The Sin Of Gloating Over An Enemy's Misery

There is a difference between reveling in the fact that someone has committed a logical or moral error, even to the point of happiness or excitement that they have faltered so that one has a reason to pounce on them, and joyfully welcoming how, among other things, an amoral life setback makes it more difficult for them to wreak wicked havoc on others.  Obviously, the first kind of reveling is itself irrational and (if there is good and evil) immoral, since no one can ever legitimately err in such ways to in turn legitimize this reaction in another person.

What if the reveler does not stumble into the pitfall of this sort of celebration?  If someone is evil, would it be correct or at least permissible to delight in their trials and pain because of their faults, instead of in how they are/were in the wrong as if to celebrate stupidity and wickedness?  Not according to Proverbs.  What might seem like a random topic of little direct emphasis within Biblical theology comes up more than once in pivotal ways.  In spite of its reputation as a set of texts with no place for restraint from brutality or for compassion, the Old Testament is far from evasive on this point:

Proverbs 24:17-18—"Do not gloat when your enemy falls; when they stumble, do not let your heart rejoice, or the Lord will see and disapprove and turn his wrath away from them."

Listing various sins he claims to have not practiced out in the open or in secret, Job brings up the sin of gloating over an enemy's misfortune.  Along with evils like denying justice to his male and female servants (31:13-15), neglecting the poor and vulnerable (31:16-22), and worshiping or erroneously exalting wealth or the cosmos (31:23-28), expressing a belittling sort of pleasure at the downfall of an enemy is a sin that he specifically distances himself from.  

As seen from Proverbs, this is not the mere perception of Job, since rejoicing in the calamity of an enemy is clearly condemned as antithetical to God's character outside of a narrative like the book of Job.  The assumption made by some Jews and Christians is that whatever a figure like Job or Paul says about ethics in a Biblical story must be accurate, but this would only have to be the case if it aligns with God's nature.  Sometimes what an otherwise righteous Biblical figure states or does is not said to have divine approval, or it clearly contradicts what God demands elsewhere.  Still, what Job says is consistent with Proverbs 24:17-18.

Job 31:29-30—"'If I have rejoiced at my enemy's misfortune or gloated over the trouble that came to him—I have not allowed myself to sin by invoking a curse against their life . . .'"

Job insists he has not committed two independent but similar sins: rejoicing at the trouble of his enemy and cursing them.  Cursing any person is evil [1], with some instances being far worse than others (Exodus 21:17, Leviticus 20:9).  Each of these sins disregards the value of each person by harming them in some unjust manner.  In fact, the two can go hand in hand.  Cursing humans is actually singled out as depraved for the same basic reason as murder (compare James 3:9 with Genesis 9:6).

And the similar sin of gloating over misfortune is something promised significant judgment later in the Bible.  On the scale of a collective civilization, God predicts defeat and death for the Ammonites in Ezekiel 25 precisely for being joyful at the tragedy that befell Israel and Judah, which came about because God removed his protection from them after his people, as a whole, persisted in sin.  Indeed, beyond withholding further calamity from Israel, God reacts harshly to the Ammonites to the point of allowing them to be conquered.  The Bible, in saying these things, yet again gives specific examples of how Gentiles do not just have a pathetic and woefully incomplete seven moral obligations as opposed to Jews (Rabbinic Judaism's Noahide Laws are very clearly logically and Biblically false).  Both gloating and malice are utterly condemned no matter who is on either end:

Ezekiel 25:1-4, 6-7—"The word of the Lord came to me: 'Son of man, set your face against the Ammonites and prophesy against them.  Say to them, "Hear the word of the Sovereign Lord.  This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Because you said 'Aha!' over my sanctuary when it was desecrated and over the land of Israel when it was laid waste and over the people of Judah when they went into exile, therefore I am going to give you to the people of the East as a possession . . . For this is what the Sovereign Lord says: Because you have clapped your hands and stamped your feet, rejoicing with all the malice of your heart against the land of Israel, therefore I will stretch out my hand against you and give you as plunder to the nations.  I will wipe you out from the nations and exterminate you from the countries . . ."

Despite the lack of a statement like "You must never gloat over an enemy in their distress" in Mosaic Law, God is crucially not acting beyond or contrary to it in affirming the evil of such belittling attitudes or words in Ezekiel 25.  The Law does mandate that one take measures to assist one's enemy when they are in immediate need, such as when their beast of burden collapses under a load.  For the sake of both the animal and the human, who is one's enemy, one should intervene to offer assistance (Exodus 23:4-5), which excludes an apathetic or sadistic gloating from the sidelines.  However, Yahweh's laws never go so far as to condemn being an enemy to another party or having personal enemies.

Even in the midst of extreme and borderline misleading exaggeration as he addresses divorce [2] and oaths, Jesus, assumed by many to prescribe an ultimately quite unbiblical degree of aversion to conflict, does not say it is evil to have enemies.  Instead, one is to love one's enemies and not only one's friends or allies (Matthew 5:44-45), as they too are humans made in God's image with the same rights as all other people.  Nothing about loving enemies and treating them like a human goes beyond what the Law dictates, so there is no asinine, arbitrary addition or "correction" to it here as would be the case with many Pharisaical or evangelical ideas and even with some of the other ideas Jesus seems to propose.  No matter where one looks in the Bible, having enemies on the basis of their ideological or behavioral misalignment with the truth is not declared wicked.  

It could only be rational and righteous to be opposed to the wicked on the basis of their wickedness, after all.  But treating them in certain ways is always sinful.  Although it is possible to celebrate that a wicked person has lost power and thus has a lesser capacity to do evil from a distance without directly interacting with them, taunting them or in almost any way celebrating the fact that a human is suffering (not at justice being imposed as in the case of something like Deuteronomy 25:1-3, which does require some suffering) remains a despicable immorality.

God does not take pleasure at the death of those who deserve to die, as much as their life ending is a positive thing in some regards (Ezekiel 18:23, 33:11).  He likewise does not take pleasure at the suffering of humans as if them being in anguish is ever left to itself the morally positive thing.  Even in the limited instances where the likes of physical lashings and executions are obligatory within certain inflexible boundaries, it is always a travesty that there is any sin to punish in the first place.  

This should never be made the subject of delight, nor should the human whose objective value does not disappear no matter the folly of their stances or actions ever be denigrated.  Living this out can be very difficult for those with a proclivity towards anger or coldness.  Yet mockery of stupid, evil people is not even inherently the culprit, depending on how it is done (for instance, see Psalm 2:1-4).  Celebration of a person's ruin or that there is a need for the wicked to come to ruin is.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2025/09/cursing-humans.html

[2].  See here for elaboration, for instance:

https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2026/02/does-god-really-hate-divorce.html

"Right Now You're Feeling Helpless"

One scene in Saw VI that has nothing to do with the traps or flashbacks displays exceptional artistic competence, from the performances to the narrative tension to the layers of irony.  Antagonist Mark Hoffman, the successor to Jigsaw (John Kramer) after his death, listens to a portion of an edited voice recording from Saw V as the FBI works to uncover whose voice it really is.  It is Hoffman's.  He himself is a detective involved in Jigsaw-adjacent cases, but he was previously revealed to the viewers to have put the murderer of his sister into a copycat Jigsaw trap before being unexpectedly recruited by Jigsaw, who chastised him for making the trap inescapable.  In Saw V, Hoffman killed Special Agent Peter Strahm and placed his fingerprints in key locations to make it seem like Strahm, not Hoffman, was acting as the new Jigsaw.

While the tape in question was for his sister's murderer, Hoffman tensely navigates the situation as his framing of Strahm is on the brink of coming to light.  After all, the blade he used to cut out a puzzle piece of flesh from his sister's killer and another victim after John's death has been noted as having the same distinctive partially serrated edge.  Again and again, his own voice replays "Right now you're feeling helpless" from the tape that helped catapault him over his head into collaboration with John Kramer.  The broader whole of Saw VI is excellent, but this scene, under four minutes long, is executed so incredibly well that it stands tall entirely on its own.  It moves vital plot points along with masterful urgency and drama while showing a far more restrained Hoffman than the one we unfortunately received in the next film.  Even in isolation, the multifaceted excellence is apparent from the acting and the suspenseful course of events.

Returning FBI characters Lindsey Perez and Dan Erickson are in the room, with Perez asking Hoffman if he is alright.  Hoffman says he is anxious about the tape, and he seemingly is.  Yet instead of being anxious about identifying some separate killer on the loose, he is anxious about his own identity as Jigsaw's accomplice coming to light as the constantly repeating voice on the tape is made to sound more and more like his own unedited voice.  Perez and Erickson start to apply pressure with great subtlety at first.  Asking questions about Strahm's alleged motives as "Right now you're feeling helpless" continues to loop, they lay a conversational trap for Hoffman.

