Does The Bible Teach A Flat Earth?

Today, one can hear people casually say things like "The sun rises in the East and sets in the West."  It does not follow from the use of this language that people think Earth is stationary and the sun literally rises over it, as opposed to both celestial bodies being in rotation and one being in orbit around the other.  These words would, if this is not actually what the speaker holds to, be intended to describe the way certain cosmological phenomena appear to the inhabitants of Earth on its surface.  Here, the sun's appearance in the sky each morning makes it appear to rise and its descent each evening makes it seem to set.  The perspective of these events on the planet itself does not mean this is exactly what is happening--not that the sun is not behaving as perceived, the epistemological truths of sensory skepticism aside, but in that this does not exclude Earth and the sun spinning to cause the appearance of a rising and setting star.

Likewise, using such words used to convey how this appears to humans on Earth does not mean someone believes anything other than axis rotation of spherical bodies, the world moving in outer space to orbit the sun, is true or probable.  They would not have to believe that Earth is a landmass on a disc, Ra riding far above in the sky to illuminate the world every day, as is said about the ancient Egyptians.  They would likewise not have to believe any other erroneous or improbable things about cosmological metaphysics.  However, even in contemporary America, people use non-literal language all the time to speak of the sun and world we live on.  In all likelihood, these individuals will not be accused of automatically believing in a flat Earth.  I have written before about how a spherical Earth is very evidentially probable and is something certain Biblical verses are very congruent with, even if they are not direct acknowledgement of a spherical planet [1].

There are also verses like Revelation 7:1 and 20:7-8 that refer to the "four corners of the earth."  While parts of Revelation are absolutely presented as literal, with some figurative elements receiving their literal explanation (Revelation 1:19-20 with verse 12), this is the book of the Bible most prominently featuring exotic imagery and poetic descriptions.  It does not follow from the mere phrase "four corners of the earth" that these words are to be taken literally in the strictest sense.  One could use such language and still be thinking of the world as a sphere instead of a square or rectangular (squares might be formally defined as a subset of rectangles, but this is not how many people colloquially use the terms, and words only mean whatever is intended by them, as is directly relevant to the Biblical phrase in question).  The Bible does not say "The earth is not spherical," something that would directly put forth the notion of a flat planet.

What it says could easily be a poetic summary of the four cardinal directions or the full scope of the world.  If this by necessity means the Biblical authors think the world is flat or a disc, then modern speech referring to a rising or setting sun would by necessity mean all of us who use such words think Earth remains in place and it is the sun that goes around the planet.  Of course, the latter does not necessitate that belief, and neither does the former require that someone believes in a flat world.  Even separate from the Biblical verses that likely endorse a spherical world (like Luke 17:34-35 seemingly saying the return of Christ happens both at night and during the day), there is nothing about the "four corners of the earth" that in any way claims the planet is flat.  Besides, many of the people who might object to this phrase in Revelation 7:1 and 20:8's might also think Revelation as a whole is figurative to the point of great ambiguity, which would contradict their assumption that the four corners wording must be or is probably literal.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/10/the-geometry-of-earth.html

Game Review--Tomb Raider Reloaded (Android)

"It's not every day you come face to face with the Cretaceous period."

--Lara Croft, Tomb Raider Reloaded

Tomb Raider Reloaded might or might not have been through very tumultuous updates since its release; I did not play it immediately upon launch, so everything I observed is from within a particular window of time afterward.  What this mobile game offers is a very specific, alternate direction for the franchise.  This is not Rise of the Tomb Raider, with its third-person gameplay and exploration of a psuedo-Christ figure, whether or not God reveals himself through the natural world, and the nature of eternal life in a world like ours.  It is not Lara Croft Go, a game that makes up for its lack of ideological and narrative depth with its brilliantly executed turn-based mechanics.  It is a very different Tomb Raider game, and this is not a negative thing in itself--besides the potentially enormous time that can be required to complete the game for free.

Production Values

Tomb Raider Reloaded's stylized graphics are perfectly at home in the smartphone format and maintain consistent quality through the entire game.  Lara and her different outfits, the enemies that range from animals like snakes and bats to screen-filling bosses, and the 11 different environments (as of the last time I played prior to scheduling this post) are animated very well.  Many, many enemies can appear onscreen at the same time without drops in performance.  In some levels, the number of opponents that manifest at once will be so overwhelming that without persistent upgrades and/or fortunate in-run bonuses, it would be almost impossible to survive.  Crisp sounds like Lara's gunfire and the noises from miscellaneous creatures complement the aesthetic strengths and fairly smooth stability of the game.

Gameplay

Each of the game's regions (Peru, Greece, Egypt) has its own levels, and each level has its own stages, ranging from 20-50.  With puzzle or "escape" stages periodically appearing, the majority of each stage in a level is devoted to fighting enemies.  You do have to stand still to attack unlike the firing mechanic in Mighty Doom, a very similar game that is also a spin-off from an established mainstream gaming franchise; in that game, you automatically shoot even if you never stop moving.  This delays the clearing of dangerous levels in Reloaded but adds elements of strategy and vulnerability completely absent from Mighty Doom.  As you clear a stage, Lara's XP meter fills up, granting an ability of your choice (out of a handful of options), like an elemental grenade that is launched every four seconds at a nearby enemy, a ring around Lara that damages enemies inside the radius, or a two second boost of 50% to damage every eight seconds.  These abilities only last for the duration of the level, having nothing to do with the permanent upgrades to weaponry, amulets, and so on.

The weapons you can use range from Lara's signature dual pistols to a shotgun, an assault rifle, a spear, a chakram, and more, so there are instruments beyond firearms.  Along with other equippable items like masks, amulets, and ammunition types, these can be upgraded by using coins and a certain amount of "manuals" for each category (weapons, masks, etc.), which can be obtained at random by finishing stages.  Likewise, though they use a distinctive upgrade system, individual outfits can be upgraded--and already have their own base stats and special abilities.  The Bomber Jacket featured in many of my screenshots, for instance, lets you burn enemies upon attacking them; it simply takes a very particular amount of separate collectibles to unlock a new outfit.  Also, artifact pieces recovered from puzzle stages show up at random, but once secured, allow even more passive bonuses like additional health points or a reduction in damage from direct contact with enemies, and these can also be upgraded.  The equipment, skins, and artifacts thus contribute to a rather nuanced web of items and enhancements.

Now, it is precisely the details of the upgrade system that can force the player to spend so much time grinding.  Combining three of the same, say, weapons or ammunition types of the same color forges a superior version of the item, which then requires two others of its new color before the equipment can be enhanced again in this way.  This process becomes extremely lengthy for people unwilling to pay for microtransactions because you cannot control which items you will receive from playing through levels or from item crates (one is free every day if you watch an ad).  It could easily take 5-10+ months of playing, depending on how frequently someone gives the game their attention, to become powerful enough to complete the entire game without paying money to accelerate the process.  Thankfully, there is some variety.  You do not have to replay whichever main levels have already been unlocked in order to gradually gain resources.  Weekly events such as banner brawl, where Lara has to remain within migrating circles to earn points as enemies start to swarm her, offer something different, yet the same handful of events are eventually cycled through.

Story

Lara travels from Peru to Greece and eventually Egypt in search of various artifacts, with no developed narrative (although none is necessary here).  Her friend Anaya and her butler appear to provide bonuses every so many stages, but they do not speak, and Lara herself only speaks in introductory cinematics.

