts right to the heart of their characters.  Seeing some of the same events from the assumption-driven perspective of various characters only adds more depth to the acting in that each member of this trio had to make subtle or major changes to how they present their characters depending on whose chapter of the film it is.  Oh, the enormous missed opportunities with Adam Driver as Kylo Ren!  Driver makes it clear that he is perfectly capable of embodying a realistic villain: the kind who does not even seem to understand what they are actually guilty of.  The way that the beliefs and actions of his Jacques le Gris contradict themselves without him ever showing any sign of realizing this lets Driver show a mastery of acting that would have done wonders for his Star Wars trilogy.

Jodie Comer displays both vulnerability and strength as a woman misunderstood or used as a tool for personal gain by even her own husband.  Intelligent, observant, and authentic, her Lady Marguerite is of course the character without which there would be no story.  It is only fitting that such a crucial character would be handled by Comer with stellar expressions, line delivery, and physical presence, and she does indeed accomplish all of these things.  Matt Damon and Ben Affleck also deserve praise for the precision and subtleties of their performances.  Damon has to perhaps change his character's demeanor the most across the different tellings of the events, but Affleck gives one of his best offerings of his entire filmography here.  Affleck's Count Pierre might be a fool whose hedonism is only a front for his assumption that whatever he subjectively wants must be morally permissible, but he provides an unexpected level of comedy that never threatens the very solemn subject matter of the story as a whole.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

Two men, Jacques le Gris and Jean de Carrouges prepare for a fight that is meant to end in the death of one party or the other.  Before the king and queen of France, the two will fight to supposedly "prove" the truth of a rape accusation against one of the duelists.  The majority of the film after this opening scene is a three chapter portrayal of the same general events leading to this duel, each chapter shown according to what the two dueling men and the victimized woman are said to believe happened.  Jacques and Jean already have an uneasy relationship when the former is given land promised to the latter at the behest of the self-absorbed Count Pierre.  Then, upon returning home, Jean hears his wife accuse Jacques of invading their home and raping her, which prompts Jean to call for a legal duel to "settle" the guilt and innocence of Jacques.

Intellectual Content

What I originally wrote for this section was so long despite being incomplete that I decided to save it for a separate post.  Below, I will still give a less thorough summary of how The Last Duel handles its grave subject matter and how that relates to the true nature of reality.

"The truth according to . . ." marks each of the three chapters of the movie as the focus cycles between three primary characters.  However, when it is time for "The truth according to Lady Marguerite," the phrase "The truth" is left visible even after the rest of the chapter title fades.  There are mostly subtle differences between each telling of the supposed events, like le Gris being less expressive and quick to speak when he enters Marguerite's home or the mood of de Carrouges when he returns to his land.  One of the most significant changes, though, is that Marguerite screams and weeps as le Gris grabs her as shown in her chapter, whereas in his chapter, she made sounds suggesting that she was sexually aroused despite her verbal objections (after all, even being raped does not mean a person's body will not react sexually as might during consensual sex, so this does not contradict her being unwilling).

For all the talk of Christian devotion by numerous characters, no one seems to be even slightly familiar with the moral demands of the Bible that exclude trial by combat (no one's guilt is revealed or grounded in who can defeat their opponent), that forbid torturing people except using the relatively miniscule means occasionally prescribed in Mosaic Law (and what was promised to befall Marguerite if her husband lost the duel is certainly unbiblical even for people who commit capital perjury), and that do not treat rape as an offense against someone besides the victim.  The rape case law in Deuteronomy 22:25-27 says to just execute the rapist while declaring the victim innocent, which defies almost every ideological and behavioral reaction to rape across human history.  Sexism against female and male victims of rape and a desire for extreme torture or even the hypocrisy of raping the offender is rather easy to find supporters of.

