Game Review—Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker (Switch)

Mario actually debuted in the 1981 Donkey Kong arcade game and only then became the main face and marketable character of a fictional universe.  Luigi, Peach, Wario, and Yoshi have since received their own spin-off games or subfranchises.  So has one of the many Toads in the overarching franchise.  Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, first released for the Wii U in 2014 before coming to the 3DS and Switch in 2018, is not exactly the most explicitly philosophical game, but not every game has to be a Metroid Prime, Bloodborne, or Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice to have objective quality as an artistic work.  What Treasure Tracker primarily stands on, it executes very well, though its scope is very narrow.  It grants the Toad leader introduced in 2007's Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii a much more central spotlight.

Production Values

Unsurprisingly, Treasure Tracker, even as a 2018 release on a Nintendo platform, looks great, and not just for a Switch game.  It benefits immensely from the platform's regular first-party aesthetic boost and the stylized graphics.  Rarely did the environments show pixelated edges, though one screenshot was uncharacteristically blurry.  Central characters Captain Toad, Toadette, and Wingo, the enormous bird that bothers both protagonists by flying away with them or their stars, have excellent models with smooth animations.  Diverse in color and function, the many environments to be traversed are often unique from each other, with their own clear animations and very distinctive perils or features: fiery dragon-like entities, goombas, hammer-throwing koopas, falling platforms, and much more.

Gameplay

Treasure Tracker is divided into a series of episodes, collections of levels often tied to a specific playable character in the case of the first three and a collection of levels related to Super Mario Odyssey in the case of the fourth.  Episode 1 is spent playing as Captain Toad as he tries to rescue Toadette, Episode 2 is spent playing as Toadette as she tries to rescue Captain Toad, and Episode 3 alternates between both playable characters.  Both when it comes to flipping between pages of the onscreen book that displays each mission and when it comes to certain mechanics, the game utilizes the Switch's touch screen, a very rare thing despite how much the 3DS and its own predecessors heavily relied on this feature.  Titles for the Switch tend to have very little to no touch screen functionality, so for Treasure Tracker to do anything with this actually makes it stand out.  For instance, tapping an enemy can freeze them in place or send a piranha plant back to the opening they emerged from.

Levels tend to be very small, dense with crevices that items like gems or coins could hide in.  Most have a small cube-shaped mass where the player's character cannot fall off the map by walking to its edges, though some do allow the player to fall in certain places.  As condensed, short, and straightforward as many levels are, the environmental design and puzzle elements vary significantly and trend towards genuine creativity, especially further into the game.  Yes, some can be finished in less than two to three minutes; the sheer volume of levels and the differences between them somewhat make up for this extreme brevity.  Rotating the camera is often a necessity to fully see where to go or find optional items.  A total of three distinct levels of camera magnification also help with visibility.  Sometimes, Toad or Toadette will be very small on the screen if not for the two closer zoom-in settings.

You do not strictly have to complete every single level to beat the game, since some levels can only be unlocked with enough total gems, and you do not need all gems obtainable up to that point to proceed; any levels that come afterward are locked until the completion of these particular areas.  Replaying any mission is an easy affair.  Actually, there is a potential incentive to replay besides finding missed gems, and that is locating "Pixel Toad," a Toad somewhere on a flat surface in each level that is animated as if from an earlier era of gaming.  Here, Treasure Tracker leans more into observation than it does outright puzzle mechanics, though some reorientation of or navigation through an area might be necessary.  The Pixel Toad is visible oftentimes without even walking around the map: camera adjustments can reveal its exact position.  

Should you wander around hoping to stumble into Pixel Toad more directly, it generates a sound when the player stands in close proximity—but sometimes the pixelated figure is outside the walkable area.  This noise does not automatically clarify where in the immediate vicinity it is, though.  Camera manipulation might still be needed!  When you see Pixel Toad, you press on his location through the touch screen to complete the level.  As simple as it is, this and other touch screen functionality like spinning wheel-directed mechanisms really are uncommon on the platform.

Story

While celebrating over a star (the kind obtained in Mario-related games), Toadette is abducted by Wingo, compelling Captain Toad to venture his way to the bird for a rescue.  After passing through a multitude of environments, however, he winds up taken himself in an event which leaves Toadette free to pursue the avian kidnapper to liberate Captain Toad.

