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.

What Does Paul Mean By Divine Tolerance?

Condemning hypocrites for their disapproval of other people's sins even as they commit the very same ones, Paul asks if double-minded people show contempt for the riches of God's kindness and, in some translations, tolerance that are meant to inspire repentance in the wicked (Romans 2:4).  Some translations feature words like forbearance (restraint) instead of tolerance, which is perfectly consistent with the way the rest of the Bible describes God: not as tolerating evil, but as not immediately giving fallen people what they deserve out of mercy born from love.  In fact, if he were to do so, not only would many people immediately die, but they would either be annihilated abruptly or immediately brought to the lake of fire to potentially suffer before being killed again (Romans 6:23).

If the word tolerance is the right word for Romans 2, this is not tolerance in the sense of harboring support for or granting protection to irrationality and other evils--and all sin involves elements of irrationality when a person thinks their feelings, including conscience, make something morally good or when they do not care about the truth and verifiability of their worldview, and about the justice of their actions.  To tolerate stupidity and evil is to be stupid and evil, and the Christian deity is not an amoral God.  If this is what the uncaused cause is like (amoral), there would be no evil and thus there would be no such thing as tolerance being good, nor would there be any evil to tolerate.  Of course, if there is such a thing as moral obligation because the uncaused cause has a moral nature, then it is still true by necessity that tolerance of this kind is irrational and immoral.

No, though he is willing to wait vast amounts of time for people to turn to him (2 Peter 3:8-9) and though he is eager to show mercy, Yahweh is not a deity of tolerance in the way that the word is often used today.  The divine tolerance or kindness of Romans 2:4 would have to be an expression of mercy in the context Paul is speaking of, for tolerance in the modern sense of the word is itself sinful (if the Bible did disagree with this, it would be incorrect on this point) and Yahweh is repeatedly shown to not be tolerant at all in this manner.  He repeatedly kills his enemies across Biblical accounts, and rightfully so, and he will kill them again a second time to eternally banish them from existence (Matthew 10:28, Ezekiel 18:4, Revelation 20:11-15).

It is not true that it is logically impossible for there to not be any moral obligations even though there is an uncaused cause, but if there are moral obligations, any at all, tolerating the neglect or violation of them--with encouragement or by trivializing that which should be done--is inevitably immoral.  Even if tolerance was the correct word for Romans 2:4, it would not be this kind of toleration that marks the Biblical Yahweh, and it still does not follow from even this lack of tolerance that he would be devoid of mercy.  The intolerance of the Christian deity towards evil is not inconsistent with his merciful attitude.  He is neither tolerant nor unwilling to provide people with time in order to commit to him, no matter how grievous or numerous their moral blunders.

The Social Construct Of Business

In all of the natural world, there is no such thing as a business that exists by default.  Likewise, businesses are not the abstract, necessary truths of logic, nor are they some other nonphysical or physical thing that exists without multiple beings having formed them.  In the most simple business transaction possible, two beings are required, one serving as both an employer and employee if these roles are not held by separate people and the other serving as a consumer, as I have addressed previously [1].  Modern people might be so accustomed to business, and even to there being a multitude of diverse businesses around them, that the status of business as a social construct of sorts is completely ignored or unrecognized.

Like the money business is intended to generate, business itself is not a social construct in the sense that gender stereotypes or unjust legal punishments would be.  This latter kind of social construct is a philosophical error that deviates from the truth, something that is contrary to reality and only believed in, practiced, or tolerated by irrationalistic fools.  The different kind of social construct, like business or every kind of currency from all of history, is something contrived or established by people that would not exist without them (or at least a small group of some other type of analogous being).  Language would be another example.  There are no words without a conscious being to use them, though the logical possibility of creating languages is still present.

Money and business have a similar status in other ways because of this: to live for them as opposed to in the midst of a society that features them is highly irrational.  They are only a means to achieve a goal other than themselves, and so to mistake them for an intrinsic part of reality or a meaningful goal in themselves is a pathetic error.  Other than blind intellectual and existential "autopilot," desperation to get by, a desire for recognition, or an emotionalistic love of accomplishment (as opposed to one constrained by rationalism) are the only reasons why someone would love business as anything more than a means to something else.  All of these are subjective preferences that are invalid as grounds for any belief except that someone experiencing them has the preferences.

