A Small Government

The only Biblical form of government is not a democracy, but a theocracy, where God is ultimately the ruler even if the optional presence of a human monarch is included (Deuteronomy 17:14-20).  The government under Christian theonomy is indeed rather small, being focused on one thing for the most part: enacting the penalties for criminal sins, which God has affirmed is the role of political bodies (Romans 13:1-4), though these social structures must abide specifically by Yahweh's commands to be just (Deuteronomy 4:5-8, Matthew 5:17-19, Acts 24:14, Romans 7:7).  The moral relativism and utterly cruel penalties (life imprisonment, for a contemporary example) even many Christians unwittingly believe in to distance themselves from Biblical justice are neither Biblical nor rational; moral relativism is logically impossible either way and only subjective preference or cultural norms would drive people to endorse something like prison altogether.

No one deserves to be punished by human governments for coveting/lust, for instance, though it is a sin (Exodus 20:17) that would still Biblically deserve the annihilation of the second death, or divine justice (2 Peter 2:6).  Not every sin is deserving of human intervention to punish the error, so this drastically limits the scope of Biblical theonomy from what some people might imagine a Christian theocracy would be like--it would absolutely not entail a government that penalizes people for things like mere lying, unjustified divorce, reading the Quran (which is not even a sin on Christianity since it can be done without ideological allegiance to Islam), and so on for various real or imagined sinful deeds.  There would also be no practice of elaborate tortures by the state in such a society.  In these regards, a truly Biblical government is already much smaller than many might assume.

Even so, having a small government only for the sake of having a small government is asinine, yet I have known many Christians who, on the basis of assumptions, think this is the chief purpose of government in itself.  As if a miniscule government could not still be unjust by what it does and does not punish or by how it does so!  Besides, if a minimal size is ideal, and the government should be as small as possible, then the optimal government would be run by a single person, who almost certainly would be exhausted and overwhelmed by all of the duties of their role as the sole leader.  I have met many proponents of "small government" that claim to be Christians, mostly conservative rather than libertarian, even as they might support government activities that ironically go beyond the Biblical scope of a just political framework.  Of course, they almost always are against actual Biblical theonomy on the basis of philosophical misunderstandings (such as that Jesus opposed Yahweh's commands), personal dislike, or simple unfamiliarity.

Any conservative who thinks they long for small government would have to be some variant of a libertarian in order to not be a hypocrite on this point alone, not that many traditions of America or other countries correspond with Biblical prescriptions anyway, and not that anything being traditional, which is a vital part of general conservatism, makes it philosophically true or morally good.  All the same, a small government is Biblical, just not in the way some Christians believe.  A Biblical government has none of the bloated departments or useless tax-absorbing programs that some countries have today or have had throughout the historical record.  Again, its purpose is to enact justice by punishing sins that qualify as crimes according to Yahweh's revelation with the right methods.

A small government is a byproduct of the Biblical structure, since many contemporary functions of government are excluded, yet a small size is not specifically the goal in itself or even one of the most important aspects of such a system.  Justice is the objective.  What is just might not always be what a person or collective culture wishes it was.  Someone might wish for their adulterous spouse or their child's murderer to be tortured for days instead of merely killed (Deuteronomy 22:22, Exodus 21:12-14).  Someone might wish for someone who robbed them of their life savings to be sexually abused in prison instead of monetarily repaying the amount lost at a fixed ratio dependent upon the situation (Exodus 22:1-4, Leviticus 6:1-5).  Someone might wish that uttering a racist comment rather than committing the likes of murder or kidnapping (Exodus 21:16) on the basis of race would deserve execution.  Someone might wish for the gratuitous and superficial trappings of modern political systems like America's to be mandatory because they are used to them.  A Biblical government is small, but its purpose is extraordinarily clear in the Bible and its exact obligations are obvious.

Deception In The Workplace

No one can be deceived unless they actually believe in things they could not prove in the first place, so there is a way to avoid all deception.  It requires a total devotion to rationalism in order to avoid assumptions, though, something the majority of people are too emotionalistic and intimidated to ever actually do.  Even if a person prevents themselves from being deceived by not believing something is true because of hearsay or perception, others might still lie to them in hopes of deceiving them, and the workplace can be riddled with attempted deception at the very least.  No workplace is a den of lies by necessity, as being an employer or an employee does not mean someone will be dishonest one way or another.  Everything from revenge to desperation could nonetheless motivate either party to tell lies that they would despise if they came from the other side.  While employers who cling to the tenets of American capitalism (which is not the sole possible version of capitalism) might think lying is a morally legitimate expression of their workplace power  because it can benefit them, and employees who are only insincerely concerned with morality might lie to employers thinking their lower position on the hierarchy justifies it.

The ways employers could deceive or mislead current or potential employees are plentiful: they could provide false pay information in job listings, say one thing in casual conversations and then claim they never said such a thing, promise something they do not intend on carrying out, and so on.  Because of the possibility that they could be lied to, whenever they can ensure it, it is ideal for employees to secure written statements about everything from compensation increases to promised promotions to other favorable changes.  The same is true when an employer openly admits to engaging in invalid discrimination, misleading workers, or underpaying them.  Even if a dishonest employer or other people in the company bent on protecting the lie, it would be much easier to expose what they are doing if there is an email or a printed--and perhaps signed--document making the promise or admitting to the exploitation.  There is more to deception in the workplace than just malicious employers alone, however.

There is a kind of worker who, like the kind of employer they despise (though they might wrongly think that simply being an employer by necessity means someone is cruel), is really only interested in doing whatever feels right to them or whatever is convenient for their own goals.  At the same time that they rage against deceitful employers, they are willing to lie to employers as if the moral permissibility of an action is determined by whether or not it is directed at workers.  Full of hypocrisy, pettiness, egoism, and general stupidity, an employee like this is only different from a deceptive employer when it comes to their positions within a company.  Each of them would maliciously lie to the other if only it meant they could personally benefit in some way, even just in the sense of feeling emotionalistic satisfaction that they have.  If it is morally wrong for an employer to lie to their workers, since lying is still being practiced by dishonest employees who use deception as a tool of revenge, then it would also obviously be immoral for workers to do the same in return.

Now, employers do not need to hear everything about an employee's situation, and there are many ways to actually avoid dishonesty while still keeping personal circumstances or directly work-related details out of a conversation.  Being selective and precise with wording can even make it seem as if one is implying something that is not at all being suggested.  Employees can use this to their advantage.  After all, one is not forcing the other party to make assumptions or stating things that are not true; one is just admitting certain things or refraining from drawing attention to others.  Non-rationalists will almost certainly make assumptions in response, but it is not as if a rational person wants them to make assumptions or made them do so, as they are only trying to strategically navigate conversations in such a way that they neither lie nor bring attention to something the employer might misunderstand anyway.

Non-rationalists are also prone to fiercely commit to beliefs based upon subjective perceptions and personal gain.  As such, it would not be unusual if they were to always think that it is permissible for them to lie regardless of whether they have the role of worker or employer.  An irrationalistic employee who resents their employer for lying about compensation or policies would almost certainly lie if they were to rise to the same position.  Inversely, those who deceive and otherwise trample upon their workers would almost certainly oppose the practice if it was them in the position of the employee being lied to.  Too stupid to understand that consistency is a requirement for philosophical validity and too selfish to care about consistency, so many people one might encounter or hear about in the American workplace are hypocrites who would do whatever it takes to obtain or preserve power and condemn almost anyone else for doing the same.  Deception in the workplace is not something only people in one position or another can practice.

The reCAPTCHA Test

It can be triggered as part of a website's default procedures or by rapid activity on the user's part: the CAPTCHA's (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) reCAPTCHA forms are likely familiar to many moderners who use the Internet.  A set of tiles with images appears onscreen, and someone has to click on all the images that, for instance, contain bicycles in order to be marked as a human rather than a software or robot.  Alternatively, a box holding an even smaller box to be checked next to the phrase "I'm not a robot" might appear, and the human user is to use their computer mouse or their device's touch screen to click the box and pass the test.

This is in place to thwart bot activity, the online doings of an automated program.  Mere boxes meant to be clicked on by human users of desktops, laptops, or smartphones are ultimately inadequate as an attempt to epistemologically distinguish between robots and humans (really, anything is in an ultimate sense).  Either a software could be programmed to click the box or a physical machine could perform the action if an android or similar robot was to grasp the computer mouse.  However, the goal of reCAPTCHA is not to just use the clicking of the box as the criteria for treating a user as a human--it is the measurement of mouse movement before someone clicks the box that is used as the criteria.

A human user is very, very likely to make small deviations from a straight line to the box to be checked.  It is not that a person is moving their mouse cursor, if a desktop or laptop is being used, in broad, erratic spiral motions as they move it towards where they need to click for the reCAPTCHA, but that very small, perhaps unnoticed "imperfections" in the mouse movement are a very probable indicator of a human user.  Taking time to move the mouse as opposed to having a bot automatically click it is another evidence that a human is the user--and yes, when I say evidence, I mean something that falls short of logical proof, a fallible but probabilistic support.

