Exploitation In The Hiring Process

Having to submit work history in individual units in addition to submitting one's resume, the document that would already detail that very work history, is but one of many ways that, by intentional irrationality or by a more passive philosophical incompetence, the hiring process of some companies is artificially prolonged or difficult.  Such things in no way make receiving applications or conducting interviews more easy for anyone on either side of the process.  No, they are there because those in charge of hiring do not have the rationality to recognize them for what they are (or to care) or, even worse, they might be irrational and apathetic towards how they treat general applicants, hoping to find people desperate or compliant enough that they will endure all of this obliviously or knowingly.  Requiring that people provide their full work history more than once, when a digital resume already addresses this information, is not even the worst that could be done here.

Asinine practices like having multiple gratuitous rounds of interviews (I have heard of scenarios with up to seven, though there is always the possibility of having one more if interviewees will put up with it) are in place to glorify pathetic traditions or to pressure interviewees anxious or frustrated enough to accept offers that might be subpar.  These processes are especially wasteful of time and effort on everyone's part if there is already an internal candidate selected for the role and all external interviews are an illusionary formality.  However many people apply in such cases are putting their time into these interviews uncompensated, in all likelihood, though they have devoted effort for the sake a company as if they were already hired, in a sense.  Even worse than this is the possibility of a company having a candidate complete an uncompensated task to "test" them, only so that the organization can use their method or results for themselves without hiring someone.

Then there is the fact that if someone can do the job adequately, but derives no grand pleasure from the role, some employers would reject them for this alone.  Only if there is an equally talented or more skilled applicant/choice who also has passion for their field would dismissing someone for lack of passion be valid.  A lack of excitement, after all, is not a lack of skill or willingness.  Passion will only be exploited by some employers or managers anyway, another thing they can rely on to keep certain workers enthralled with their job despite a rotten company culture, inequivalent pay, and few opportunities for advancement.  Even with passion, some employers might only want enough passion for the desire to be emotionalistically blind, a shallow motivation to be harnessed by a shallow organization.

People without passion could not deserve to die for it, as passion is a subjective thing that does not necessarily reflect a person's worldview, core intentions, and competencies.  A specific kind of employer really is treating people like this is the case.  If no one hired someone who is honest enough to say that they have no incredible personal attachment to their professional life beyond the money and security it brings, those people would starve or die of dehydration unless they were freely able to live directly off of the natural world--a difficult thing for ordinary workers in countries like America.  The idea that people should long to devote their lives to professions is itself folly unless the profession is something morally valuable in itself; it is only something that is assumed by irrationalists and, more significantly, it contradicts reason since only philosophical truths could be worth living for, not careers or money or social recognition.

Why does almost anyone want to professionally work?  They want to get paid so they can easily pay for shelter, food, water, clothing, entertainment, and so on.  There is absolutely nothing other than subjective preference that would motivate a person to work beyond this.  It is not irrational or otherwise sinful to enjoy or look forward to professional opportunities, and there could be deep passion choosing behind certain jobs, but passion and skill are ultimately secondary to the real reason why jobs as a whole are created at all.  Some people need tasks completed, and some people are willing to do them in exchange for compensation of some kind in order to survive or fortify their life security; these are the driving factors behind most work.  Rationality and righteousness are the only additional things besides skill or willingness that by necessity matter in the interview process, and they are what will often be ignored in favor of idiotic cliques, superficial words, and connections with reveres figures.

True Skepticism

The skeptical position is not one of denial that something is true, but that a given thing is not known or knowable: someone who believes elementary particles or ghosts or yetis or aliens do not exist is not a skeptic regarding the respective subject although they might be stupid enough to think they are.  They are really an anti-realist with that particular thing existing or being true.  Rationalistic skepticism, moreover, is not a default skepticism of all matters.  This is idiotic in certain cases, as with logical axioms and one's own mental existence, for these are self-evident.  They can only be doubted by relying on them, so they are verifiably true independent of what else is.  Other truths can be known, when applicable, if they follow by logical necessity from something that is self-evident, or if one perceives--one can at least know that the precise perceptions exist even if their correspondence to outside factors is unverifiable in some cases.

If someone is inattentive or shows bursts of outward hyperactivity, they might say they have ADHD.  Among other things, I do not know if they are lying to me intentionally, confused about their own condition, or telling the truth.  The same is the case with any instance of physical weakness or illness with no external symptoms, though it is entirely consistent with logical axioms, and thus possible, that they are either right or wrong in their projected stance.  A skeptic of whether another person has a particular learning disability or mental disorder would not believe they do not have it.  No, they would not believe either way.  Their reason for doing so would determine the extent of their rationality.  However, given human limitations, there are many things that cannot be known by people who might passively or actively think otherwise.

A skeptic of the external world would not hold that there is no such thing as matter; he or she would think that they do not or cannot know (each would be its own form of skepticism).  A skeptic about the afterlife does not believe in scientific reductionism, immediate and permanent soul annihilation upon death, or any other such thing.  Rather, this person would believe that they do not or cannot know if there is life after biological death, much less which of all the logical possibilities it would be.  Sensory skepticism aside, I have no way of observing photons at the quantum level to see if they exist and are immaterial, and hearsay is never proof of anything but that hearsay is being proposed.  As a rationalist, since the logical possibility of either the existence of nonexistence of photons cannot be proven, I am a skeptic about such things.  This does not mean one cannot find fallible evidences in favor of something or at least know that if the hearsay is true, certain things would be entailed.

As long as it is consistent with the laws of logic, something is possible, although a concept's veracity and falsity cannot both be correct at once.  Many things are possible despite their inability to be proven or disproven, such as that electrons actually break down into some smaller particle, that the inhabitants of Earth live in a supernatural or technology-rooted simulation, that God hates all people and does not love anyone alongside this (love and hate are not always exclusive), that an alien species with the power to keep us alive for decades of torture is mobilizing against the planet now, and that Jesus did not exist in spite of the evidence suggesting otherwise.  A true skeptic would embrace true skepticism (but only rationalistic grounds, which themselves require the absolutely certain knowledge of reason, can make someone legitimate in their skepticism) and not deny the possibility or veracity of any of these things.

No intelligent skeptic has a bias against the supernatural or extraterrestrial life or undiscovered terrestrial life forms or the possibility of human historical records being either true (or false).  A rational skeptic, more importantly, does not hold to something that is merely logically possible simply because it does not follow from either axioms nor any other necessary truth stemming from them that the idea is true.  They do not have an assumed skepticism.  With select issues, someone might even be a rational skeptic only in the sense that they have not had the chance to particularly focus on a matter that is demonstrable one way or the other, yet they know that they can at least have genuine knowledge, which is always absolutely certain, that logical axioms govern the issue, that some things would or would not follow if true, and so on.  The person who thinks rational skepticism is anything else is gravely mistaken, and the person who thinks base skepticism is about anything other than a lack of personal knowledge or epistemological knowability altogether is even more wrong.

The State Of Death

The presence of consciousness is the difference between a living human body and a corpse.  The body's only foundational difference in death is that it is not animated by a mind, and it is thus inactive and lifeless.  This conceptual distinction and the logical fact that to perceive requires only an immaterial mind and not a body (even if no human minds actually exist apart from bodies, there is nothing logically impossible about an unembodied consciousness).  It does not follow that the mind does or does not depart from the body directly or at some later point after death, free of its corporeal confinement, though there would be no outward evidence for this as far as ordinary sensory experiences suggest.  Still, when someone dies, all mere evidence for their independent consciousness as a separate mind vanishes.  One can no longer see their expressions or movements.

If soul oblivion/sleep until the resurrection (Daniel 12:2) is true as the Bible plainly puts forth (Ecclesiastes 9:5-10, Job 3:11-19, Psalm 88:10-12, and more), then when it seems like the consciousness fades from the bodies of people into nonexistence or metaphysical inactivity--immaterial whether it separately exists from the body or not, as a mind and its perceptions can only be nonphysical even if they reside in a material form--this really is what is happening.  The soul is not leaving the body to go to a purely spiritual realm or inhabiting a placeholder or new body away from the dimension of our earthly lives according to the Bible.  It is impossible to know from sensory observation if other minds do or ever have existed, if the sensory perceptions as a collective correspond to the external world at all, or if other minds have gone to an immediate afterlife, but if the Biblical doctrine of soul sleep really is true, then what appears to be the case on a terrestrial, sensory level matches with what is the case on a grander metaphysical level: the consciousness of the dead has ceased to exist or is locked within an unperceiving state.