Intellectual Content

Reloaded does not dive into (as fallaciously as Lara from the 2013-2018 games handles herself philosophically) subjects from the reboot trilogy like the metaphysics and logical possibility of supernatural phenomena, what eternal life in the present human condition would be like, and so on, but in this genre of mobile gaming, this is not a problem though it is not even a puzzle game like Lara Croft Go [1].  Upholding the imagery of the franchise and adapting it for a smartphone-exclusive experience, it does not need to do more than provide challenging combat that sometimes calls for careful observation and strategizing, and in this the game succeeds.  It is not a narrative or theme-driven game and this is not to its detriment.

Conclusion

The core problem, other than occasional server issues, is not the microtransactions themselves, but that without them, the game takes such an enormous amount of to complete all the way to the end of whatever is the currently released final location.  Tomb Raider Reloaded is otherwise great at what it sets out to do: providing a stage-based, isometric shooter take on Lara Croft's adventures suited to the mobile format.  It is difficult enough that players must actually put in effort and take the time to grind for items but strong enough in its mechanics to have competence and depth.  For what it is, at least in the form I experienced, Tomb Raider Reloaded is a generally well-designed game great for bursts of play and for casual or thoroughly invested players alike.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/05/game-review-lara-croft-go-ps-vita.html

The Wages Of A Hired Worker

Mosaic Law addresses both the state of debt servitude, with the male and female servants of one's own countrypeople (or foreigners living alongside them according to Leviticus 19:33-34) to be freed from both debt and service every seven years (Deuteronomy 15:1-3, 12-14), and the more temporary state of hired work.  With Biblical servanthood, a man or woman sells their labor to pay off a as much of a debt as can be diminished in six years (Exodus 21:2).  A hired worker could labor on a more ongoing basis.  While he or she would have the human rights shared by all people, such as the right to not be murdered (Exodus 20:13, Exodus 21:12-14), and they like servants are certainly not to be physically or otherwise mistreated (Exodus 21:26-27), some additional Biblical obligations towards them are detailed.

Whereas Deuteronomy 24:14-15 focuses on paying poor physical laborers of one's own or a foreign nationality their wages before sunset, the very day of their work as opposed to up to two weeks later as with today, Leviticus 19:13 expands this to all workers by saying to not withhold wages overnight, regardless of the person's economic class or category of labor.  Every hired man and woman is to be paid the day they work instead of waiting days or even weeks as is customary in the modern United States.  Yes, the Bible teaches that not paying one's daytime workers the literal day they work (night laborers would have to be paid before the following sunset), before the sun has even started to descend in the sky, is a universal injustice.

Though the text of Leviticus 19 would not need to clarify this part--since foreigners can be hired workers, there is nothing in the Torah that allows for a potential difference in how foreigners are to be treated regarding professional labor and in many other ways (Exodus 22:21, 23:9, 12, Leviticus 19:33-34, 24:22), and Deuteronomy 24:14-15 already touches on this--a foreign worker in the midst of one's community should never be exploited in this way either.  Again, this is contrary to a notion and attitude that I have encountered in my nation over and over holding that foreign workers, and more particularly, foreigners from certain regions of the world, are to be used as if they are only a means to an end, paid as little as one can get away with and probably not the day of their work.

In America, where even today, some employers do everything from excusing months-long accumulations of payroll errors to underpaying employees to disregarding human workers the moment they can save a dime, businesses/employers are typically not concerned with enduring their workers receive their pay promptly.  Even then, the compensation is often the bare minimum that employees will stomach or that the employers can legally get away with, with little to no focus on reason or morality as opposed to legality and pragmatic selfishness.  That delayed payment is overtly condemned in the Bible but not by many who identify as Christians is another example of how for all its extraordinarily superficial and misleading "Christian" trappings, America as a whole is nowhere near adhering to the commands of the Bible related to the "workplace" or the broader treatment of fellow humans.

The Marriage Bed Of Hebrews 13:4 And Its Misinterpretation

In the words of Hebrews 13:4, "Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and the sexually immoral."  What does a verse like this mean by the sexual immorality that the latter people are engaging in?  Since adultery is described alongside general sexual immorality, this verse affirms that there are other sexual deeds which are evil, but it does not clarify what they are.  Assuming that a given act or thought is sexually immoral, a legalist might read the text already believing that by "the sexually immoral" it means people who practice whatever things they sexually dislike.  If conservative enough, they might assume that this refers to things that are not even sexual, like a woman wearing a bikini, because they erroneously think they are sexual and that sexual expression itself is evil outside of marriage.  Almost inevitably, they will think this at a minimum condemns sex prior to or outside of legal marriage.

Bestiality (Exodus 22:19, Leviticus 18:23, 20:15-16), rape (Deuteronomy 22:25-27), prostitution (Leviticus 19:29, 21:7, 9, Deuteronomy 23:17-18), adultery (Exodus 20:14, Leviticus 20:10, Deuteronomy 22:22), sex with a separately engaged person (Deuteronomy 22:23-24), homosexual intercourse (Leviticus 18:22, 20:13), incest (Leviticus 18:6, 20:17, and so on), and casual sex (Exodus 22:16-17) are Biblically condemned.  So are miscellaneous things like a man or woman marrying two living siblings at once and sexually interacting with them (Leviticus 18:18, 20:21) or sex during a woman's menstruation (Leviticus 18:19, 20:18), though this is about the timing and not about the act itself otherwise being immoral [1], as well as nonconsensual tactile contact with someone's genitalia (Deuteronomy 25:11-12)--the example given of the latter is not strictly sexual in the intention of the assault, but if the deed is sinful even without this component, it would have to be if it was specifically a sexual assault.

Nothing else could be meant by sexual immoral actions since adding to divine commands is evil (Deuteronomy 4:2)!  On the true Christian worldview, there is nothing God has not condemned to some extent in the Torah by explicit mention or by logical equivalence/extension that is actually sinful in any way.  Having sex with an unmarried, unengaged person if one is not married is not automatically sinful; it is having casual sex with no intention of commitment during or afterwards that is condemned (see Exodus 22:16-17 again).  Sex before legal marriage, legal marriage being a social construct that does not ground the human behaviors that can precede it or the divine moral nature that transcends it, is not adultery.  As the Torah does not condemn premarital sex itself despite being very thorough with many other sexual acts and declaring anything not directly or indirectly condemned as permissible, Hebrews 13:4 cannot be opposing all premarital sex by its unspecified reference to broad sexual immorality.

Many other acts are relevant to this as well.  A woman or man, married or not, who regularly masturbates to physical/digital imagery, mental visualizations, or live people of the opposite gender is not sexually immoral unless they are looking to sinful acts like adultery or incest for stimulation.  An engaged male-female couple that has sex before their legal marriage is not sexually immoral for doing so.  Someone who marries multiple people of the opposite gender at once is not sexually immoral; this is even specifically touched upon as permissible (such as in Exodus 21:9-11)!  These people are neither adulterous nor sexually immoral in some other way.  Whether it is in Hebrews 13:4 or other verses scattered about the New Testament, sexually immoral or sexual immorality absolutely does not mean that whatever someone's cultural norms or personal comfort/preferences would regard as immoral really is, and vice versa.