A bot could of course replicate more "human" habits here.  It is obvious (to a genuine rationalist that knows consistency with logical axioms dictates this) that it is logically possible for a machine or software to hypothetically move the onscreen cursor with more erratic trajectories that do not travel in straight lines.  All it would take is for it to be programmed that way and then execute its function without error, or, if there was a genuinely conscious software entity [1], to adapt accordingly with intentionality behind the adjustment.  As for a physical android or other machine rather than an immaterial program, sentient or not, of course such a robot could--whether it is the result of a deterministic programming or conscious choice on the machine's part (something that could never be proven)--wiggle a mouse in a way that is treated as "human".

The difference between software and hardware is that a program runs on a machine and is intangible, while a machine is the collection of physical components which can be engineered to run software.  Either a software without a separate machine body or a literal machine, even a wind-up one, could pass the modern evolutions of the CAPTCHA test with ease under certain conditions.  If an android a person directly stares at was realistic enough, no outward distinction would be discernible between it and an actual human.  This is all the more the case with the online activity of a distant user whose face and behaviors cannot be seen by mere website activity anyway.  Probabilistic evidence is enough to act as if an entity is a person or software for reCAPTCHA purposes, but only a fool would think they can have absolute certainty, which can only be derived from utter logical necessity with no epistemological assumptions being made, that an online presence is due to a human, an automated bot, a conscious software, or a physical machine directly using hardware to access the Internet.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2021/07/artificial-intelligence-joining-of-two.html

Joseph's Mercy

Mercy can be righteousness in that righteousness is moral goodness, though what it cannot be is just, or deserved.  No one deserves mercy because mercy is, sparing someone from a morally justified punishment (not from over-punishment, but true justice), not treating people as they deserve.  If the deserved treatment for a sinner is to die in hell, as 2 Peter 2:6 teaches, then mercy is not sending someone to hell.  If the deserved treatment for someone who steals animals is repayment at a given ratio (Exodus 22:1, 4), then it is not mercy to oppose killing them, but it is merciful to forgive their restitution.  If the deserved treatment of a woman grabbing a man's genitals outside of a consensual sexual encounter is the loss of her hand (Deuteronomy 25:11-12), it could not be merciful to not grab her own genitals in the same manner, but it would be to forgo the amputation out of love or pity.

Within Christian philosophy, mercy is good because God is merciful, and God is the grounding of righteousness.  To be merciful for correct reasons, not for its potential emotionalistic appeal or to fit in with church conditioning or because one thinks mercy is mandatory, is to be like Yahweh (Luke 6:36).  To be merciless cannot be evil, however, because the opposite treatment is never deserved.  To be unjust through cruelty is immoral, but not the mere withholding of mercy.  Acting towards people as they deserve is the opposite of morally erring even if they despise the fact that what they deserve might not be pleasant!  To not kill a murderer (Exodus 21:12-14) is mercy if done for the right reason, yet this penalty is Biblically right, rather than any sort of extended torture, a lesser penalty, or no penalty at all.  A murderer might not like this, but their approval has nothing to do with whether it would be true or false, as with anything.

In the very first chapter of the New Testament, we are given an example of someone who is presented as merciful.  Faced with an impending marriage to a woman who is ultimately pregnant via miraculous means instead of sexual immorality (Matthew 1:18), although he is not initially told this, he is said to want to divorce Mary quietly (1:19) instead of having her executed (Deuteronomy 22:23-24).  Joseph is said to be righteous in some translations, but in this situation, though it would have only seemed as if Mary had committed a sin, his intention was to be merciful.  The penalty of death for having sex with someone engaged to another person was not what he wanted to enforce.  He could not have been just by this if what seemed to be the case was true.  He could still be a morally upright person for how he would have handled the situation.

Joseph would not automatically be obligated to have her killed even if she had sinned since Mosaic Law does not forbid mercy.  It is just that mercy should not be something a person always holds to without ever allowing or pursuing justice in any scenario.  It is not valid to have it as a ceaseless default goal.  Choosing to rightfully impose justice on others is not evil.  It is what one should do, short of opting for mercy for philosophically valid reasons.  Of course, if something is just, it is not and cannot be evil.  Yahweh does not change (Malachi 3:6, James 1:17).  The man or woman who sleeps with someone engaged to another person from outside the relationship still deserves to be killed, albeit not with the methods of many pagan societies, as opposed to the quicker, less brutal methods prescribed in the Bible.  Mary would not have deserved this fate because she had not committed any corresponding sin, but the penalty itself is universally righteous when applicable according to the Bible (Matthew 5:17-19).

This is true and it is also true that the Bible presents Joseph as a good person and his mercy as an expression of that--as something that is in no way contrary to the total keeping of Mosaic Law.  It is not until after Joseph had already settled on a divorce without great publicity an angel tells him in a dream that he should proceed with his marriage Mary and that she has conceived through the Holy Spirit (Matthew 1:20-21).  The desire to be merciful, though, would have spared her life otherwise, and this is not described as some moral shortcoming of Joseph.  No, if this was the case, it would mean God is in the wrong for every time he shows mercy or longs for reconciliation to sinners, and yet it is logically impossible for God, whether the real uncaused cause is Yahweh or some other being, to be immoral.  God is either amoral and thus everything is also amoral or his nature is what makes something good.

Not Having Realized Something

Someone who has never realized that logical axioms are inherently true or even started to think about them, short of being a literal baby or in an ongoing coma, can only be irrational, stupid, a fool.  Anything they believe could only be an assumption since absolute certainty (the requirement for knowledge) is solely attainable if one recognizes foundational truths that could not have been any other way--yet everything about reality hinges on logical axioms, which are true independent of the rest of reality, so that no person can get through life without constantly relying on the very necessary truths they neglect, misunderstand, or perhaps outright reject.

Since to be rational one must not be irrational, and one cannot be rational without grasping the intrinsic truths of reason free of assumptions, not having realized logical axioms are inherently true automatically requires that someone is utterly stupid.  As they are self-evident (to deny or doubt them can only be done while relying on them, and they are true independent of recognition), there is no excuse for not discovering them.  This is not so with a great many other miscellaneous truths that are not metaphysically true in themselves or epistemologically self-evident like logical axioms.  For instance, the particular fact that it is logically possible for grass to have naturally been perceived to be burgundy red instead of green is a necessary truth, and it is connected to core metaphysics, but no one is irrational for not having thought of this.  It is not the actual color of grass that is important even then, but that there is no logical necessity in it having to be or have been green.

Likewise, a person could know logical axioms (that their falsity requires the veracity and thus they are true in themselves, even if they have not realized all the ramifications of this) and been a genuine rationalist for years without realizing that a bizarre animal found on Earth might be a stranded extraterrestrial species; we would have no way of proving or disproving this since both options are logically possible.  In this case and the prior one, the person still has not believed in anything that contradicts what is true and they have not assumed anything; whether that concept is true or false or knowable or unknowable, they have not believed anything apart from the basis of logical proof.  They have also grasped logical axioms without confusing them for divine creations or human constructs or scientific laws, accepting them as intrinsic truths that do not depend on anything else.  Their status of not discovering, with or without prompting, certain secondary truths does not make them unintelligent.

Again, this only necessitates that there is some issue or truth that they had not thought about/of at a certain point, but not something it is erroneous or delusional for a person to have not discovered.  Someone who has not realized logical axioms for what they are, with or without prompting by another person and especially if they have been alive for decades, is an intellectual insect that has not recognized the only things that are by necessity inherently true, on which all else in reality and thus their life already hinges on whether they like it or not.  It is not irrationality on its own to not recognize that, up to a point since some things are logically impossible and there is a finite amount of possible permutations of factors, it is possible for people to have wildly different afterlives that scarcely resemble each other's at all as opposed to the standard misconceptions of the binary Christian heaven and hell, or that it is necessarily true that God's existence does not require that he even has any awareness of his creation.

Other than being true and a matter of core metaphysics and epistemology, there is personal gain to be found in discovering what it is and is not irrational to have not realized.  It can indeed be liberating for people who might gravitate towards feeling insecure about their philosophical capacity even though they have both realized the fundamental truth of logical axioms and avoided assumptions.  Even if a rationalistic person was to feel stupid for not having realized a given logical fact (about necessity or possibility) that is not self-evident and is also among the many miscellaneous things that a rationalist might happen to focus on, meaning that it is also one of many miscellaneous things they might not end up focusing on, they are not.  If someone knows axioms and embraces them and makes no assumptions, they are perfectly rational.