Intellectual Content

Such a game as this is nowhere close to gaming's heights of exploring the nature of reality.  Even at the level of navigating worlds, there is nothing as perilous as some feats in Super Mario Sunshine or as relatively abstract as the environments and mechanics of Super Mario Galaxy, the game that set in motion the eventual release of Treasure Tracker.  This title is for the most part about simplicity, relaxation, and quite narrow exploration.

Conclusion

Treasure Tracker does an excellent job of delivering increasingly complex and diverse environmental puzzles with strong visuals, but it is very limited in basically every other aspect.  This can tend to be the case with games in the massive Mario franchise and its branching titles, even as many of them have more layered mechanics than this title.  The simplicity is usually not this extreme.  There remain distinctive pillars of quality in Treasure Tracker, as much as it is but a narrow representation of what its broader universe has produced.  Even so, Captain Toad from Super Mario Galaxy came a long way before even 10 years had passed!

Ecclesiastes On The Living, The Dead, And Those Who Have Never Been Born

It is logically true that life is neither inherently pleasant nor inherently painful.  However, living means there is always the capacity for suffering.  More specifically, only a conscious being could experience pain, and short of the power to do anything logically possible whatsoever, humans are left without a universal ability to will away burdensome feelings or thoughts or the problems that could give rise to them.  The Bible comments repeatedly on how suffering and deterioration are not foreign to this life following the introduction of human sin.  Trouble is not something rare by default, nor does it inevitably amount to a minor affair; this is precisely the opposite of what Jesus predicted would befall many of his followers (such as in Matthew 24:9), and it is absolutely not what many, whether Christians or not, do indeed experience.

The author of Ecclesiastes, who calls himself the Teacher and identifies himself as an Israelite king (1:1, 12), does not shy away from such grim truths as the facts that pain is widespread, likely, and devastating.  Words like the following are seldom spoken by those in the church, yet they are not only correct, but straight from the book the church supposedly looks to for its religious doctrines.  Emotionalistically cheerful optimism is nowhere to be found:

Ecclesiastes 4:1-3—"Again I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place under the sun: I saw the tears of the oppressed—and they have no comforter; power was on the side of their oppressors—and they have no comforter.  And I declared that the dead, who had already died, were happier than the living, who are still alive.  But better than both is the one who has never been born, who has not seen the evil that is done under the sun."

The dead have the advantage of no longer facing the struggles of life "under the sun", making them in a sense objectively better off than those who still live with all of the pains and complications of this human existence.  Later in this post, I will address why the author of Ecclesiastes, to be consistent with what they themself present, would not mean that those who have died are happier in that they (some or all of the human dead) are conscious in some blissful afterlife.  No, they are "happier" in that they do not face the turmoil and grief and oppression that can come from this life.  But those who are the best off in this manner, the Teacher correctly acknowledges, are those who have not yet tasted conscious existence at all.  They alone of the three groups mentioned have not experienced the trials or potential for suffering—if not one, then the other—that are inescapably part of life in a fallen world.  This is logically true: as far as avoiding suffering goes, only never coming into existence at all truly and utterly avoids pain [1].

As for the dead, according to Ecclesiastes itself, they cannot experience happiness.  Whatever their circumstances in life and the moral alignment of their deeds, they have descended into total unconsciousness.  The ESV is quoted below for its inclusion of the Hebrew word Sheol, the Old Testament word for the place/state of the dead, in the English wording, which reinforces that the author is speaking about the same Sheol a multitude of other Old Testament verses mention.  What those who die face afterward is not exactly what most people claim the Bible puts forth.

Ecclesiastes 9:4-6, 9-10—"But he who is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion.  For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing . . . Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun.  Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going."

Why does Ecclesiastes propose that a living dog is in a better position than a dead lion?  At least the living have the hope of finding relief from their misery while still consciously existing in order to savor whatever peace or pleasure (though obviously immoral things should never be done no matter the pleasure they result in) they can secure for themselves.  In this regard, it is better to be alive, for an unconscious person cannot experience their absence of pain and worry.  While it might almost seem to contradict Ecclesiastes 4:1-3, Ecclesiastes 9:4-10 only means that the living alone still have a chance to experience joy and accomplishment, because everyone in Sheol lacks perception altogether, no matter who they were in life, just as Job describes in the third chapter of the book bearing his name.

The condition of unconsciousness means the dead experience no pain, including pain from alleged divine torment, but it also means the dead can experience no joy, no comfort, and no excitement.  They are not even at peace except in the sense that they cannot be if agony of any kind due to not perceiving anything.  Whatever release they receive from woe in death only entails the termination of any suffering in their last moments among the living.  To be truly dead, one cannot consciously experience anything in an afterlife, and thus to be truly dead means one cannot even savor the end of some trouble.