Hebrews 13:4's exaltation of marriage and reverence for "the marriage bed" is not the same as affirming that all sexual expression outside of legal marriage is vile.  On the contrary, a great many things for the unmarried and married are permissible that many people would be utterly shocked the Bible is ultimately favorable towards or accepting of.  Adultery betrays marriage.  Polyamorous marriage, which is obviously allowed by the Torah and is itself a form of heterosexual marriage, is not condemned in Hebrews 13:4, and neither is mere sex outside of legal marriage.  Even without the Torah's lack of condemnation and its addressing of the matter in Exodus 22:16-27 and Deuteronomy 22:28-29, Genesis makes it clear that God did not create human governments.  The very nature of God being the metaphysical grounding of morality also means that government approval is irrelevant to whether something is morally valid or not.  Looking to Hebrews 13:4 or other uses of phrases like "the sexually immoral" in isolation is always incomplete because it is the Old Testament which the New is founded on that defines what this would mean.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2024/05/sex-during-menstruation.html

Luke 17 On Forgiveness And Repentance

As I have detailed elsewhere, if God does not forgive people unless they ask, people could not be in the wrong for doing the same, since the moral nature of the uncaused cause is what would dictate morality.  Matthew 18 [1] and Ephesians 4 [2] affirm that this is also the Biblical stance on the matter directly or indirectly.  In Luke 17:3-4, Jesus very plainly says that if someone who has sinned against you repents, you are obligated to forgive them.  Elsewhere, he says that those who do not forgive others will not be forgiven by God (Matthew 6:14-15).  Here, he says that if a brother or sister sins against you and repents, you are to forgive them, and that even if they sin against you and come to you in repentance multiple times in one day, you "must" forgive them.

Personal forgiveness and forgiveness from the just penalties of Mosaic Law or the eventual penalty of annihilation in hell (Ezekiel 18:4, Matthew 10:28, John 3:16, 2 Peter 2:6) are not the same.  However, though forgiveness without repentance on the sinner's part is good but not obligatory, for it is mercy rather than justice, Jesus teaches that forgiving those who sincerely ask us for it is mandatory.  He does not say that it is morally good but optional; he says that one must do this.  Some might irrationally mistake this for an approach to forgiveness that is universal and default, yet he clearly says that it is only once the right condition is met by the other person is forgiveness owed to them.

Over and over, though once is enough, the Bible teaches that we are to forgive like God does, and God does not forgive anyone without their repentance.  He shows mercy just as we can show mercy (Luke 6:36).  We can be like him in this regard and be righteous for it, yes.  Still, his moral nature is what grounds that which we should do regardless of context, and forgiveness is not something that is ever prescribed in Mosaic Law or even in the allegedly "contrary" doctrines of the gospels.  This nuanced ethical stance on forgiveness is not especially recognized by many so-called Christians one might encounter, who crave forgiveness when it is directed at them or when it appeases their subjective whims but are unforgiving to others, or who think that forgiveness is always required in itself or that it is somehow better than justice.

No, Jesus says we must forgive when met with repentance, and this could only be the case if forgiveness is obligatory in this situation, and this would in turn only be the case if it is just in this scenario.  What is not deserved could not be morally required since deserving something means one has the right to be treated in a certain way.  Since it is God's nature to forgive when asked, it should be ours.  Justice in a punitive sense is always superior to mercy because the latter depends on the former.  Forgiveness in response to authentic contriteness is different.  A truly repentant person is not the same as the careless or selfish version of themself who committed their sin.  They have changed for the better and they are to be treated as such.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2020/01/imitating-divine-forgiveness.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/12/forgiving-like-yahweh.html

"It Can Be Safely Assumed"

Despite how some people speak, there is no safe assumption.  One might hear, as I have, others say that "It is safe to assume" a given thing or that "It can be safely assumed" that something is true.  I have even encountered the literal statement that something can be "logically" assumed.  An assumption is by nature a belief on a basis other than proof, which can only be found in logical necessity; even the introspective proof of one's immediate mental states, though it involves experience within one's consciousness, is only proof because logic necessitates that experiencing something means at least the mental perceptions are real.

Oh, an idea being assumed might be objectively true and even demonstrable from logical necessity, but if anyone assumes it, they are to one extent or another disregarding logic altogether, thus making them irrational.  It does not matter that it is true or also entirely knowable, and it does not matter if the thing seemed so probable that the person felt comfortable with making an assumption.  Subjective persuasion or approval is not objective logical proof, which means one thing by necessity is true in itself (like logical axioms) or in light of some other truth.  Other than recognition of logical necessity, which is true independent of all else, there can be no knowledge.

People can still believe or perceive things without having true knowledge because not genuinely knowing logical axioms and other necessary truths does not prevent someone from thinking and experiencing.  When they brush up against the fact that they have only assumptions to stand on, or when they feel so persuaded that something is true even though it is not verifiable (or at least they have not logically verified it), they might believe anyway that they really are justified in making an assumption.  That some people openly admit they are assuming something while calling their assumption rational only means their delusion is far greater than someone who knows logical axioms but still believes in other things that ultimately contradict them.

Anyone who exists still exists, for instance, even if they have never rationalistically examined anything to find the necessary truths about it.  Any non-rationalist just cannot know even this self-evident fact or the logical axioms on which even this depends!  To have knowledge, they would need absolute certainty, and to have absolute certainty, they would have to recognize what cannot be false for what it is.  There is nothing that cannot be or have been false, because its falsity is literally impossible, other than logical axioms--including the logically necessary existence of an uncaused cause, as it could have been the case that there was neither any beings nor physical substance in existence.

It could not be or have been the case, for instance, that nothing logically follows by necessity from anything else, because then it would follow logically from the nature of reality that nothing follows by logical necessity, and that anything that would have followed logically would be necessity have to be false!  That one cannot doubt or reject one's own conscious existence without already existing as a consciousness is likewise epistemologically self-evident, but there is no inherent necessity in one's mind or any other mind existing, only in a mind existing as long as it exists (an application of the logical law of identity) and existing if it perceives anything at all.

No one can be intelligent (rationalistic) regarding a given matter without avoiding assumptions and turning to logic, starting with logical axioms, yet due to ego, fear of abstract truths, social conditioning, philosophical apathy, or any other invalid reason, so many do not.  In a world short of perfection, it will always be more likely that a person one is meeting for the first time will be a non-rationalist precisely because shedding or avoiding assumptions takes effort when a person is used to the alternative.  Whether the assumptions are passive or active, everyone who is not a rationalist is a slave to assumptions, and there are no safe assumptions.  Every assumption makes someone irrational to the extent they assume.

The Relevance Of Exodus 21:28-32 To Modern Life

For some time, I have relatively infrequently written articles that are meant to be published less than up to a year or more in advance.  Coming across article after article about human deaths preventable if greater care had been taken or due to non-wild animals, often by happenstance, compelled me to write this one in light of fairly recent occurrences.  As far removed as a spontaneously dangerous encounter with a bull's horns might be from the lives of many people in my country today, Exodus 21:28-32 is still highly relevant to modern life, and not just because the exact scenario described in the case law should be universally handled in the manner prescribed (as directly taught by verses like Malachi 3:6 and Matthew 5:17-19 independent of other reasons and verses).  