When Perez mentions how she never saw any evidence of such inclinations in Strahm during his five years as her partner, Hoffman says, "You never really can tell what someone is thinking on the inside."  This line simultaneously touches on a major philosophical truth about the human condition (as far as other minds are concerned, not one's own) and ironically affirms how he is trying to conceal his own intentions and deeds from others in the room, some of whom are already growing suspicious of him.  Now, he is the one in an increasingly vulnerable position; he is probably feeling quite helpless himself.

We see Hoffman walking around and preparing himself to fight or kill everyone in the room.  He gets a cup of hot coffee, which he later throws into the face of Perez to temporarily distract her.  He even sets down the coffee when Erickson seems to lean towards the idea that Strahm tried to frame Hoffman rather than the other way around.  And then he picks it back up after Erickson insists there is a problem with this, declaring that evidence points to Strahm having already been dead when his fingerprints were placed at the scene.  Almost right after, Hoffman's voice becomes clear on the tape: "Right now you're feeling helpless" plays one more time before the murderous detective starts killing everyone in the room.

You do not have to watch the entirety of Saw VI to see the elements that make this scene so strong—though it is of course integrated in ways that build off of Saw V and earlier scenes in Saw VI to great effect.  It is a stellar example of how to maximize every aspect of the dialogue, performances, and setting in an individual scene to pay off almost immediately while still serving as the culmination of many prior plot developments.  For a franchise primarily associated at a cultural level with lethal traps, this segment of the sixth film rises to great heights without even featuring any trap (many traps in the movie are likewise masterfully handled on many levels) or any portrayals of Jigsaw expressing his philosophy, not even in flashback form.  A simple premise and location can be superbly capitalized on with strong dialogue, acting, and ominous buildup free of elaborate effects.

Overemphasis On Words

People who act like the mental light bulb has turned on when literally all they have been told is the contrived term for a concept they still know little to nothing about and have just heard of for the first time are, well, foolish.  They are irrational.  If you just know the word for something, you still do not know what that thing is, only what it is called!  From this alone, you could not even know which concept is being associated with the word.  Spoken language literally illuminates almost nothing on its own in this sense, and certainly nothing of importance.  Someone could be familiar with a multitude of words for an idea, even in different languages, and lack knowledge of what exactly it is.

Some people are so infatuated with words, and perhaps moreso with the illogical elitism expressed in favor of people who read or claim to read (at least certain books) than with words themselves, that they focus very disproportionately on language and articulation.  Are words important?  For the pragmatic purpose of communication, yes.  They are quite literally the only way short of direct telepathy for one being to get highly precise or abstract concepts across to another such being.  Do they have such a high status that concepts are trivial compared to the arbitrary words for them and that familiarity with words means you know concepts or reason itself?  Of course not.

If you were to look out for instances of other people reacting as if they have learned far more than is possible from simply being told of a term that is new to them, it might not be difficult to find plenty of cases.  Whether because of some personal delusion or the desire to look "intelligent" before others, this exaggerated reaction is somewhat common, at least in my experience.  One might see, among other things, a person encounter a word for something like a psychological condition or a personal finance tool and then treat the word like it has grand significance or special power.  

If they knew the nature of the thing already thanks to logic, the term is unnecessary for this altogether even on the level of prompting.  And if they did not know, the word reveals basically nothing in isolation, as already stated.  While subjective excitement or gratefulness for having a word for something has its limited place, whatever the thing it refers to, it is just a word.  Communicating is where language is truly vital, not understanding an idea.

If a concept is neither logically self-necessary (only logical axioms are) so that there is literally no excuse for a conscious person to not grasp it at some point early in their life nor in some extended way obvious in light of reason (that introspective states of mind cannot be illusions, that skin color is always objectively irrelevant to personality traits, etc.), then it might only come to mind if someone else brings up the idea using words or uses a word and then is pressed as to what it means.  Absolutely!  But, only someone who is not being rationalistic would ever conflate a term with an idea, as if the former is anything other than random invention used to communicate the latter, or would ever, even worse, elevate the former over the latter.

Job Titles

Someone can take a job for its title with the real intention of using it as a stepping stone to a job in order to manipulate fools who themselves care about meaningless things.  This, even if manipulation of intellectual insects is the explicit goal, is a legitimate approach.  It does not require false or assumed beliefs or any sort of commitment disproportionate to the actual objective nature of the workplace.  A job is just a job, and the title is not even as significant as the job itself or the money it earns, as it is a mere word or phrase and might not even accurately reflect the nature of the position.  More than just one's employer or other prospective employers might care, though.  Coworkers (especially if they gave into the cultural bullshit of certain regions of the world) might actually respect someone more as a person because of such rank, similarly to how many non-rationalists regard people highly or lowly on the basis of educational background.

Educational elitism is not valid, for it conflates intelligence (rationality, which someone can only possess by being rationalistic [1]) with education and especially with arbitrary credentials, having the added error of discriminating against those without access to formal education, for financial or other reasons, on a basis they cannot necessarily control at all.  In place of educational credentials or perhaps alongside them, job titles are despite their irrelevance treated by some as indicators of characteristics like intelligence.  Aside from how even job promotions are to some extent entirely beyond one's control—no one is guaranteed to be noticed for genuinely hard work or rewarded accordingly even if they are (you could be ignored, kept in place for productivity, or punished through lack of promotion)—positions and tenure have nothing to do with whether someone is a philosophical rationalist for the right reasons and actually understands or cares about things which are true and significant.

People who scramble to obtain jobs with particular titles, such as managerial or executive titles, so that they can as quickly as possible make more money and securely escape the "rat race" of asinine workplace obsession and American capitalism are not in error for this—if they go no further.  Anyone else who actually cares about job titles for almost any other reason is a fool, one who has either bowed down to social conditioning (and even if society was right, assuming its ideas are true is still irrational) or devoted themselves to some form of egoism or emotionalism.  Looking to job titles instead of one's alignment with the necessary truths of reason, which depends on neither personal belief or perception nor societal trends, to maintain self-esteem might be popular in some circles, but it is utterly pathetic and erroneous.

The sole way to otherwise care about job titles and yet not be irrational is to, making no assumptions and having no philosophically false priorities all while knowing reason, subjectively appreciate professional duties and effort while strictly recognizing them for what they really are: social constructs made to serve a broader social construct that itself only matters as a means to a financial end, so that workers can survive without resorting to begging or sins like theft.  Work of a professional kind is nothing more than this, and so job titles within the workplace are even lesser than the general workplace itself.  There is nothing rational or righteous about someone because of their career (except concerning certain jobs if certain worldviews are true; for instance, see Deuteronomy 23:17-18), and any thrill derived from work and its titles or prestige is purely subjective.

[1].  For just some posts where I address the truth and nature of genuine rationalism, see here:

A.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/08/it-does-not-follow.html

B.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2024/04/true-skepticism.html

Does God Really Hate Divorce?

Often in conjunction with an exaggerated emphasis on a total misunderstanding of Matthew 5:32 and 19:9 (which allegedly specifies the one exception for divorce and remarriage) that contradicts Matthew 5:17-19 and a host of other verses and logical facts, anti-divorce people in the church routinely appeal to Malachi 2:16.  Supposedly, this verse says God hates divorce.  Anyone who insists that Malachi 2 and Matthew 19 show that Yahweh hates divorce as an intrinsic or almost universally grievous evil is simply wrong.  Aside from probable translation errors with some versions of Malachi 2:16 (compare the NIV and ESV translations to those like the NKJV's), even if God did genuinely always hate divorce, that would not make all divorce evil.  This much is logically true on its own.  Something could be unfortunate but morally permissible or necessary in grave circumstances, so that it is valid to "hate" the thing in question without it being evil itself.  For an analogy rooted directly in Biblical theology, see what God says about the death of the wicked in the book of Ezekiel.

Ezekiel 18:23—"'Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? declares the Sovereign Lord.  Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?'"

Ezekiel 33:11—"'Say to them, "As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live . . ."'"

God clearly says he is not delighted by the death of the wicked and actively prefers for them to turn to righteousness rather than perish.  All the same, as much as God takes no pleasure in their death and longs for their repentance (see also verses like 1 Timothy 2:3-4 and 2 Peter 3:8-9), he inflexibly commands the just death of people who sin in certain ways elsewhere.  However tragic any human death is because it is linked to sin one way or another, it is still justice to kill some people because of their own actions.  I have listed two passages that address capital sins below.

Leviticus 20:9—"'Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.  Because they have cursed their father or mother, their blood will be on their own head.'"

Deuteronomy 17:2-5—"If a man or woman living among you in one of the town the Lord gives you is found doing evil in the eyes of the Lord your God in violation of his covenant, and contrary to my command has worshiped other gods, bowing down to them or to the sun or the moon or the stars in the sky, and this has been brought to your attention, then you must investigate it thoroughly.  If it is true and it has been proved that this detestable thing has been done in Israel, take the man or woman who has done this evil deed to your city gate and stone that person to death."