The Christian stance on rape is so different from that described in The Last Duel, and yet there are still many Christians and non-Christians who do not understand this vital part of Biblical teachings.  Justice is not blaming the victim for the sins of another person; justice is not making assumptions based on stereotypes; justice is not putting the perpetrator of rape in prison with rapists in hope they will be mistreated as well; justice is not pretending like a duel between two people has anything to do with whether a sin has been committed beforehand.  According to the Bible the characters in The Last Duel pay lip service to, justice for rape, whether the offender or the victim is a man or woman is the quick execution of the offender and nothing more.

It is also crucial to realize that Jean rapes his wife after hearing that Marguerite was raped by le Gris, demanding sex so that le Gris was not the last man to have sexually "known" her.  This is completely left out of Jean's chapter despite the fact that he is shown as committing the same sin as le Gris, though this unflinchingly conveys the sexism against women that would stop an abusive husband from seeing himself in his wife's rapist whom he takes to court.  Here and elsewhere, The Last Duel's different character perspectives do an excellent job of giving attention to what is merely part of an issue that haunts humanity: the rape of women and men alike has been mishandled for millennia, and for all of the progress made by Biblical standards towards addressing the issue, even many Christians in modern America fall woefully short of treating rape as what it is.

Conclusion

Ridley Scott might be an imbecile when it comes to understanding things beyond the process of filmmaking, like why people might not have viewed The Last Duel in theaters for reasons besides them just seeing superhero films instead, but none of that changes the grand quality of everything about The Last Duel and its solemn focus on sexual assault.  The cast is at its best in this movie that is perfect for the times despite only showing part of how sexual assault is handled or mishandled.  Few films from 2021 even come close to rivaling this diamond that shows Ridley Scott has only become a better filmmaker with age.  In fact, this is one of the better movies of the past few years, transcending both the generally lackluster releases of last year and the trend for entertainment to fail to handle its themes or its story and characterization equally well.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  A handful of battle scenes, besides the duel itself, feature blood that never evolves into the gore of something like Game of Thrones but still shows the harshness of medieval life.

 2.  Profanity:  "Fucking" is minimally used in dialogue.

 3.  Nudity:  Several naked women are seen in the background when the promiscuous Count's sexual escapade is interrupted.

 4.  Sexuality:  In addition to several scattered scenes that show sexual activities, Lady Marguerite and Jean de Carrouges are shown while covered by a sheet as they have sex in multiple scenes, and then there are the multiple clothed rape scenes.

Deuterononomy 24:16 And The Death Of Jesus

The death of Jesus can be misunderstood as a sort of human sacrifice or some other event manipulated by Yahweh without regard for the wishes of Jesus himself.  Several key verses in the Old Testament like Deuteronomy 24:16 addressing the injustice of executing someone for another person's sin (and thus by extension punishing them in any way, not just by capital punishment) are relevant to the issue, yet none of them contradict the goal or method of the atonement.  Whether or not Christianity is true, the theological concept of Christ's sacrifice is not one of God forcing someone to be punished on behalf of someone who has sinned in the sense that they were an oblivious or mistreated pawn.  There is even a major aspect of the death of Jesus that is completely overlooked by most people with regard to the issue at hand about the injustice of his fate.

First of all, Roman-style crucifixion is a heinously abusive and therefore unjust punishment by the standards of Mosaic Law as it is, rendering anyone's crucifixion evil according to Biblical moral ideas from the start.  Everything from its combination of flogging and execution to its intentionally prolonged duration to its infliction specifically on non-citizens and foreigners is unjust [1].  Second, there is an enormous distinction between a voluntary sacrifice and a forced death when a person has not committed a capital sin (a sin deserving capital punishment).  The Bible forbids the latter as an injustice, while the former is something any person is morally free to enact if they desire so, even though no one is obligated to sacrifice themselves for others--no one sins for not allowing himself or herself to die for someone else.

Deureronomy 24:16 does condemn executing a parent for the crimes of their son or daughter, and vice versa, but this is specifically about intending to punish the innocent by arbitrarily or maliciously killing people who had nothing to do with an offense.  While this idea is obviously already present in every command to punish someone for a given sin that qualifies as a Biblical crime, since it says to punish the wrongdoer and not a friend, family member, or unrelated person, there are records suggesting some ancient cultures actually did punish family members for someone else's real or imagined wrongs.  Perhaps Deuteronomy 24:16 specifies something that is already an inherent part of Mosaic Law's commands because of this.  However, punishing a person for their sins is a foundational part of Biblical justice.