Read the verses if needed.  The moral principles entailed by Exodus 21:28-32 are not limited to specific parts of an animal that can be dangerous (horns as opposed to claws or feet, for example), specific animals (a bull as opposed to a heifer or dog), or even non-human animals altogether.  Really, this passage is about how human negligence leading to the death of a man, woman, or child is a sin so great it deserves the same punishment as murder (Exodus 21:12-14) and other severe sins like rape (Deuteronomy 22:25-27).  

For one thing, a dangerous factory machine that goes unrepaired despite worker complaints would be subject to the same obligations, including the obligation to execute anyone negligent enough to take no precautions to save human lives when they have warning (such as the situation addressed by Deuteronomy 22:8).  It is not just bulls or animals Exodus 21:28-32 addresses by logical extension!  And if being protected from injury or death stemming from neglect is the right of every "man or woman", "son or daughter", and "male or female slave", the same would logically be true of intentional injuries, the greater category of sin, according to this passage alone in isolation from the rest of Exodus 21.  One can find a multitude of examples of reported negligence leading to human death or of circumstances that, though negligence was not necessarily always involved, are still within the scope of Exodus 21:28-32.

More recently, a woman named Blanca Ojanguren Garcia is said to have been gored to death by an elephant in a Thai care center while traveling early this very year [1].  Since the elephant killed Blanca, using the same kind of bodily instrument (horns) mentioned in Exodus 21:28 at that, the creature should be killed according to Biblical philosophy because a non-human animal has killed a human.  That the animal had never killed anyone prior to this at least as far as the article mentions has no relevance.  It cannot be known in advance that a domestic/agricultural animal will kill a person.  Though the owner/caretaker is not necessarily guilty in this case depending on the specifics of what happened, the animal still must die.  A woman was reportedly killed by an animal that was not residing out in the wild, and that is all it Biblically takes for the animal responsible to need to die if the claim is true.  Yes, certain cares must be taken with handling non-human animals for the sake of their own moral rights (see passages like Exodus 23:4-5 and Deuteronomy 25:4), but human life always merits priority.

Another example of an incident relevant to Exodus 21:28-32 is the death of three men in India, who drove off of an unfinished bridge in 2024 while seemingly following a Google Maps route [2].  Yes, Google Maps getting updated to prevent tragedies like this is not something that always be ensured quickly.  At a minimum, still, local government doing nothing to block the drivable surface of the unfinished bridge whether or not navigation apps would guide anyone on such a road is absolutely the same kind of negligence condemned so explicitly in Exodus 21.  Contrary to corporate practices that try to leave consumers with most or all of the risk and no substantial recourse if they survive a dangerous situation in any way related to an organization's products or services, the Torah commands that people who passively disregard human life be put to death.  Someone failed to install signs or other obstacles on the Indian bridge in question to prevent injury, loss of property, or loss of life.  Exodus is not subtle whatsoever about the deserved punishment, although monetary ransom is permitted as a substitute in verse 30, whereas this is injustice for murder (Numbers 35:30-31).

Yet another relevant event took place in 2024 and culminated in the death of a young woman named Alison Pickering in America [3].  Allergic to peanuts, she ate a familiar dish from a restaurant she had been to before.  However, the introduction of peanut sauce to the ingredients unannounced to customers triggered her allergy, and ultimately consuming the sauce killed her.  Not even the wait staff was allegedly informed of this change.  Anyone at the restaurant who knew as much as they could that the ingredients would change and said nothing about it would be guilty of the class of negligent sin addressed in the first chapter of Mosaic Law after the Ten Commandments.  The absence of an unconfined animal that injured Alison here would not make a moral difference.  By logical necessity, this situation would have to be connected to the same rights and obligations as that of a farm animal that attacked someone and was never penned up, only to later kill a person.

Other stories similar to these can be found [4].  Perhaps Judeo-Christianity is true and perhaps it is not, like many worldviews consistent with true rationalism.  Either its veracity or falsity is logically possible irrespective of fallible evidences.  But aside from its truth, the ideas behind Exodus 21:28-32 are not irrelevant to a host of circumstances common in modern times.  Thus, on Biblical theology, it does not matter it you do not own bulls or are not exposed to animals that could show dangerous behavior whether or not they attacked or killed anyone in the past.  Each human should be protected from incidental harm or death as much as possible.  Each human is also responsible for ensuring as much as they can that others are not placed in danger due to passivity.  Other case laws in Exodus have analogous ramifications beyond the exact things the words speak of.  

The principles of Exodus 21:10-11, for instance, are not just about a polygamous marriage specifically; logically and textually, all husbands and wives can divorce for neglect of material or relational needs/rights (Genesis 1:26-27, 1 Corinthians 7:2-5).  The concepts of Exodus 21:26-27 are not just about literal slaves; all people can or must Biblically go free from relationships for abuse no matter their promises of commitment beforehand (Exodus 21:5-6, Deuteronomy 15:16-17), including from any marriage relationship.  Exodus 21:18-19 is not just about a stone or a fist, Exodus 21:23-25 is not just about negligent injury to a pregnant woman (21:22), etc.  Exodus 21:28-32 is certainly no different!

[1].  https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/07/asia/spanish-woman-killed-elephant-thailand-intl-hnk/index.html

[2].  https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly23yknjy9o

[3].  https://www-cbsnews-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.cbsnews.com/amp/texas/news/texas-restaurants-new-recipe-cost-her-life-parents-on-a-mission-to-make-changes/?amp_gsa=1&amp_js_v=a9&usqp=mq331AQGsAEggAID#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=17327304113266&csi=0&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cbsnews.com%2Ftexas%2Fnews%2Ftexas-restaurants-new-recipe-cost-her-life-parents-on-a-mission-to-make-changes%2F

[4].  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/21/us/google-maps-lawsuit-collapsed-bridge.html

Can Business Not Be Personal?

"It's nothing personal, just business" might be a common or stereotypical phrase of someone shrugging off a course of action undertaken in the name of money and access , especially if they had to trample on someone to achieve that financial goal.  Popularity of course does not entail logical correctness.  The idea behind the phrase is philosophically nothing but bullshit on multiple levels.  On one hand, if an action truly is immoral, whether there was personal malice driving it or whether the outcome is pragmatically beneficial does not override this.  On the other hand, business cannot not be personal.

What is a person's motivation for engaging in business as a merchant, employer, or employee?  Is it to achieve psychological or lifestyle security by amassing wealth?  Is it to impress others, as stupid as this is?  Is it to feel better about themself either by living up to cultural pressures about success or being accomplished as an individual?  The exact motivation or blend of motivations is not necessarily the same from one person to another, but desiring any of these or other things is an inherently personal matter of subjective intention.  Desire for security, fame, and accomplishment is inherently personal, as is hoping to make a positive impact through business efforts; all desire is subjective, even if the desire is otherwise for something that itself transcends mere subjectivity.

Subjective matters like ego, psychological insecurity, or the longing to impress others are personal!  It is logically impossible for someone to have a fully impersonal approach to business.  I do not mean that their philosophy of business is automatically tainted by logical fallacies because no one has to make assumptions or hold to errors rather than align with the objective truths of reason.  I am referring not to their beliefs about business, but to what drives them to involve themself in business at all.  Perhaps they simply want to make money to avoid starvation or dying of thirst or exposure to the elements (homelessness), which although it is about physical needs broadly relevant to human life rather than sheer individualistic fulfillment is still necessarily personal.