The Anti-Trinitarianism Of John 10

The book of John is in no way affirmative of the Trinitarianism one might hear ascribed to it.  By Trinitarianism, I mean the notion that Yahweh, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are different "persons" but are all equally God.  It is the logically impossible (contradictory) doctrine of "three in one" without multiple personality disorder that many who identify as Christians adhere to.  If Jesus is literally the same as Yahweh, any differences in presentation are mere illusions, yet this is neither what classical Trinitarians posit nor is taught in John or other books of the Bible.  John 10 is among the chapters of the former which some assert teaches that Jesus is equal to or synonymous with Yahweh, but there is not just one verse that refutes this.

In John 10:25-30, Jesus distinguishes between himself and the Father by saying things such as that he does miracles in his Father's name (10:25) and that his Father has given his sheep to him (10:29).  By saying that he and the Father are one (10:30), Jesus would not have to be saying they are the same metaphysical being, as some assume, but only that he is in alignment with his Father.  Indeed, the very verses right before this clearly do not equate Jesus with Yahweh.  Later Jesus says that the Father is greater than him and makes obvious statements that exclude claiming he is the same being (14:28), and this is what John 10 really teaches.

Some of the listening Jews grab rocks to stone Jesus at this point (10:31).  They insist that they are stoning Jesus for claiming to be God (10:33), but he said no such thing here!  These Jewish opponents of Christ misinterpret his statements, likely "I and the Father are one" in particular, the same way irrationalistic Christians like modern evangelicals have.  The difference is that these specific Jews are against Jesus on the basis of this error and many Christians think favorably of Jesus based on the very same error.  How ironic it is that the same false and easily avoidable misunderstanding of John 10 is treated so differently by these two groups that are both heretical by Biblical standards.

Jesus responds by pointing out that Psalm 82:6 refers to mere mortals as "gods" (John 10:34-35).  Actually, he says here that if true, Scripture cannot be broken, taking Psalm 82:6 much more seriously than even many people today might.  Adding that if ordinary humans are "divine," the Son of God would be all the more so (10:35-36), Christ quickly distinguishes yet again between himself and the Father.  He tells his audience to not listen to him unless he does what his Father does (10:37) and that his miracles are evidence that he is in the Father and the Father is in him (10:38).  John 10 is absolutely anti-Trinitarian in the sense of conventional Trinitarianism, like the rest of the book, presenting Jesus as lesser than and blatantly distinct from Yahweh.

Elsewhere in the book of John, Jesus is differentiated from the Father (such as John 5:19-30), is called God's begotten Son, a phrase that would even suggest Jesus is created by the Father (3:16), and is never claimed to have been past-eternal along with Yahweh in spite of existing before Abraham (8:58) and the cosmos itself (1:1-3).  Over and over Jesus says he is not the one who sent him (as in 12:44-45, 49).  For instance, in John 14:21, Jesus states that whoever obeys his commands is loved by the Father and also by Christ, and in John 14:24, he says that whoever does not love him (Jesus) will not obey his teachings, and that these words come not from him, but from the Father.  Trinitarianism in any sense other than one entailing multiple metaphysically separate entities is contrary to the Bible's plain doctrines and thus heretical.

Legal Marriage

If governments are created by people, formed when groups of varying sizes come together to establish laws and hierarchies, they are by necessity social constructs because they are not there apart from cultural forces.  A political body could unify in recognition of logical truths, moral obligations, scientific laws, or other metaphysical things that are true or that seem to be true, serving that which is transcendent or at least not dependent on a politician's or citizen's whim.  Criminal "justice" is not made so by democracy or autocracy or any other structure of government.  Forming a marriage, in spite of the traditions inside and outside the church associated with it, ultimately has nothing to do with the government unless people allow theirs to.

Any law or norm established by a government is thus just that: a mere law or norm treated as authoritative by irrationalists.  A thing could be legalized or criminalized, and it is only the real obligation that the law might happen to overlap with which is valid on its own.  Laws are invalid on their own without perfect overlap with real obligations, and rationalistic caution is by no means what marks any of the reported legal systems of the world.  As a consequence of this, legal marriage and even all of its secondary traditions in various countries are looked up to by some as moral necessities for romantic partnership.

Legal marriage is inevitably a social construct.  It could be nothing else.  Since it is a legal marriage, it depends on human law, and human law depends on government, and government is only formed by bodies of people.  There is no legal marriage without some sort of society, making it nothing but a social construct, but there could be lifelong romantic relationships without any governments at all.  Someone can choose to pursue it free of assumptions because they personally want to legally formalize/express their commitment to their partner.  This is not erroneous.  What does not follow is that if romantic commitment to a partner is good, then legal marriage is a moral necessity.

As strictly logical truths, these things do not depend on any examples of how real couples interact or on subjective emotions or on the teachings of the Bible (which are actually in full agreement with these logical facts).  They are true irrespective of all such things.  Anything established by a legal system is nothing more than that even if it is in alignment with something true and deep and good.  A moral obligation to remain committed to one's partner for life outside of specific exceptions would not be made true by human preferences, and any law or cultural norm would be irrelevant to its nature.  Legal marriage simply is not important in almost any of the ways it is held up to be.

What Is A Cult?

Truth is what reflects reality, not the words for those things.  As always, one must look past words to reason and ideas when discovering or savoring a truth.  This is as much the case with the nature of cults and religions.  What distinguishes one from the other?  Some religious people might consider every religion other than theirs, as well as the adherents, cultish simply because it is not their own, though this is an arbitrary and self-based approach to realities that do not depend on perception or preference.  Others might consider a cult a group that is bent on some destructive end or think of a non-mainstream religion as a cult, whereas they would think of something like Christianity or Islam as a religion.  Is it mere popularity that differentiates the two?

Many examples of what are called cults relate to the following of a charismatic, secretive, or powerful individual, such as Jim Jones of Peoples Temple and Bonnie Nettles of Heaven's Gate.  In some cases, they might be devoted to syncretism of a dominant religion like Christianity, or at least the cultural distortions of it, and some extraneous or even contradictory worldview.  With the philosophy of Jim Jones, the facade of Christianity was used to attract followers to something that combined genuine Biblical egalitarianism of race and class with the pseudo-deification of Jones himself, among other things.  However, if allegiance to a person or their proposed philosophical system makes an ideology cultish, then many religions are cults as they are.

Islam would be a cult because of its reverence for Mohammed, Mormonism because of its founder Joseph Smith, Catholicism for its adoration of Mary, and Christianity for its emphasis on Jesus--though, unlike many insist, Christianity is first and foremost [1] about things like ultimate truth, Yahweh as the uncaused cause, and moral obligations rather than mere Christological salvation from deserved annihilation in hell.  However, the figures associated with these religions are either long dead or, if Christianity is true, have ascended to heaven in the case of Jesus (Acts 1).  Their religions persist or thrive as active movements after their death.  Famed religions are usually fairly organized in their theology, but the same could be true of a cult's theology.

Jesus himself would have had similarities to many more recent cult founders, such as appeal to the poor, a level of very controversial charisma, and the gradual acquisition of followers.  This does not erase the evidence for the historical presence, death, and resurrection of Jesus, with the writings from the likes of Tacitus and Josephus pointing to the former two and the lack of a body pointing to the latter of the three.  There is something far more important than whether or not there even is a difference between a religion and cult besides the exact philosophical stances each respective one entails.  That is if any of them are actually true.

Since most religious tenets beyond the basic existence of an uncaused cause, the creation of the cosmos, and so on cannot actually be proven (as with scientific laws and their ongoing metaphysical uniformity) despite whatever evidence Christianity boasts, the most one could do is identify contradictions in miscellaneous worldviews that make them logically impossible because they would defy self-necessary axioms.  This can reveal that some "cults" misrepresent ideologies like Christianity that they are claimed to endorse.  It can also reveal that religions like Islam contradict their own tenets or affirm logically impossible things [2].  This does not mean there is a difference of any ultimate kind between a religion and a cult as opposed to different kinds of religions and cults.

The word cult is frequently reserved for fringe philosophies and movements associated with them.  Perhaps used to promote fear or mockery, this word can be chosen out of emotionalistic panic or avoidable confusion about a system's real concepts.  It is this often negative or dismissive connotation that leads some people to believe cults are different from religions for some arbitrary factor or something that would not even apply to all of what they would respectively call religions and cults.  Like faith [3] or pornography [4], there is not one thing that might be meant in society by the term cult, and it is logically necessary truths about concepts that matter instead of petty linguistic constructs.  No other core truth is ultimately altered because of this: all religions are cults depending on what is meant by the words.  What is of significance is whether any religion is true.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2022/02/the-gospel.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/03/quranic-punishment-surah-538.html

[3].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-evangelical-misconception-of-john.html

[4].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-truth-about-erotic-media-part-1.html

The Null: It Only Gets Worse

If something like the Null as presented in Stephen King's Revival is real, no one who dies receives rest, reward, or pleasure of a moral or amoral kind; everyone is destined for misery after death.  The way the end of the novel describes the Lovecraftian hellscape, religious martyrs would be accelerating their entrance to a very different afterlife than they likely imagined or hoped for.  Soldiers, like the Spartans or Vikings, thirsting for the blood of others or eager to have their own lives ended in battle would be catapulting people, possibly including themselves, into something far worse than mere warfare.  People who commit suicide might be hoping for soul oblivion, and with it the eternal cessation of pain, only to find themselves forcibly summoned to the Null's slavery and torture, surrounded by the ant-like servants of Mother and her fellow eldritch abominations.