Now, the death of Jesus as described by the Bible is not a case of a random, unwilling person killed for the offenses of others and is not condemned by Deuteronomy 24.  The Jesus presented by the Bible is autonomously willing to give his life for the sake of others, and he even says this directly in John 10.  Multiple times in this chapter of John, he makes this point.  He first introduces the analogy of a benevolent shepherd before he identifies himself as the "good shepherd," adding that he lays down his life for his flock (John 10:11).  Shortly after comes a vital clarification about the giving of his own life: "No one takes it from me, but I give it of my own accord" (10:18).  The sacrifice of Jesus as the Bible describes it is a voluntary one.

Thus, within the context of Christian theology, the death of Jesus is quite different from an unwilling innocent getting arbitrarily killed for another being's sins.  That Mosaic Law condemns things that are far from possessing the cruelty of Roman crucifixion only further demonstrates that the death of Jesus was not a moral necessity out of justice, for nothing about his crucifixion or any crucifixion is just according to Biblical standards.  Either this fact about Christian moral theology or the open admission of Jesus that he chooses to give his life is enough to refute the notion that the sacrificial death of Jesus contradicts previous Biblical claims about justice (also, Jesus did not need to be crucified, only killed for the basic soteriological outcome to be achieved [2]).  This might be subjectively bothersome to some people, but nothing is true or false, probable or improbable, or knowable or unknowable because someone wants it to be that way.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/12/we-are-getting-what-our-deeds-deserve.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/04/jesus-did-not-have-to-be-crucified.html

The Conservative Tendency To Conflate Unrelated Issues With Communism

On social media and in conversations occuring in person, one of the most common conservative trends is to try to take any political, theological, or broader philosophical discussion to an emotionalism-fueled talk about communism or socialism.  An especially swift way to see them try this is bringing up anything having to do with "social justice," which, in itself, is just a part of justice--treating people as they deserve, which is the same regardless of happenstance factors like gender and race.  Almost anything having to do with true social justice, not even just the shallow and emotionalistic distortions of it pursued by many liberals, is automatically assumed to be dangerous by conservatives to the point that they will at least say that to support it is to invite the tyrrany of involuntary communism.

What does feminism--which is in truth a gender egalitarianism that opposes discrimination against women and men on the basis of their gender--or anti-racism have to do with North Korean tyranny or Chinese communism?  Absolutely nothing!  Communism as a general concept is not even represented solely by very particular modern applications of it by tyrants, much less by philosophically separate issues like gender equality or racism.  A conservative who misrepresents feminism as a destructive ideology (as opposed to the idiotic, sexist, hypocritical distortions of it endorsed by some) and then tries to blame its increasing mainstream popularity on "communism" has just broadcasted the irrationality of their worldview to every rationalist who hears or reads them.

Gender egalitarianism (feminism) is about rejecting the stereotypes of men and women and the other forms of discrimination that follow them, such as opposing the idea that women are incapable of leadership due to their supposed emotionalism and that men cannot be raped by women due to their supposedly constant desire for sex with almost any woman.  Nothing about this has to do with communal ownership of goods and property, as communism is a far broader, more economics-oriented political concept.  This is also true of anti-racism, which in itself is just about intellectually and socially ending discrimination based on skin color.  The selective, hypocritical application of this goal by some liberals and the cultural uproar around real or imagined racism does not mean that fighting racism is about paving the road for a communist regime.

Whether by sheer stupidity or intentional misrepresentation, conservatives almost always resort to calling any change away from the status quo part of some grand plan to plunge the United States into a North Korean or Chinese hellscape, but it might take only a few moments for any thorough rationalist to understand why something like gender egalitarianism is true [1] regardless of the motives of political elites and regardless of what a regime on another side of the world is reportedly like.  Conservatives, like the liberals they tend to rabidly despise, often rely on rhetorical red herrings to keep their fellow political party subscribers in fear of a conspiracy-like assumption about what the other party is trying to accomplish.  What else do they have to appeal to but assumptions or fictions when reason is not on their side?