Besides the objective truth about its philosophical nature and relationship with morality, other metaphysics, and everything else that is connected to it because of these relationships, there is no reason to care about business other than practical usefulness in achieving a goal or subjective appreciation or fascination.  This is all that there is to the subject of business beyond the more foundational, abstract truths about it and how it relates to things far deeper or otherwise more significant than itself.  Even its practicality relies on more fundamental, important things: business is practical for some things because it can help people achieve financial or material goals necessary for survival, for flourishing beyond survival, or for stimulating self-actualization--and these things are themselves dependent on logic and the nature of morality in order to be meaningful.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/01/power-in-business-part-1-employers.html

Why Doesn't The Bible Mention Logical Axioms?

Since logical axioms are inherently true, and thus more foundational and significant than all other truths (which hinge on them and not the other way around), why would the Bible not mention them if its doctrines are also true?  Everything depends on logical axioms for its possibility or necessity, which is why even axioms being false requires that they are really true: if, for example, it was true that contradictions were possible, then it would have to be true that the idea that contradictions are false is false, since its veracity would require that the alternative is false.  If A was not A, then a thing would be something other than what it is, but this would still be what it is (A would still be A), so what can be called the law of identity is true in itself (though one does not need words, much less the formal phrases for particular laws of logic, to discover these things).

God's existence is absolutely certain because there is an uncaused cause by logical necessity [1].  What is not absolutely certain because it is not necessarily true by default, in light of itself like axioms or in light of any other necessary truth, is that Yahweh is synonymous with that uncaused cause and that the moral system of Christianity is correct.  However, it could not be the case that a thing which follows from something else is false, for then it would follow logically from the untruth of this axiom that logic is erroneous, which would require logic still being true in order for it to be false.  The Bible does not directly focus on these sorts of truths which are independent of all spiritual, religious, and scientific matters, all of which are contingent on being consistent with logical axioms to even be possible.

Its tenets are indeed logically possible, though.  It is possible for God to be loving even if the real uncaused cause is not.  It is possible for there to be a future resurrection, even if there will not actually be one in reality.  It is possible for theft or blasphemy to be immoral, but it could also be true that there is no such thing as morality or that what is good is very different in some ways from Biblical ethics.  However, since conscience is a meaningless, irrelevant, subjective thing of no intrinsic metaphysical or epistemological connection with the existence and particulars of morality, and since cultural norms are mere sociological trends that have nothing to do with whether good and evil exist, the Biblical emphasis on Yahweh's moral nature addresses things people could not know left to themselves.  I do not mean that Christianity is guaranteed to be true, even with all the evidence in its favor.  If Christianity is true, one still cannot just know from introspection and conscience what is evil or obligatory and what to do if one has sinned.

The Bible might be a book that happens to be philosophically correct on things like the existence of an uncaused cause even if other parts are false.  Nonetheless, in focusing on moral revelation, soteriology, and eschatology, it most directly, repeatedly mentions things that people would not be able to know of given human limitations.  No one needs the Bible or any kind of literary, conversational, or sensory prompting of any kind to realize the inherent truth of logical axioms that all other things already depend on, though many people do not recognize this and might even deny these truths when pressed.  It is not self-evident/self-necessary or necessitated by other logical truths that God loves humanity, that a demonic being called Satan opposes God, that there is eternal life for the righteous in an afterlife following resurrection, or other such things.  Reason is true in itself.

Although the Bible would have to be consistent with it to be possibly true or true in actuality, it would not have to mention what is and could be literally the only self-necessary set of truths.  Not even the self-evidence of one's own conscious existence, which would have to be true in order to be denied since one has to be conscious to disbelieve in one's own mental existence, is true apart from logical axioms.  My existence (only that of my consciousness) is self-evident, yes, but it depends on their preceding, inherent metaphysical and epistemological truth like everything else would have to.  The Bible does not need to state these things to be logically possible or to even be true beyond merely having potential to have been true.  There is evidence for its truth, which would entail the truth of its moral, soteriological, and eschatological doctrines, and these are things that, though possible, would not be obvious to humans as probable apart from some sort of revelation and evidence for its veracity.