In various places, the Bible calls an assortment of other sins detestable besides worshipping other gods or the natural world as in Deuteronomy 17.  What follows is a mere sampling.  All sin is detestable because it is evil, of course, albeit not always equally detestable.  When Proverbs 6 says seven things are detestable, it does not even mention the detestable sins called such in Deuteronomy 18 and Luke 16, for instance.  But it does say that feet which rush into evil are detestable, without specifying any particular kind of evil.  All sin is encompassed.  The Bible, like reason, affirms that anything immoral would be detestable:

Deuteronomy 18:9-12—"When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there.  Let no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead.  Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord; because of these same detestable practices the Lord your God will drive out those nations before you."

Proverbs 6:16-19—"There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a person who stirs up conflict in the community."

Luke 16:13-15—"'No one can serve two masters.  Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.  You cannot serve both God and money.'  The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus.  He said to them, 'You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others, but God knows your hearts.  What people value highly is detestable in God's sight.'"

If God hates the evil act, then he would also hate the evildoer, apart from whom there is no evil.  Indeed, Deuteronomy 18 communicates as much about those who practice divination or necromancy.  God hates them and other evildoers because of their evil acts or thoughts, without which they would not be wicked.  But he does not actually hate divorce or divorcees, at least not in the sense that evangelicals might think.  He would hate that divorce is warranted or necessary in the way he might hate that the unrepentantly wicked must die.  Their death under proper conditions (i.e., not through murder or unjust tortures, but the likes of legitimate capital punishment or divinely appointed death from sickness) is a thing that in a very particular way merits celebration for the elimination of evil by removal of the evildoer.  But the evil that made the sinner deserve to perish is a tragedy, along with the fact that the dead evildoer did not repent beforehand and thus potentially save their life.

There is a very easy way to demonstrate that divorce is not an abomination on Judeo-Christianity, at least not automatically: find at least one verse expressly permitting divorce.  A lack of condemnation also accomplishes this, but one would have to read more of the Bible to notice an absence of such prohibition.  Yet the Law, where God restates almost all of or clarifies more about the moral obligations sporadically touched on throughout Genesis in a very incomplete way, does both.  The Law never condemns divorce as a whole, instead revealing that there must be some genuine error on the other spouse's part (Deuteronomy 24:1) and that divorce in certain very specific circumstances is wrong (Deuteronomy 22) unless there is something like abuse, such as unjust physical force (not for self-defense), aimed inside the marriage.  For instance, Exodus 21:10-11, 26-27, Deuteronomy 23:15-16, and 1 Corinthians 7:15 all independently affirm one way or another that no man or woman loses all rights to divorce, no matter the scenario, based on their own misdeeds before or during the marriage.

Sometimes, as with Numbers 30:9, general divorce is brought up in the divine Law using a variation of the word without any condemnation.  In other cases, like in Exodus 21:26-27, the context is not about marriage, though there are logical ramifications for marriage and divorce in the Bible's position on the issue at hand.  Here, that is the abuse of male and female slaves.  Passages like Deuteronomy 21:13-14 clearly speak of a marriage ending without actually using terms like "divorce", but it is very obvious from what is said that divorce is in view and ethically permissible in, at a minimum, the context addressed.  The verses below are but a sample of the relevant passages from the Torah, arranged in sequential order:

Exodus 21:26-27—"'An owner who hits a male or female slave in the eye and destroys it must let the slave go free to compensate for the eye.  And an owner who knocks out the tooth of a male or female slave must let the slave go free to compensate for the tooth.'"

Numbers 30:9—"'Any vow or obligation taken by a widow or divorced woman will be binding on her.'"

Deuteronomy 21:13-14—". . . After she has lived in your house and mourned her father and mother for a full month, then you may go to her and be her husband and she shall be your wife.  If you are not pleased with her, let her go wherever she wishes.  You must not sell her or treat her as a slave, since you have dishonored her."

None of these or other passages call divorce some universal or near-universal act of wickedness.  Instead, they clearly allow it and prescribe allowing one's partner to go free for abuse.  If divorce was a sin, then God did the exact opposite of forbidding it by both explicitly and more subtly giving laws that permit divorce in a wide variety of situations.  In fact, even lack of contentment with the marriage is a factor according to Deuteronomy 21:13-14 (and 24:1)—personal, amoral dissatisfaction is not the sole factor, but it is treated as relevant twice.  As I love to point out, the only possibilities if all of the verses I have mentioned or alluded to are in the Bible are that 1) the Jesus of the gospels is an overtly insane, hypocritical heretic who forsakes reason and his own supposed religious philosophy, or 2) he does not mean exactly what he says.  There is direct indication of the latter in the gospel accounts themselves [1].

Malachi 2 similarly does not present Yahweh as hating divorce.  And if it did, either it would mean God hates divorce but it is still permissible in many circumstances, similar to how God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked but still kills/will kill them as they deserve, or it would mean that God is himself an irrationalistic hypocrite, and therefore he is in the wrong.  Guess which of these is not Biblical either way?  God is said to not change (Malachi 3:6), so if the Bible is true, he absolutely did not arbitrarily "decide" that marriage is more important than the people in a marriage or anything else of more foundational philosophical significance, then arbitrarily decide that divorce is permissible, and then arbitrarily decide to hate divorce before his Son announces that divorce is suddenly always evil with at most one exception.  Further disproving this incoherent stance on divorce is the fact that Jesus never even condemns divorce in his strictest wording: at best, he only condemns remarriage to a new partner following divorce.

And this is massive hyperbole that would otherwise outright contradict Mosaic Law (Deuteronomy 24:1-4, 12:32).  Deuteronomy 24 even makes the emphatic point that the party whose wrong spurred the other to end the marriage, in this example the wife, does not sin in remarrying.  That is, remarriage is not a sin unless they/she marries a separate partner afterward and then, after the new partner dies or divorces them, remarries the original spouse.  Neither does Paul condemn remarriage, all but saying it is of course allowed when he declares an abandoned or otherwise abused spouse as no longer bound or enslaved.  See 1 Corinthians 7:15, which clearly uses the phrase "such cases" or "such circumstances" to reference scenarios far beyond the scope of literal physical abandonment.  Also, see how the analogous passages in the Law about slaves going free for abuse, even if they had freely promised lifelong service with some of its own parallels to marriage (Exodus 21:5-6, Deuteronomy 15:16-17) and with no discrimination based on gender, never forbid the liberated servant from seeking a new master or mistress.  Perhaps Paul recognized the equivalence of such servants to abused spouses when he wrote that the abandoned husband or wife is no longer enslaved/bound.

I myself was quite surprised even after years of being a rationalist at how utterly exaggerated the statement of Jesus is in Matthew 19:9.  Almost as soon as I became a rationalist in early 2015, I saw that Biblical ethics explicitly allows for divorce far outside of what Jesus hyperbolically says is the one basis (Exodus 21:10-11 and 1 Corinthians 7:15 alone) and that God's moral nature requires that abuse of various kinds frees the victim of either gender to leave their relationship or situation (Exodus 21:26-27, Deuteronomy 23:15-16).  But obviously, to the exact extent specified earlier, God is entirely fine with people divorcing because they lack personal interest in continuing the marriage according to Deuteronomy 21 and 24.  Heretical anti-divorce and anti-remarriage theology I had already been exposed to before coming to rationalism did contribute to a level of initial wariness towards the issue that, even though I had already started making no assumptions, is entirely unnecessary.

God does not hate divorce as an intrinsic evil, nor does he automatically hate people who initiate divorce or have their marriages end by the wishes of the other party.  He does hate the sins of husbands and wives that make divorce legitimate or even necessary for the safety or mental/physical wellbeing of a victimized partner.  Divorce really is the best and divinely authorized solution to a wide variety of marital issues as soon as they appear.  Sure, reconciliation is a valid solution, but it is absolutely never a moral requirement, and abusive partners need to acknowledg their stupidity and wrongs as much as they recall them whether or not a couple stays together.  If more people were as ruthless in dismissing dating partners as romantic options for any rationalistic reason (not for their own emotional issues they force onto their partners, for instance), fewer people would even have to bother with the potentially harrowing process of divorce that is monetized and drawn out in an unbiblical society like that of America.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2025/08/misunderstanding-luke-1616-18.html

Above And Beyond

The very concept of going above and beyond  as a moral necessity is something promoted by a certain kind of parent, employer, or other party, usually with the promise or implied hope that some significant reward will follow, even if it is only self-satisfaction.  With the workplace, the possible benefit is an eventual raise or promotion, though people could hold to this notion of going above and beyond in other contexts as well.  But having pragmatic benefits does not mean something must be done in a moral sense, only that it might result in a given objectively or subjectively favorable outcome.