Scientific epistemology is indeed utterly secondary and therefore inferior to logic.  Reason provides absolute certainty because of its necessary truths, while sensory perceptions are involuntary experiences that, except in the very precise case of there simply being a physical body that my consciousness currently dwells in [1], are not knowable except on the level of mental experiences that might not correspond to an outside world of matter, for it does not logically follow from seeing or hearing something that it really exists as more than an immaterial hallucination.  One knows from reason that reason exists; one knows from reason that one's consciousness exists, with direct introspective experience also being accessible; one knows from reason that science is epistemologically useless except for discovering correlations and practicalities on the level of mere perception.

All the same, what would seem to be the case on the level of observing human corpses is really the case according to the Bible.  Though an immediate afterlife is logically possible, it would only be possible for there to be an afterlife of torment (as evangelicals often conceive of Sheol) that some or all of the dead instantly go to if it was an amoral afterlife, for otherwise people are tormented for longer or shorter periods based only upon the happenstance timing of the birth and death in human history, and it could not be an everlasting torment and still be proportionate to finite sins.  As irrelevant as it is to knowing logical possibilities or necessities that do not depend on matter or perception of matter, as well as to knowing the teachings of the Bible, the seeming lifelessness of a corpse would left to itself provide no evidence for or against an immediate afterlife and makes the dead truly seem dead.

The seeming causal springing of the mind from the human body--it could be the other way around, though the divine mind would sustain all matter and all minds besides its own either way--simply parallels the Biblical teaching that the soul is not conscious between death and the resurrection unless it is briefly, prematurely revived by supernatural powers, such as with the witch of Endor summoning Samuel (1 Samuel 28) or Jesus conversing with Moses and Elijah during his transfiguration (Matthew 17).  The Biblical Sheol is and was not a place of torment or paradise for anyone as creation waits for the apocalyptic return of Christ and the events that follow.  It is the grave, the physical ground or tomb that holds the body and it is also the corresponding mental nonexistence or existence in a dreamless, unthinking sleep of death.  According to this, what would seem to be the case more strictly from observing a corpse would actually be true, and death is a foreshadowing of the total nonexistence of the soul in the second death (Ezekiel 18:4, 2 Peter 2:6, Revelation 20:15).

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/07/dreams-and-consciousness.html

Emotionalistic Patriotism

If everyone was patriotic to their country at the expense of rationalistic awareness and moral uprightness, then every person would be a fool, living for a meaningless personal love of an arbitrary geographical state in denial or ignorance of logical truths about the matter.  As associated in many minds as patriotism is with specific countries, and as much as some patriots all but worship their country while denouncing foreigners for doing the same, there is no one country or group of people that is incapable of choosing to fall into this stupidity.  Emotionalistic patriotism is always a voluntary philosophical stance, and more nations than simply the United States could be guilty of this, with the patriotism of each person being tied to them as an individual rather than decided by their country of birth or residence.

America's historic fascination with the most asinine forms of patriotism is certainly not its only possible manifestation.  It is not as if other countries cannot or have not or do not grasp for this same kind of idiotic loyalty to and approval of a country simply because its people are born there, no matter how irrational or unjust its leaders and social norms are.  The logical possibility of other countries fostering fallacious patriotism (which is knowable without historical or modern examples) aside, China, England, and more pressure their citizens to have a meaningless subjective attachment to their state or, in certain cases, force outward submission to oppressive governments, such as North Korea.  A country like China or North Korea is according to many accounts led by egoistic, irrationalist fools who demand allegiance not to reason, God, and justice, but to the whims and benefit of a ruling figure or elite at the threat of death or worse.

In the United States, while patriotism is not necessarily expressed domestically with this level of direct, casual brutality, it is strong enough in its hold on some people, particularly conservatives, that it dissuades them from criticizing their country's glaring faults or even reevaluating their pathetic faith in their happenstance homeland.  For someone like this, the only focus will be on supporting their own country in thought and deed to the extent that people from other countries are possibly regarded as inferior.  This kind of patriotism is almost inseparable from adherence to nationalism when given full devotion.  Thinking they are not being arrogant, "only patriotic," this kind of irrationalist deceives himself or herself to avoid giving up comfortable but false or assumed beliefs.

In all of these types of patriotism, the forced outward compliance with social constructs or the assumption or cultural conditioning-based allegiance reduces to the stupidity of emotionalism or relativism.  Patriotism can be misused or embraced on fallacious grounds by people of any nation, not just America or the other major political presences in contemporary global events.  Universally, if it is anything more than a subjective affection for one's homeland recognized as not being morally obligatory or a logically necessary truth, it is a terribly irrational stance to have.  American or not, no one is on the right side of reality for their irrationalism and emotionalism in a political context and beyond.

Language Is Not In The Domain Of Science

Language is not found in the natural world, which itself would exist directly or indirectly because of the uncaused cause [1], and even then, the uncaused cause and cosmos can only exist if they are logically possible--if they are consistent with or necessitated by the intrinsic truths of logical axioms.  Yes, the physical materials used to craft the parchment (animal skin) or page (wood converted into paper) on which linguistic symbols can be written would be made of matter, and thus are part of the natural world and subject to whatever laws of physics are active at the macroscopic or quantum level.  Language itself is not; language can be expressed in written form on physical substance, but it can also be used privately inside of a person's immaterial mind (though this is not necessary for thinking whatsoever [2]), and the logical necessities governing language are of course more foundational than science and language and thus transcend them [3].

Since language is not part of the cosmos, for it is something that conscious beings have to create and use, it cannot be grounded in physics or discovered through the scientific method.  Yes, how the vocal cords correlate to the production of sound used in conversation, which requires language, is a matter of science.  How the muscles in the body behave and the air from the lungs brings about the vibrations connected with the audible voice are scientific in nature (although science hinges on logical truths dictating necessity and possibility and thus is never supremely central to any aspect of reality).  How changing the way one utilizes specific muscles generates specific vocal sounds to modify spoken language is an issue of science, but language is not noise: it is a system of written or verbalized symbols that have to be arbitrarily created.

Language is not arbitrary in the sense that it is beyond reason.  Nothing can be.  If something is logically impossible, it cannot be true.  The truth about all things is governed by logic, though truths about what does and does not follow from something, metaphysical identity, and possibility and impossibility are all true independent of examples beyond the inherent reality of reason itself.  Logical axioms like how something which follows from another thing cannot be invalid, as necessary truths in themselves, have to be true pertaining to language as well as outside of it (a word is a word, which requires the law of identity's veracity, a letter is not a word, which requires the law of non-contradiction's veracity, and so on).  No, language is arbitrary in that words are individual or social constructs used to communicate information.

They are not the things being described.  The word love is not the mental state of love.  The word bacterium is not any of the many microorganisms it could be referencing.  The word reason is not the necessary truths of logic that are true in themselves apart from the creation or use of any language.  The word dust is not actual particles of dust.  Like it can refer to other things related to or beyond science, language can convey or be assigned to scientific objects, events, and laws.  However, it is not perceived out in nature or initially perceived with the senses at all.  No, it is contrived by people for the sake of communication between non-telepathic beings, and there is no inherent meaning to any sound or symbol no matter how much it might seem to be the case--the fact that people can intend different things by the same words alone requires that this is true.

Since some people think that linguistics is a social science, it is relevant that social "science" is not science.  Unless the laws of physics change, dropping a stick under identical conditions will lead to identical outcomes because scientific phenomena entail physical environments/objects behaving in specific ways.  There is no such thing with people.  Conscious beings have their own individualistic wills and personalities that can vary dramatically from person to person.  There is also no deterministic outcome with outward behaviors when different people are in the same situations as there would be with truly scientific phenomena.  Thus, even on the level of human behavior regarding language, language is not in the domain of science metaphysically or epistemologically.  Like science, it is governed by the laws of logic, but unlike scientific objects and laws, language is often a social construct (otherwise it still has to be created and amended by individuals).  The only person who thinks otherwise is highly irrational.

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

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2021/06/thinking-using-language.html

[3].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/06/scientific-contingencies.html

The Power And Empowerment Of Self-Control

It takes genuine power of will to suppress irrational or immoral desires, including the desire to believe something because it seems persuasive rather than because it is metaphysically true and epistemologically verifiable by logical necessity.  In this sense, there is objective power entailed by self-control: power over one's arbitrary, subjective impulses and potential willingness to allow them to dictate beliefs or behaviors.  Not everyone needs self-control to avoid any particular sins because not everyone finds the same things appealing, no matter their circumstance.  Still, there are many ways to exercise self-control in an amoral or supererogatory way, even with the likes of sexuality or money.  Holding back in these instances is not always a moral requirement and yet it can be some people's preference.