Yahweh does not torture anyone without end, which would be the ultimate injustice.  Sheol is not even the actual hell of Christianity, which itself does not torment anyone eternally, instead consuming them until they die (Matthew 10:28, etc.).  However, there is a grim ramification of Sheol's real nature.  The dead are still cut off from experience and thus think, perceive, and carry out nothing.  If you want to accomplish something or enjoy anything which is permissible, the only opportunity you have is restricted to when you live.  This universal fate of unconsciousness in Sheol is of course pragmatically so much better than any sort of endless or even years-spanning torture, but it is worthy of a different kind of somberness, because the unconsciousness of death brings an an end to activity of all forms, to pleasure, and to one's grasp of all that is true and good (logic, God, morality, etc.), not just the capacity to experience pain.  

All perception of objectively and subjectively positive and negative things comes to an end.  You would not know you are dead because you do not grasp or experience literally anything, not even the self-evident truth of logical axioms and your own existence as a consciousness.  In such a condition, the dead could not possibly feel happy, because they have no thoughts or emotions, unlike those whom the Teacher encourages to find happiness with their wives (Ecclesiastes 9:9), for both they and their wives still live.  Yet the dead would be better off in another sense than those living in the grip of suffering, especially if the suffering is extreme.  Still better off are those who have never faced the diverse difficulties of human life to begin with because they have not yet been conceived.  What Ecclesiastes freely declares about "happiness", conscious human existence, and the unconsciousness of genuine death does not involve any contradiction even as it contradicts scores of idiotic heresies.

[1].  See posts like this one:

https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-burden-of-consciousness.html

The Logical Incorrectness Of Calvinism

The logical flaw with Calvinism is not that God shows some people mercy and others none.  By its very nature, mercy only means someone is not punitively given what they deserve (what they truly deserve, not what they "deserve" according to emotional impulse, subjective persuasion, or social convention).  Mercy can be arbitrarily given to some and not others without injustice, since those who do not receive mercy would still be treated justly, as long as they are not in any way punished too severely.  Rather, the logical flaw with Calvinism is that God would be the sole being responsible for sin, for he does not simply allow other beings to sin for a time on this theological philosophy, but he actively forces their wills.  The murderer is not truly guilty of murder, nor does any other sinner really have moral culpability, but God punishes him or her in hell and potentially on Earth anyway, despite God himself being the one responsible!

A Calvinist may object, but this is precisely what Calvinism entails.  God, by predestining all human activity (not foreknowing, but predestining), chooses to deliver some people from sin and its eschatological punishment.  They cannot choose to free themselves by voluntarily seeking God or repentance; their turn is decided by God and not the humans themselves.  Obviously, this would require that, since people cannot make their own legitimate choices and have only the illusion of free will at best, God alone is the causal reason for why their is evil perpetrated by humans.  But then God cannot be righteous, because he is solely at fault, but then if God is evil, there cannot be such a thing as morality, because there is nothing to logically make anything good or evil (as opposed to subjectively pleasant or unpleasant, objectively helpful or harmful, and so on) other than the divine character.  Without God having a moral nature, there could be no metaphysical anchor for ethical obligations.

The clear logical error of Calvinism, then, is that God is supposed to be morally perfect while, as the entity truly making decisions that people carry out as mere puppets devoid of autonomy, he literally forcing people to sin.  If they lack free will, it would also be illogical and unjust, if morality exists, to then punish them for what they have no control over, but then this contradicts the only possible grounding for morality in the first place (God's character).  As unbiblical as Calvinism is, the more severe problem, due to being more foundational, is that it is logically impossible for Calvinism to be true.  Had the Bible really put forth as simultaneously true both divine moral perfection and divine fatalism, where all events (or more pertinent here, at least all human thoughts and behaviors) are caused strictly by God, its theology would have to be false.  Both of these things could not be true at once, though an amoral deity and divine fatalism are logically consistent.