Some motivations might be more personally and introspectively charged, absolutely.  It is possible that one person feels driven to succeed in business to provide for their family they deeply love.  Another could be devoted to contradicting stereotypes about their workplace potential on the basis of gender, race, or class.  Others could be pathetic slaves to greed out of commitment to the delusions of egoism or materialism.  While hoping to make money for the sake of endless profit increases is obviously asinine (due to the impossibility of infinite growth and the stupidity living for a social construct like money over pure logical truths), it is no exception to business always being personal.  Exceptions to this are logically impossible.

There is and can be no such thing as business not being personal.  Logically, it is impossible for anything contrary to be true.  Nevertheless, most people are not rationalists and thus have no true knowledge of necessary truths, and many times the phrase "It's nothing personal, just business" is used only to deflect moral criticism anyway.  As if any actual moral obligations could be just sidestepped because they are inconvenient for your business practices!  If someone ever uses this phrase, they have made themselves vulnerable to being humiliated by total refutation, and confronting them about their stupidity could ironically hurt them very personally.  Thinking themselves cold and detached or at least intending to project this persona while avoiding accountability, they leave themself wide open to very personal reckoning.

Bodily Functions

Prudery can extend to more about the body than mere genitalia and sexual acts--the two not being identical whatsoever.  Though consumption of food is correlated with the energy that keeps physical creatures alive, it leads to excrement, the same as how the intake of liquids leads to urination.  Deuteronomy 23:12-14, with the preceding two verses setting up part of the context, actually had to do with the visibility of certain biological waste in a camp.  It might seem at first to some readers that this is God here treating defecation as evil or at the very least as something that is immoral to see despite its biological occurrence.  However, the human body with its anatomy, including the genitalia and buttocks, and physiology, including the activity referenced in Deuteronomy 23:12-14, is very good (Genesis 1:31).  Yahweh is not a prudish being since it is he who would have created living creatures and their workings and approved of them.

Also, some clarifications can be discovered about or relating to this set of verses.  Verse 9 already specified the military context of a camp, not that defecation is limited to a martial encampment or a battlefield.  The wording of verse 10 also references male soldiers despite how female soldiers are never prohibited by the Torah, and as fellow bearers of the divine image (Genesis 1:26-27, 5:1-2), they are of course permitted to fight righteously just like the men who are no more expendable than they are, with Deborah the judge being a Biblical example of a woman appointed by God to preside over male soldiers (Judges 2:16-19, 4:4-7).  Humans defecate and not men alone.  In fact, there is something else that in part follows from this to be mentioned later on.  Any female soldiers would of course have the same obligations described here.

The passage says to bury the excrement resulting from when people relieve themselves on the battlefield, not because it says God is disgusted by the human body that he made or its functions or waste, but because it is a way to respect the divine force that is said to have actively moved about the encampment.  Now, there is nothing here or elsewhere said to be immoral about defecating in front of others or seeing others do this thing, and the same would go for urination by logical extension, which is not even addressed here since the text speaks of excrement (23:13).  It is leaving human feces unburied during a military campaign that is prohibited, far from having the same moral weight as something like engaging in an unjust war as the aggressor or torturing captives (combatants or civilians alike).  It is also not something to be buried because other people might see it outside the camp.  No, it is a way to respect God in this scenario.

From this brief set of verses, a great deal is affirmed one way or another, even if these things could be discovered from other verses (Genesis 1:31 and Deuteronomy 4:2 would already tackle how such activities are not evil, nor do they need to be hidden from other people).  While personal comfort or discomfort with bodily functions like urination is a subjective thing that for some people might simply have no matter what their cultural background is, hiding people away when relieving themself in either manner by default is just a social custom that some people are so adjusted to or appreciate so much that they might not think about how it is just that: an unnecessary habit.  Segregating people when performing this activity by gender is likewise a social construct, not something done out of some logical necessity for the act itself or to honor any Biblical command.  No such thing is prescribed in the Bible in itself or by logical necessity through a separate command.

There is no need for any unwilling person to proceed with these biological functions while being watched, as that does not logically follow.  What is the case is that inside or outside of the Christian worldview, there is no rational (true and logically verifiable, that is) basis for conversationally  shunning any mention of urination or defection, for striving to only perform then in secret--or maybe in the presence of a significant other--except out of sheer personal preference, and for treating these aspects of biology as non-applicable or offensive to women, as well as for believing that men and women should take great care to not speak of or do such things in front of each other (again, perhaps except for spouses on the prudish stance).  Thinking one could add to one's moral obligations, as if God's nature does not reflect all that is good and his revelation does not at least indirectly convey all of them, is itself sinful, as addressed by Deuteronomy 4:2.

Bathsheba's And David's Baby

In the aftermath of David's adultery with Bathsheba and murder of Uriah, the prophet Nathan confronts him at God's prompting according to the text of 2 Samuel 12.  Nathan says in verse 14 that David will not die following David's acknowledgement of his sin--sin which deserves premature death by execution (Leviticus 20:10, Deuteronomy 22:22).  There was mercy on this level.  However, the prophet also states in the same verse that the son born to Bathsheba and David from the adulterous sex will die.  What happens to this child according to Biblical doctrines instead of non sequitur assumptions and moronic traditions?  Some (hyper-Calvinists) might insist he went to hell if he would have rejected God when older.  Other people say the child went to heaven if it was too young to sin.  The only way that the chapter touches on this at all is indirectly: David says that he will go to his son and his son will not return to him (2 Samuel 12:25).

David only says he will in some sense go to the child.  He does not speak of any alleged immediate afterlife he would share with his son and certain not of heaven as popularly conceived of, as will be addressed.  From the wording of 2 Samuel 12 alone, it would not follow that he is referring to a conscious afterlife that the baby is already experiencing which David will eventually join.  The text is perfectly compatible with the idea that David only expects to join his son in death at some point.  The child will not return to life, but David's life can end so that both are dead.  This passage does not provide any real details, much less hints, about what the intermediate state before the final judgment is, or if there is one.  It also says nothing about whether babies that die automatically go to heaven or hell at some point as some assume.

One must look to other passages.  In actuality, Peter says in Acts 2:29-34 that David did not ascend to heaven when he himself died, having just quoted Psalm 16 where David says God will not abandon him to Sheol, the state of the dead.  Jesus also teaches in John 3:13 that he is the only person who has ever been to heaven.  David, Bathsheba, Rachel, Elisha, Joseph, and more all went to Sheol upon death according to the Bible.  What, then, is Sheol like?  Contrary to a popular misconception of it as an afterlife realm of consciousness divided into a side for the righteous and a side for the wicked, it is not a place where spirits of the dead are rewarded or punished before the final judgment.  It is a place/state that all people are reduced to at death in which the righteous and wicked alike are unconscious (Ecclesiastes 9:5-10, Job 3:11-19, Psalm 6:5, and so on).

Animals like sheep go there as humans do because Sheol is the earth or water that holds a body rather than an underworld of consciousness (Psalm 49:14).  For the mind, which is not inhabiting the body after death (James 2:26), there is only unconscious sleep until an eventual eschatological resurrection of humanity (Daniel 12:2).  When David says in Psalm 16 that God will not abandon him to Sheol (a state of oblivion for conscious perception, as Psalm 88:10-12 would suggest even in isolation from explicitly direct passages like Ecclesiastes 9:5-10), or the grave, he is also alluding to a future resurrection.  Otherwise, he and everyone else would remain in unperceiving sleep where no one can think or feel or praise God, for it is only the living that can worship him (Isaiah 38:18-19).