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

Alcohol And Other Drugs

Alcohol is a drug, for a drug is a substance that affects a person on a phenomenological or physiological level.  Yes, so does food, but drugs are used for medicinal or pleasure-seeking purposes outside of the more basic survival and nutritional purposes of food; drugs are only used for survival in atypical situations when applicable, such as when a life-saving medicine is administered.  They can be psychotropic just as alcohol is: they can alter mental states, and not just in the way that any drink like water or substance like dough can make a person experience specific tastes or scents.  All of these things can bring particular mental states as well.  The difference is that they, unlike some drugs, do not trigger something like a state of drunkenness.

One might hear alcohol and drugs separated linguistically despite the plain overlap.  It can be much more difficult to linguistically define drugs than some might think, for they might only appeal to authority or think of a drug as something that really overlaps with what they think of as a separate category--for instance, as aforementioned, drugs impact the mind and/or body, but so does food, and yet food is very different from something like marijuana or hard drugs like cocaine.  At the same time, they have more in common than might be initially believed.  Alcohol is indeed often referred to alongside other drugs by a different word as if wholly distinct, but it genuinely is a drug in the looser sense.

Just because it is a liquid does not mean alcohol is not intoxicating or otherwise capable of affecting the mind and body.  Many people are familiar with its correlation to phenomena like potential drunkenness.  However, there is a widespread attitude that accepts alcohol use as something refined or even positive under the right conditions, in public or in private, that can be abused but does not have to be; at the same time, there is a double standard that also characterizes use of other drugs like marijuana as inherently addictive, destructive, and an indicator of hedonistic or depraved worldviews or behavior.  As if drugs cannot be used to varying extents like alcohol and as if all drugs have the same effects, alcohol and other drugs can be regarded very differently for purely irrationalistic reasons.

Language can only influence your worldview if you allow it to, and one can always look past words and whatever errors they might express to reason and concepts themselves.  Still, the way that people might mention "drugs and alcohol" instead of "alcohol and other drugs" could contribute to a misperception that not everyone examines free of assumptions.  Someone certainly could use the terms alcohol and drugs more in line with the societal norm in modern America without believing anything contradictory or assumed, yes.  Word choice alone does not have to mean someone believes in fallacies and misunderstands the nature of concepts.

I myself have used the words in this way here on my blog (though I have pointed out the double standard precisely because alcohol and drugs are just different examples of the same overarching category of mind-altering substances)!  The way that the masses use the words in differing ways nonetheless could suggest on its own that alcohol being a specific class of drug is not acknowledged.  Given the double standard between how alcohol and other drugs are regarded in plenty of cases, which would only be embraced if many people did falsely think the one is not just a subset of the other, it is true that the relative acceptance of one and the demonization of the "other" means some people would believe things that cannot be true.

The Throne Of God

Many people say all the time that Christianity entails people going to heaven after they die or that heaven is the ultimate destination of the righteous and redeemed.  Do they mean the new heavens and earth of Isaiah 65 and Revelation 21-22?  Or do they mean the present abode of God, where his throne is situated (Isaiah 6:1-5, likely also referenced in Daniel 7:9-10 and Revelation 20:11-15)?  Jesus says that no one had been to heaven but he himself (John 3:13), the Son of Man spoken of by Daniel 7:13-14).  Later in the book of Acts, Peter says not even David ascended to heaven (2:29-35).  Heaven is not a place where Abel or Sarah or any other Old Testament figure has gone.

At no point before Christ's incarnation does the Bible say anyone went to heaven before or after their biological death.  Even now, the Bible teaches that we absolutely do not go to heaven as Christians after dying.  The dead are collectively and without exception, the Bible teaches, unconscious in Sheol (Ecclesiastes 9:5-10, Job 3:11-19) before their resurrection (Daniel 12:2).  Only at the resurrection are people restored to life, some to receive eternal life (Revelation 20:4-6, John 3:16) and some to die once and for all in hell, in a second death within the lake of fire (Revelation 20:11-15, Romans 6:23).

Christ is said to return at some future point, and from this time onward, his followers will be with him, not before (John 14:2-4).  Before this return, the dead are not raised (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18) and those in Sheol remain unperceiving as their bodies are contained and decomposed by the ground or the water.  The first resurrection occurs after the return of Jesus, and this is for the righteous.  The second death, Revelation 20 says, has no power over those who partake.  The righteous, after their resurrection, reign with Christ, and then comes the judgment of unrepentant sinners before God's throne (Revelation 20:11-14).