All the worse, the seemingly most popular forms of Calvinism are tied to the idea of eternal torture being justice, a heresy against logic and Biblical philosophy.  Sure, Calvinism is compatible with annihilationism (what the Bible really teaches about hell) in that theological determinism and annihilation in hell do not contradict each other, but Calvinism still has its own massive errors independent of the exact version of hell paired with it due to the deprivation of free will and simultaneous "guilt" of the people who on one level carried out the wicked deeds, but in another sense could not possibly be at fault.  Eternal conscious torment would make Calvinism even worse, of course.  This is what many Calvinists loudly hold to.  The ultimate negative and unjust fate (if evil exists) would be to come into being only to be controlled by another entity, forced by that very entity to perform acts it despises, and then be perpetually tormented in an afterlife for those acts they were unable to avoid carrying out.

Calvinism is simply logically impossible.  Not even God can transcend logic because it is inherently true, and thus logic is on the contrary the one thing that transcends and dictates all other things.  But if a Calvinist was to examine the Bible without the irrationalistic folly of their assumptions and biases, they would find it actually posits doctrines entirely at odds with the determinism they espouse.  God wants everyone, not just a group of predetermined elect, to repent (1 Timothy 2:3-4, 2 Peter 3:8-9).  The Biblical Jesus did not die for only the elect—those, on Calvinism, predestined to be saved—because this is plainly contradicted by 1 Timothy 2:5-6 and 1 John 2:2.  And people do have free will, as is provable by logic and experience (or at least it is true that I have free will and that other beings like me can know they possess it [1]), and as is affirmed by the Bible (Leviticus 22:17-18, 21, Revelation 22:17, etc.).  Calvinism is just false all around!

[1].  See here, for one such post where I address this:

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

The Tongue

James 1 and 3 in no way trivialize the extreme power that our words have for wreaking havoc on other people and our relationships with them.  The apostle is not under the sway of pleasant illusions that obscure how devastating, vicious, and hypocritical words can be, if someone is not careful to restrain themself as often as is needed to keep themself from saying something false or abusive and therefore unjust.  Since using words has an ethical dimension (Exodus 21:17, Matthew 12:33-37, etc.), and speech-related sins might seem easy to dismiss because they do not have the same outward force and severity of actions like physical blows, it is imperative to take the warnings of James very seriously.

Described as a "restless evil" that is "full of deadly poison" (3:8), the tongue is compared unfavorably to animals by James in that while many animals have been successfully tamed by humankind, the tongue can be incredibly challenging to tame (3:7-8).  Indeed, the hyperbolic phrasing of James 3 all but presents sins of the tongue as an incessantly insurmountable obstacle standing between a person and absolute moral perfection (though James 3:2b more subtly acknowledges that perfection is achievable, as do many other Biblical passages like Deuteronomy 30:11-15 and Job 1:1).  Parts of James might ultimately exaggerate to emphasize an important point about controlling how we speak, but the attainability of perfection must not lull someone into lowering their guard whenever necessary.

Without necessarily being a hypocrite on the ideological level, that of believing logically contradictory concepts, the person who exercises no self-control with their speech while committing themself to Yahweh betrays the very moral framework rooted in God.  Such a person has deceived themself if they think this fault is canceled out by the strength of their religious devotion and righteousness in other matters (James 1:26).  Left unchecked, the words that one speaks using the tongue—or, for the same reasons, the words that one writes—can indeed set the course of one's life aflame, as if ignited by hellfire (3:6), and direct one's course to be burned to ashes in the actual hell.  Such stern warnings against misusing our words as those posed by James should horrify those who have sinned verbally against others and inspire deep caution in those who have not necessarily fallen into such evil, lest the latter succumb to the same errors.

The person who does not engage in any form of verbal sin might not actually lack the desire to speak in what is ultimately a degrading or deceitful manner, such as by cursing the humans made in God's image while blessing the God whose image they bear as mentioned in James 3:9.  However, this person must have enough self-control to refrain from uttering just anything that they would like to.  Maintaining this mastery over how one speaks can be far from easy.  All of someone's emotions might roar for them to lash out when there is nothing to justify this response or to lash out more harshly than another person deserves, to the point that it might truly feel like they are unable to control their speech.  Extreme passion never means that actions (and beliefs) are incapable of being controlled.

One's speech has the power to destroy, foster, or protect the wellbeing of others, and even of our very own selves by proximity to how our relationships with others impact us.  It is one of the "tools" by which we can sow in a manner that naturally lends itself to harmony or discord with those around us.  A person who gives himself or herself over to whatever immediate impulses they experience will find it might very well seem almost impossible to stop themself from uttering whatever their heart desires in the moment.  When that happens, the results can be catastrophic in addition to this approach to speech being irrational (emotionalistic or at the very least egoistic) and evil.