In the story, Mother exhibits telepathic control over many people exposed to a "secret electricity" that is underpinned by a greater cosmic energy present in the Null, driving them to suicide.  Suicide in other contexts can seem subjectively appealing to some people precisely because it ends suffering in this life, at the very least.  If there is an afterlife of any kind, there is consciousness after death, even if it is only reincarnation.  Consciousness, however, necessitates the possibility of suffering.  Without a mind that perceives, there would be nothing to have the capacity for pain, so whether a mind is integrated with a resurrected body (or a new body) or exists separated from a corporeal shell, the possibility of an afterlife by logical necessity entails the possibility of suffering.  Not all logically possible afterlives involve such agony, and certainly not the New Jerusalem of Revelation (the Biblical hell does not torment people endlessly).

The Null or any similar afterlife would still mean that no one who kills themself has really escaped torment.  They have only entered something presented as far worse than the most terrible things of earthly life.  Yes, the connections to Stephen King's multiverse in Revival, including the references to the locations of Jerusalem's Lot and Castle Rock and very probable ties to the Dark Tower of the literary ontology, mean the work is intertwined with stories like The Shining where there are other afterlives.  This means that not everyone goes to the Null upon death as the protagonist assumes (and he does merely assume it from a brief glimpse), the dimension is an illusion crafted by Mother to terrify characters Jamie and Charles (or one brought about by contact with the special electricity), or it is a temporary place where some or all people go to die again before potentially being sent to a better afterlife.  Jamie, who outlives Charles, still would not know what is the case until he dies.

Yes, it is also entirely possible that there really is an afterlife resembling what Jamie assumes the Null to be, unlike various ideas of a heaven or calm universalist transcendence.  Suicide might liberate people from suffering one way or another in real life, either by bringing about the end of the soul altogether or springing it into a blissful afterlife.  It also might not.  One could not know unless one was omniscient (or at least free of human epistemological limitations about the future and the afterlife) what, if anything, would await one's mind after the death of the body, whether nonexistence or a peaceful trek through matterless space or resurrection of the body where it is reunited with its soul or something more cruel than even the unbiblical misconceptions of eternal conscious torment in Yahweh's hell.  However dire and painful this life is, suicide cannot be proven to not lead to something far worse; either philosophical option is logically possible because neither contradicts self-necessary axioms, such as the inherent truth of one thing logically following or not following from another.

Pursuing suicide as a means of escaping this life's terrors is therefore not guaranteed to actually accomplish anything more than just that, which might lead to suffering of a much greater and longer kind.  In Revival, Jamie is told by Mother that the pain and subjugation will not lead to death or rest.  He has no access to the evidence seen in other novels by King that this afterlife is not universalist, that it is a total illusion, or that it is only a temporary afterlife, whichever combination of possibilities is applicable.  The novel ends with him awaiting his death.  "Come to me and live forever," Mother allegedly whispers to him.  As far as seems to be true to Jamie, suicide only figuratively throws him out of the frying pan and into the fire, where he will eternally reside.  It is not that the Null of all things is likely to exist despite the logical possibility.  It is that ending the pain of this life does not necessarily end all pain and we cannot have the opportunity to know until our own individual deaths.

Possibility Is Knowable Ahead Of Observation

The people, scientists or "laypersons", who conclude that they can know causality from correlation are in error already [1], but those who engage in an observational study, though there are inherent hearsay components when it comes to communication between the scientific observers and to the public, and think that their experiences are what show that a causal link between two things/events is possible thoroughly misunderstand possibility.  Only one thing in itself dictates what is possible: consistency with logical necessities like axioms.  Since axioms cannot be false [2], they must be true, and so anything that does not contradict them is either true or possible, while anything that does exclude them can only be false.

Does the artificial sweetener aspartame potentially cause cancer?  Does that new medication have a potential risk of triggering heart palpitations?  Of course they possibly have these effects, as all of this is a matter of simply not contradicting logical axioms or other necessary truths, and no one needs sensory experience to realize this.  Still, a certain kind of idiot believes that an empirical study, which is incapable of ever epistemologically proving a metaphysical causal link to begin with, though it can reveal degrees of probability, is necessary to realize this.  There would be nothing pointing to a particular correlation between events and thus probability of causation apart from empirical observation, which has no guarantee of not being illusory; all truths and possibilities are still a matter of logical necessity and consistency.

It only takes recognition of what does or does not logically follow from something, in this case consistency with axioms, and a moment or two of reflection on this topic to realize that possibility of a causal connection is not metaphysically determined or epistemologically revealed by a study, much less by hearsay afterward presented to the public about a study.  Of course, since sources make claims inconsistent as it is, and new research can support or point away from a previously proclaimed scientific "certainty" or probability, the person who believes that something is possible because of a study is not just stupid, but he or she is also going to, if consistent, shift between believing something is possible or impossible as often as some source they subjectively find persuasive says so.

Any concept can immediately be known with absolute certainty to be possible or impossible through the aforementioned criterion.  With phenomena in the natural world (by natural I mean physical here, so any artificial substance like aspartame would still be part of this), everything is by necessity constrained/governed by the separate laws of logic, and while possibility does not mean that a given correlation or causation is true of nature, whether something could or could not be true is knowable without going out to see what perceptions of events are reported by the senses.  This is just as true of receiving hearsay, which has its own epistemological deficiencies, that in turn reports what someone else experienced.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2019/07/correlative-relationships.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2021/03/the-epistemological-and-metaphysical.html

The Impossibility Of Thinking Exclusively With Words

It is logically possible for one person to think using mental imagery, for another person to think using words whether or not they hear them in their mind, for another person to think by relying on abstract recognition of reason and concepts with no accompanying mental imagery or audio, and for still another person to alternate between all of these methods of cognition.  Nothing about one person thinking in such a manner necessitates that anyone else does as well.  People who think using language to help them focus on ideas, either routinely or on a selective basis, must avoid the erroneous stance that thinking requires language.  Even a person who constantly thinks using words, whether a rationalist or not, is thinking using more than language itself.

Otherwise, a person could not even know what they mean by the words they are using in their mind as an aid or a springboard for thinking, for they would only be thinking about an arbitrary assortment of symbols and sounds and not the concept beyond them.  In turn, they could not know logical truths, that is, the inherent necessary truths of reason, which do not depend on thought or language and can be known without any linguistic prompting or assistance.  Indeed, no one could know what language is and is not or how to use it if it was not for already knowing or having the capacity to think.  It would be impossible to assign words to any ideas if language was necessary to think.  No one could have ever acquired or invented a language after being born if this was the case since they could never think prior to this in order to do so!

I do not mean that people, the vast majority of whom are not rationalists and thus not rational, can know anything apart from rationalism as long as the matter is basic or trivial enough, as if the typical person actually "knew" anything when they learned languages in their youth.  To know, one cannot assume, and any belief not wholly rooted in necessary truths like logical axioms or other things which follow from other concepts in themselves is only an assumption.  The non-rationalist masses have only the capacity for knowledge they have not yet obtained, for a person cannot know anything at all unless they have grasped the necessary truths of logical axioms that all other truths, knowable or unknowable, hinge on, so that they recognize the very foundations of reality and possess absolute certainty.

Nothing is known through the illusion of comprehension that assumptions can offer, though non-rationalists arbitrarily find miscellaneous ideas subjectively persuasive wholly aside from logical necessity and thus epistemological proof.  Only a rationalist can know anything.  It is just that language cannot be understood except in light of concepts, not the other way around, and concepts can only be truly understood through reason's necessary truths that dictate and govern the very nature of all things.  Without thinking of some concept they have one way or another associated with the word, whether they say the word out aloud or merely think of its sound or phonetic structure in their mind, a person could not think any particular thing using words.

By habit, some people might come to think using language, though they are still relying on things other than words to engage in thought as it is.  This could be a very normal and familiar phenomenon for them, though it is false that one person thinking in words, whatever the extent of their reliance on this, means another person does the same.  It is an even graver error to confuse words for the ideas beyond the words or for the thoughts themselves by which a person grasps the concepts or, all the more asininely, for the necessary truths of reason themselves that transcend all besides themselves.  Language is nothing more, as I love to emphasize to fools and rationalists alike, than an arbitrary construct used for precise communication and only, at most, in a secondary and unnecessary sense for introspection or philosophical contemplation.