Once again, God is described as sitting on a throne.  Other than glimpses of heaven in visions like that of Isaiah 6, and seemingly at the final judgment, no human so much as sees what the Bible often refers to by the word heaven.  Attended by angels that are so alien or powerful that prophets might feel urged to bow down to them (Revelation 10:9-10), God in his majesty and residence is enough drive Isaiah to say there is woe upon him (Isaiah 6:5).  The realm of God, where his throne is positioned, is not a place people are supposed to visit, in this life or the true Biblical afterlife, which is not a disembodied existence immediately at the time of death, but conscious and bodily existence at the resurrection.

Heaven comes to Earth after the old heavens and earth pass away by fire (2 Peter 3:7, 10-13).  Isaiah 65:17-19 mentions how God will create a "new heavens and a new earth," the former versions being forgotten.  Revelation 21:1-5 affirms this before the chapter provides a detailed description of various aspects of New Jerusalem (21:9-27), the city that comes down from the heaven mentioned in places like Isaiah 6 (Revelation 21:10).  On this new world, those who have eternal life are at last free to enjoy life free of human death and the trials of a decaying creation, and God has a new throne (22:1).  Far more than empty space inhabited by pure spirits or a single confined location, the new creation is a physical universe outside of New Jerusalem, the eternal city where the gates are never closed and nations can go about the world (Revelation 21:25-27).  This heaven on Earth is what is reserved for the righteous or repentant after their resurrection (Daniel 12:13).

The Speed Of Thought

A perfectly rationalistic person might out of habit or lack of psychological energy take a few moments, or longer, to discover or recall particular logical truths.  Perhaps, if another person has so adjusted to rationalistic thought over days or years, they might be relaxed enough with their deep familiarity that identifying logical truths new to them can occur within fractions of a moment (this kind of speed is accessible from the start, though, depending on the person!).  There is nothing logically impossible about either this dramatic speed of thought on one hand or an actual rationalist having a hazy mind on the other.  Even for non-rationalists, there is nothing impossible about thinking being done very rapidly--an example even people without true knowledge (which can only be obtained by logical proof with no assumptions) might experientially relate to is reading prolonged texts very rapidly after looking at them.

Sometimes, one might interact with people who disparage someone strictly for the alleged unintelligence displayed by requiring a few seconds or longer to think of something, whether it is more about them fighting to concentrate despite exhaustion or psychological conditions or truly about them having difficulty with grasping abstract logical necessities in the moment.  If they are having such difficulties, though, it is absolutely not as if the only possible reason is that they are irrational.  For instance, a holistic rationalist might still have memory problems, which does not intrinsically prevent someone from recognizing or savoring at least some logically necessary truths, like the axioms I frequently mention.  This is yet another way people can confuse some irrelevant trait like mental quickness for intelligence, which is in reality nothing other than the intentional, accurate mental grasp of the laws of logic.

What an irrational person concludes or starts from does not align with the objective truths of logic, and so they are irrational one way or another, but it is not the exact speed at which they arrive at a conclusion that is the inherent problem.  The issue is that they have made assumptions or neglected certain necessary truths.  Now, it does not require 10 minutes to realize while first thinking about the matter that logical axioms are true, as they are epistemologically self-evident because them being false still requires that they would be true.  Becoming aware of how to logically prove one's own existence likewise does not have to longer than a moment or so, although logical axioms are more fundamental than one's consciousness.  It is certainly not that an entirely indefinite amount of time is ever necessary for anyone to realize what is self-evident or to discover/remember any other given ramification of a concept whatsoever.  The truth is that there is no specific speed of thought that makes someone rational, despite how enormous lengths of time are objectively unnecessary to realize or embrace many things.

It really does take only a few moments for a great many philosophical facts, from the only truths that cannot be false to very particular logical truths which are not self-evident, to be recognized by someone who is sincerely trying to align with reason unshackled by assumptions.  Thinking about even the most abstract or precise of necessary truths can be actively engaged in at incredible speeds, so that someone might be able to think about multiple logical truths and how to prove their necessity in under a single moment or two.  For anyone who struggles to pinpoint or recall vital truths within such miniscule timeframes, though, there is no irrationality except where there are assumptions, philosophical negligence (such as by never coming to logical axioms), or failure to live according to what is known to be true.