Some employers act as if they basically think that an employee who does not go "above and beyond" the literal base requirements of their job is a poor worker, or at least one that somehow still merits condemnation or suspicion even if they have done nothing irrational or immoral, although they would very likely not get immediately paid more and perhaps not get noticed in a proportionate way for complying with these asinine overexpectations.  Likewise, some people think that it is really a moral duty to go above and beyond the actual obligations to other people and treat them with greater kindness, affection, or consideration than what is required by their moral system, such as Judeo-Christian ethics.

By nature, going above and beyond is utterly unnecessary to being a rational or righteous person precisely because it is above and beyond.  It can be a good thing, but it can never be mandatory, and thus it is erroneous to think that anyone who passively or actively (and therefore intentionally) shirks from going past what is truly required of them by reason and morality is in the wrong.  If kindness is morally good, for instance, one can be kind without spontaneously reaching out to all of one's friends or neighbors to check on them, putting on a "kind" facial expression in the presence of others, or doing anything else that is not in itself necessary in order to be kind.

Doing the "bare minimum" to uphold this or any other obligation—not that Biblical ethics is really about kindness at its core as opposed to truth and justice—or to carry out a job is really all that is necessary.  If something was not the bare minimum, some other criteria would be, and if there is a minimum threshold, then anything above that is by default above and beyond.  Above and beyond is inherently unnecessary.  This is such a simple truth that many parents and employers overlook to their own stupidity.  Everyone needs only to align with reason and morality to be in the right, at which point they can see the folly of anyone who would pressure others to do more than this.

The Sun Will Turn To Darkness And The Moon To Blood

The brief book of Joel, containing only three chapters, covers several topics of great importance, though chapter two will be the focus here.  Portions of this very chapter are quoted by the book of Acts (2:16-21) to hold up events concerning the early church as the fulfillment of particular Old Testament prophecies, with an emphasis in the quoted verses on Yahweh's egalitarian approach to Jews and Gentiles, men and women, and the old and the young, as well as the divine being pouring out his Spirit on people from all of these categories (Joel 2:28-29).  The immediate context confirms this outpouring is supposed to occur before the "great and dreadful" day of the Lord because it is described before Joel mentions the the sun turning to darkness and the moon to blood (2:31), which is itself said to occur before the day of the Lord.

In fact, like God pouring out his Spirit on a diverse set of people, the prophecy about the sun and moon does not go unreferenced in the New Testament.  Revelation 6 does describe celestial abnormalities that perfectly align with the words of Joel 2:31.  While Acts cites Joel 2 by more directly paraphrasing the wording and attributing it to the prophet Joel, Revelation simply declares that the sun will turn or at least appear to be black and the moon will look as red as blood after the opening of the sixth seal.  The parallels between Joel and Revelation are still stark without any sort of explicit paraphrasing or citation:

Joel 2:30-31—"I will show wonders in the heavens and on earth, blood and fire and billows of smoke.  The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord."

Revelation 6:12-13—"I watched as he opened the sixth seal.  There was a great earthquake.  The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red, and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind."

Joel certainly provides little clarification about what precisely is meant by the sun turning to darkness and the moon to blood, without specifying anything about the timing of these phenomena other than that they will occur at some future point before the "great and dreadful day of the Lord."  Revelation brings up the sun and moon appearing to have a different color as connected with a specific seal judgment in the context of a particular sequence.  However, the way Revelation describes the sun and moon alludes to the exact eschatological things mentioned in Joel 2:31.  Peter says in Acts 2 that at least part of the prophecies in Joel 2 were fulfilled on Pentecost during the time of the early church, and though he mentions the part about the sun and moon in Acts 2:20, he does not claim these things have transpired yet.

Revelation clarifies more about how these specific portions of the prophecy are to be brought about.  And alongside the unusual appearance of the sun and moon, there is said to be a terrible earthquake once the sixth seal opens, one that Revelation 6:14-17 seems to equate with that of Isaiah 2:10-21, another eschatological passage.  But I am focusing on a very specific connection between Joel and Revelation about the sun and moon; Revelation alludes to a multitude of Old Testament segments, far more than would fall into the scope of this post!

Since Joel says that the sun and moon change color (or appear to have their color changed) before the day of the Lord, it is pertinent that Revelation uses language about people experiencing the earthquake referring to the "day" (Revelation 6:16-17) of the wrath of God and the Lamb only after the sun appears black and the moon red.  Even aside from strict chronology, the day of the Lord spoken of throughout the Bible is not necessarily a single day, and Revelation definitively presents the content of Joel's prophecy about the sun and moon as eschatological.  Far from irrelevant to the New Testament, Joel 2 is a pivotal chapter from the minor prophets for multiple reasons, eschatology included.

Can Abusive People Change?

It is easy to find online assertions of some sort of asinine fatalism holding that if someone naturally gravitates towards abusive inclinations on a mental level or if they act abusively once, they are doomed to commit abusive actions for the rest of their life.  But if someone was truly rational, they would never think such a thing.  Change is not necessarily positive, so even if someone changed, they might only become worse.  Sometimes people do claim abuse is bound to increase in severity or frequency.  However, a rational—that is, rationalistic—person does not conflate claims or consensus with logical truth and proof.

Even if someone who thinks abusers never/cannot chance has personally received abuse from a person who never changed or has seen it inflicted on others from similarly consistent abusers, they are wrong because they would have to be assuming, misunderstanding subjective experience instead of looking to reason itself.  One abuser is not another abuser; that one remains steadfast in their harmful practices or becomes even more abusive does not mean another one will do either.  And comparison between hypothetical or real people is unnecessary to know that abusers can change, since it is logically untrue that a given person will stay as they are or have been.  Ultimately, of course, the fact that an abuser changing in a positive manner does not contradict logical axioms is what all of this hinges on.  It clearly is logically possible for them to change for this reason alone.

Possibility alone does not mean something is true or will occur, however.  An abusive person having the capacity to change for the better unfortunately does not necessitate that they will choose to.  Still, they could.  There is nothing about being an abuser that logically requires otherwise.  Anyone who holds a contrary belief is an illogical thinker planted in emotionalism or assumptions.  For abusive people who do not change, though, why would this be the case?  Their staunchness is certainly not an inevitable outcome.

In some cases, the status quo of the relationship serves the abusive party's own irrational or evil intentions—perhaps they just want someone to exercise power over arbitrarily, or perhaps they like hurting people for the sake of hurting people.  For romantic relationships, perhaps the abuser is afraid that their partner will end the relationship and seek another partner.  Lashing out verbally or physically is intended to deter them from this course of action, whether or not they were even considering it beforehand, and whether or not they already had valid reasons to.  The former's behavior is self-sabotaging, of course, because they are only giving their partner a genuine reason to leave.

Perhaps they think they are so worthy of attention and submission that they deserve literally unconditional loyalty, so they intentionally or unintentionally toy with their partner to feel empowered or important.  If the partner stands up to them, even on a purely rationalistic basis without engaging in mistreatment in the other direction, they might think they are the one being abused.  Some form of emotionalistic arrogance or egoism is almost an intrinsic part of this, if not on the level of philosophical belief, than on the level of mental indulgence and behavioral practice.  Or, the abuser assumes that pain from past relationships (romantic or nonromantic) justifies him or her in their mistreatment because they are driven by the desire to overcome or redirect their own anguish.

No, abuse will not necessarily continue or get worse.  All the same, if someone is already a non-rationalist, there is little hope for them to ever become rational and righteous anyway.  When irrational people do change—particularly with people who are truly irrationalistic as opposed to merely rationalists who avoidably fall short of perfection—it is probably going to be for the worse.  They are not rational, and it takes effort to initially let go of assumptions or identify logical truths without confusing them with any irrelevant thing like personal intuition or preference.  That effort is unlikely to be given by people who are just in the grip of assumptions.  This is not true strictly or especially about abusive people/non-rationalists, however.  Could they change?  Absolutely.  Will they?  That depends on their rationality, willingness, and other factors, all of which have to do with their individual standing, not that of another abuser.

The Dear Lady Of 2 John

It might not receive a great deal of attention in general American church circles, but the book of 2 John is outright addressed to a woman.  "To the lady chosen by God and to her children," John writes in verse 1, identifying the primary addressee as a woman.  He also calls them "dear lady" in verse 5.  Near the end of the book, John goes on to express his eagerness to see and converse with her face to face in one of multiple affirmations of platonic interaction between men and women in the New Testament, which receives absolutely no censure in either Testament to the discomfort of some. 

So it is plain that a New Testament book is written primarily to a female contemporary of John the apostle, which simply would not be part of the Bible if women are supposed to be kept to the sidelines of Christian community by men.  With this sort of thing, absence would not mean that John believes the opposite or that Judeo-Christianity contradicts gender egalitarianism in any way.  That is, if this and every other New Testament book was addressed to men, this alone would not logically entail a denial of women's equality with men with all of its ramifications.