A Shortened Workweek

A life that revolves around professional work is in a sense a life of enslavement to a social construct.  It is true that someone has no excuse for not coming to rationalism no matter their professional lives, for reason is inherently true, universally accessible, and what governs the truth about everything other than itself.  It is also true that, especially for some more than others, professional labor can occupy so much time in a person's life that he or she does not have the chance to contemplate, savor, or discuss (though discussion is secondary to directly grasping reason) the truths of rationalism.  Even the standard five day workweek that is the norm in current American society encroaches on much of people's lives and makes it so that often pointless, micromanaged work consumes an abundance of time.

Any Christian who wholeheartedly embraces Biblic morality and cares about the philosophical nature of reality, dictated by the laws of logic, will of course care more about reason, God, and other such matters of explicit philosophy more than any amount of pride in professional work, any amount of compensation, and any kind of cultural norm that glorifies the workplace as anywhere near the most important parts of life.  It is irrationalistic and contrary to Christian ethics to think that it is rational or Biblical for the workplace to dominate so many lives as it does, whether evangelicals want to realize it or not.  It is not that cutting the workweek from five days to a specific smaller number is obligatory, but that eliminating as much time spent in professional labor as possible is rational, as well as objectively good on the Christian worldview.

As such, a four day workweek or even one that is shorter is something that should be welcomed by Christians.  There is no Biblical obligation to specifically have a three or four or five day workweek, as long as there is at least one day free of non-exempt professional labor, though even which day of the week this is has no actual Biblical specifications; as long as one day of rest is had for every six days of work in a week, the obligation is upheld.  To spend four days a week working professionally would honor this command as much as working for six days a week.  As long as a culture can still sustain necessary roles like those of doctors and have its people flourish on a smaller workweek, then abolishing the expectation or norm of working for even five days a week is for the best.

However, since professional work is only a social construct and a means to an end, it is certainly not something that should steal time and energy away from discovering and savoring rationalistic truths, a relationship with God, friends, a significant other, one's children, or even the ability to enjoy entertainment.  Thus, it would be logically necessary that it is irrational to structure societies so that people are forced or pressured by economic concerns or social encouragement to set up their lives so that their outward activities ultimately revolve around work, rather than the other way around.  It would in turn follow that it is irrational to intentionally strive to have a culture that spends more waking time working than not, as long as this is pragmatically unnecessary (and automation only makes this easier).

Fighting any structural changes to the status quo that protect the economic stability of workers while diminishing the amount of time they have to work is also of course irrationalistic in light of these facts.  Social conditioning, subjective delight in work, apathy towards truth, or sheet boredom are the only reasons why someone would ever choose to dedicate 40 hours or more of their life to work if they had the chance to not do so.  Anyone who embraces even the contemporary status quo at the expense of a life outwardly oriented more towards celebrating the objective, absolutely certain truths of rationalistic philosophy is an insect of a human being, and for plenty of people, time spent working is cited as an alleged excuse as to why they are not more familiar with reason and various philosophical issues.  Rationalistic Christians need to be the most fierce opponents of the societal obsession with social constructs and needless labor.

Payment For A Murderer's Life

As Satan says in Job 2:4, cynically objecting to Job's integrity when God allows tragedy to befall his life circumstances but not his own bodily health, a person might give all they have to save their own life.  The way they might cherish their possessions might not stop them from offering all that belongs to them if they think it will extend their life in a given situation.  However much wealth someone has, they are never to be allowed to buy their way out of execution for murder.  This is what Numbers 35:31 emphasizes.  He or she deserves to die, and no "ransom" is to be accepted to avert the penalty.

Shortly after murder is mentioned in the Decalogue, Exodus 21:12-14 says that, although accidental killing (sometimes colloquially called manslaughter) is not to be met with the death penalty, murder, the premeditated or spontaneous killing of a human being for reasons besides an accident, justice, or self-defense, deserves capital punishment.  Numbers 35 repeats this information while adding new details.  Among these are the duration for which those who accidentally killed someone are to remain in a city of refuge (until the death of the high priest is what 35:22-28 says) and the direct rejection of a financial ransom to spare a murderer.

While this implies that perhaps some other types of capital sinners might be allowed by God to make payment in exchange for being spared the death penalty, at least one other sin would inflexibly deserve capital punishment in this way: rape.  The sin of having sex with someone against their will is treated very seriously.  In Deuteronomy 22:25-27, rape is said to always be like murder, which both necessitates that the Bible does not teach that only the rape of an engaged/married woman deserves death, as opposed to an unmarried woman or a male victim (by a male or female perpetrator), and that if murder always deserves death, then so does rape.

Murder is not the ultimate sin, after all, either in the sense of being the worst expression of immorality by Biblical standards or the worst thing one could inflict upon another person.  Rape is one such thing that could be far worse, since the victim survives unless the deed is paired with murder and must live with all of their trauma.  A murder victim, if the Bible is true, goes to Sheol, totally unconscious if their mind exists in any form (Ecclesiastes 9:5-10), to await their resurrection (Daniel 12:2).  Even if this is not what truly happens to the dead in actuality if this part of Christianity is false, and it is nonetheless something Job longed for during his trials (Job 3:11-19) for the relief from suffering it would bring, the act of rape can still be far worse than mere killing in itself, no matter what hypothetical fate follows death.

Murder is still a Biblically severe sin that is not to be excused.  In the words of Leviticus 24:21, killing someone's animal deserves restitution to be made to the owner, but, contrarily, to kill a person unjustly merits the offender's death.  There is no monetary restitution to be made for taking someone's life.  For even accidental killings, the avenger of blood is still permitted to kill the one responsible without being guilty of murder themself (Numbers 35:26-27).  If this is the gravity of unintentionally ending someone's life in a non-malicious manner, murder is nothing trivial, only trivial by comparison to some of the absolute worst possible forms of torment that one person could impose on another.

Linguistic Flexibility

"I want to kill you" could be entirely sarcastic in meaning, a part-joke that comes from genuine seething, or a serious, unironic expression of the desire to murder someone.  Which one is it in a given case?  You could never fucking tell from the words themselves, or else they could not convey each of these meanings in different contexts!  Saying you want to have a bat could mean that you want either a baseball bat or the flying creature that generally is nocturnal and capable of using echolocation.  Does the word gay refer specifically to a homosexual man, or to men or women with a homosexual orientation, or to a person experiencing happiness?  In some cases or in different eras, it could mean any of these things.  The reason why some words like this shift in generally intended meaning over time is only possible because someone, at some point, simply made up an additional or new meaning for a word, just as by logical necessity happened with the first human words of any language.

Words have no special, intrinsic meaning.  This is what makes them flexible.  However, if they are flexible, then there is no such thing as a single valid definition for many words some consider rigid; there are only definitions that are consistent with themselves and a person's other definitions, which must be conceptually accurate in light of the laws of logic to be "accurate" words.  It is whatever concepts or other reality, such as logical necessities or introspective states of mind, that the language is supposed to communicate that are true or false, verifiable or unverifiable.  Words are just words, mere sounds or symbols.  If an alien language was to feature a word that sounds like "cat" in English, it would absolutely not be the case that this necessarily means the same thing, either in its general societal usage or in an individual extraterrestrial's intentions, as what I would mean by the same word.

People who have trouble looking past mere words to ideas or wanting to do so--perhaps because they think this is too abstract, intimidating, unfamiliar, or effort-consuming (as if this makes it any less true that words are not what any rational person focuses on)--are of course idiots.  This will still, beyond holding them back from understanding either language or the concepts language refers to as they really are, impact how people interact with other people.  Rather than use reason and concepts to illuminate the real nature of language, they approach this in the inverse direction while still actually talking and acting as if they can in any way reach knowledge of the truth, and they might hate or dismiss anyone pushes back against their linguistic reductionism or conceptual apathy.  There are only additional layers of stupidity involved when people assume things that are neither said nor implied given the wording of a statement.  Otherwise, they would not be able to assume, for it would be known (though one can never know what the words of others are intended to mean, only what they seem to be intended to mean).

With something like the Bible, it absolutely does not follow (for many other reasons as well), even aside from the many verses that clarify such things, that Biblical statements like "Husbands, love your wives" (Ephesians 5:25) or "The person to be cleansed must wash his clothes, shave off all his hair and bathe with water" (Leviticus 14:8) are really about gender-specific obligations [1].  If I say women are people, it does not mean I am saying men are not people; if the Bible says not to murder a man, it would not mean murder of women is permissible (Exodus 21:12)!  With religious texts, proponents and opponents alike are just usually too stupid to recognize logical and linguistic nuance.  A verse might say one thing but be perfectly consistent with a broader or unmentioned concept, or another passage makes it as clear as language can, which is never to the point of absolute certainty, that it is not the case that, for instance, only wives deserve love from only husbands.  Yes, other verses directly teach as much (Leviticus 19:18, Romans 13:8-10, Titus 2:4, Genesis 1:26-27), but nothing in the wording requires that Paul meant wives are not to love their husbands or that this is less important than the other way around.  Another miscellaneous example is that it does not follow from Genesis saying God created Adam and Eve that he did not simultaneously or subsequently create other humans directly.