Even when it concerns permissible/amoral things, a person might relish the freedom to decide if they will or will not not engage in a permissible activity that is personally alluring to them.  To savor this sense of empowerment, which is their subjective reaction to the objective truth of free will [1], without which there could be no such thing as self-control since the self is forced to believe or act by forces external to the mind, is a legitimate goal in itself as long as there is no fallacious belief present.  Someone might go so far as to abstain from something they crave indefinitely, even "knowing" (as much as can be the case, for only probabilistic evidence is accessible here, with conscience being an irrelevant subjective set of perceptions and social norms being arbitrary group habits on their own) that it is permissible, just to experience the fulfillment of being the introspective master or mistress of their own behaviors.

In such a case, it is not the anticipation of finally giving in on some planned or spontaneous date that compels them to do this, though someone who wants to see how long they can maintain their resolve is both volitionally and morally free to do so.  It would always be logically possible to go one more moment, but in the sense of perceived inability to continue, finding the "breaking point" could be an introspectively delightful and satisfying experience for someone with the right personality.  No, anticipation of an eventual yielding does not have to be the intention.  Abstinence not for the sake of moral obligation but expression of personal self-mastery can be entirely rational and empowering.

Now, someone who pursues any and every permissible pleasure--Biblically, this includes any kosher food [2], a host of sexual activities with or without a partner (for instance, what is addressed here [3]), and alcohol use short of drunkenness, as well as friendship and anything from lighthearted to dark entertainment--has not sinned.  A pleasure cannot be permissible if seeking or practicing it is immoral!  Self-control is only morally mandatory when a person is tempted to believe something false or do something that is itself evil.  While this kind of self-control being obligatory when needed already follows by logical necessity from the Torah condemning certain actions and intentions, this is what the New Testament explicitly commends or prescribes (such as in Galatians 5:22-23).

The excitement that can be tied to self-control for certain people can be just as intoxicating as pursuing permissible pleasure with rational, nonsinful motives, all of which would involve motivations other than hedonistic gratification.  Hedonism, of course, is the philosophical stance holding that all or most pleasure is good, even the greatest good, or that personal pleasure justifies any/many beliefs or actions, which does not logically follow from something being pleasant or stimulating.  On its own, loving pleasure is not irrational or evil, and many pleasures are not Biblically sinful; in fact, one could find great pleasure in knowing the necessary, objective truths of reason, in aligning with righteousness, or in self-control for the sake of individualistic preference.  Empowerment related to self-control is even itself about subjective pleasure!

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/09/refuting-assumption-about-free-will.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/09/that-which-defiles.html

[3].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-truth-about-erotic-media-part-2_19.html

The Bible Is Not White Supremacist

The Bible is so clearly against white supremacy, or any kind of racial supremacist philosophy, that one has to be a thorough non-rationalist to even begin gravitating towards the idea.  As humans, white people would of course have no less baseline value than anyone else from any time, from geographical location, or or any skin color (Genesis 1:26-27), but this does not make them metaphysically superior to anyone else on the basis of skin color or lineage.  The early chapters of the Bible already affirm the tenets of this and Mosaic Law does the same.

Foreigners, which could sometimes be members of other races, are not to be treated differently than the human rights of all people under Mosaic Law dictate (Leviticus 24:22, Exodus 22:21).  People of other nations or that look different from whatever one's race is are not regarded as subhuman by any means.  However, the happenstance fact that some white supremacists throughout American history believed or claimed that Biblical theology is consistent with their racist ideology does not mean it is so.  This does not logically follow, which itself means the idea is epistemologically flawed already, and then the Bible also contradicts this.

Besides the way that the Bible repeatedly makes clear statements that would exclude racial supremacy--when other people groups besides the Jews are killed, it is not just because they are outsiders/foreigners, but because of their predominant sins--the Bible simply never says that white people are superior to others.  In fact, the only white people it directly mentions are the Greeks and Romans, though, say, the Roman Empire contained many various groups of conquered people within it.  Salvation is offered to them, white or not, just as it is extended to all people (Galatians 3:28, John 3:16).

There is only one kind of racial/national supremacy that assumptions and superficial misconceptions might lead the irrational to believe are actual doctrines of the Bible, and that would be Jewish supremacy.  Since so much of the Torah is devoted to injunctions to not mistreat outsiders and to specifying obligations without even mentioning race or nationality (the two are separate qualities anyway), the misunderstood verses would not exactly be all over the place as some imagine.  Deuteronomy 23:19-20, for instance, says charging interest to a fellow Israelite is forbidden but that interest can be charged to foreigners.

As if Leviticus 25:35-37 does not separately say to treat the poor Israelite like a foreigner or stranger by not charging them interest or even selling them food at a profit, meaning at the very least that poor foreigners were not to pay interest to Israelites either, Deuteronomy 23:19-20 would still be consistent with Genesis 1:26-27.  The obligation would be to not charge interest to people of one's own country or community, not to treat Jews as superior to the many non-Jewish peoples of the ancient or modern world.  In either case, the same obligations are universal to all, and none of this has anything to do with white supremacy.

Contemporary American liberals are in many ways just as delusional as the conservatives they oppose, sometimes pretending like the Bible is white supremacist or misogynist or some other such thing as a basis for rejecting it as even possibly true.  It is absolutely not white supremacist in any way.  Biblical philosophy is thoroughly racially egalitarian and anyone who believes otherwise only assumes out of irrationality.  Moral value, justice, and salvation are either respectively possessed, owed, or offered to everyone according to Biblical teachings.

Conservative Sensitivity

Sometimes conservatives are the biggest snowflakes of all despite their common use of the word in reference to liberals.  Whether it is criticizing Donald Trump, not practically worshipping firearms (of course firearms are morally neutral since they can do nothing on their own, though), pointing out that Soviet communism is not pure communism since it had a ruling/enforcing class (I am not a communist, nor am I a capitalist, for both are neutral until misused), using legal freedom of speech in ways they do not subjectively approve of, or something else, conservatives rush to show their worldview is driven by emotionalism potentially without realizing it.  Yes, liberals are pathetic as well, despite more of the affiliated philosophical stances being true or probable in their case even if the liberals themselves distort them.

With conservatives, who tend to deny their extreme sensitivity, casting a black actor/actress in Rings of Power or the live action The Little Mermaid upsets many of them, as if the color of a character's skin automatically changes anything about the base plot.  A hint of gender or racial egalitarianism frightens many of them.  For instance, acknowledging something such as the objective truth that men can be raped by women can stir up animosity in them.  Moreover, mocking the epistemological stupidity of deep state conspiracy theories with satire or casual comments might light their hearts aflame with fury or panic--certainly, it is logically possible for there to be a secret shadow government in true control of America or the world, but this could not be proven and is not some metaphysically inevitable state of affairs.

These are the people who might think the phrase "Happy Holidays" is some malicious, egoistic attack on Christianity.  They are the ones who might think that the COVID-19 vaccine is the mark of the beast or that a woman wearing a bikini is by default sexual.  They might rightfully (since it is true as a concept, not that they approach it with rationalistic epistemology) but for all the wrong reasons say that "facts don't care about feelings" and then believe in the existence of moral obligations on the basis of petty conscience just like so many liberals do.  The only racism they might want to talk about is that directed against white people, and they think themselves the victims of an evil world when they are mocked, when everyone who is not a rationalist, short of the very young or the likes of the catatonic, could not deserve to be hated or ridiculed.

Liberals can be wonderful examples of emotionalistic snowflakes, but so are conservatives; each ideology is crucially false independent of how the adherents act, as tradition and shifting away from the status quo for any arbitrary/emotionalistic reasons are both irrational.  In addition to this core ideological error, many adherents to each political philosophy are outwardly emotionalistic in their outbursts, reacting to things disproportionately, giving what would otherwise be legitimate reactions that are motivated by emotionalism, or by objecting to things that are not problematic at all.  Conservatism is false either way just like liberalism.  It is just that conservatives can be more likely to pretend with their words and attitudes as if they are the ones trying to look to reason, unlike liberals, members of the supposedly only major political party guilty of irrationalism.

Again, conservatism is false independent of how conservatives conduct themselves because logical truths and moral ideas, and thus the subcategory of political ones, are not true or false based upon how someone carries themself.  Conserving any tradition, unless the tradition is a moral obligation (which would not be due to its social normalcy or personal appeal), is idiotic.  This is like how Islam is not false because of how some or all Muslims behave.  It is false because it contradicts the Torah it also says it true.  Still, though their philosophical foundations are already invalid, modern conservatives often go further in their errors than they would need to in order to simply be basic conservatives.  Baseless outrage for the sake of outrage, which is especially irrationalistic when directed against logically necessary truths, is what they are empowered by or push themselves to.

Selecting A Spouse

No one is ready for marriage unless they are a rationalist.  Irrational people cannot deserve to be happy in their delusions and in relationships based on them of reason, which is inherently true, morally matters.  If anything matters, reason must as well since it is what governs the rest of reality.  If nothing matters, no one deserves anything at all, certainly not happiness.  However, just because someone is a rationalist does not mean that they will not land in the unlikely place of a relationship they or their partner were absolutely not prepared for (whether in the sense of intellectual and moral correctness or in the sense of personal psychology).