It is plainly taught, just not in 2 Samuel 12, that the son of Bathsheba and David goes to an unconscious sleep before which he will either rise to eternal life in bliss with Yahweh, either because he had not sinned or because he chooses God after the resurrection, or rise to be killed permanently if he refuses to align with truth (Matthew 10:28, 2 Peter 2:6).  There will be no eternal torture in hell for their child or for the many genuinely wicked figures in Biblical narratives either way.  Theirs is the second death (Revelation 20:15) if they neither repentant in this life nor in the next after their resurrection--yes, this is logically possible, and the Bible does not say it will not be permitted.  It is in fact highly probable since God wants everyone to repent (2 Peter 3:8-9, 1 Timothy 2:3-6, Acts 17:30), as well as since not everyone has exposure to Christianity or the evidence for it, and yet John still says there are people from every nation, tribe, and language that receive salvation (Revelation 5:9-10, 7:9-10).

The innocence of the baby as a human that has little to no capacity to sin out of intentionality or philosophical carelessness alone means the child would not deserve hell.  No one is even in hell right now according to the Bible.  Only after Satan is placed in the lake of fire are wicked humans restored to life from Sheol and damned to be killed in hell (Revelation 20:10-15).  The child is also not in heaven.  No one is in heaven until after the resurrection of the righteous and heaven comes to the new earth through New Jerusalem (Revelation 21-22).  Right now, says the Bible, the righteous sleep, and the wicked likewise sleep, unaware of even the self-evidence of logical axioms and the existence of their own consciousness.  The two outcomes to follow are either eternal bliss or eventual destruction with an eternal exclusion from life itself.  The child of Bathsheba and David is neither suffering nor in heaven if Christianity is true.

Olber's Paradox

Olber's paradox pertains to the logical ramifications of how the sky would appear at night--depending on whether there is a disparity between perception and the natural world beyond it, as I will address--if the universe had no beginning, had no spatial boundaries and thus is not expanding, and is populated by an infinite sea of stars.  Infinite in age (in other words, past-eternal), infinite in scope, and infinite in its number of stars (for it stretches on in all directions and is inhabited by celestial bodies, or else the physical universe would not be infinite in scope/size, leaving some metaphysical space empty), which would have had an infinite amount of time to come into being, this sort of universe was recognized as being contrary to what one sees when one gazes into the dark, star-spotted skies at night.

If there is an infinite array of stars in a universe extending endlessly in all directions, there would not be distinct darkness marking the night sky that is illuminated only at scattered points by stars. The night sky would be far brighter and more densely lit than what appears to us on Earth.  This would require that there is a sufficient number of stars to crowd the night sky in an unbroken, uniform light, which itself would mean that all starlight aimed towards the planet is visible regardless of distance.  Not even the fact that light takes time to travel distances would account for what is seen above us because there would have been an infinite amount of time that has elapsed, which is already an utter logical impossibility in itself independent of empirical evidence.  On the level of epistemological limitations and sensory perceptions, Olber's paradox, however, could still not logically prove that the universe is not metaphysically infinite in the aforementioned ways (that is impossible for non-empirical reasons).

There could be more stars that I cannot see although they exist, for instance, whether for some more practical, scientific reasons like these particular celestial bodies being obscured by some unknown laws of nature, or because of a more metaphysically explicit disconnect between my mental and sensory experiences and the external world of matter, such as if a grand eldritch being is manipulating my sensory experiences.  Also, there might not be stars at all, as unlikely as it seems; visually perceiving something, whether a building up close or a star in the cosmic distance, epistemologically proves nothing beyond that one's visual perceptions exist.  The correspondence of those perceptions to a material universe outside of the mind and its senses is entirely up in the air.  Thus, Olber's paradox only shows that if we are seeing the universe as it is, the universe would have to at least be finite in its boundaries (size), finite in its age, or dynamic instead of static with regard to expansion, because there is not starlight at every point in the night sky.

It is nevertheless true that the cosmos can be proven to have had and only to be capable of having a beginning, and this is due to logic instead of probabilistic scientific methodology.  The logical impossibility of an infinite number of past moments or causal events within those moments is absolutely certain since it is a logical necessity.  Whether it is units of time or a chain of causal events, an infinite amount leading up to this moment or whatever events are happening right now would mean that the present could never be reached.  An infinite amount of time or occurrences could never fully elapse in order for this moment and the events transpiring during it to arrive.  Thus, whether time and the universe have been around for a moment or billions or trillions of years, they cannot have always existed.

As a logical necessity, all of this is true by default and any scientific truths must be consistent with it to even be possible.  All the same, Olber's paradox does entail that scientific observations from the standpoint of Earth, if they reflect reality beyond our perceptions and not just our subjective experiences, disqualify a universe of eternal age, boundless spatial distance, and thus one that is not expanding (because it is already inhabiting infinite space).  It is only as a response to a very particular philosophical error refuted by pure reason or scientific assumptions that do not match the sensory evidence that one would ever need to bother with looking to the night sky and thinking about how stars, visible light, and the age or size of the universe would relate to the cosmos not being eternal, infinite, or static.

Of Course Prophetesses Are Biblically Valid

It might strike theological conservatives as frustrating or outright offensive, but Biblical law permits prophetesses, and narratives of the Bible give multiple examples of them.  There are two ways that a text can condemn something: it can either directly call it immoral or say it should not be done, or it can prescribe something which would logically necessitate that an alternative is immoral.  The Bible does neither with female prophets, or prophetesses, not even in the Mosaic Law some people seem to assume is thoroughly hostile towards women, among other things, in positions of spiritual, familial, or workplace leadership.  Of fucking course prophetess are Biblically valid.  The Bible does not teach that moral obligations beyond those having to do with actual anatomy like male circumcision, not behaviors that people with any genitalia can do, are just for men or women.

Deuteronomy 13:1-5 and 18:14-22, for instance, condemn prophecy in the name of other gods and false prophecy in the name of Yahweh (both are capital offenses), but not prophetesses.  In fact, Deuteronomy 13:6-10 exemplifies how male language like "he" can refer to both genders since men and women are introduced and then referenced in these verses with male wording in some translations, like the KJV, NKJV, NASB.  Compare this to the KJV translation of Deuteronomy 13:5; male wording is irrelevant to whether prophets must be men.  Many other passages like Exodus 21:20-21, 21:26-27, Leviticus 13:29-39, and Numbers 5:5-7 do the same thing as Deuteronomy 13:6-10, often with perpetrators or victims of some sin among both genders.  Miscellaneous passage would thus be using male language when all people are in view if nothing about the context requires that it is referring to literal men.  As if the obviously egalitarian proclamation of Genesis 1:26-27 (and 5:1-2) and the absence of a prohibition of female prophets are not already enough to demonstrate already that prophetesses would of course be Biblically permitted and valid, Deuteronomy 4:2 and 12:32 say not to add to God's commands.