Whether it is a satanic plot to introduce a communist dictatorship (though communism is morally neutral on its own) that conservatives might imagine around every corner or a fascist dictstorship where the disabled and minorities are gleefully killed that liberals might imagine around every corner, the conspiracies are utterly unprovable at best and slanderous, false, or improbable at worst.  It is conservatives that more regularly try to associate unrelated concepts for the sake of inspiring fear, though.  Very little actually has to do with communism, much less the form of communism that involves tyranny (the involuntary kind).  Almost everything conservatives desperately say is a sign of impending communist tyranny in America is totally unrelated on the level of core philosophical ideas.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/05/on-alleged-differences-between-men-and.html

Different Forms Of Objectification

There are as many ways to objectify others as there are aspects of a person to focus on to the exclusion of the others.  Sexual objectification gets the most attention on a societal level, but the many ways a person could disregard all but one part of a person's humanity extend far beyond mere sexuality.  Every different form of objectification dehumanizes someone by ignoring almost the whole of their personhood and individuality in favor of whatever part of them is convenient for one's desires.  Even someone who has not yet associated the term objectification with nonsexual reduction to one thing might have already feared that they are being trivialized to a single aspect of their existence.  They have at least somewhat struggled with the hurt this can bring.

Of course, focusing on a part of a person that is situationally useful is not the same as believing or pretending that this is all there is to them.  The latter is what constitutes objectification.  Any person is hypothetically capable of objectifting anyone else in any possible way, but anyone who cares about deep connections with others or acknowledging everyone's shared humanity could easily sidestep this problem without even putting any effort into specifically avoiding objectification.  Since objectification is in actuality a very extreme attitude towards someone because nothing but the pretense that someone is absolutely nothing but one aspect of themselves is truly objectification, it is not difficult for a sincere, rational person to reflect their desire for deep relationships in friendships, dating, or marriage.

If two people, in a romantic sense or a platonic one, truly love each other, they want to benefit each other without being loved merely because they offer benefits of various kinds.  To be useful to someone one loves but not loved only for one's usefulness, to be perceived as physically attractive but not reduced down to just aesthetic pleasure or sex appeal, to be personally intimate but not used as a source of attention only when it is convenient--these are things one might hope for in a close friendship or romantic partnership.  Where usefulness and appreciation is found and yet no person is thought of as no more than what they can offer the other party, there is the potential for a deep, fulfilling relationship based on truth instead of manipulation.

The only core relationships (friendships and romantic relationships, whether in dating or marriage) that will last for any reason beyond luck or happenstance are ones where these truths are understood, celebrated, and lived out.  In turn, the only relationships where these truths can be understood without assumptions or distortions except by happenstance are ones between rationalistic individuals.  Only through the necessary truths of reason and the self-awareness enabled through rationalism can relationships of the deepest and most lasting kinds develop intentionally.  In this context, two people can relish the opportunity to share their lives and learn about each other, embracing the full scope of the pair's individuality and humanity.

This inevitably involves seeing others as more than just a means to an end, even if some people are more deserving of love and attention than others.  Anyone who wants a friendship or romantic partnership that has substance (the only kind of friendship or romantic relationship worthy of pursuing) needs to embrace more than one aspect of the person they want to bond with.  Thankfully, this is easy when one truly cares about another person as an individual and can be easy even when only only cares about others in the more impersonal sense of honoring their human rights.  Mutuality and a genuine desire to know someone as well as epistemological limitations allow for is one of the most vital keys to relationships that, no matter how personal or deep or new they are, entail far more than just one person using another to pass time or appease selfish desires.