Even a thorough rationalist could paradoxically wind up trapped in a marriage with an irrationalist simply because he or she truly has no way of knowing other minds, hoping that someone is as they appear and discovering that it was never likely the case.  It is logically possible for someone to hide their irrationalism even by accident, just as it is possible for someone to change after they get married and become an emotionalistic, selfish, abusive, or philosophically apathetic husband or wife after commitment was formed.  There is absolutely never a way to prove that someone else is or will remain a rational partner, the only kind of person who could possibly be worthy of marriage or of existing at all, and this is an unrecognized truth for many cases.

There is no number of conversations or other activities that confirm that someone truly loves you or, more importantly, is truly rational.  Only one's own mind is knowable when it comes to its existence and when it comes to its contents.  No matter how many talks or expressions of seeming or genuine love or rationality there are, a non-telepathic being will never actually know anything more than possibilities, probabilities, and perceptions of what another person is thinking, as well as what would logically follow if a given thing is true about them.  Anyone who heads into friendship or marriage thinking otherwise is undeserving of having either in the first place since they have disregarded reason, that which all else hinges on.

What if a spouse does descend into madness or was already there unnoticed?  There is, in one sense, not always a Biblically valid escape for all spouses from their marriage.  Only sinful interpersonal acts qualify for divorce, and these acts are far broader than many Christians think (these imbeciles do not understand the Torah or how the New Testament is but conditional upon it, as affirmed by the likes of Matthew 5:17-19): deeds like abuse or neglect (Exodus 21), abandonment (1 Corinthians 7), sexual immorality such as adultery or rape (Matthew 19), and general sin (Deuteronomy 24).  This true scope of Biblical divorce is liberating indeed, but it is not all-encompassing.  Non-sins do not merit divorce, as difficult as they might be to deal with.

Marriage, like deep non-marital friendships, is nothing to rush into.  Still, only a fool would think they could know that someone is actually rational, just, or loving as opposed to somehow saying all the right words and acting outwardly as if this facade is the case.  This makes marriage nothing to rush into even with someone who genuinely towers above the superficiality and unworthiness of so many people.  A total, unflinching rationalist and devotee of Yahweh could find himself or herself tethered to someone they should never have stayed involved with for logical, moral, personal, and even pragmatic reasons.  This would be terrifying to any rational person.

Complying With Asinine Workplace Policies

A person is not irrational in carrying out unneeded workplace steps or one part of conflicting orders (if they conflict, you cannot fulfill all of them wholly) if they do not believe anything false about the nature of their goals, or if they recognize at least the basic illogicality of someone else wanting these procedures in place.  Anyone in the workplace is still likely at some point to be faced with such policies or expectations, passed down to them by someone else above them on the hierarchy.  There is a way to satisfy at least some of these policies in a manner that either draws attention to how idiotic they are or that sabotages the company simply by doing what one was told.

What if they tell you to send a manager an email update for every single trivial or pointless change in scheduling something with a client, every fluctuation in an office plan that does not involve them, and so on?  Since they supposedly wanted an email update for everything, giving them what they asked for might make them realize that they either did not really know what their own instructions meant or that they do not actually want that after all!  An inbox flooded with gratuitous emails could interfere with their own work and remind them of how pathetic their own commands are when they are not in alignment with reason.

Do they claim they want to be told about every five minute adjustment to tackling an objective that comes up across every single workday?  Well, if that is truly what they want, they have no basis for objecting when all of the workers given this task do exactly that.  No delays in their own productivity or personal frustration would make them repeal this demand if they truly were rational and sincere in making it.  However, it is likely that if their own workload is large enough, they will regret giving instructions that slow down not only the employees, but the managers or employers themselves.

Some managers love to push for changes just for the sake of change, an irrational reason, or they will pressure workers to do completely unnecessary or counterproductive things merely for the sake of exercising power arbitrarily or emotionalistically.  They do not do it for the sake of the company, as if the company is not made of people who are more foundational than success and profits already, but they do it in order to act on delusions or to make themselves feel important or useful when they are in opposition to reason, the only thing that intrinsically legitimizes anyone's stances.

Complying with their irrationalistic demands can be done in such a way that they see how much it ultimately slows them and perhaps hinders the very goal the demands were intended to bring about.  This does not have to be done out of malice as irrational, hypocritical, egoistic workers might assume is justified.  Because malice in a moral sense is the desire to inflict unjust harm on someone or to punish them for emotionalistic reasons, malice is not the same as complying with certain asinine instructions in order to subvert them.  One can do this without being irrational or without being motivated by malice or selfishness.  The phrase malicious compliance is a very misleading one when it is used in reference to this.

Self-Love And Moral Freedom

Self-love, as opposed to selfishness, is at a minimum no less righteous than love of others if everyone bears God's image (Genesis 1:31).  In fact, since one's own mind is the only one a non-telepathic being can know exists, and neither individual nor group whims make something morally binding anyway, it is folly to think loving others necessarily entails submission to them, be they a stranger, authority figure, parent, sibling, or even a spouse.  That is, it does not entail submission via tolerance (which is stupid or evil) or mercy (which cannot be obligatory because it would mean justice is not, though justice is treating people as they deserve).

Biblical or rationalistic love of others is not universal, unconditional support for them in all of their, for non-rationalists, folly.  One is free to love oneself in the same way: as long as one does not intentionally harbor affection for any irrationality or other sin in oneself that one must and can overcome, one is in the right to celebrate and explore one's own being (involuntary feelings and preferences are not the issue, but believing in what is false or doing what is evil).  We are to love our neighbors as ourselves (Leviticus 19:18).  We are to treat ourselves justly and hold ourselves in the same regard as other people, at least when it comes to base human value and rights.

Now, with love of others could come some instances of submission.  Husbands and wives can submit to each other in things like temporarily, consensually abstaining from sex (1 Corinthians 7:2-5) or try to please other Christians in general, non-obligatory individual cases--in the sense of showing them kindness or honoring their amoral wishes (Ephesians 5:21).  With matters like one person preferring another person to never play violent or sexually graphic video games or have no opposite gender friendships, among many other things, love does not require submission.  Reason and morality permit one to do whatever one wants without disregarding these two things themselves (Deuteronomy 4:2).

There is never a legitimately moral need to submit to anyone unless they are on the side of reason and justice and you are not, but each person can independently ensure that they make no assumptions, know logical axioms, discover a great deal about what follows from them by necessity, and be devoted to doing whatever morality might require of them.  If a person is already on the side of reason and God/morality, there cannot be anything necessary about submission to others in this sense.  The moral freedom of all people is to love themselves and to do as they please without betraying reason or morality.

Selfishness is living for the self over reason or obligation.  Rational, Biblical self-love can provide the psychological resolution to never give in to anything but reason, God, justice, and any affiliated thing.  One already has the moral freedom on the Christian worldview to love oneself, which is actually a requirement.  This can be an additional motivator to never take lesser people's wishes into consideration when going about one's life.  Their preferences are irrelevant!  Let any submission be out of knowing, non-fallacious mercy, non-emotionalistic love, or for a matter so trivial or amoral it does not matter how one acts.

Movie Review--Dragon Wars

"Imoogi.  It is a creature from a Korean legend which turns into a dragon."

--Jack, Dragon Wars

Dragon Wars has a unique place in cinematic history as the first Korean movie to be released in general American theaters, a poor to mediocre film that at one point was supposed to be the most expensive South Korean movie to be made, though films like Snowpiercer (by Parasite director Bong Joon-ho) have since dethroned it in this regard.  South Korean productions have led to some incredible films, but Dragon Wars, in spite of the then-record amount of money that went into it, is at best a mediocre execution of something far more promising than the final film turned out to be.  It is not as if there is no artistic and philosophical potential in a story about reincarnated lovers, cosmic serpents, and an exploration of South Korean culture, but Dragon Wars fails to make the most of its premise, though it does still have some unintentional and intentional humor, adequate lore, and the occasional great action sequence.  It is at its worst no Suicide Squad, Iron Man 2, or Black Christmas (2019), and yet it still falls far short of the likes of Parasite!