The significance is still immense, and not only for how it contradicts cultural norms of the time, but also for how it defies things like the gender segregation that infests plenty of modern churches outside of primary services—at least churches in my country.  Men and women are treated as if they are different species of unrelatable beings, rather than as individuals with somewhat biologically different bodies.  So much for not yielding to culture as evangelicals clamor to avoid with other issues!  This of course by logical necessity invalidly burdens men in gender-specific ways as well, but if men and women are separated and men are placed in positions of hierarchical authority, women are kept from those positions.

All of this is in part why 2 John might shock some people who call themselves Christians as they hold to an illogical philosophy of gender at odds with pure reason and Biblical doctrines alike.  John treats the "dear lady" as an equal and an intimate friend who shares the same (probably correct) theological worldview.  Again, while there would be nothing inherently anti-egalitarian about the mere absence of women being the direct addressees of any book of the Bible, that even one is written to a woman, and in a celebratory way, is of great importance.  On its own, this contradicts some tenets of evangelical complementarianism altogether.

But, 2 John is not even the only book of the New Testament specifically written to a woman.  Paul includes his spiritual sister Apphia in the people addressed at the beginning of Philemon.  After mentioning Philemon, the man whose name is that of the epistle, he brings up Apphia.  Paul frequently mentions women by name in his New Testament writings (throughout Romans 16 and in Philippians 4:2-3, Colossians 4:15, etc.), and in the case of Philemon, he writes one of his letters to a woman.  All the New Testament is written for women as well for men, of course.  The Old Testament before it is likewise for women as well.  However, for multiple reasons (the linguistic flexibility of male nouns and pronouns, the logically necessary applicability of doctrines to both genders, and so on), New Testament epistles are written to and/or for women.  And all are for men, including 2 John.

Becoming A Vampire

Between various entities like vampires, ghouls, and eventually a certain core character, consuming blood comes up rather frequently in Supernatural for such a specific act in a show that is not exclusively about vampiric or vampire-adjacent creatures.  However, it is vampire antagonists that introduce the act into the central plot in the first season.  These beings are shown abducting people to intake their blood.  The second season introduces Gordon, a "hunter" of monsters like protagonists Sam and Dean Winchester, along with vampires who refuse to drink human blood to survive, instead relying on the blood of animals.  Gordon assumes that all vampires must actually rely on human fluid and does not relent when he is told that the ones he is hunting are not the same as others he has killed.

As is the case with any non-rationalist who believes they know literally anything rather than just perceiving or assuming it, Gordon thinking he is justified for making assumptions is already hypocritical.  Now, hypocrisy is a recurring focus of the show.  One character after another says or does asinine things that contradict certain beliefs they have previously espoused—or, in the case of beliefs, that contradict the objective truths of logic.  The Winchester brothers themselves are chief examples within the early seasons alone, but the hunter Gordon's delusional reason for pursuing even vampires who do not harm humans is among the first overt examples.  Believing he is treating vampires as they deserve does not make his reason for doing so valid.  It would actually be the other way around, if his exact reason was correct.

Gordon displays a much more insidious form of hypocrisy in the third season, however, once he is involuntarily turned into a vampire himself.  Becoming a vampire or some other non-human creature against one's will is already terrible enough.  That Gordon hated and feared vampires to the point of stereotyping them as aggressive towards humans would certainly add layers to the existential terror that overcomes him as his metaphysical transformation leaves him yearning for blood with the full intensity of a craving he has yet to master.  Rather than abruptly change his belief about vampires deserving to die because it is no longer as personally convenient, he tells a fellow hunter that he, the hunter, must kill him, Gordon—once he kills Sam Winchester for ostensible affiliation with demons.  

Gordon remains consistent with his anti-vampire worldview in this regard, although some of his beliefs about vampires beforehand were still inconsistent with reason itself, in part because he only believed them on the basis of assumptions.  Where he lapses into sheer hypocrisy regarding even his own somewhat irrationalistic philosophy is in turning a woman into a vampire so that Dean Winchester will be distracted by an attacker as Gordon attempts to eliminate Sam.  Typifying how extreme circumstances often bring people, and people who are already fools all the more, to the point of inconsistency between one belief and another or between belief and action, his decision parallels things far more relatable than making another vampire.

If being a vampire is so evil—and it would be certain actions a conventional vampire must take to survive that are evil, not simply being a vampire against one's wishes—then it would of course be immoral to make someone else a vampire to distract an enemy.  Gordon betrays his own philosophy here.  He remains consistent enough to not pretend like he would be an exception if all vampires deserve to die, but he seems to think turning a human into a vampire against their will for utilitarian purposes is permissible in his situation, despite creating another monster he regards as abominable and harming one of the non-hunter humans he supposedly strives to protect.

And yes, Biblically, a true human-turned-vampire or equivalent being would morally have to be put to death even if they never killed anyone but only drank the blood of any creature to live [1] (if they could somehow survive without resorting to the sin, then this does not apply).  Not even the blood of a subhuman animal can be legitimately consumed except by other such animals.  So, Gordon is ironically in alignment with Biblical theology on this (Genesis 9:4, Leviticus 17:10-14, etc.), even though Biblical theology is wildly different from what mouthpiece characters in Supernatural say about it (hell, justice, demons, eschatological seals, etc.), and even though he is by no means a rational person who makes no assumptions and holds no beliefs for personal reasons as opposed to strict logical necessity.  He simply dislikes vampires, attributing malicious actions and intentions to every single one them irrationally and unjustly, when the sin of eating any blood is already enough to deserve capital punishment even if it is not from humans.  And then he as a vampire does to an extent exactly what he hated them for and ascribed to all of them in the first place.

Through Gordon, viewers see an example in fiction of a person who is comfortable with arbitrarily deviating from either what is true or what they merely but sincerely believe is true because of emotion or convenience.  How very much like the typical person!  Put them in the right circumstances, and their perhaps already irrational beliefs will fail to constrain their behaviors, even as they might still profess or hold to those beliefs.  The central allure of utilitarianism is precisely that one can supposedly be absolved of guilt by bringing about a certain goal because the situation or the outcome would somehow override moral duties to act or not act in certain ways.  Whether he is driven primarily by emotionalism or utilitarianism when he transforms the woman, it would not matter.  He is in the wrong just by being a hypocrite separate from the irrationality he had already clung to before becoming a vampire.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-vampires-moral-dilemma.html

Repeat Divorcees

It might strike some people as humorous or asinine that someone could divorce multiple times in a row.  Perhaps they find the suffering of others amusing—though not every person is subjectively upset by their divorce and not every divorce is a negative thing—or perhaps they think that it is impossible for someone to have a legitimate reason, whatever their likely arbitrary criteria are, for divorce, whether for one or more than one.  A certain kind of person would assume that the only reason for someone to become a repeat divorcee is because they are terrible at handling romantic/marital relationships or because they are an outright abusive, selfish, or otherwise immoral or problematic partner.

This does not follow, not even according to the real Biblical doctrine of divorce, where moral failings of ultimately any kind are justification for leaving a marriage (Exodus 21:10-11, Deuteronomy 21:10-14, 24:1-4, 1 Corinthians 7:15, etc.).  Of course, even aside from Biblical standards, it could be the case that someone's partners were one after the other predatory or neglectful people.  Even irrationalistic people, though their moment to moment existence is one of one inevitable metaphysical or epistemological error, can be victims of deceit, dehumanizing manipulation, or malicious physical or verbal treatment.

Especially if the divorcee is a rationalist, however, in this world of irrationalists or anti-rationalists, almost everyone else will invariably be worthy of being discarded maritally.  It is just that a rationalist would not marry a non-rationalist except under misleading, bizarrely complicated pretenses or some circumstance that entails an incompleteness or lapse in their adherence to perfect rationalism.  Also, there is nothing logically impossible about someone not being the reason for the failure of a marriage or of them having justification for divorce more than once consecutively, with no inherent limit.

Though it is logically possible for someone to be at fault each time or at least sometimes if they have multiple divorces, possibility does not mean this is true in a given case, and it is also logically possible for someone to be completely innocent across numerous marriages that end in divorce, even if they were the one who initiated it.  Of course, the stupidity of non-rationalists, who would be the vast majority of married people because they are the vast majority of people, is reason enough to divorce almost anyone married at this moment, but then again, except for circumstances of misrepresentation and so on, a genuine, careful rationalist would not end up with one of them anyway.