Men and women bear God's image; men and women can sin in the same ways, and men and women can grasp reason and serve God and righteousness, either by carrying out the obligations all people have or by becoming special representatives of Yahweh.  There are specific examples of prophetesses in the Bible, despite examples of such a thing being unnecessary to establish that the Bible does not condemn them.  In Exodus 15:20, Miriam, the sister of Moses, is called a prophetess--or prophet depending on the translation; again, male wording does not necessarily refer to just men and in many cases could not.  This is in the allegedly misogynistic Torah!  Now, I already addressed how Mosaic Law, by far the most central and thorough of all the Biblical moral revelation, says absolutely nothing against female prophets.  It is just that the Torah affirms them in this way as well.

Deborah of Judges 4 is called a prophetess, and she leads the whole of Israel, acting as a judge in the days before the Jewish monarchy.  Barak, a man, insists that he will only go on the military operation she prescribes on God's behalf if she goes with him (Judges 4:4-8).  Nothing about this contradicts the explicit, literal teachings and words of the Torah.  There is also Huldah of 2 Kings 22 and 2 Chronicles 34.  King Josiah has just found the book of the law, a clear reference to some portion of Mosaic Law, and laments how the people have not upheld it.  He tasks several people with inquiring of God about the book, since Josiah says that God's anger with the people is great, and they go to Huldah the prophetess.  Now, people can be hypocrites, but there is no hypocrisy in Josiah's reliance on the prophetess Huldah and his simultaneous devotion to Mosaic Law.  Her actions are not immoral because she speaks truthfully and her gender is not an affront to the deity who made both men and women equal in their humanity and thus metaphysical value, intellectual capacity, and moral rights and obligations!

Without listing the other prophetesses of the Bible, I want to touch on how Luke 2:36-38 mentions Anna, the prophetess who sees Jesus as a child and celebrates him.  This prophetess interacted with the young Jesus and spoke with listeners about his role in the "redemption of Jerusalem".  After the resurrection and ascension of Christ, Peter quotes Joel 2:28-29 in Acts 2:14-18, which predicts a particular era in which sons and daughters would prophesy, and in which God would pour out his spirit on his servants, male and female.  It is not as if he forbade such a thing beforehand, though.  God does not change (Malachi 3:6, James 1:17), and thus the obligations rooted in his nature do not change.  Men and women are not in error for prophesying when both can perform the same task!  This was never opposed in the Torah's detailed moral commands where some might expect prophetesses to be dismissed.

Logic, people.  It is very fucking helpful.

The Sabbath Is For Man

Having one day a week where one cannot work in the standard sense of the word might be easy for someone immersed in or obsessed with superfluous, meaningless labor and productivity to regard as intrusive.  Perhaps the basic concept of a weekly Sabbath, one day of rest for every six days of work, strikes such a person as restrictive or dangerous, but the more foundational issue is not about professional work at all.  It is about whether the Sabbath would interfere with mental health or physical safety.  Just what is permissible on the Sabbath?  Can one take a step?  Can one enjoy food?  What Jesus claims about the Sabbath is contrary to the notion of a day of deprivation meant to gratuitously test our patience and willingness to forgo matters like fulfillment, healing, or pleasure.  He outright declares, in accordance with the Old Testament as will be demonstrated, that the Sabbath is for people and their flourishing, not the other way around:

Mark 2:27--"Then he said to them, 'The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.'"

Moreover, the scope of the Sabbath's rest encompasses all people and their animals.  No earthly creature is to be excluded, and the benefit of those resting is acknowledged as vital, as stated in verses like the following:

Exodus 23:12--"'Six days do your work, but on the seventh day do not work, so that your ox and your donkey may rest, and so that the slave born in your household and the foreigner living among you may be refreshed.'"

Deuteronomy 5:12-15--"'Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the Lord your God has commanded you.  Six days shall you labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God.  On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your ox, your donkey or any of your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns, so that your male and female servants may rest, as you do.  Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.  Therefore the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.'"

Obviously (to someone looking to reason while avoiding assumptions), it cannot be to our benefit to disregard the likes of our physical health one day a week, which could already sabotage our mental health despite mental rejuvenation being one of the literally stated goals behind a weekly Sabbath.  Yahweh's Mosaic Law does not in any way prescribe that we undermine our own actual wellbeing for the sake of rest that is supposedly for our wellbeing!  When Jesus says that the Sabbath is for mankind (which on its own contradicts the idea that keeping the Sabbath is an obligation only for the Israelites), not mankind for the Sabbath, he articulates nothing that is not logically and textually evident from the Torah's primary prescriptions for one day of rest for every seven days of work.

From Exodus 23:12 and Deuteronomy 5:12-15 alone, it can be seen that the Bible emphasizes the mental and physical health of those resting on the Sabbath.  Part of the basis for the obligation is that as creatures God brought into existence and sustains, and especially so for humans due to having the divine image (Genesis 1:26-27, 5:1-2), animals--including people--have value and deserve to not to be unnecessarily overwhelmed by unhealthy expenditure of effort.  The point of the Sabbath is not to physically rest just enough to not prematurely destroy one's bodily functioning before more labor is done the next day, but to regularly refresh the minds and bodies of those who rest.

Jesus heals bodily deformities and conditions on the Sabbath (as in Matthew 12); as if mere walking on the Sabbath is anywhere condemned by God in the Torah, Jeremiah 17 and Acts 1 plainly permit it in various ways--for instance, Jeremiah 17 only condemns carrying loads for business through the gates of a city on the Sabbath, not walking through them.  Walking for health (mental and physical) or for leisure is not contrary to Biblical obligations.  Unrelated to health in particular but still allowing certain acts of physical labor on the Sabbath, Leviticus 6, 24, and Numbers 28 require that the priests engage in specific activities necessitating physical exertion.  On all levels, physical movement itself is not prohibited!

The properly executed Sabbath is liberating rather than confining, in fact.  Eating, drinking, bathing, walking, and so on are not sinful on this day.  A regular day of rest defies those who reductionistically regard people (more specifically, often people other than themselves) as a means of professionally generating profit, promotes human flourishing, and provides a day overtly dedicated to introspective and recreational pursuits.  The Sabbath is indeed for humanity, not humanity for the Sabbath.  Whoever thinks of the Sabbath as a geographically or historically limited obligation according to the Bible is delusional, as is whoever thinks it is an oppressive thing in concept, intention, or practice.

The Pension And The 401(k)

Retirement is supposed to be the grand reward waiting at the end of a long career full of hard work, though hard work in no way logically guarantees that one will be able to retire.  In addition to standard compensation derived from employment, retirement benefits from employers like a 401(k) plan with matching are meant to serve as an additional incentive to come work at a company or remain there for prolonged periods.  The pension has largely been replaced by the 401(k), although the former term might still be familiar even to those who have never received or worked towards receiving one.  What exactly is the distinction, and why would many companies offer the 401(k) over a pension?  Here I will examine the basic nature of one retirement setup and the other as related to why employers might forgo pensions for their own benefit on top of probably exploiting workers in their regular wages or salaries as addressed elsewhere.

With the 401(k), the employee is given the freedom, and the burden, of choosing the investment risk level and the percentage of their pay that goes into the plan.  Depending on market factors, the amount inside the account can oscillate, though it allegedly trends upward across longer periods of time.  The employer can match up to a given percentage at one percent for each percentage the employee contributes.  It is just that this might come with time-based limitations on how long one must work at the company before the employer match is permanently transferred to the worker.  In other words, if a company has a vesting period of three years, you have to either wait that full duration in order to truly keep any of the employer match or you will have to wait that amount of time to fully keep it.  Depending on the company, there could be partial vesting each year prior to that threshold.