Production Values

Sharing its mixture of mediocrity and lack of effort with several other major aspects of the movie, the visual effects rarely look like anything more than very obvious CGI creations, appearing very artificial next to the human actors and physical locations.  To conserve resources for more pivotal moments, the scale of the army of exotic creatures needed to be scaled back, as only a handful of scenes have Imoogi serpents or dragons that do not look blatantly out of place, and only moreso compared to more recent CGI.  Oddities in the editing or execution of scenes also sometimes show up, such as a part where a group of soldiers shoots at the entryway to a mountain before a large, hostile serpent exits the tunnel a few seconds later--which would be a productive course of action if the soldiers were actually aiming inside the tunnel instead of running off to the side and shooting in such a way that they could neither see nor aim at the serpent.  Scenes like this can provide unintended comedy, but rare moments of intentional humor are actually handled better than almost everything else, such as when an old woman tries to phase through a gate after she sees a servant of Buraki do the same, only to hit her head on the material.  The characters are rather undeveloped, but at least Aimee Garcia, who plays a friend of a main character, and Craig Robinson, who is better known for his role in The Office, do more with their limited roles than even the leads do, as the main characters are not exactly acted with a high amount of urgency, depth, or general energy.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

Shortly after a massive scale is unearthed in California, which triggers a memory for a reporter named Ethan, a massive serpent called Buraki begins searching for Sarah, the reincarnation of a woman who died in 1507 AD.  This woman, named Nani, was the human embodiment of a power that would elevate one of two legendary Imoogi serpents to become a celestial dragon--for the one that sacrificed her.  Buraki scours Los Angeles as Ethan recalls that he is the reincarnation of Nani's lover from 500 years ago, and that unless Sarah is killed by/for one of the Imoogi, Buraki and his forces will only search for yet another reincarnation of Nani 500 years later.

Intellectual Content

Dragons Wars squanders plenty of its philosophical potential, though shards of important or deep issues are addressed.  That Sarah, the latest incarnation of the Yuh Yi Joo, a woman whose life force can transform an Imoogi into a dragon, is to be killed for either "heaven" or for the arrogant Buraki is something that could have made for a very elaborate, personal exploration of sacrifice, especially with Sarah as an unwilling pawn in a rivalry between serpents that are far more powerful than humans.  Combined with a stronger, better funded approach to the metaphysics of South Korean legends, this could have helped the film stand apart from others in a distinctly positive way instead of as a very mixed movie.  As it is, the themes of destiny and Korean mythology and human sacrifice are scarcely developed, much like the characters themselves.

Conclusion

A bigger budget and a more committed cast, or perhaps better directing as well, would have lifted Dragon Wars to the place of a more thoughtful, dramatic film that introduced Korean terms and legends to some Western audiences for the first time.  Yes, even though it might have been the most expensive South Korean film when it debuted, the budget certainly needed to be larger or the resources utilized better if this was to have the level of visual flair it seems to strive for.  Dragon Wars still turned out to be the film that reached some important milestones for Korean filmmaking, although Korean movies that followed boast some much better examples of how to reach artistic greatness.  It could have been far worse, certainly, and it also could have been far better.  This puts Dragon Wars, or D-War, as it is sometimes unecessarily called, in the company of many other movies from all sorts of countries that are based on ideas with potential and yet were mishandled in the execution.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  Bloodless explosions, shootings, and physical fights are the extent of the violence.

 2.  Profanity:  Words like "shit" are seldomly used.

Women In The God Of War Reboot

It is not portraying the individual male or female characters of a given story in a certain way that is irrational or evil.  Such a thing does not have to be sexist at all.  The same is true of making a story that features mostly (or exclusively) male or female characters.  The problem would be in the intention of promoting the fallacies of stereotypes, if applicable, or in mass trends of, say, presenting only women as sexual assault victims, presenting only women as having emotion and personal sensitivity, presenting only men as aggressive and domineering, and so on.  Likewise, the mass creation of entertainment with mostly men or mostly women would be discriminatory, whether or not the stories promote stereotypes.  Even if every character of either gender is largely portrayed as if stereotypes are true, but not every single one, this is idiotic because it contradicts the necessary truths of reason since nonphysical traits do not follow from having certain genitalia.  Stereotypes also contradict social experiences [1], though reason is true and knowable independent of all sociality and sensory experience.

The 2018 God of War reboot, on one hand, focuses on largely male characters.  It follows Kratos and his son Atreus, eventually joined by the reanimated head of Mimir, on their journey to spread the ashes of Kratos' wife from the highest point in all the nine realms of Norse mythology.  Unlike with some contemporary games, the majority of the enemies seem to be resurrected or corrupted male soldiers called Draugr, at least when they are not animals like wolves.  The duo winds up visiting a benevolent witch multiple times, this sorceress turning out to be the Vanir pseudo-goddess Freya.  There are also actual female witches without alleged divine power (a created being like Freya or even Odin could not be an actual uncaused cause) called Revenants that must be fought to progress.  One of them, encountered in an optional side quest, is named Gullveig.  Then there are the nine Valkyries, spirits trapped in female bodies that the player can fight to liberate them--a pure spirit has no body and thus no genitalia no matter what the myths or popular culture interpretations of them would posit, so it cannot be male or female even if it presents itself as having the appearance of one gender.

On the other hand, although there are long stretches of the game with no female characters, the ones that are part of the story are very integral to moving the plot forward, highlight how women can be malicious and selfish (a sometimes very neglected truth), or showcase how women can be mighty warriors.  The wife of Kratos and mother of Atreus, for instance, though she is used narratively as a significant catalyst that sparks the events of the game, is frequently spoken of by her surviving family members, and her death is a driving force for the plot.  There is only something erroneous about a female character dying to push male characters forward (she has died before the game starts, however) if this end was all that female characters were used for across different stories or if it was meant, in this respective case, to degrade the gender of the character by favorably expressing sexist philosophical ideas.  This is also not the case with the cameo of Athena, who might only appear as a hallucination, though having her post-mortem astral form from God of War III might point to her literally manifesting outside of Kratos' mind.  Athena and her words are used to show how haunted Kratos is by his actions from Greece, a very fitting thematic inclusion.

Some people might think that using the Valkyries as optional and often very powerful bosses to be killed is disrespectful towards women.  This is itself sexist: it is not that attacking women is always evil and attacking men is always permissible or at least not as bad.  It is that attacking anyone because of their gender is sexist.  In fact, it is highly sexist to think that having to fight or kill female characters is abominable, but not the other way around.  The 2018 God of War is not misogynistic, and the way female characters of earlier games are utilized is not sexist in itself either, despite the occasional sex minigames (like on the boat at the beginning of the original God of War or with Aphrodite in God of War III) and partial nudity.  After all, Kratos has his chest and much of his body exposed, and this is not sexist since the male and female bodies alike are just human bodies; his chest just might be perceived differently, to the detriment of both genders [2], by the typical idiotic non-rationalist than even nonsexual portrayals of female breasts, as with Eos, goddess of the dawn, when Kratos speaks with her in Chains of Olympus.

The God of War franchise has never contained any inherently misogynistic or misandrist leanings despite sometimes portraying things in line with various sexist ideologies and social practices.  Actually, female characters have been a prominent or pivotal part of the franchise since its start, from the village oracle of the original game to Athena, who guided Kratos until her accidental killing, even aiding him in his quest against Zeus from her own intriguing afterlife in God of War III (and perhaps appearing in her spirit form in the 2018 game).  Though they are closer to catalysts for the initial storyline, the deaths of the first wife and child of Kratos, named Lysandra and Calliope respectively, are of enormous significance in the series, for they are what drive Kratos to renounce service to Ares and serve the other Olympians as penance, though he comes to oppose them.  As the Furies in Ascension, Persephone in Chains of Olympus, Gaia in multiple games, Hera in God of War III, and more show, as well as miscellaneous female enemies like gorgons, women are not gentle or peaceful or selfless because they are female.  So much in the franchise brims with a philosophical depth that not everyone notices, and the way the series treats men and women is ultimately rather egalitarian, showing Kratos grapple with powerful emotions, women fighting and scheming, and a host of characters of each gender embrace varying moral alignments.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2020/06/refuting-gender-stereotypes-unnecessary.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-twin-harms-of-denying-womens.html

"Professional" Appearance And Speech

The workplace is in many instances dominated by employers who enforce policies that have absolutely nothing to do with the work.  Slaves to tradition, emotionalism, or consensus with imbeciles, they will penalize people who do such supposedly problematic things as have hair dyed to specific colors or wearing clothing that is not especially formal.  It could be a way to exert abusive power over those who are dependent on them for an income or it could be driven by an idiotic love of social norms.  Whatever the motivation that leads someone to act on them, these ideas are objectively false and are ultimately used to betray reason, reinforce erroneous discriminatory hiring or other treatment, or feed the egos of fools.

What if someone has visible tattoos?  While some people actually assume this is unprofessional because they are accustomed to the asinine tradition of covering tattoos at work--or simply refusing to hire someone with tattoos, whether they would be visible at work or not--it does not impair someone's skills at all.  They are not disrespectful to customers/clients, employers, fellow workers, or (more importantly) to reason by having these markings, not unless the tattoo expresses some irrationalistic philosophy.  Tattoos are not and by logical necessity could not be unprofessional for just being tattoos even if some people react with discomfort.