The Lovecraftian Yahweh

What makes a being Lovecraftian?  It must be superhuman, alien (in the sense of unfamiliar or unrelatable rather than that of strictly extraterrestrial, with some of Lovecraft's literary entities being all three), and very threatening to humans by direct intentionality or due to incidental destruction.  If it is a being with a corporeal shell, a body, the more unusual that body is, the more Lovecraftian it is thematically as well.  Yahweh, the deity of the Bible, has no physical form, but he falls into all of the other categories.  Indeed, his incorporeality actually heightens his Lovecraftian nature to an extent by making him more metaphysically separated from people.  This deity who afflicts the world so heavily in Revelation that very large proportions of humanity are killed (9:15, 17:17-21), and who has the power to resurrect people for involuntary judgment before exiling them from partaking in existence (Revelation 20:11-15), is not necessarily recognized as Lovecraftian very often by his ideological supporters and foes alike, but the basic actions and capacities of Yahweh would establish that he absolutely is.

First, I will address why anyone who thinks a Lovecraftian deity must be evil is utterly wrong.  If there is no God (and there is by logical necessity an uncaused cause even if it is not the Judeo-Christian deity [1]), there is no morality.  At most, some people have feelings that make it seem to them as if some things are good or evil, and other people have very different moral feelings, and some might have none at all.  Nothing is good or evil because someone has an emotion that makes it seem this way, and no one could know any morality that does exist through feelings (conscience).  If there is a deity, but it has no moral nature, there is no morality.  There are still at most simply personal feelings and meaningless social norms.  If the uncaused cause has a moral nature that is completely contrary to what a given person would want to be good—remember, conscience is purely subjective and thus what one person is emotionally disturbed by might not at all offend another person—then human emotion still is meaningless and of no relevance to morality.  Either way, it is epistemologically of no consequence.

No matter what, there is no possible basis for it being valid to morally object to whatever God exists.  Either morality does not exist regardless of anyone's desperate feelings or it exists and has nothing to do with our feelings one way or another, in the sense that they prove nothing about morality's existence or nonexistence and would not be the reason why any actual moral obligations exist.  It does not matter if or how much Yahweh, therefore, toys with people or showers plagues upon them.  This means any true deity, which Yahweh is supposed to be, would be morally just or at least amoral no matter what they do.  However, the way Yahweh acts, which is consistent with all of these independent logical necessities, still makes Judeo-Christianity very much what some people would call Lovecraftian: God is a conscious force that can casually bring apocalyptic devastation (as in Exodus 10:1-24), that manages and is attended to by beings that are on their own cosmic horrors of a sort (Judges 13:2-22, Ezekiel 10:1-17) [2], and that will burn his enemies to ashes after eschatologically resurrecting them (Daniel 12:2, Matthew 10:28, Revelation 20:11-15) [3].  Amidst all of this, it is his nature that dictates righteousness.

Yahweh, again, is very Lovecraftian.  He is a nonphysical being (Deuteronomy 4:15-20) that has power to bring about any logically possible thing and that demands worship at the expense of the very life of anyone who would worship any other being or natural body (Deuteronomy 13:6-10, 17:2-6).  He can order his human servants to exterminate entire communities of his mortal opponents (1 Samuel 15:1-3), something that could not possibly be evil for the aforementioned reasons if it truly corresponds to God's nature even though the Amalekites and many moderners might have felt otherwise.  He can bestow disease or health as he wishes (Deuteronomy 7:15), the non-sadistic (Ezekiel 33:11), morally upright equivalent of Lovecraft's Nyarlathotep in a sense.  On multiple levels, the Biblical Yahweh is thoroughly eldritch, albeit a very moralistic entity whose very character is the standard of morality to the terror of subjectivist or culturally relativistic fools; they are fools, of course, because such philosophies are false whether or not Christianity is true since they are logically impossible.

There are several reasons why Yahweh might not be thought of as a Lovecraftian type of being in spite of all these things.  Some people, even if they wildly, willfully misinterpret the Bible and still think of themselves as rational or as Christians, like to think of Yahweh as if he is on their side because he has such unconditionally extreme love for them that he would not "ever" burn them to a second death in hell, or that he would not turn his back on them, as he threatens to do even to sinners who were very righteous beforehand (Ezekiel 33:12-16), though these so-called Christians uncaringly disobey commands of the Torah that Jesus does not abolish whatsoever (Matthew 5:17-19).  Also, while Lovecraft's god Azathoth and his other supernatural or extraterrestrial beings are seemingly amoral, Yahweh's explicit moralistic bent is another major reason why some people do not think of Yahweh in connection with cosmic horror.  Moralism and nihilism, though, are not what determines if something pertains to many key elements of Lovecraftian cosmic horror, though Lovecraft's own stories are at best absurdist and at worst nihilistic.  The Bible does present God as a source of genuine cosmic horror for the wicked and as an entity with many qualities of a Lovecraftian being.

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

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2022/08/biblical-angels.html

[3].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-cosmic-horror-of-hell.html

Mutually Exclusive Acts Of Kindness

Two able-bodied people arrive at a closed door and need to pass through.  At the same time, each one extends a hand to open the door, insinuating on showing this kindness to the other person.  They think it is morally required to do such acts as they have the power to.  However, both of them have the power to do so here!  Who "should" open the door out of consideration?  No one should in that no one could have to.  This might be a very trivial example on one level, but it is of vital importance that it cannot be true that both people, or either of them, should by default try to perform this act of kindness.

Pragmatically, person A and person B would both remain at a standstill if each strives to do what they allegedly should.  Neither individual would be able to get anywhere for the day, much less in their life at large.  Pragmatism has nothing to do with making something good, though.  For instance, it does not matter if using physical force to persuade someone to reveal information is situationally useful—although the victim might say anything to convince the torturers to stop, with no way to automatically verify it, posing its own problem for both abstract epistemology and mere pragmatism.  If torture or a given form of torture is immoral, circumstances and actual usefulness could never legitimize it.

The inconvenience of both people in the example of the door being unable to get anywhere if they simultaneously, relentlessly try to perform an act of kindness for the other is not why they cannot be obligated to both show respect or consideration by opening the door for each other.  But, if doing what is morally right requires that someone else not act as they should, then, well, it simply cannot be morally correct after all.  Only one of them can open the door.  It does not follow, of course, that cruelty and behaviors driven by sheer disregard for others are valid.  The necessary truth of the matter is just that certain acts of kindness cannot be obligatory because only one of the multiple parties involved would then be righteous, meaning one person must err for the other to be in the right.  This entails a contradiction, and contradictions cannot be true.

It is logically impossible for this idea about morality to be true no matter what, because it is contradictory at its very heart, contradictory towards itself and in turn ultimately towards the laws of logic which are inherently true.  Kindness has been touted about as if it has a status that literally cannot be the case.  Submission is similar.  While there are all sorts of asinine but popular concepts about one-sided submission in, say, marriage that are false for separate reasons, total, unflinching submission in a matter from both directions is likewise impossible.  If both wills are in total alignment, there is no genuine submission.  If each will is different, then there are situations in which it is logically impossible for both people to submit.

This sort of approach to kindness and submission are objectively erroneous not only because no one's subjective whims are authoritative, but also because both parties (like spouses) cannot both do what is supposedly "ethical" in this case.  Thus, it cannot be ethically mandatory, though perhaps trying to benefit the other person can be good in a wholly optional sense.  There are many other possible scenarios that exemplify the point, like the fact that an employer cannot show a kindness by allowing a worker to leave early without a loss of pay if the employee is to go above and beyond and do as much as they can for their employer during a shift.

Far more than the lower sort of practical problem with mandatory two-way kindness in such circumstances, there is an intrinsic logical problem with the idea that kindness is a duty of all people wherever they have the power to show it.  Some actions which are kind or that express submission can indeed be ethically mandatory.  This does not contradict logical axioms or any other necessary truth.  Even so, acts of kindness and submission cannot always be obligatory from two different directions at the same time.  As simultaneously simple as it is, it is an inflexible logical fact that doing something which inevitably involves another person being unable to behave as they should already cannot be ethically correct.  Logic renders many forms of kindness entirely optional at best.  And if someone does not morally have to do such a thing—if it is untrue that they should—then, short of irrational or wicked motives, they cannot be in the wrong for abstaining.

As Long As The Money Does Not Go To Workers

Why might it sometimes appear as if a company will part with money as long as it goes to anything but to pay increases for workers, or particularly to those at the lower levels of the organization?  Extreme (and unmerited) executive compensation and bonuses or donations for the sake of superficial public relations are just two things money can be far more likely to be directed towards than employee raises across the board, even if there is absolutely plenty to spare and the workers are not currently paid livable or fair wages.  Not even making and overtly celebrating record profits stops certain companies from acting like there is just not enough to pay employees more, although the leadership is content to inflate prices because times are allegedly "tough" for corporate executives and their profits.

Spending large amounts on meals with clients, useless or relatively trivial "perks" that do not involve monetary benefit for the employees, and on paying legal fines (and even a fine of $12,000,000 would not be severe for a major corporation like Google that makes hundreds of billions a year) seems to be prioritized by various companies in the cases of the former two and accepted in the case of the latter.  It really is more probable that a typical company might be willing to spend more money as long as it does not go to the workers, without whom there would not be a business at all or at least a business functioning beyond a far more limited scope [1].