One genuine benefit of 401(k)s, still, is that they can be migrated (or "rolled over") to the 401(k) of a new employer so that it follows a worker from job to job.  On the contrary, a pension remains with the company of origin: and if the company fails, one's retirement would be affected.  Why would 401(k)s have reached such prominence when pensions were popular during a portion of the 1900s?  With a pension, the employer has to give a set amount in retirement each month until the death of the retiree.  It does not matter if the investments go poorly during the employee's working years so that the employer loses money from this arrangement; they have to eventually pay the pre-specified amount on a monthly basis after the worker's retirement.  The company bears the risk of managing the investments, and the retiree might live a long life, so having the employee contribute a portion of their own direct earnings with or without an employer match can save the company an immense amount of money.  Once the 401(k) match is made, the employer has nothing to do with the money in the account other than potentially reclaiming some of it if a worker leaves before the vestment period ends.

Ultimately, forgoing pensions in favor of optional, employee-managed 401(k) plans saves or can save companies money, which in turn is used as another way to minimize the reward to employees for their labor and loyalty while placing more risk on their shoulders--though it is policies like this that undermine the incentives to remain loyal to companies at large to begin with.  An organization could also strategically "lay off" people who are reaching the vesting term to protect the company from having to permanently transfer ownership of the vested portion of retirement contributions.  As long as they do not do it for particular discriminatory reasons, there is nothing illegal on American law about merely letting people go abruptly and without a valid reason under at-will employment.  There is no need to go this far to save more money than a pension would require, however.  401(ks) can still easily benefit a company's retained finances more than pensions.

Functional "worship" of the bottom line is more and more overtly what many companies will prioritize over people inside or outside the organization.  The pandemic era saw companies celebrating record profits while refusing to pay workers more from the value they helped generate (or even to pay them truly livable compensation), and layoffs have become routine because times are so ostensibly difficult for executives looking to continually boost profitability--although the exclusive way to keep doing this is to exploit consumers or employees, as otherwise only a finite amount of money can be obtained from a finite consumer base on a planet with a finite human population.  The delusion of pursuing endlessly higher profit is highly stupid even when the timeframe is year after year rather than each fucking quarter.  Placing more instability into the lives of workers as they prepare for their retirement by emphasizing 401(k)s over pensions is just one of many ways an exploitative company could try to shortchange the employees it relies on.

The Book Of Jonah

Jonah, son of Amittai (Jonah 1:1), was an active prophet during the reign of Jeroboam, son of Jehoash, the king of Israel (2 Kings 14:23-25) in the Biblical account.  He is tasked with going to Nineveh, the capital city of the Assyrian Empire, to preach against it because of its great evil (Jonah 1:2).  While the first chapter of Jonah does not specify the sin in question, 3:8 provides slightly more detail.  The ruler of Nineveh proclaims that his people are to give up their violence along with their broader immoral ways (along with many other parts of the Bible, the book of Jonah clearly presents morality as universal and having nothing to do with being a Jew or Gentile).  Violence is not always evil, but Yahweh's Torah law makes it clear what the distinctions are, and Assyria is recorded as using very unbiblical forms of torture that go far beyond 40 lashes (Deuteronomy 25:1-3) or cutting off someone's hand (25:11-12) for limited, particular sins.  The Assyrians are renowned for flaying people and displaying human skins, among other extreme brutalities.  The book of Jonah leaves which illicit acts of violence the city repents of unspoken, but the king does repent and instructs others to do the same (Jonah 3:10).

The prophet has already said while inside the great fish that "'Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs'" (2:8), and still he is disappointed and hostile when a pagan city does turn from its sins.  He does not want that same grace to be extended to the citizens of Nineveh.  No, it cannot be illegitimate to go so far as to hate unrepentant sinners as God does (Leviticus 20:23, Deuteronomy 25:15-16, Psalm 5:5-6, 11:5, Proverbs 11:20).  The text does not say if Jonah hated the residents of Nineveh or not, but it does eventually reveal that he was reluctant to go to the city not out of fear.  He admits he expected God to relent in his threatened punishment out of love: "'This is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish.  I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity'" (Jonah 4:2).

His error is not hating the Ninevites and this would not necessarily be immoral as long as he did not mistreat them himself.  It is hoping that they would not repent and wanting God to destroy them anyway.  The prophet of Yahweh is greatly displeased and angry (4:1) precisely because God had compassion on them "and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened" (3:10).  The idea that only the deity described in the New Testament loves and accepts repentance from practically anyone is asinine and assumed; the Old Testament describes God as loving Israel and foreigners (Deuteronomy 10:18-19), inviting all who are willing, regardless of ancestry, to become his follower (Isaiah 56:3).  It is also in the Old Testament that his love is said to outlast and eclipse his anger (Psalm 30:5), which parallels how the wicked will be exterminated in hell and undergo finite torment at most (Matthew 10:28, 2 Peter 2:6), yet the righteous and redeemed will live forever (John 3:16).

After God asks Jonah if he has any right to be angry over his mercy (Jonah 4:4)--mercy is an arbitrary thing by default that never has to be shown to anyone, so there is no basis either for demanding it or opposing it in itself--the prophet decides to wait to see what would happen to Nineveh (4:5).  God directly causes a vine to grow to provide shade, something Jonah was very delighted by (4:6).  He then has a worm chew the vine to the point of withering (4:7).  With his head now exposed to the sun, Jonah wishes he was dead and insists he is angry enough to die (4:8-9).  God again asks in this time if he has a right to be angry.  Appealing to the greater worth of any and all humans than plants (Genesis 1:26-27), Yahweh points out that Jonah has cared for a mere vine that he did not even cause to grow and that only lived for a day, while Nineveh is full of more than 120,000 people lost in their wickedness, and many animals as well (4:10-11).  "'Should I not be concerned about that great city?'" God asks.

Here, the book of Jonah ends.  There is no additional verse and thus the weight of Yahweh's words and the ideas behind them is left as the final thing for readers to dwell on.  The moral value of animal life is held up as reason enough to be hesitant to destroy the city, though the human presences, however marred by sin they are (and some horrendously great sins at that in light of what is elsewhere ascribed to the Assyrians), are what God is most concerned with.  The command for Jonah to prophesy in Nineveh (given what Jonah said he knew about God beforehand) and God's compassion towards the repentant inhabitants are examples in the Old Testament of how Yahweh does not damn Gentiles for being Gentiles and wants every fallen person to be saved (2 Peter 3:8-9).

To hate sin and sinners can be rational and righteous.  God despises both according the aforementioned verses and more.  Still, he loves not just some people, but all.  If love is what drives him to show mercy, as even the book of Jonah acknowledges, and he wants everyone to repent, then he loves everyone, Jew and Gentile.  The Biblical deity does not change (Malachi 3:6, James 1:17).  His affection and mercy are not novel in the New Testament.  Rather, the New Testament elaborates upon the divine love that is already established long before.  It is not just Israel that Yahweh shows mercy to.  Jonah dislikes this, and God draws attention to his hypocrisy.  As difficult as it can be to accept mercy directed towards the true worst of sinners, far more difficult than accepting mercy directed at oneself in some cases, to oppose it when God is willing to withhold deserved destruction could never be right.