Then there are things like hair dyed to colors that are similarly offend some people on the basis of assumptions or emotionalism.  Perhaps people who oppose these things in the workplace stereotype people with dyed hair (moreso if it is dyed to bright colors that are not natural) or tattoos as having worldviews or personality traits that are wholly irrelevant to factors like this.  The same is true of people who object to workplace conversations that are not strictly about the work itself, including personal bonding or workplace flirtation, condemning things that are neither irrational nor immoral on the only ethical system with evidence (Christianity's).

Profanity, like tattoos, dyed hair, or casual clothing, cannot be unprofessional because it has nothing to do with the quality of a person's professional skills or with their ability or desire to effectively tend to their client's or employers needs.  What it might do is upset some people on the meaningless basis of emotionalistic preferences, certainly, but such people cannot deserve to be appeased since they are not pleased by reason, morality, and other truths; they derive pleasure or satisfaction from having their arbitrary, subjective, often socially-manipulated desires gratified at the expense of another person's career or wellbeing.

The most common thing that people encourage and object to the absence of, though, is clothing.  Wear casual clothing in many offices or other workplaces, and a certain kind of common employer will insist that this does not present the company well, maybe focusing on customer perception.  First of all, in many jobs, the customers do not interact with or see the workers at all.  Second, even if they do, their own subjective preferences are as equally meaningless in a moral regard as those of employers.  "Professional" clothing is a nonexistent category because professional competency and, far more significantly, worldview and actions are not dictated by casual or formal clothing.  Employers and consumers who believe otherwise are very obviously, inherently in the wrong.

God Resurrected Jesus: Another Refutation Of Trinitarianism

It is not particularly hard to come across passages that refute conventional Trinitarianism.  They will just largely be read by assumption-enslaved people who overlook the way such verses very clearly teach a metaphysical distinction between Jesus and God.  For example, see 1 Corinthians 8:6 and 1 Timothy 2:5 and 6:14-16 to find Paul presenting the two as their own beings.  He does not say Jesus is God, but that Jesus is the mediator between humanity and God.  Jesus himself says that the Father has knowledge he does not (Matthew 24:36), has his own will that Christ submits to (Luke 22:42), and is the only default good being, the latter statement being his response to the rich young ruler when Christ is called good (Mark 10:17-18).  Jesus is the Christ but not God (1 John 2:22-23 teaches this while obviously referring to the two separately).

Any of these verses is enough to refute Trinitarianism on its own.  What of the handful of verses like John 10:30, where Jesus says he and the Father are one?  John 10:30, even in isolation, would not have to mean anything more than that Jesus and Yahweh are in ideological unity, and in this very chapter, Jesus distinguishes himself from the Father more than once (such as in 10:25-29, and see John 5:19-30).  The context already clarifies that this is not an affirmation of Trinitarianism.  Only a fool would think Genesis 2 and 1 Corinthians 6 teach that a man and woman who have sex, in becoming one flesh, literally become one metaphysical entity instead of sharing a deep physical intimacy!  Though they would probably not be quite stupid enough to make this error, for the sake of tradition, many people assume that Jesus is literally equating himself with God when this is declared the straw man misinterpretation of his Jewish opponents (John 5:18, 10:31-37).

Another way the Bible presents Jesus and God as separate beings is easy to demonstrate.  Acts 2:24, 2:27, 2:32, 5:30, and 17:30-31 all make it as clear as language can that it is God who is supposed to have resurrected Christ.  Jesus was only a passive recipient of this miracle.  Paul says in Romans 10:9 that it is God who raised Jesus to life, not Jesus who raised himself.  In Revelation 1:18, Jesus says he was dead and now is alive forever, not that he raised himself from the dead.  Over and over, the New Testament emphasizes that it is God, also called Yahweh or the Father, who raised Jesus from the dead while always distinguishing between them.  First of all, it is plainly said to be one being, God, resurrecting another, Jesus.  Second of all, Trinitarianism has other problems regarding the death of Christ.

If he was truly "fully human" as evangelicals put forth, he would not only be incapable of being killed by another entity (1 Timothy 6:15-16), but he also would have entered Sheol's state of unconsciousness before his own resurrection (Ecclesiastes 9:5-10, Job 3:11-19, Daniel 12:2, Psalm 6:5, Isaiah 38:18-19, Mark 5:35-40, and so on).  His consciousness would have lacked all experience along with those of other people between their death and resurrection.  This would require that he would not have been able to resurrect himself anyway, since, as Ecclesiastes puts it, he would be totally devoid of perception and action, and as Job and Daniel put it, he would sleep.  Jesus would have been as helpless as all who are dead according to the true Biblical doctrines of death, resurrection, and the afterlife.

In addition to these teachings and those from other passages I have previously addressed, including John 14:28, which says the Father is greater than Jesus (an impossibility if they are the same!), the Biblical statements about how God resurrected Christ also affirm that the latter is not the same as Yahweh.  Jesus is higher than humans, having existed before the universe (John 1:1-3) and yet likely being created by God (John 3:16, Colossians 1:17).  If you take the Bible literally when the text points to this, you will realize numerous controversial things.  The falsity of Trinitarianism, which is already logically necessary since any form of Trinitarianism that is not really Unitarianism with multiple personas or polytheism contradicts the inherent truth of logical axioms, is among them.

The Bible is theonomist (Deuteronomy 4:2, 5-8, 12:32, Malachi 3:6, Matthew 5:17-19, and many more), annihilationist (Ezekiel 18:4, Matthew 10:28, Luke 15:1-5, John 3:16, 2 Peter 2:6, and many more), and gender egalitarian (Genesis 1:26-27, 5:1-2, Numbers 5:1-7, and many more), and it teaches soul sleep before the resurrection and that Jesus is not Yahweh.  The irony is that many of the insects who think otherwise claim that they are the ones interpreting the Bible literally unless the text requires a figurative meaning, yet Jesus cannot lack knowledge the Father has (Matthew 24), be God's begotten Son (John 3:16), and so on unless he is his own being.  The difference between Jesus and Yahweh is just one thing such people are likely to come to by social conditioning and eisegesis, but for whatever reason, it is something many people cling to even when they reject other popular Biblical heresies like anti-nomianism and eternal conscious torment.

Freedom For The Slave

Deuteronomy 23:15-16 says to not return a slave fleeing from their master, even if they left a neighboring pagan civilization, in which servitude was not structured around honoring the divinely grounded rights of each person.  This is in great contrast to how the likes of the Law of Hammurabi or the American Fugitive Slave Act say to treat runaway slaves.  In this way, the fleeing slave could find genuine freedom in Israel.  Slavery in the context of Yahweh's demands is not cruel or domineering.  Exodus 21:2 says that someone who sells themself (a clarification on this will come later regarding foreigners), in order to be provided for financially, to pay for a debt, or as punishment for a crime (the debt thus being punishment for a criminal sin, such as in Exodus 22:1, 3-4), is actually to be released every seventh year.

By saying in Exodus 21:3-4 that a spouse given by the master is not to go free when the now-married servant's maximum years of service expire, the Bible is not teaching that the other spouse is a permanent slave.  It just means that if the wife (or husband), a separate servant of the same master, still has time remaining before her release on the seventh year, she does not yet receive freedom just because her husband does.  The marriage itself is not dissolved or trivialized.  It is not as if they cannot see each other until the other is also freed.  They are not forced to live miles or towns apart.  No, this is not the gratuitous breaking apart of a family for the sake of exploitation or profit.  Biblical servitude, which is a word with less of an association with the race-based, malicious slavery of many pagan societies or even America before The Emancipation Proclamation of 1865, is not about dehumanization.

What of what Exodus 21:7-8, which says a daughter sold by a parent does not go free like the aforementioned servant?  It is the fact that she is a child of the parent, not that she is a woman, that is given as the reason for this.  Deuteronomy 15:12 separately specifies that men and women can voluntarily sell themselves and that men and women are to be freed on the seventh year, irrespective of gender or leftover debt.  However, the exact words of Deuteronomy 15:12 are not necessary to establish this.  The literal wording of Exodus 21 does not necessitate this complementarian-style concept, and Genesis 1:26-27 already would entail that men and women, as metaphysical and moral equals, have the same rights and obligations.  However, Deuteronomy 15:13-14 even says right after to liberally supply the newly freed servant with material wealth of animals or food and wine.  The slaves were not to go free empty-handed.

On each individual Sabbath day in the meantime, the servants, male and female (some proponents or haters of Christianity like to distort such tenets) are to rest no less than their "masters"/"mistresses" (Exodus 20:8-11), who share the humanity of all their servants and who cannot in an ultimate sense actually own them in the first place. For one day out of every seven, not that abuse against them is to be tolerated on other days, all slaves are prescribed the opportunity to experience leisure, peace, and freedom of sorts that parallels the status awaiting them after their debts have been paid.  This is not the only specific way Mosaic Law either promotes the wellbeing of servants or takes cruelty against them very seriously.  In addition to the same sins that merit capital punishment not being trivialized if done to servants, for example, acts of physical abuse resulting in permanent injury release the slave by default.