The Folly Of Vague Encouragement For People To Stand Up For What They Believe In

I, like many others, have heard the phrase "stand up for what you believe in" said with almost no context or nuance.  It is easy for someone to say this with the intention of encouraging other people to be honest with themselves and others about their worldviews.  However, left to itself, this statement is sheer folly.  The implied concept that might not actually be stated outright is that simply believing in something makes the ideology worth fighting for (at least figuratively, if not literally) as one goes about life.  Not only is this not true at all because truth is a prerequisite for beliefs to deserve to be lived out or have ultimate significance, but this statement is selectively used to promote broad tolerance up until the person making the claim gets subjectively uncomfortable.

If standing up for beliefs is commendable in and of itself, then someone like Hitler standing up for what he or she believes in must also be encouraged, lest someone oppose another person's sincere beliefs about reality.  Ask someone if this kind of belief should be promoted, and watch how quickly most of them suddenly rush to clarify a pathetically vague statement and begin making exceptions to their own proposed ideas!  Acknowledging that beliefs are invalid unless they are rational and true is the only way to truly avoid extending the generic praise for people living out their beliefs to its logical conclusion, which is just another manifestation of universal tolerance born from irrationalism.

Rationality is incomplete apart from alignment with rationalism, and rationalism is intertwined with the objectivity of truth, something that inherently conflicts with this notion that all beliefs not only equally deserve to be expressed, but also are all valid in at least some way just because they are beliefs.  Perhaps no one truly believes this in a perfectly consistent manner, as any pushback at all against another person's beliefs indicates that someone does not actually think that all beliefs merit encouragement.  I have never found a single person, not even the most confused and unintelligent of non-rationalists, who truly wants everyone to "stand up" for their beliefs when relevant examples (like that of Hitler's Nazism) are given.

There is no rationality, depth, thoughtfulness, or serious authenticity in this, only the most superficial kind of vague encouragement for someone to stand up for their beliefs.  This idea is for fools too shallow to think competently about reason and reality beyond recognizing that different people claim competing worldviews.  If someone truly thinks that everyone should speak up and act upon their beliefs, they cannot make arbitrary exceptions based upon personal preference or alleged societal wellbeing--not unless they want to leap into the hypocrisy that is already present in the hearts of everyone who thinks tolerance and thorough rationality go together.

An Accusation Against Women Who Enjoy Sexuality

It is outright stupid to think that prostitution is a profession that only women hold.  Men can be prostitutes, and the Bible itself acknowledges this and even mentions male and female prostitutes alike in some condemnations (Deuteronomy 23:17-18).  It is also outright stupid on the level of pure logic, social experience, and Biblical teachings (although reason alone can prove this without direct social stimulation to prompt it at a given moment) to think that women do not tend to experience strong heterosexual attraction.  Building off of these errors, it is even more idiotic to believe in them while thinking that a woman is a whore just for being a woman or for wanting to enjoy sexual acts as a woman.  Everything from daily conversations to entertainment reveal that there are some who at least accuse women of being a whore for unrelated things.

Of course, women are not whores for enjoying or wanting sex--or for being sexually attracted to multiple men (as if that is wrong as it is) or even being promiscuous, despite promiscuity being Biblically sinful.  This is because a whore is another term for a prostitute, and prostitution requires payment for sex!  It is this very component of the definition that is "conveniently" ignored by those who would accuse women of being whores for activities or desires that have nothing to do with prostitution.  Yes, words are constructs that ultimately mean whatever is meant by them, but the fact that men are generally not called whores for promiscuity while women are means that the term is used inconsistently outside of the only context it would culturally belong in otherwise.  While there is much sexism against men in American culture, this is an example of sexism against women.

The word "whore" does not even describe anyone at all, man or woman, who has not had sex with someone in exchange for payment.  This is all that prostitution is, and thus using it with this in mind is the only use of the word other than using it in a joking manner that does not involve trying to humiliate or manipulate someone by using a word in a context that it is not ultimately referencing.  Only assumptions and double standards, which inevitably reduce down to stupidity, keep this habit of some non-egalitarians alive.  Conservatives and liberals alike can be hell-bent on misrepresenting men as hypersexual monsters and women as disinterested in sexual acts with men, and the red herring accusation that women are whores for pursuing sex is one way to express these false ideas.