To Dust You Will Return

It is out of the dust of the ground that the Bible describes Yahweh as creating Adam, the first named human in the Bible (Genesis 2:7).  After sin brings human death into the world, more than one verse says that humans will return to dust, which Yahweh animated with the breath of life, and they say nothing about an afterlife strictly for the consciousness of a person after their body has died.  Before someone has even read through the first first three chapters of Genesis in their entirety, they would come across the first of these statements.

Genesis 3:19—"'By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.'"

Ecclesiastes 3:19-20—"'Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so does the other.  All have the same breath; humans have no advantage over animals . . . All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return.'"

There are, in fact, hints here of the real Biblical doctrine of the intermediate state (the state between death and resurrection), as the wording says that "you" will return to dust rather than specifically saying "your body" will become dust again, although the body is plainly in view.  It is other passages which ultimately say very simply and directly that the Bible teaches there is no immediate afterlife.  For those who die, there is only the unconsciousness of Sheol; the body dies and decays, and the immaterial consciousness of a person fades to oblivion (see also Psalm 6:5, 88:10-12, John 14:2-3 [1], and more):

Ecclesiastes 9:5-6, 10—"For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even their name is forgotten.  Their love, their hate and their jealousy have long since vanished . . . Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom."

Job 3:11-14, 16-19—"'Why did I not perish at birth, and die as I came from the womb?  Why were there knees to receive me and breasts that I might be nursed?  For now I would be lying down in peace; I would be asleep and at rest with kings and rulers of the earth, who built for themselves places now lying in ruins . . . Or why was I not hidden away in the ground like a stillborn child, like an infant who never saw the light of day?  There the wicked cease from turmoil, and there the weary are at rest.  Captives also enjoy their ease; they no longer hear the slave driver's shout.  The small and the great are there, and the slaves are freed from their owners.'"

That is, there is no Biblical afterlife until the resurrection:

Job 14:10-12—"'But a man dies and is laid low; he breathes his last and is no more.  As the water of a lake dries up or a riverbed becomes parched and dry, so he lies down and does not rise; till the heavens are no more, people will not awake or be roused from their sleep.'"

Daniel 12:2, 13—"'Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt' . . . 'As for you, go your way till the end.  You will rest, and then at the end of the days you will rise to receive your allotted inheritance.'"

Even then, only the righteous or repentant receive eternal life.  No other human lives forever as the righteous do after their resurrection (for more on this, see 1 Corinthians 15, 1 Thessalonians 4, and Revelation 20:4-6).  The rest of humanity literally dies, or perishes, in the flames of hell after their resurrection (Revelation 20:11-15), destroyed for its sins (Matthew 10:28, John 3:16, 36, Romans 6:23, and many more).  Eternal torture as "justice" is not only a very obvious misrepresentation of real Biblical doctrines, but it is also the second greatest possible heresy after theistic irrationalism, the idea that God created or is otherwise above/beyond or able to change the intrinsic necessary truths of reason that start with logical axioms.  Endless torture could never be deserved by any amount of sin, for it is always inescapably disproportionate to whatever evil a person could maximally commit in even billions of years.  It is the worst possible category of injustice and thus of evil.

Going back to the fading of human corpses to dust, in tangent with other verses relevant to death, soul sleep, and resurrection, the verses about returning to dust are clear: there is no human experience outside of bodily life because the human mind dies with its corporeal shell, though consciousness is indeed immaterial by logical necessity [2] and the Bible affirms its distinction from the body (Matthew 10:28, James 2:26).  Human consciousness itself is, whether or not the Bible is true, not a physical thing, but an immaterial thing that animates the body.  Regardless, at biological death, the body starts decomposing into "dust", as one can see from empirical observation and as the Bible repeatedly calls attention to.  The Old and New Testament agree that there is no immediate afterlife for anyone, for those who die enter the unconsciousness of Sheol as their bodies begin disintegrating.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2024/01/i-will-come-back-and-take-you-to-be.html

[2].  For just one of many posts where I detail such things, see below:

https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2020/08/reductionism-and-phenomenology.html

Making A Living

People unfortunately need to earn money to support themselves within a socially constructed system of economics to avoid stealing or any other immoral means of resource acquisition, if they cannot adequately hire someone else to do the same tasks for them.  This is what constitutes the legitimate, pragmatically necessary endeavor of making a living.  Some people might confuse the practical necessity of someone performing labor of some kind so they or others can live with the supremely foundational aspects of reality, which is erroneous; only logical axioms are true in themselves and so are the intrinsic foundation of all things, and even beyond basic logical axioms, currency depends on the material world, which itself depends ultimately on the causal chain stemming from the uncaused cause, for starters.  Nothing about making a living is anywhere near the innermost heart of reality.