As compensation for the damaged/lost body part, the abuse victim, male or female (though the rights of one would be the rights of the other in light of Genesis 1:26-27 even if the text did not touch on this matter), would go free without making any payment for outstanding debt (Exodus 21:26-27).  This kind of mistreatment nullifies whatever monetary amount is owed that led to the servitude to begin with.  No one is morally obligated to remain in abusive circumstances like this, even if poverty or a sin punishable by monetary damages they could not afford landed them in servitude.  Of course, even in legitimate cases of corporal punishment applied to servants, the absolute maximum allowance is 40 lashes (Deuteronomy 25:1-3) and killing a slave by unjust excess is punishable (Exodus 21:20-21).

Now, kidnapping of any kind is automatically sinful on the Biblical worldview--no, Exodus 21:16 says this is sinful no matter who the victim is, even if Deuteronomy 24:7 focuses on the kidnapping of fellow Israelites.  Unlike Deuteronomy 23:19-20, which does specify that charging interest to foreigners is allowed but not to people of one's own country, Deuteronomy 24:7 does not even say that other people outside of Israel can be kidnapped (but some idiots might assume otherwise).  It just mentions a subgroup of general humanity.  Freedom is never to be taken from someone by abduction, for slave trading or other purposes.  Leviticus 25:44-46 does say that servants can be bought from foreign lands--not kidnapped--and that they can be retained for life.  A Hebrew servant had to request this voluntarily, meaning the permitted kind of slavery is obviously not abusive as already clarified elsewhere, and since the servant rightfully regarded this as a favorable but optional thing (Exodus 21:5-6, Deuteronomy 15:16-17).

No, this is not how some conservatives present the dehumanizing style of slavery of America.  These Hebrew servants are not "brainwashed," with the many other passages addressing how this servitude is not abusive or exploitative.  There is still the parallel of how charging interest is not disallowed entirely, only to fellow countrypeople.  Even then, the foreigner living among a community is to be treated exactly as a native-born in contrast with certain exceptions for foreigners abroad (Leviticus 19:33-34; also, compare the already-mentioned Deuteronomy 23:19-20 with Leviticus 25:35-38).  Nevertheless, all of the safeguards, such as automatic freedom in cases of abuse such as physical mutilation (Exodus 21:26-27) and the inability to return a fugitive slave (Deuteronomy 23:15-16), would still apply to any servant.  A foreign slave could simply leave and it would be sinful for the Israelites or anyone else to hunt them down unless they committed some criminal sin in the process.  Anyone interested in self-preservation and humane treatment would have preferred being a slave in Israel even with the stipulation of potential lifelong servitude!  There is freedom for the slave even in the midst of service under Mosaic Law.

The Nature Of Talk Therapy (Part Two)

Just listening to even a perfectly rationalistic talk therapist, whom is very unlikely to ever be found, does not cure anyone who does not accept the truth or face themselves.  Someone whose depression is rooted in gender or racial stereotypes about themself that saddens them, for example, will never make progress unless they hold to verifiable philosophical truths of egalitarianism about the matter while trying to reorient their emotions and behaviors around them.  Talking to a therapist, no matter the real personal honesty involved, only verbalizes the problem, doing nothing on its own to actually address it if someone is against actually doing what they can to rectify a psychological affliction.

An emotionalist, a hypocrite, and a philosophically apathetic person would still have their flaws or trials and they could simply wallow in them.  If there is a need to change behaviors for the sake of reason and morality, and a patient refuses, what can therapy accomplish besides at most drawing their direct attention to things they, to a significant extent, could or should already know?  Will talking to someone about a tendency to extreme, disproportionate anger that is allowed to dominate the patient's life remove the anger itself?  Will a selfish person actually benefit from talk therapy if they cling to the fallacies of ideological selfishness?  Absolutely not.  The person is the problem here and not therapy.

This is not because talking is never a powerful remedy or help in itself.  Apart from the listening party (in this context, the therapist) actually saying anything and without any sort of ideological improvement or behavior-based follow-up on the part of the speaker, having the chance to openly acknowledge things out loud or recount personal struggles can truly be empowering and relieving, in some cases enough to calm deep anguish.  Catharsis alone can eliminate some psychological problems altogether or make them much more emotionally small, as in less turbulent, and thus easier to handle alone outside of therapy meetings.  If someone has this kind of issue, then talk therapy has a likelier potential to be incredibly helpful.

This is all true, and still therapy of various kinds, especially talk therapy, might have wildly varying levels of treatment success--not only because of irrationality on the therapist's part or that of the patient, but also because of the specific problem a patient has, their psychological constitution, and more.  The problem, the person's willingness and emotional state, the effectiveness of the therapist in inviting openness or stirring up introspection, and so on are all vital factors here.  Talk therapy needs willingness and honesty, two things plenty of people are unwilling to channel in any direction that removes them from emotionalistic comfort.

To someone philosophically lost and emotionally distressed, facing themself could be one of the most terrifying things they have done in their life.  So many try to distract themselves from any kind of significant existential soul searching, dismiss their own faults on the irrelevant grounds of convenience, and actively fight against any sort of prolonged confrontation with who they really are as an individual.  Perhaps at times this is partly driven by the desire to blame things on others, when a problem is only of one's own doing, and at other times it is the terror of giving up comforting or familiar assumptions that could deter some from seeking introspective clarity or resolve on their own.  The combination of introspection and communication to an outside party is what makes talk therapy helpful in possibly breaking down their resistance to necessary self-awareness and change.

The Only Possible Criteria For Valid Judgment

All while forsaking the very thing that is the core of reality and thinking themselves intelligent or justified, many non-rationalists discriminate based upon asinine criteria for two primary reasons: they either want to feel better about themselves and thus target other people in order to make themselves look "important" by comparison or they submit to whatever cultural conditioning they encounter related to race, gender, age, and more.  Sheer stupidity is always by necessity at the heart of all of this, as both of these primary, broad reasons reduces down to mere assumptions or the avoidable neglect of logical truths.  If they hold to these idiocies as children, they might never give them up, and at least not by looking to reason on their own, for adult non-rationalists are even worse than plenty of children at seeking truth!

These irrationalists, comprising the vast majority of all people to ever have lived, are slaves to errors and assumptions, and fallacious discrimination is a common expression of irrationalism now and in the historical record.  They might not always discriminate consistently or in every category that they could, but they might hate or dismiss people based upon their gender, race, nationality, age, subjective degree of sex appeal, family descent, language(s), accent, job (immoral jobs aside), height, weight, personal preferences, or literally any other factor irrelevant to their rationality and moral standing.  Too concerned with tradition or emotionalism or persuasion than reason, they might even fiercely push back when confronted and refuted.

The one thing they will seldom do in this regard is actually care about someone's true rationality--not about subjective persuasion, but alignment with the necessary truths of logic--or their moral character--not whether they abide by cultural norms or have the same subjective preferences, but whether they are actually righteous people.  Believing they are rational for clinging to assumptions they find convenient or popular or appealing, they will think that things follow from ideas that have nothing to do with them or have faith in their worldview rather than embracing only what can be logically proven (to clarify, that some things are probabilistically likely, including Christianity being true, can be proven even if their actual veracity cannot be known).  Especially if they are motivated by arrogance rather than arriving at it for unrelated but fallacious reasons, they will not be eager to regard people as equals except for philosophical ideology and moral alignment.

Non-rationalists often look down upon people for anything at all except for the only criteria that could possibly matter.  Does someone know and live for the necessary truths of logical axioms that are independent of all else and that all other things hinge on?  If not, are they open to shedding assumptions and neglect of reality if prompted by another person?  Unless they at least do one of these things, they are fools, undeserving of their very existence for their apathy towards the very foundations of truth itself.  Do they seek to know what they can about what moral obligations likely exist, distinguishing between preferences, conscience, cultural norms, and the concept of true obligation?  Would they at least care, if someone else prompted them, that what they wish or how they were raised have nothing to do with whether morality exists or what its duties consist of?  If not, they are also fools who only care about whatever fulfills them or deludes them into irrationalistic stupor.

The Rapture

Someone who has entered a room once cannot enter it for the first time again.  They can only enter it for the next consecutive number of times: for the second time, the third time, and so on.  No one can return only once and also return twice; only one of these can be true.  In the same way, a person cannot have woken up from their sleep at 6:00 AM if the first time they have awoken for that morning is at 8:00.  The contradictions--and thus logical impossibilities--of the alternative ideas are precisely what so many evangelicals believe with regard to the return of Jesus.  They hold that he will have two second advents of sorts, which by necessity would make the second of the "second" comings the third.