Women are no less or more sexual than men, for men and women are all individual humans.  Individuality and humanity are what we share; the only actual differences between men and women are found in their anatomy and physiology--the appearance, shape, and functioning of their bodies, and even these differences are overshadowed by the bodily similarities.  Any idea that contradicts these truths is false and any action that expresses something contrary to them is an expression of irrationality.  It is not even particularly difficult to recognize any of these logical facts about gender and the ramifications for sexuality.  It is even rather easy, when one has become a rationalist, to notice when other people talk or act as non-egalitarians and recognize their hypocrisies, assumptions, and selfishness for what they are.

Game Review--Darksiders III (Switch)

"Why did the Creator construct a universe teeming with... imperfection?  Misery?  Sin?  Among the scholars of both Heaven and Hell, this query is know as the Riddle of Sorrows... If sin is itself a part of the Grand Design, is not sin then, by definition, divine?"

--The Charred Council, Darksiders III

Each Darksiders game thus far has its own aesthetic identity or gameplay style.  The first is an excellent mixture of God of War and Legend of Zelda with partially-Christian lore, the second is more of an RPG, complete with dialogue options and loot, and the third seems heavily influenced by Dark Souls (then there is Genesis, a top-down co-op game).  Darksiders III is a departure from the less strategic and more frenetic style of combat in the previous entries.  Careful dodges and timely strikes are key to consistently surviving even encounters with many non-boss enemies.  The movements and fighting are still faster-paced than those of Dark Souls, so there is no pesky stamina bar to artificially increase the difficulty of dodging or fleeing.  There are other differences that make Darksiders III less punishing than Dark Souls and thus more accessible to general players.  Overall, the game is a unique and competent addition to the series--or at least the current versions of the game have less glitches than the original release.  As the gameplay evolves, the clever ways of portraying the Seven Deadly Sins as literal demonic beings and the eschatological backdrop also work in its favor as a continuation of the series' themes.

Production Values

With regard to the colors and smoothness of the animations, the graphics are a major success, with Fury, her Watcher, and the Seven Deadly Sins being a graphical success.  It is the periodic slowdown and sudden crashing of the game that gets in the way.  One of the two times the game actually crashed on me was while repeatedly fighting (and getting killed by) the demon Sloth. Since there were more enemies onscreen than ever before in this part, the likely reason is just that the game had to run more all at once.  The second time, the crash was sudden and not because there were more than 7-14 enemy units.  The graphics themselves are fine; the game just has trouble running everything from time to time.  Unlike the colors and environments, the soundtrack is largely repetitive in this case, as only a single core track tends go repeat throughout the time Fury travels the world outside of boss fights and story moments.  Darksiders III reportedly had a much smaller budget than the previous two games and almost never got made, though, so perhaps this is to blame for that.  Fury's voice actress and the dialogue between her character, the Seven Deadly Sins, and the Watcher assigned to her all still reflect the high quality of voice acting and writing the series usually has.

Gameplay

This is probably the most consistently difficult of the Darksiders games by far.  The camera and controls are similar, but the combat is more oriented towards slowly whittling away the health of enemies, especially the larger ones, as you make precise dodges and then land a hit or two before having to evade a blow that could remove a large amount of health from Fury.  The boss battles might have to be retried at least two to three times before avoiding their attacks becomes a smoother affair!  A new "Hollows" system also allows Fury to quickly switch between different elemental configurations, like flame or storm Hollows, that have their own secondary weapon and jump-related feature.  The returning character Ulthane can use various collectible items to upgrade the effectiveness of the weapons and arcane attacks associated with each Hollow.

These optional upgrades and the upgrades tied to the souls system in the game--yes, like in Dark Souls, enemies drop souls that are left where Fury dies--make the fights easier, but rarely easy to the point of not needing to actively dodge and be precise with attacks.  Thankfully, the souls do not disappear upon dying a second time before you can collect them, and they even can contain health refills too.  This is so very helpful when repeatedly dying in a boss fight: the souls will await your return.  As tough as the boss battles can be, like with the bosses or even lesser enemy fights of Metroid Dread or Dark Souls, the enemies in Darksiders III can become far more easy after reflection and experience help you adjust to the repeated patterns of whatever enemy is being faced.