There are two categories of people who would deny any of this: irrationalistic but aimless fools whose philosophical incompetence is far greater than they have ever dared to realize or irrationalistic fools who have some particular goal in mind by endorsing misconceptions about language.  For the latter category, words might make someone feel alive or empowered.  They might also make someone feel safe in accepting/committing to or rejecting a worldview (like Christianity) based on what is ultimately assumptions about language.  As someone who is both fascinated by language as a philosophical subject and the way I and others use words, in light of these grand truths, I appreciate words, but I do not crave them as supposedly spectacular things in themselves, nor do I care about honoring linguistic trends just to fit in with others.  I also know fully that nothing I hear or read from anyone else is truly knowable for me in its meaning beyond perceptions of the seeming intentions.  Within this, there is still a great amount of context and evidence that can be found for a given meaning, yet the flexibility of language even within a historical period or specific person's lexicon is there.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/10/deuteronomy-2213-21-part-two.html

Alleged Bible Contradictions: Leviticus 19:33-34, Leviticus 25:35-37, And Deuteronomy 23:19-20

The Biblical sin of usury is not strictly about charging a certain percentage of interest, but about charging interest to certain parties (see Exodus 22:25 and Deuteronomy 23:19-20, for instance).  However, while Leviticus 19 says that foreigners must be treated the same as the native-born or Hebrews, Deuteronomy 23 clearly allows charging interest to foreigners, even as Leviticus 25 uses the example of not charging poor Israelites interest as being similar to how foreigners specifically should be treated.  The relationship between the verses in question is not as complicated as it might seem, but first, here are the portions of each chapter in view:

Leviticus 19:33-34--"'"When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them.  The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born.  Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt.  I am the Lord your God."'"

Leviticus 25:35-37--"'"If any of your fellow Israelites become poor and are unable to support themselves among you, help them as you would a foreigner and stranger, so they can continue to live among you.  Do not take interest or any profit from them, but fear your God, so that they may continue to live among you.  You must not lend them money at interest or sell them food at a profit."'"

Deuteronomy 23:19-20--"Do not charge a fellow Israelite interest, whether on money or food or anything else that may earn interest.  You may charge a foreigner interest, but not a fellow Israelite, so that the Lord your God may bless you in everything you put your hand to in the land you are entering to possess."

What Deuteronomy does not say is that interest must be charged to foreigners or that foreigners sin by charging Israelites interest, only that it is permissible for someone to charge interest to foreigners.  The real issue is whether Deuteronomy 23:19-20 truly contradicts Leviticus 19:33-34 and 25:35-37.  It is not as if Deuteronomy itself does not repeatedly affirm how foreigners are not to be mistreated, such as by discriminating against them in administering valid criminal and social justice (Deuteronomy 1:15-17, 10:18-19, 24:14-15, 17-22, 27:19).  In this, it absolutely is consistent with Exodus (Exodus 22:21, 23:9) and and a host of verses in Leviticus, including 19:33-34.

However, Leviticus 19:33-34 does teach that general foreigners are not to be treated as lesser people or subhuman or as anything other than fellow neighbors, in accordance with Genesis 1:27 and 5:1-2--and the logical falsity of racism/nationalism independent of the Bible.  Leviticus 25 already singles out charging interest to foreigners as sinful, if they are living among you.  There is no conceptual contradiction if the foreigners of Deuteronomy 23:19-20 are those not living in or traveling though Israel even though a host of other moral issues are not logically or Biblically capable of having these sorts of layers.

Simply put, unlike moral categories such as matters of unjust violence, which are addressed without any qualifications about where someone lives or their nationality or race (like in Genesis 9:6 or Exodus 21:26-32; see also Leviticus 24:19-22), or matters of worker exploitation, which are outright presented as intrinsic sins when committed against a native resident or foreigner (Deuteronomy 24:14-15), merely being charged or not charged interest as a foreigner living in a land separate from the debtor's own is not a matter of inherent immorality; instead, it is being charged interest by one's fellow countrypeople and by foreigners whom one is living among that is Biblically immoral.  The matter of human rights and universal moral obligation (Deuteronomy 4:5-8) is not charging people of one's own country and foreigners residing in one's community interest.

1 Peter 3 Does Not Conflict With Egalitarianism

Read only Jude, and it might seem like the punishment that befell Sodom and Gomorrah is a pale shadow of potentially eternal torture in flames of Gehenna, but read 2 Peter 2, which is structured almost identically to Jude at times, and it is clear that it is the way the inhabitants of these cities were reduced to ashes that foreshadows the real fate of the wicked in hell.  Of course, it still would not logically follow from the phrase eternal fire that anything, much less everything, thrown into the fire would also last forever, so it is not as if Jude could only be referencing eternal conscious torment even if that was the only verse on hell in the entire Bible.  However, 2 Peter 2:6 clarifies Jude.

Similarly, read only Numbers 30, and it might seem as if the Bible prescribes different moral obligations for vows to men and women.  These are situational case laws that would apply to either gender, not that it would follow by necessity that the strict wording of Numbers 30 would contradict this.  Nevertheless, Deuteronomy 23:21-23 (and other Biblical teachings in the Old Testament [1]) reveals that of course anyone, male or female and married or unmarried, is supposed to honor the vows they make to God.  Numbers 30's case laws and the obligations described therein would thus have to apply to both genders.  Men are not supposed to bear any greater weight of making vows to God than women and women are not incapable of making vows without interference from their parents or husbands.

Something much like this is the case with 1 Peter 3:1-6.  A set of commands is given to a particular audience, in this case women, to be submissive to husbands (3:1, 5-6).  It would still not logically follow that if this submission in marriage is good, that it would not be morally binding for men too.  If submission and inward beauty (3:3-4) are morally good, in fact, and men can pursue and have both as well as is the case, then these qualities would be no less good or obligatory for men than for women (Genesis 1:26-27).  Still, Ephesians 5 already addressed submissiveness, including that in marriage, and yet right before it tells wives to submit to husbands (which would be one side of mutual submission anyway and thus does not exclude it), it tells Christians as a whole to submit to each other (5:21).

This instruction of Ephesians 5:21 would already encompass all Christian husbands and wives, though of course no one should submit in abusive circumstances or to any irrational or sinful request, and divorce is permitted in the former cases (Exodus 21:9-11, 26-27, Deuteronomy 24:1-4, and so on) and the later would entail a contradiction if one was morally obligated to submit to doing something immoral as long as one's spouse demands it.  Alone, 1 Peter 3 might once again seem to teach something that the Bible very blatantly does not put forth, but with Ephesians 5, it is as clear as it can be that this is not so.  Husbands and wives are to submit to each other just as husbands and wives are to love each other.

Also, the phrase "In the same way," used in reference to husbands towards wives immediately after the aforementioned verses (1 Peter 3:7), would not be valid unless there was a parallel even within 1 Peter 3 concerning the moral expectations for women and men.  Husbands are told to respect their wives in the same way as the women addressed, who were just told to submit to their husbands--so much for the complementarian concept that the Bible agrees with men specifically needing/deserving respect and women specifically needing/deserving love!  Mutual submission is the Biblical teaching regarding marriage (Ephesians 5:21, 1 Corinthians 7:2-5).  There is no obligation taught in the Bible that both men and woman are capable of doing which is ever only assigned to one gender or the other.

Scientific Hypotheses: Assumptions And Expectations

The epistemological scientific method is commonly presented as in an abbreviated sense being employed when a person formulates a hypothesis, an untested guess about what might come about if a given thing is to happen, then conducts an experiment to observe the results and compare them with the hypothesis, and then alters their hypothesis as needed to fit what they found with their senses, which in turn could lead to additional experiments and revision.  There is something very important about the nature of a hypothesis that is relevant to core rationalistic truths: it is not just that a person is not in error for thinking of a hypothesis without next carrying out an experiment, but also that a hypothesis is not on its own any sort of assumption.  It could be recognized by a person as potentially true, whether or not there is any particular evidence suggesting it already, without the person believing it is true.

No one, from a "layperson" to a professional scientist, has to make assumptions when dwelling on what, if anything, they expect the outcome of a scientific event to be.  To assume is always irrational in itself, moreover, concerning science or anything else.  If something is not provable by logical self-necessity (the veracity of axioms or one's own conscious existence) or because it follows by necessity from something logically verifiable which either is or is not self-evident, with scientific ideas such as the existence of a proton being empirically supportable rather than logically verifiable, it might be true--as long as it does not contradict any logically necessary fact.  That is, a logically necessary fact cannot be false.  However, it is always unjustifiable and outright, inherently irrational to assume that something is true when it is not necessarily so, even if that thing is logically possible or evidentially probable.  It is a leap in the philosophical dark based upon whim, and so even believing in something that can be proven when one only does so on the basis of assumptions is still inflexibly irrational.