Gender Equality In Biblical Divorce

If divorce was universally immoral, it would obviously be better to never marry, for one cannot see into other minds in order to know if they are truly rational, righteous, and sincere, and one cannot see into the future in order to know if a spouse would change into a tyrannical, egoistic, hypocritical partner.  This is the reaction of the disciples to Jesus (Matthew 19:10) when he says that it is not morally legitimate to divorce for any reason at all, which is what the Pharisees ask him about (19:3).  Jesus is not denying Yahweh's approval of divorce for more than just adultery, a common misunderstanding.  He affirmed the righteousness and enduring nature of Mosaic Law (Matthew 5:17-19, 15:1-14), which permits divorce for broader circumstances than adultery, whereas the Pharisees of Matthew 19 misrepresented it as commanding divorce (19:7).  Moreover, Jesus mentions divorce for "sexual immorality" (19:9), which is far broader than just adultery, encompassing acts like rape as well (Deuteronomy 22:25-27).

What the Pharisees were alluding to, albeit in a straw man manner, is the divorce portion of Deuteronomy in verses 1-4 of chapter 24.  In this chapter, God says that men can divorce their wives if the former find something "indecent" about her.  Unlike the position presented to Jesus in Matthew 19 entails, which he rejected, Mosaic Law does not permit divorce for any and every reason.  There is no sin in developing a disability or having a certain personality trait (given that it is not expressed irrationally/sinfully) or accidentally overcooking food, for example.  The husband of Deuteronomy 24:1-4 is not morally free to dissolve the marital bond on a mere whim because of petty, emotionalistic, or otherwise asinine reasons.  This is the context from which Jesus responded to the Pharisees--remember, he said he absolutely did not come to abolish the obligations of Mosaic Law earlier in the book of Matthew.

However, is divorce only Biblically permissible when initiated by husbands?  Not at all!  Not only is there no text in the Torah saying wives cannot divorce their husbands as long as they too have valid grounds, making this morally permissible since it also does not logically follow from some other direct command that this is automatically sinful (Deuteronomy 4:2), and not only is there logical equivalence in an offended male or female spouse ending their marriage (which Genesis 1:26-27 would be consistent with), but there is already a key passage that addresses a woman voluntarily leaving a marriage because of how she is treated.  Exodus 21:9-11 mentions that a wife is free to leave a marriage if she suffers material neglect or abuse, so she is not sinning in any way.  Even aside from how Deuteronomy 24:1-4 would already apply to both genders in the Christian worldview, Mosaic Law separately touches upon a more particular basis for divorce and how women are of course allowed to terminate their marriages in the right contexts, contexts distinctly outside of mere adultery on their husband's part.

Since acts like physical assault (Exodus 21:18-19), nonconsensual sex (Deuteronomy 22:25-27), and so on are sinful, they would have to fall under general moral indecency, which Deuteronomy 24 already cites as a valid reason to divorce.  Capital sins like rape, sins which are prescribed the death penalty, would legitimize divorce by the victimized party, male or female, for the offender deserves to be killed anyway, which would already result in the end of the marriage.  Just to clarify, though the case law for rape mentions a male rapist and female victim, it would still be applicable to male victims and female aggressors for the same aforementioned reasons the divorce laws of Deuteronomy 24 would, but there is the additional fact that Deuteronomy 22:26-27 says that rape is like murder: a sin that is immoral for everyone, as if that would need to be stated in gender neutral language for this to be obvious (Exodus 20:13), that always deserves death no matter the gender of the person on either end of the deed (Exodus 21:12-14, Numbers 35:30-31).

Also, Paul speaks of divorce in gender neutral ways, mentioning how both husbands and wives are not to casually divorce and how spousal abandonment frees a spouse of either gender from the marriage status (1 Corinthians 7:10-16).  Remarriage to one's divorced former spouse after they marry another person, who in turn either dies or divorces them, is prohibited, not divorce itself (Deuteronomy 24:2-4).  It is also available to all abused women and men alike.  Divorce is neither something to rush to over amoral or relatively trivial matters nor something to vehemently oppose universally.  As painful as it might be, it is better to divorce than to suffer unwavering abuse, and just as there is no sin in defending oneself when called for (Exodus 22:2), there is also no sin in liberating oneself from a marriage that is threatening or suffocating because of actual sins like physical abuse, neglect (which can be a form of abuse in itself), adultery, rape, legalistic demands, and so on.  It is pathetic that some people deny the Bible teaches this even as they might deny the gender equality of Mosaic Law.