Combat is not all there is to the game, though.  Opening shortcuts, discovering items like additional health refill slots and souls, and beating optional mini-bosses are all there to accomplish if you so desire.  There are also humans scattered around the world that can be teleported to Ulthane, the Maker introduced in the first Darksiders, who will give you a special item and enhance its effects as you send various numbers of humans to his safe haven.  It is in the best interest of players to explore the ravaged landscapes of Earth and rescue humans, as this will allow access to greater abilities that make surviving enemies much easier.  Just traveling around killing enemies can even give a large number of souls if enough of the open world is traversed.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

Fury, the most emotionally volatile of the Four Horsemen, finds herself summoned by the Charred Council to deal with the Seven Deadly Sins (personified as demons) as they rampage through Earth.  As angels and demons clash, the Seven Deadly Sins have little to no opposition from anyone else.  Fury's brother War has already started his century of confinement after being framed for starting the Endwar before the Seventh Seal was officially broken, and he insists that something has gone wrong with the universe before she hears the same from others again and again.  The quest to destroy the Sins also puts her in closer proximity to the humans she merely assumes have less value than herself simply because they lack her power.

Intellectual Content

From the opening cutscene to the end of the game, Darksiders III maintains the series tradition of exploring theological and broader philosophical ideas.  The "Riddle of Sorrows" spoken of in the opening cinematic directly brings up the "problem" of evil, going so far as to ask if sin is divine if it is a part of the Creator's world.  It is outright stupid that the creators of the game have actually insisted that there is no God in the world of Darksiders [1], when the Creator is even here spoken of in divine terms after two other games presented it as a true deity (if the Creator in Darksiders is really not God, then the game's own lore designers did an exceptionally fucking terrible job with conveying this through the worldbuilding and with conceiving this idea in particular)!  Of course, the very idea of sin being divinely supported or intended is philosophically incoherent.  An amoral deity leaves no room for evil because there is no such thing as good, and a morally good deity is the only possible standard for actual moral obligations, without which nothing is good or evil, only preferred or not preferred.

There are other substantial or unusual theological/philosophical aspects of this third installment, including how the Seven Deadly Sins themselves are presented.  Lust is not the stereotypical sexualized female, for instance.  Lust is a fully armored demon who tempts Fury with a lust for recognition and respect as a leader, not with a sexual encounter with an attractive female or male being.  While the Biblical use of the word lust to refer to covering someone else's spouse (which is neither the same as experiencing/enjoying sexual attraction towards them nor sexually desiring an unmarried or unegaged person, as many Christians and non-Christians fail to understand) has become one of the dominant uses of the word, lust actually could refer to an illicit desire for anything, a selfish desire to have what one does not deserve or what rightfully belongs to someone else.

Conclusion

Darksiders III is perfectly consistent with the lore and character development of the Horsemen throughout the series in spite of the controversy around it.  Ironically, War fought to clear his name of the slanderous charges that he started a war prematurely, and Death fought to bring humanity back to life; now Fury realizes that blind rage is not the rational or just way to live.  While the combat is different here, the protagonist's development as a character, as well as the broader lore and themes, perfectly mirrors the norms of the franchise's main installments.  Darksiders III is not a betrayal of anything the series has made its core.  It might be more difficult in some ways, but make it to the end of Fury's chapter in the grand apocalyptic story, and you will have seen (whether it is accepted or not) how it reflects the subgenre experimentation each main Darksiders game has and further builds the creative lore of this universe.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  Gore is nowhere to be found, but attacks with whip-like blades and other weapons are an integral part of the experience.

 2.  Profanity:  The rare profanity includes words like "bastards."

[1].  https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2011/06/10/serve-in-heaven-or-rule-in-hell-exploring-the-lore-of-darksiders.aspx%3famp