If a new species is discovered and its reproductive system turns out to be unique, for instance, a researcher would have to see its method of reproduction firsthand, as opposed to relying on hearsay, to come as close to knowledge as possible.  All of the epistemological limitations of the senses would of course have to apply [1], so this is not knowledge of anything more than fallible perceptions of things that are seemingly true but still wholly lesser than logical necessities either way.  Still, it would not be irrational to expect the reproductive system of this novel creature to be a certain way, if it is indeed logically possible and suggested by probabilistic empirical evidence--in this case, that might be the appearance of its outward body as relevant to sexual reproduction.  It would also not be irrational to think of various genuine possibilities beforehand, all while never assuming that possibility makes them true.

All assumptions can be avoided, so there is nothing special about the nature of any pre-experiment hypothesis that has to be believed.  Yes, after the experiment, a hypothesis can be revised to more closely match the observations, perhaps before more empirical testing that could lead to additional revision, but this does not mean anyone actually believes the hypothesis beforehand.  No one has to.  Even if they are a very confident scientist, a person would be an utter irrationalistic fool to do such a thing, or to assume more foundationally that observations logically necessitate that the external world is really as it appears.  There is nothing irrational about the scientific method although it is epistemologically inferior in all ways to the inherent, universally accessible, all-encompassing truth of logical axioms and what follows from them [2], the same superiority being metaphysically true of reason over whatever material world is out there beyond the mind and its senses.  Only a conscious being can err, not reason.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-reliability-of-senses.html

[2].  A person can recognize logical possibilities and necessities about what could or would be true of a scientific matter if a given notion is true, such as that electrons flow through conductors, though the lack of logical necessity in such a premise being true means the only way to obtain fallible evidence for it is sensory observation.  However, this is an epistemological limitation of non-omniscient beings, not a flaw of the intrinsic truths of reason.

Socialism: A Blend Of Communism And Capitalism

My wife and I, as I like to say, are communists in our marriage, or as she likes to say, we are French ("Oui, oui!" sounds like "We, we!").  I am not a communist or a capitalist beyond this context, though, for neither is inherently irrational or predatory in all of its forms.  As rationalists, we realize that Soviet communism is not pure communism--it is not a classless society without the presence of a leading elite.  The word communism has likewise been miunderstood to refer to any ideology/system that is not capitalistic, at least in some circles here in America.  Because of this, socialism might be mistaken for communism.  The former is about a system here factories and business-related land are not privately owned by an individual investor or an often oppressive upper class, but by the workers or community as a whole for the benefit of broader civilization.  Communism entails the literal absence of any sort of true property altogether.

Socialism is indeed closer to communism in that it is more aimed, when applied correctly, at the genuine wellbeing of the general public than basic capitalism (albeit often in ways that are Biblically superogatory, or good but not obligatory), the latter of which is to varying degrees is about people conducting business and economic transactions without governmental intervention to, in many cases, primarily or exclusively benefit themselves.  The goal of a capitalistic organization is more directly aimed at generating profit, and that goal might or might not be pursued by given individuals out of greed, which could lead the wealthy to avoid paying taxes or use their money to influence political decisions in their favor.  Socialism would have wealthy businesspeople pay at least no less than the same proportion of taxes based upon income as everyone else, or be subject to progressive taxation that taxes the rich more heavily (though they still woud have plenty left over), and these proceeds would benefit the public as a whole.  Again, the workers would have shared ownership of the means of production.

Yes, socialism is at the same time closer to capitalism in that socialism does not entail a classless society.  There can still be people with miscellaneous amounts of wealth obtained through opportunity or labor, yet the wealthier citizens are not allowed to hoard as much because taxation does not fall harder on those who are least able to pay and who will suffer the most from paying taxes.  People are still allowed to work and accumulate personal savings and make purchases from their wealth.  Moreover, not everyone will have the same amount of belonings or money.  The point is not that everyone is destitute and starving together or that everyone is forced by external state coercion to have an identical level of wealth.  Private/personal property is permitted under socialism.

The means of production being owned by collective workers is not the same as true communism's void of personal property.  This is what many conservatives misunderstand.  While some people might advocate for socialism as an intermediate step towards communism, nothing about the concept of socialism requires that its system could only be implemented in such a way.  Rather, elements of capitalism and communism are blended in socialism, yet all three can be implemented with irrationalistic motives or in hypocritical manners.  Not even the Bible condemns any of these general frameworks as long as they are not set up or used in tyrranical ways (Deuteronomy 4:2).

With communism, the communal ownership must be voluntary by all.  With capitalism, greed and disregard for reason, morality, and living things must not be present.  With socialism, the public must be benefitted rather than the system being used to perpetuate classism and exploitation but with more subtlety.  The last of these three options does distinctly incorporate aspects of the other two.  Personal autonomy and freedom are still honored given that someone does not wield them to the economic devastation of society; money and the things money can buy are still allowed, just without greed being the driving force behind businesses tied to a somewhat financially or politically untouchable ruling class, one founded on wealth obtained largely through exploitation like underpayment and deception.

The Quran On Oaths

Sometimes the moral doctrines of the Bible and the Quran clash.  The terrestrial punishment for thieves (see Exodus 22:1-4 and Surah 5:38, especially ironic in light of Surah 2:53 and 3:3) and the eschatological punishment of hell [1] are great examples of this.  In other cases, they overlap, as with the prohibition of killing outside the context of justice or defense (Exodus 20:13, 21:12-14, Surah 5:32).  Supposedly, Allah is Yahweh (Surah 2:53, 3:3, 5:46), yet the Torah and Quran have many ethical disparities.  On the subject of oaths made to God, the Quran and Bible once again do not say similar things.  Promises to God are actually quite malleable in the Quran, which excuses people for things that they did not intend to say.  

The intentions of a person alone, in a way, are all that is ultimately binding according to the Islamic text, although an intentional person would at least correct mismatching words in the moment when making a vow.  There is no such thing as a person who cannot adjust their words to align with their intentions even if they only notice the difference between the standard meaning of their words and what they meant by them.  In the words of Surah 2:225, "He will not call you to account for oaths you have uttered unintentionally, but He will call you to account for what you mean in your hearts.  God is most forgiving and forbearing."

The prior verse says not to allow a vow made in God's name to hold someone back from doing what is good, and the following verse touches upon the broader context at this point in the Surah of vows related to divorce.  Depending on the situation, Allah himself is thus taught to release people from their own vows.  Never does the Christian deity release people so casually: he actually does allow certain other humans to do this, though, as specified below.  If a vow is not to do something that is already irrational or evil, one is obligated to do it, for one could have avoided the vow altogether and would not have sinned by refraining (Deuteronomy 23:21-23, Numbers 30:1-16).

The Christian God demands that people not utter anything false (Leviticus 19:11), malicious (Leviticus 20:9), or otherwise sinful no matter how carelessly the words are used (Matthew 12:33-37), specifically commands that people not make vows to God that are not sincere.  Parents of an unmarried person and a married person's spouse--the wording of Deuteronomy 23:21-23 alone means the situational case laws of Numbers 30 that address this are not really about gender, as scheduled posts will more specifically explore--can free them from their vow if they overhear and object, but otherwise, a person is obligated to do what they pledge unless they vow to do something sinful.  

Words have no inherent meaning, yes [2].  In this regard, all words only mean whatever they are intended to mean.  If a person still uses words one way and casually, carelessly makes a promise to Yahweh that they do not intend to keep or have the power to uphold and do not, given that the thing promised is not itself evil, they are obligated to do that thing.  This is the Biblical doctrine of vows.  As for the Quran, Allah here is less demanding than Yahweh, though that alone does not make something metaphysically true or morally good (as if Allah's and Yahweh's hells are comparably severe)!  Still, if someone truly intended to not say something or to say it differently, they could always rectify their speech immediately afterward and clarify their intentions.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/09/yahwehs-and-allahs-eschatological.html

[2].  While I have frequently written about this logical truth, this was one of my first articles about it:

https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-relativity-of-language.html

Circumstantial Evidence

A person's fingerprint on a kitchen knife would not in any way logically necessitate that the person who left their fingerprint is the murderer.  Perhaps he or she used the instrument to prepare food and then a separate person wearing gloves later used the same blade to murder someone.  Alternatively, it is possible for a person to be one of few people in the area of a robbery or kidnapping when it occurred although they had nothing to do with the act.  Witnesses who see them around the site have visual and, once the moment passes, memory evidence they were present, but it does not necessarily even suggest the individual in question is the criminal.

The whole of this would at most be circumstantial evidence.  All evidence is merely probabilistic or else it would not be evidence from testimony, unverifiable sensory experiences [1], or memory, but logical proof rooted in necessary truths.  Ultimately, though people who use the phrase are almost certainly not often rationalists and would still confuse a higher degree of evidence for proof, circumstantial evidence means there are other logically possible circumstances (though there are always multiple logical possibilities where direct evidence is involved, albeit more seemingly unlikely ones) that are fully consistent with whatever seems to point to a particular likelihood.