Desperate workers, workers who need their job to survive, are certainly ideal for an organization bent on maximal exploitation.  The employee who needs to keep their job because they are too exhausted to look for work elsewhere or too financially unstable to dare to defy their employer has little they can do to resist genuine workplace oppression; as long as their predicament is not their own fault due to reckless or emotionalistic overspending, it really is solely the fault of materialistic or power-drunk employers and management that they are made to economically struggle when there is more than enough money to pay employees livable amounts (or better!) while still seeing vast profit go to members of the upper hierarchy.

Such is the nature of an inherently exploitative workplace system like that of American capitalism (and any other such variation).  All the more illogical is that some who perpetuate the present state of the typical American workplace--yes, not even widespread oppression necessitates that every company practices this--identify as Christians and yet would ignore or even be hostile towards the command of Yahweh to pay workers before sunset the same day as their labor (Leviticus 19:13, Deuteronomy 24:14-15).  Yes, Biblical workers' rights go beyond what many secular people, whose moral philosophy (if they really believe it) could only be rooted in subjective conscience or arbitrary cultural norms or some other invalid/assumed things, would adhere to.

Again, revenue could go to showing gratuitous "appreciation" for clients or paying for enormous lawsuits that perhaps nonetheless barely make a dent in the sheer profit generated by the company.  The actual workers are the ones trampled in spite of being a foundational part of the operations.  This phenomenon likely often reduces down to employers either viewing employees as horrid leeches that parasitically require compensation (in contrast with consumers, who are at least superficially catered to respectfully in order to extract money from them) or to hoping to keep them in a state of financial desperation to distract them from thoughts of "insubordination" or resigning.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/02/power-in-business-part-2-employees.html

Genesis 9:4-6 And Violence Before The Flood

We are told very little about the exact evils practiced by humans in the antediluvian world (before the flood of Genesis).  First, the immorality of the era is described without specifics other than that the masses were totally corrupt to the point of being constantly devoted only to evil and bringing God to regret creating humans (Genesis 6:5-9).  Then, Genesis 6:11-13 adds that widespread or extreme violence was prominent.  Some potential clues as to particular sins of the time in this category are found in Genesis 9, however.  After Noah exits the ark with his family, God condemns the acts of eating blood and murder (in this context, illicit killing of one human by another) in verses 4 and 6 respectively.  In the immediate context, he also reveals the moral duty for the remaining humans to increase in number after such a cataclysm (9:1, 7) and more subtly reveals the justice of capital punishment for murder (9:6), which would would make implementing it obligatory.

Many people hear about the sin of murder one way or another, even if the precise boundaries of what constitutes murder are not acknowledged with regularity.  Not all killing is murder, for murder is only the illicit killing of a person, which excludes killing in self-defense proportionate to the threat (Exodus 22:2-3), capital punishment for applicable sins (including that authorized in Genesis 9:6 for murder), and some forms of warfare which are the equivalent to self-defense or capital punishment on a larger scale as it is (Deuteronomy 9:4-6, 20:10-15 [1]).  Before Genesis 9, basic murder has already been explicitly condemned in Genesis 4.  What about eating blood?  Unlike simply killing a human, eating blood is always evil, except for something like the incidental ingesting of one's own blood from an internal oral wound.  Actively consuming blood, whether of a clean or unclean animal, is a major depravity censured repeatedly throughout the Torah (such as in Leviticus 17, 19, Deuteronomy 12, 15).

This is what Genesis 9:4-6 specifically says about eating blood and murder:

Genesis 9:4-6—"'But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it.  And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting.  I will demand an accounting from every animal.  And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being.  Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind.'"

Perhaps eating animal flesh with its blood was one of the prominent sins which led to the flood, and perhaps some of this flesh was cut away and consumed while the animals were still living as some insist.  Since illicit violence is the broad category of evil said to specifically define the age before the flood in Genesis 6:11-13, eating the flesh of a living creature could certainly be among the sins of violence commonplace among humanity at the time.  It is almost inevitable that murder would be among the violent sins directed from one person to another, though of course violence can be far more diverse and far more severe than mere murder.  Other violent sins are addressed in the Law, the greatest concentration of these miscellaneous sins receiving attention in Exodus 21.

Irrespective of how normalized it might have been to consume blood with animal meat, eat the flesh of a living animal, or murder other people prior to the flood of Genesis, wicked behaviors towards both humans and animals are condemned at a very broad level through two hyper-specific examples in the account of Genesis 9.  The right treatment of both humans and non-human animals (humans are animals too!), while entailing far more than abstaining from murder and eating animal blood according to the precise doctrines of the Bible and their logical ramifications, is really a subcategory of obligatory submission to God, whom all initial living things on Earth were created by (Genesis 1-2) and to whom all things on Earth belong (Psalm 24:1).

Everything I have mentioned thus far other than what some say about eating meat from an animal that is still alive can be demonstrated from logic and texts in the Bible.  But one could never tell from the wording of the Bible what depths some people go to in their asinine misinterpretation.  Somehow, Rabbinic Judaism, a philosophy based on the contrived traditions of Rabbis, twists such a basic passage as Genesis 9:4-6 to use as a false pillar of a heavily racist form of moral relativism called the Noahide Laws, but the nature of the command in Genesis 9:4 regarding the consumption of blood is bizarrely misunderstood in isolation.  Adherents of Rabbinic Judaism might say this command is really about not eating the flesh from a living animal, but no such thing is mentioned.  This stance hinges on how cutting apart a living animal and immediately eating its flesh with the blood does involve a violation of Genesis 9:4.  However, consuming blood could take many forms, all of which are evil; that is what Genesis 9:4 is about.  Eating raw meat with blood from a still-living creature is in fact worse than "merely" eating blood!  Because it combines the intrinsic sin of eating blood with the further sin of needlessly inflicting physical harm on a conscious being, though, it is not referenced in the verse at hand.

An obvious distortion of the broader type of sin the verse does condemn, with eating the bloody flesh of a living animal being only one way to eat the blood of a creature, this tradition is yet another example of how Rabbinic philosophy is at odds with the Old Testament and with reason itself.  All the same, eating blood is one of the handful of prohibitions specified after Noah and his family depart the ark.  There clearly is moral revelation provided to the survivors of the flood in Genesis 9, but it is neither said to be exhaustive nor to be in any way pertinent to the nationality or ancestry of a person as with the idiotic Noahide Laws as proposed by Rabbinic Judaism.  Supposedly, God prescribed only seven things to Noah and his descendants after the flood, with nothing else being morally binding on them.  Where the Rabbinic distortions of Biblical Judaism err far more gravely than confusing eating blood for eating/removing meat from a living animal is in treating eating blood as one of only seven sins or part of seven categories of sin that are evil when Gentiles engage in them, things like murder, theft, eating blood, blasphemy, and idolatry.

These and the others out of the seven are not the only obligations of Gentiles as according the Rabbinic idea of the "Noahide Laws".  Separate from the logical impossibility of cultural/ancestral ethical relativism, Genesis 9:1 and 7 already prescribe a situational obligation to Gentile figures that is completely outside of Rabbinic Judaism's contrived Noahide Laws; it is also true that very few of these seven things are mentioned in Genesis 9.  God says nothing to Noah about theft, blasphemy, or most of these seven moral issues that fools say are all that is binding on all people according to Genesis.  The Old Testament also never says in Genesis 9 or elsewhere that anything outside of the seven supposed duties/rights to be honored by Gentiles apply only to Jews (including anything having to do with issues like vows, slavery, torture, poverty, widows, and more except as they pertain to the likes of murder or theft), as opposed to humans.  

Additionally, the Old Testament gives multiple examples of Gentile sins outside the alleged seven obligations of the Noahide Laws (Genesis 6:11-13, Leviticus 20:6 and 9 with 23, Deuteronomy 18:9-12, Ezekiel 16:49-50, 25:12-17, Amos 2:1-3, and so on).  It even separately speaks of general morality, often with no examples, as universally applicable to all people where being a Jew or Gentile makes no difference in one's capacity to act or abstain (such as honoring one's parents or making restitution for theft), because what is obligatory and wicked has to do with the nature of the action or thought, not the identity of the one respectively doing or thinking it (Deuteronomy 9:4-6, Ezekiel 5:5-7, Ecclesiastes 12:14, 2 Kings 21:1-11, etc.).  All of this is in accordance with what logic necessitates about ethics if there is good and evil: race is irrelevant to the ethics of an action that by nature can be done to or by anyone.