A highly popular idea among some evangelicals is that of Jesus "rapturing" Christians away from Earth before a cataclysmic period where divine wrath, human savagery, and demonic malice all devastate the world, only one of them doing so justly.  After seven years they call the Tribulation, Jesus returns again with the raptured souls to establish a kingdom for a thousand years before the unrighteous dead are resurrected (Revelation 20:11-15)--according to many evangelicals, the fate of this group is eternal conscious torment in blatant, active disregard for the Biblical punishment of hell being the fate of death where one is never again revived (Ezekiel 18:4, Matthew 10:28).  When it comes to the Second Coming, they believe there will be two "phases" or that there is actually a third coming of Christ!

They acknowledge that the Bible teaches Christ will return, as is very explicitly stated over and over (Mathew 24:30, Acts 1:6-11, Revelation 19:11-21, and more verses touch on this).  The return of Christ is also said to be accompanied by a trumpet blast at which the saved are gathered to him (Matthew 24:31) and after which Jesus defeats the beast and the false prophet with their armies (again, Revelation 19:11-21), with Paul twice speaking of a trumpet that marks the resurrection of the righteous/redeemed dead (1 Corinthians 15:50-55, 1 Thessalonians 4:3-18).  This is when those who sleep in death reconciled to God will be restored to bodily life.  The first resurrection, reserved for the righteous or repentant, occurs when Jesus returns to instate his millennial kingdom (Revelation 20:4-6), and the passages about a trumpet and a divine eschatological appearance are connected with a resurrection.

Thus, according to the actual statements in the Bible, there is no rapture independent of the full Second Coming.  The first resurrection cannot happen before the first resurrection!  Christians will not all sleep in death, Paul says in both 1 Corinthians 15 and 1 Thessalonians 4.  Those who die slip into temporary nonexistence or unconscious, dreamless sleep of the soul at death (Ecclesiastes 9:5-10), and the return of Christ, occurring around a trumpet blast, is when those in right standing with Yahweh will come back to conscious life.  The first resurrection is one of glory, the resurrection to eternal life (Daniel 12:2).  There is no broad resurrection prior to this; up to this point, there are only the atypical restorations of specific individuals like Lazarus and the daughter of Jairus for them to biologically die again.

The pre-Tribulation rapture, as it is called, is purely unbiblical in its timing, as if there could be two second advents of Christ with neither of them being the third as evangelicals assume!  Nowhere does the Bible say that Jesus returns again and again.  As he departed, so he is said to one day appear for the second time (Acts 1:11).  The events before the Second Coming and their sequence aside, the return of Christ itself is a very clear and foundational doctrine of Christianity (though of course eschatology could not be as foundational as core Biblical metaphysics and their consistency with the necessary truths of rationalism).  It is also very clear that if the return of Jesus is what signals the rapture of those who sleep in death restored to Yahweh, and this is the first resurrection, then there could not be a previous awakening of dead souls seven years earlier.

The Power Of Cosmic Horror

It is no secret on this blog or in-person interactions with others that I have had more than just annoyance with non-rationalists throughout the years.  As people who disregard the only inherent truths and live for assumptions or emotion over logical necessities, they have received my fierce and outright, brazen hatred that I was practically never opposed to showing.  Hatred is not irrational or evil just because it is hatred, after all.  As long as you do not make assumptions or mistreat anyone in thought or deed, there is nothing problematic.  I prided myself on the way that I unflinchingly, eagerly expressed that loathing and not even on Christian ethics could I have been in the wrong (Psalm 5:5-6, for example, is one of many verses affirming that some hatred is morally good).

Reading Stephen King's cosmic horror story Revival unexpectedly shifted my attitude towards people in general, not that my worldview itself was in error.  I became persistently merciful, and not out of hope of manipulating non-rationalists for pragmatism or amusement.  The end of the story shows a glimpse into an alleged afterlife called the Null that everyone, from babies to the elderly, goes to after death: a dimension where souls in supposedly undying new bodies are trapped in eternal servitude to anthropomorphic ant-like slavers who are in turn enslaved by immensely powerful beings that are almost godlike except that they might not be uncaused causes.  One of these beings, Mother, can imprison or display the new, still-animated bodies of people within her own massive, spidery, projected body.  Overwhelming lights illuminate the marching horde of humans that, according to Mother, will never receive death, light (of a non-threatening kind, since there are the aforementioned extreme lights in the Null), or rest.

If this kind of afterlife exists, which is entirely logically possible despite the evidence for Christianity with its eternal bliss or annihilation of the soul (John 3:16, Romans 6:23), people endure lifetimes of suffering only for death to awaken them to something far worse than any pain of this world.  With sexual abuse, the pain cannot last longer than the abuser is alive.  With murder, the pain of earthly existence, not the hypothetical pain of an afterlife, cannot outlast the deed that kills the victim.  Not even the most severe tortures of this world, that far outclass murder in cruelty, would be anything more than a drop in an infinite ocean compared to ceaseless slavery and torment at the whims of immortal Lovecraftian beings.  The Null is not about morality since it involves supposed endless pain and is the postmortem destination, as assumed by the protagonist, of everyone.

Though there is no evidence for an afterlife like this, there is a great deal of evidence for Christianity and by extension its very different, often unacknowledged hell of justice and death rather than endless torture of any kind.  Yahweh's justice, not that eternal torment could be morally proportionate to the finite sins of a human life as it is, is the elimination of those who betray or refuse reconciliation to reality (Ezekiel 18:4, 2 Peter 2:6).  They will neither suffer forever nor exist as a blemish on his creation.  The last enemy to be destroyed, if Christianity is true, is death itself (1 Corinthians 15:26) and then pain itself will be no more (Revelation 21:4).  There is no eternal suffering in Yahweh's hell.  What the wicked come to is the second death (Matthew 10:28, Revelation 20:15).

Reading Revival, it is not as if I had never realized that not only is an afterlife logically possible because it does not contradict axioms, but also an afterlife that is very different from the Christian one is possible.  A universalist heaven could be a popular idea on an emotional level, but a universalist, non-theological hell that has no purpose other than just to subjugate the human dead for the sake of the Great Ones is even worse in one sense that the irrational, unbiblical heresy of the evangelical hell.  At least this unbiblical hell of eternal conscious torment is supposed to be about justice although that very fact is what makes it a logical contradiction, whereas the Null is presented as an unavoidable, permanent residence for all human souls (though other Stephen King books conflict with this and thus the Null as it is described is an illusion or the protagonist made assumptions).

Even now, many months after I read the novel, the irony being that I bought it right around when I became a rationalist nine years ago and happened to initially never read past the first 70 or so pages, the elements of the Null and the general idea of an inevitable and endlessly hellacious afterlife still receives my attention all the time.  Intense flashes of color alongside live stage music remind me of the lights of the Null, where the colors seem alive and alien and like they are perceiving the terrified human inhabitants.  I joke about how at any moment I might go to meet Mother and see her leg reach down for me with its decorations of screaming human faces.  It is not that I had not thought about many of the relevant ideas without making any assumptions, but that I was never particularly terrified of just the fact that something like the Null is entirely logically possible, as utterly unlikely as it seems.

The plentiful evidence for Christianity would have to be an illusion, which would probably mean much more about the sensory plane is an illusion than just a few documents about the life and death of Christ.  The uncaused cause would have to be amorally sadistic or apathetic, leaving dead humans to be treated cruelly without end by some other supernatural beings.  Whatever hell might exist in this case would not be about proportionate justice with a finite ending or about eradicating evil by purging reality of unrepentant sinners.  Like the Null, it would be about arbitrary suffering or the irrationalistic or pointless whims of an eldritch entity.  This is far from the Christian hell, and since there is evidence for Christianity, it is improbable.

As I read the slow burn cosmic horror novel that presented this afterlife, I developed a terror of death that I had never before experienced, and it is not because the likely afterlife--the Biblical hell--is anywhere near as severe as the Null.  Despite this, I simply no longer had the subjective desire to be permissably aggressive with non-rationalists or wish annihilation upon them.  It cannot be irrational to wish nonexistence upon those who reject or ignore the only part of reality that cannot have been any other way in itself, logical axioms, and when it comes to Biblical morality, all unrepentant sin deserves death.  Because of the power of non-religious cosmic horror, all the same, I lost my bent towards wishing for a much less awful and,ore importantly, deserved fate for people.  A different kind of cosmic horror seized me: concern that other people might avoidably fade from existence altogether.  This saddened me like never before, and I came to deeply prioritize mercy for others.  Directly Lovecraftian horror shifted my attitude towards the Bible's own lesser cosmic horror.