The difference between this and direct evidence is that while there are still possible alternatives with the latter, such as extraterrestrial doppelgangers, sensory illusions, and so on, direct evidence is more blatant and does not involve as many assumptions if believed: no one is justified in believing anything on the basis of evidence except that there is evidence and that something is probable, of course.  It is still all that there is to point towards a given possibility in many criminal situations.  Say that someone did not see a suspect walk out of a room after a gunshot is heard from inside (which would be circumstantial if this is all there is).  They walk in and see the gun with smoke emerging from the barrel still in the hand of the suspect--this is direct evidence.

Not even a literal smoking gun in someone's hand with their finger on the trigger and a corpse on the ground is absolute logical proof that the gun was used to kill them; while it is logically true that this is very strong probabilistic sensory evidence, it is not logical proof because of all sorts of possible sensory distortions and illusions.  This is still as direct and immediate as any evidence could be that whoever holds the gun is the one who committed the killing.  Hearsay that is more removed from the actual events, witnessing someone in the mere vicinity of a crime, and other such things do not have this high level of probabilistic evidential strength.

Circumstantial evidence a specific criminal suspect is guilty is glaringly epistemologically fallible, and yet it is very common for people to talk and act as if most or all of their worldview is based upon mere assumptions like inferences in matters far beyond whether someone has committed a crime.  For this reason, some people deny or ignore the only things that cannot be false or have been any other way (logical axioms and other necessary truths of reason) but assume something philosophically secondary, objectively contradictory, or entirely unverifiable is true, or maybe even the real core of reality despite how it could only be logical necessities that have this status.  Circumstantial evidence might be selectively dismissed as being more than it is, yet, in the sense of non sequiturs, the entire foundation of many people's philosophies is like circumstantial evidence or worse.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-external-world.html

When Male Words Speak Of Men And Women In The Bible

Archaic language unfamiliar to or unused by the typical modern American that is commonplace in certain translations of the Bible like the King James Version could be misunderstood by people in the grip of assumptions.  This very translation of the Bible often speaks of men and women in certain verses, as the original languages and other English translations do, and then refer to both genders using words like "he" and "him."  Of course, complementarians, including some people who actually prioritize a word-for-word translation instead of meaning-for-meaning, will arbitrarily pretend like some passages apply to only men and others to all people on the basis of whether they mention men and women in an individual case.  

I have never heard of someone supposing that the male-default language of the KJV's Exodus 21:12 means that the Bible teaches it is not murder if a woman kills a man outside of justice or self-defense or that it is not murder if a man kills a woman in the same way.  Still, something like 1 Timothy 5:8 is likely to be fallaciously interpreted as if men specifically or exclusively have what would be the sexist burden (this would be sexist against men) of materially providing for family members, when there is nothing in the literal wording of the text, even with the male words of certain translations, that requires this.  If the Bible uses male words for men and women, though, this on its own (aside from the logical equivalence of deeds and humans, the irrelevance of gender of anything good that any person can do, the logical falsity of gender stereotypes, and both genders bearing God's image as equals) already proves that there is nothing male-specific about obligations described using male words.

The King James Version is not the only Biblical translation to do this, as this habit is reflected in the original languages.  See a small sampling of such passages below, some of which are from the Torah where God reveals moral obligations and some of which show that the same linguistic trend occurs elsewhere in narrative accounts.

Exodus 21:26-27 (KJV)--"And if a man smite the eye of his servant, or the eye of his maid, that it perish; he shall let him go free for his eye's sake.  And if he smite out his manservant's tooth, or his maidservant's tooth; he shall let him go free for his tooth's sake."

Numbers 6:1-2 (ESV)--"And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 'Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When either a man or a woman makes a special vow, the vow of a Nazarite, to separate himself to the Lord . . .'"

Deuteronomy 15:12 (NKJV)--"'If your brother, a Hebrew man, or a Hebrew woman, is sold to you and serves you six years, then in the seventh year you shall let him go free from you.'"

Deuteronomy 17:4-6 (KJV)--"And it be told thee, and thou hast heard of it, and enquired diligently, and, behold, it be true, and the thing certain, that such abomination is wrought in Israel: Then shalt thou bring forth that man or that woman, which have committed that wicked thing, unto thy gates, even that man or that woman, and shalt stone them with stones, till they die.  At the mouth of two witnesses, or three witnesses, shall he that be worthy of death be put to death; but at the mouth of one witness he shall not be put to death."

Job 31:13-15 (KJV)--"If I did despise the cause of my manservant or of my maidservant, when they contended with me; What then shall I do when God riseth up?  and when he visiteth, what shall I answer him?  Did not he that made me in the womb make him?  and did not one fashion us in the womb?"

Esther 4:11 (KJV)--"All the king's servants, and the people of the king's provinces, do know, that whoever, whether man or woman, shall come unto the king into the inner court, who is not called, there is one law of his to put him to death, except such to whom the king shall hold out the golden scepter, that he may live . . ."

Ezekiel 14:19-20 (NIV 1984)--"'Or if I send a plague into that land and pour out my wrath upon it through bloodshed, killing its men and their animals, as surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, even if Noah, Daniel and Job were in it, they could save neither son nor daughter . . .'"

James 2:15-16 (NIV 1984)--"Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food.  If one of you says to him, 'Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,' but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?"

Already, such verses dictate gender equality in Christian ethics with matters like violence, vows, slavery, emancipation, religious worship, criminal punishment, divine judgment, and poverty (and there are no verses that actually deviate from this regarding these topics elsewhere, at least not in their actual wording or meaning).  There are far more statements like this in the Torah alone, including ones that illustrate how "he" or "him" can inclusively refer to women alongside men.  As for Esther 4:11, here is acknowledgment of a pagan law, not an affirmation of something corresponding to Yahweh's nature, but for all the irrationality and tyranny of this construct imposed by the king, at least he does not enforce it in a sexist way.  The ramifications of the male wording for people of both genders in Esther 4 still exemplifies how the Bible does not necessarily mean literal biological men when uses such a word.  The context would have to clarify that only men are in view, and this alone would not teach anything sexist against men or women when it comes to moral obligations as it is (it would not follow that if men should do something not contingent on anatomy itself that women should not or vice versa, and anything to the contrary would contradict reason and be false).

Along with many other passages, verses like the following, even on a linguistic level rather than that of what does and does not follow logically from the literal wording, are clarified by the ramifications of using male language for both genders as seen in the above sampling.

Exodus 21:14 (KJV)--"But if a man come presumptuously upon his neighbor, to slay him with guile; thou shalt take him from mine altar, that he may die."

Deuteronomy 21:22-23 (NKJV)--"'If a man has committed a sin deserving of death, and you put him to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain overnight on the tree . . ."

Psalm 1:1 (NIV 1984)--"Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way or sinners or sit in the seat of mockers."

Proverbs 20:5 (KJV)--"Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water; but a man of understanding will draw it out."

1 Timothy 5:8 (KJV)--"But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel."

James 1:2-3 (ESV)--"Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness."

These are together only a handful of the verses that would be clarified, although many individual verses well outside of Genesis 1:26-27 do emphasize gender equality regardless.  If it was not for the verses in certain chapters that do this, like the aforementioned Deuteronomy 17:4-7, other passages which in their current wording do not have such wording could have featured this clarification instead.  For instance, the content of Exodus 21:12-14 and 18-19 could have been reworded by God in Hebrew so that they explicitly mention men and women in their case laws about general murder and physical assault (without permanent injury) instead of using default male words for general humans, if it was not for the separate laws regarding physical violence in Exodus 21:15, 20-21, 26-27, and 28-32 overtly drawing repeated attention to the strict gender egalitarianism of the chapter.  Complementarians and egalitarians, or sometimes mere pseudo-egalitarians, rarely get this precise, though!  They focus on a handful of frequently misinterpreted New Testament passages like Ephesians 5:22-33 or 1 Peter 3:1-7 and a sprinkling of Old Testament excerpts, such as those about the Levitical priesthood.

If only more people would without assumptions pay attention to the explicit affirmations and clarifications elsewhere in the Bible, such as in Exodus 21, or how the Bible gives case after case illustrating how male language alone does not entail relevance strictly to literal men, it would be clear not only what the Bible does not teach in its literal words, but what it is and is not taught one way or another conceptually.  In saying that a "man" who does not provide for "his" family is in grave sin, for instance, 1 Timothy 5 (as listed above) does not say that men have an obligation as males to provide for their family, and that women do not because they are women, but in light of the Hebrew and Greek (and English up until more recent times) tendency for people to use male words for a person standing in for someone of either gender as with so many verses, the Bible itself exemplifies linguistic patterns that show this absolutely does not automatically speak of strictly men to begin with.  If it did, it still would not mean that the same is not true of women, and the Bible must not mean otherwise if it is consistent with reason, but there are logical and Biblical layers upon layers as to why these passages teach nothing gender-specific.  Male words often refer to people in the Bible's more word-for-word translations to English, as in Hebrew and Greek, and not just actual men.