Accordingly, far more violent deeds are evil for everyone on actual Judeo-Christianity.  The unjust violence of humanity that incurred divine wrath as expressed by the flood could have and almost certainly would have entailed far more than just outright murder and eating flesh from a living animal.  Of course, eating blood from a dead animal is in no way a violent act on its own, as the violent part would have been the treatment or killing of the animal beforehand.  Aside from the unspecified forms of violence in Genesis 6 that clearly do not limit the sins in question to murder, a host of other violent acts are condemned with great specificity.  Striking someone with a stone or other object in a quarrel, with the blow not resulting in either the victim's death or permanent injury, is but one example (Exodus 21:18-19).  Striking one's father or mother for any reason other than self-defense or participation in Biblically legitimate capital punishment like communal stoning is another (Exodus 21:15).  These, too, would logically and Biblically have to be evil when done to or by Gentiles in addition to Jews.  As terrible as murder and eating blood are, especially if the blood is consumed while the animal remains alive to seemingly experience pain and terror, a great many other sins of violence would have probably marked the antediluvian epoch as humans long before the formation of Israel grieved God so much that he regretted creating humanity.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2024/05/the-torah-on-treatment-of-wartime-male.html

The Day Of The Lord

Many times across the Old and New Testament, something called the "day of the Lord" is brought up in an eschatological context.  The eventual destruction of the old universe by fire as mentioned in 2 Peter 3 in connection with the day of the Lord, for example, is plainly a futurist event according to the Bible.  So too is the elevation of Jerusalem, the mass submission to Mosaic Law, and the absence of warfare as described in Isaiah 2:1-5, which is all said to take place in the last days.  Though these prophecies do not have the phrase day of the Lord, they are said to occur in the last days, and shortly after, Isaiah 2 mentions extreme upheaval of the world from God using language like "in that day" (2:17), which is related to the wording found elsewhere referring to the day of the Lord.

Amos 5:18 emphasizes that there is much to dread about that day, saying "Woe to those who long for the day of the Lord!"  This "day," though it becomes clear from the many references to it throughout both testaments that it is very likely not at all a single day, will be like a person fleeing from a lion only to meet a bear (5:19).  It is called a day of darkness and not one of light.  Similar in its description of utter apocalyptic devastation and yet far more elaborate, Isaiah 24 says there will come a time when humans are scarce in the world (24:6, 13), punished by God to the point of near-extinction for their moral violations (24:5) [1].

During this period, Isaiah says that the planet is split up and vehemently shaken so that the land reels like a drunkard and sways like a "hut in the wind" (24:19-20).  It will be the same for masters or mistresses and their servants, for buyers and sellers, and for priests and the common people (24:2).  No one escapes the severity on the basis of their economic class.  However, not absolutely everything about the day of the Lord is said to be negative; 2 Peter 3:10-13, for instance, says that following the destruction of the cosmos by fire—not with water because God promised to never use a deluge to kill sinners on such a mass scale again (Genesis 9:8-17, 2 Peter 3:5-7)—will come the new heavens and new earth that Isaiah 65 and Revelation 21-22 speak of.  Depending on which group a person falls into, that of the punished wicked or the righteous, the day of the Lord and its aftermath could be either thoroughly dreadful or joyful.

For those referenced in Isaiah 2:10-17, it will be a disaster, one that compels them to flee to caves and caverns to escape what seems to be an earthquake initiated by Yahweh.  For those who experience the actual Biblical rapture at the Second Coming [2], from that point onward, it would be a glorious, liberating thing—not that it will be easy for followers of Yahweh and Christ up until that moment.  However, at least one passage seemingly frames the day of the Lord, which is not necessarily any singular day, as continuing even after the Second Coming, describing the wicked as being burned to ashes (Malachi 4:1-3).  As an eschatological event, these verses would correspond to the wicked literally being burned to ashes in Gehenna, or the lake or fire, also called hell (Matthew 10:28, 2 Peter 2:6, and so on), which is after the resurrection, which is itself after the Second Coming.  

Are there any indicators said to precede this day of the Lord?  The occasional verse does speak of events that occur ahead of this period.  Malachi 4:5 says that Elijah will be sent by God before the day of the Lord, adding that this day is great and dreadful, so this prophecy pertains to eschatology in that its contents are fulfilled first (though the gospels teach in verses like Matthew 17:11-13 that, in one sense at a minimum, John the Baptist was Elijah).  Likewise, Joel 2:31 describes the sun as turning to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the "great and dreadful" day of the Lord.  Again, the Old Testament stresses that it will be dreadful, for the wicked, at least, though not without some sort of prophetic buildup.

While I address why this verse from Joel is distinctly eschatological despite the text saying this, like the sending of Elijah, will arrive "before" the day of the Lord in a later article, Joel does not contain the only warning about the general subject that is incredibly dire.  In their emotionalistic frenzy to welcome the events of Biblical eschatology (although they make many assumptions and errors, such as that discussed here [2]), some who identify as Christians overlook the clear cautionary statements about longing for many portions of the last days.  Despite how many people who call themselves Christians are just deluding themselves anyway because they do not represent Christianity at all with their theistic irrationalism, gender complementarianism, anti-theonomy, and so forth, perhaps they assume that they would not be among those suffering if they were truly going to live in the eschatological future.  If only it was so simple!

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-old-covenant.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2024/04/the-rapture.html

The Popular Misconception Of One Divided By Three

Divide one by three using a calculator, and it shows 0.333, with the number three repeating on and on.  However, 0.333 multiplied by three equals 0.999, and even the same calculator should get this much right.  This has compelled some to think that logic is not inherently true because contradictory things can be true at once, such as one being equivalent to 0.999.  They might also conclude that one divided by three must really be 0.333... (the ellipses here signify an infinitely repeating decimal).  There are other errors someone could believe about this issue.  One divided by three does not equal 2.777 or 5, for instance.  It is just that these or other examples are not the predominantly accepted delusion on the matter.  The truth is both extremely basic and extremely important.  This specific matter is not especially philosophically central on its own, but the truth of logic is supremely foundational, and since nothing can actually contradict logic and still be true, as I have repeatedly fixated on, the popular misconception is pivotal.

Because calculators reach 3.333 upon dividing one by three and arrive at 9.999 upon multiplying 9.999 by three, some people actually think that one and 9.999 are the same, or that math can deviate from the laws of logic.  Whatever the reason, there would be a logical reason why logic is false, so this is an intrinsic impossibility.  And 0.333 is a third of 0.999, not of 1.  Many people might assume that if a calculator presents an answer, it must be correct.  This is just a less overtly recognized form of an appeal to authority.  In truth, the only authority that has intrinsic correctness is logical axioms (even other necessary truths ultimately stem from them), with all other things being authoritative only to the extent that they concur with pure logical necessity or possibility.  A calculator is just a machine that might misrepresent the abstract truths of mathematics, which are themselves grounded strictly in logic.  With dividing one by three, these machines simply display the numeric symbols for a loose approximation that cannot possibly be correct.

It turns out that anyone who believes the somewhat popular idea that one divided by three amounts to a number that does not equal one when multiplied by three is wrong because the idea must be false.  Also, it could not have been any other way.  One divided into three could not possibly be 0.333, and so on, because the latter number added to itself three times (the same outcome as the number multiplied by three) logically has to be 9.999, with the decimal nine repeating infinitely.  Erroneous calculator solutions cannot falsify reason itself, and accurate calculator solutions are not a valid epistemological basis for believing anything—except that the calculator has arrived at a given number!  As an aside, logic is not primarily about numbers, though it necessitates certain truths about numbers.

No matter what, relying on calculators for anything more than the pragmatic purpose of facilitating the likes of academic work or professional calculations with a seemingly high probability of veracity is irrational.  Unless you mentally go through every single step in the calculation while looking to objective logic and making no assumptions, you would never know if a calculator (or another person, an AI, etc.) is right in any instance.  Reason alone can reveal this because reason alone grounds necessary truths, including those about numbers.  Not even memorizing an equation or the output with a given set of starting numbers means someone knows the truth of the matter.  One has to directly, actively grasp the logical necessity of why a specific number results.

Though the subject is so simple, the idiotic controversy over the real nature of one divided by three pertains to the very heart of all truth because if the popular misconception is true, then logical axioms would be false.  But logic cannot be false, because then there would be a logical reason why this is the case, which requires that reason is true either way.  One thing that follows from another cannot be anything but true, for instance, or else it would follow from the nature of reality that one thing which follows necessarily from another is untrue; or, it would follow from the nature of reality that nothing follows from anything—while these are two truths, they are both rooted in the same singular axiom that one thing which follows from another must be true because anything contrary still requires this to be so, and this is the case entirely independent of more specific examples of the axiom applying to something besides itself.  And if something contradicts any such self-necessary, self-evident truth, of which there are very few, it is automatically impossible.  One and 0.999, with the nine repeating, are not the same number, and, inevitably, 0.333 multiplied by three does not become one.