Others might due to classist arrogance regard business as more than a basic way to make a living, as something that renders the successful or wealthy superior to others, perhaps even the only people that have value.  There is a key difference in intention and worldview between these two types of people.  One is simply fixating on the practical to the point of misunderstanding wholly how the abstract (logical necessities and broader core metaphysics) constitutes the greatest truths on which all else hangs.  The other thinks that if they feel superior on the basis of material or practical triumph or if society treats them as such, then it must really be so.

Both kinds of people might be prone to build their whole philosophies and lives around professional work and the wealth or recognition it can bring.  Still, no one intelligent, save for those with motivations like genuine subjective enjoyment without holding to fallacies or who need to scramble out of debt, would devote an iota of effort to amassing surplus material income/wealth as if it is the means and the end all at once.  After a point, a person who gives their time and effort to securing money is no longer making a living, but instead pursuing gratuitous wealth—or the social privilege and power that comes with it.  This sort of person absolutely does not know or does not care about the rationalistic truths concerning money, such as that it is a mere social construct that therefore cannot possibly be the heart of reality.

If it is not the heart of reality, but only a means to various ends that might or might not be valid, then to figuratively worship money or spend all of one's strength fixating on it is illogical and pointless.  Seeking money to just achieve recognition or status is likewise utterly stupid, though some people like to feel special or superior because of professional success or monetary wealth.  They have gone far beyond making a living.  Their goal is one of appeasing their ego or winning the asinine, arbitrary respect of fools who conflate the likes of money or prestige with human value.  One way or another, this is simply a false concept.  If people have value, it cannot be rooted in a sheer invention of society (like currency), community perception, or in emotionalistic validation, all of which are irrelevant to the foundational nature of objective truth.

Logic, unlike money, is not a social construct, and logic necessitates that making a living could be neither the foremost component of truth and morality.  It also necessitates that to go beyond making a living for any reason but the aforementioned kinds is itself stupid.  Rather than exalting themself above a mass of lesser common people who have not matched their financial level, the one who goes past simply making a living into classist or emotionalistic intentions has not escaped the irrationalism of general humanity.  They have chosen to express it in a particular way, though it might not be the gravitation of all non-rationalists, and so have not elevated themself above anyone else who is a slave to errors and assumptions.  Making a living is not about delusions like this.

Miriam The Prophetess And Leader

Moses and his brother Aaron (Exodus 4:14) are the more familiar figures in their family to church, but significant statements are made about their sister Miriam more than once.  Miriam is declared a prophetess in the book of Exodus, and later, Micah credits God with saying that she was appointed by him to lead the Israelites alongside Moses and Aaron.  Other references to her throughout the Old Testament, even the most controversial one (in the book of Numbers), do not undermine these facts as put forth by Exodus and Micah.  And the words of these books certainly do not deny women a place right beside men as they speak for God and exercise power:

Exodus 15:20—"Then Miriam the prophet, Aaron's sister, took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women followed her, with timbrels and dancing."

Micah 6:4—"'I brought you up out of Egypt and redeemed you from the land of slavery.  I sent Moses to lead you, also Aaron and Miriam.'"

Miriam would have been a leader over male Israelites, appointed by God over Israelite men and women like Deborah who also prophesied (Judges 2:16-19, 4:4-8).  To be a legitimate prophet, which she is treated as in Exodus, someone must receive information from God (Deuteronomy 18:17-22).  And Micah 6 starkly teaches that Miriam was brought to her position of authority by God, which logically excludes any usurpation of a role allegedly reserved for men on her part.  Although Miriam is a clear example of a woman God designates to authority over men and women alike, there is a story prominently featuring her which is particularly misunderstood by some.

An incident in Numbers 12 sees Miriam suddenly develop leprosy as a temporary consequence of illicitly grumbling against Moses, an event alluded to in Deuteronomy 24:8-9, which warns people to abide by the skin disease laws detailed largely in Leviticus 13-14.  In Numbers 12, Miriam and Aaron both come before Moses to insist that they are not secondary representatives of God, as they say God has also spoken through them (12:1-2), with Miriam also criticizing Moses for marrying a Cushite woman.  In the narrative, the complaint about the special status of Moses is treated as a sin of arrogance by God, who imposes leprosy on Miriam (12:9-15).  Does God discriminate against Miriam because she is a woman, since Aaron, a man, is not said to be afflicted in the same way?  Not at all.  I address this matter here [1] in the context of demonstrating that the skin disease laws, like other parts of Yahweh's Torah laws, are rigidly gender egalitarian.

In fact, that God, Moses, and Aaron do not dismiss Miriam on the basis of her gender is a vital part of the Numbers 12 account.  It would not matter if Moses and Aaron did so as far as demonstrating sexism in the actual philosophy of Judeo-Christianity rather than in the actions of mere humans within a story, but neither these men nor God belittles or stereotypes Miriam for being a woman.  Again, God himself is the one speaking later in Micah 6 where Miriam is called a leader alongside both men; her status as a genuine representative of Yahweh alongside her brothers is not trivialized or denied anywhere in the story or elsewhere.  Hence, the sporadic references to her, one and all, reinforce that she is a leader/prophet of Yahweh, her genitalia being irrelevant to her capabilities.  No person in the Israelite community dismisses her as a woman in any Biblical texts, and if they did, they would contradict how the text says God regards her.

If the Bible taught that specifically men should lead and rule, including over people of both genders, but that women should not lead or rule at all or must lead only women, it would never include any examples affirming female leadership or authority as with Miriam (or Deborah, Huldah, and so on).  It would never acknowledge women as equally obligated to take ethical dominion over the natural world as fellow bearers of the divine image (Genesis 1:26-28).  If the Bible held that women should submit to and never be submitted to by men, it would never provide direct or indirect commands for husbands to submit to their wives (such as in Deuteronomy 24:5 and 1 Corinthians 7:2-5; even then, it would have to say submission should be unilateral rather than simply not explicitly positing mutual submission).  As significant as she is, the prophetess and leader Miriam is far from the only example of a female leader or prophet, a woman appointed to human dominion over creation alongside men, or a woman who deserves submission from men.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2024/12/gender-equality-in-torahs-skin-disease.html

Craving Meat

With alternatives to conventional meat receiving more research and media attention, philosophical issues related to animal life and the morality of eating meat might be prompted to one's attention more frequently or in different ways than they would have been in past generations.  As with so many things, what Christianity teaches on the matter would offend many political conservatives and liberals alike who mistake politics for the center of reality rather than the necessary truths of logic, God (the uncaused cause), and any actual moral obligations that exist.  What are the key obligations here if Christianity is true?  Deuteronomy 12:15 and 20-22 say that people are invited to eat kosher meat like that of the deer or gazelle when they crave it, as long as they do not eat the blood (Deuteronomy 12:16, 23-25, 15:21-23, Leviticus 17:10-14, 19:26, Genesis 9:4).

In Deuteronomy 12, the Bible allows humans the consumption of meat from certain creatures in response to what the text calls a craving for meat, though the separate verses addressing what kinds of animals should not ever be eaten [1] (Leviticus 11:1-23, Deuteronomy 14:1-21) permit some kinds of meat as it is.  Similarly, the repeated command in Mosaic Law to not eat meat with blood does not condemn having meat itself (and Deuteronomy 4:2 and 12:32 are of course relevant here).  Genesis 9:1-4 also sees God explicitly invite people to eat meat after the flood given that they do not consume blood, though the prior verses of Genesis 7:1-3 and 8-9 clarify that the distinctions between clean and unclean animals tied to the dietary commands of Mosaic Law were already present and were not ignored (see also Leviticus 20:25).  God's nature does not change (Malachi 3:6, James 1:17) and thus the dietary obligations rooted in his nature would not have differed just because Mosaic Law had not been formally revealed by the time of the great flood.

What does this not necessitate?  For one thing, God does not say that people have to eat meat.  Because humans have the image of God moreso than other animals (Genesis 1:26-27, 5:1-2), for humans are animals and any animal consciousness would make a biological creature like God in that respect, this is not evil when done so that humans can continue living.  It is up to them to abstain if they wish, though there is nothing inherently immoral about killing and eating kosher animals for the sake of human survival.  For another thing, however, since Deuteronomy 12 and verses elsewhere do not prescribe the killing of animals for meat, as it is only permitted, it does not logically preclude replacing natural meat with lab-grown or synthetic meat under the right technological circumstances.  In fact, this is what would be morally obligatory in light of the doctrines other passages of the Bible—more specifically, the Torah, as usual—teach.

Genesis 1:20-25, 31, 7:15, and 21-23 collectively teach that the first animals (nothing about Genesis in itself conflicts with theistic evolution!) are living creations of Yahweh, that they are very good like the rest of creation left to itself (Genesis 1:31), and that they, like humans (Genesis 2:7), have the breath of life.  They are conscious, and they have moral value.  To kill them needlessly is to mistreat them and sin against their creator.  Yes, killing them for food, given that they are not in the prohibited categories of animals, is not sinful on its own, but what of when artificial meat that is both no less healthy than the natural kind while also being plant-based is available?  Or what if the meat is grown in a laboratory from animal cells as with cultivated meat, but without the killing of the animal?  With the additional factor of it being affordably priced, it would obviously be morally right on the Christian worldview to choose synthetic meat over that which an animal must die for.

At that point, killing an animal would become needless since it can be sidestepped to obtain an economically accessible and nutritious meat substitute.  It would no longer be actual meat, but this would be for the best.  Even the consumption of plants involves the killing of a living thing as far as all sensory observation suggests.  There would accordingly be no such thing as avoiding the death of a living thing by becoming vegan.  With synthetic or cultivated meat becoming more normalized, it would follow logically from other ideas in Christianity that they would be not just the better choice, but also the obligatory choice by Biblical standards (if accessible/affordable and equivalently nutritious) wherever they are a substitute for meat derived from the killing of animals.  There is nothing sinful about craving meat either way, because eating meat is not automatically, universally sinful and because involuntary desires cannot be immoral.  Eating meat is not Biblically evil.  Needless killing of animals or cruel treatment for the sake of obtaining meat would be.

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

The Easiest Paths To Wealth

There is only one supremely easy path to wealth in earthly human life, and that is to be born into a family that is already wealthy.  The drawback is of course that for someone already born, there is no way to simply undo this circumstance if they came into the world as part of one of the many families that do not possess great material prosperity.  For the mere mortals in this more probable and difficult situation, work of one kind or another is the exclusive way to gain money and broader wealth without receiving it by accident or sheer luck.

Being born into a family with great monetary resources is potentially coupled with also having social connections other people have little to no access to, all by default.  Little to no effort has to be expended to get the attention of these contacts because they are already tied to the family.  You are simply raised into this arrangement.  Such ease does not mean that the son or daughter born into any degree of wealth will misuse it or believe anything assumed or philosophically erroneous about the nature of money and class, but they have the easiest path to financial prosperity, given that their older family members will not try to keep them from it.

Aside from the inherent role of luck in obtaining material/financial security—any being with human limitations is at the mercy of societal, natural, and divine forces they have no real control over that could snatch away wealth or jobs or the health necessary to maintain either—effort does play a role.  This does not mean that working hard, though committing to overtime or showing willingness to help with a variety of tasks, among other things, will not automatically enrich you.  Employers could absolutely ignore your efforts, keep you at your current position or pay if it benefits them, or not notice your investment in the job altogether.

It also does not follow logically that working hard includes only collaborative or competent effort.  Just because someone puts in effort does not mean they are doing anything more than trampling on other people in whatever way is most convenient in catapulting them to the top of the meaningless social construct (it is neither a logically necessary truth, though there are logical truths about it, nor an object out there in the natural world) that is the workplace.  It requires labor to trample on people to work one's way up the ladder, but it is malicious, egoistic labor rooted in laziness and perhaps deception.

Treating coworkers as subhuman to advance their own career, doing the same with hierarchical subordinates upon acquiring managerial power, and so on can entrench an irrational or immoral person more and more into a system that is often structured to thrive on the exploitation of those at the lower levels of "authority".  When such a person seizes or stumbles into an incredible amount of employer power, they might find little to no opposition with any realistic chance of stopping them; obtaining this power is always easier if they are willing to do literally anything to secure it.

The fastest way to wealth is to be fortunate enough to be born into it, and the next fastest way, though the particular duration varies based on many variables, is to be apathetic to anything that would deter one from brutal or unjust treatment of other people as long as one does not get exposed.  This sort of person craves power for the sake of money or status and yet manipulates people with no submission to reason or moral boundaries—or all but no submission.  I do not mean the kind of non-dehumanizing, nonsinful manipulation that all people can engage in with their philosophical/moral inferiors.  This is the truly predatory sort.

Within The Same Book Of The Bible

Statements and the ideas behind them are not incompatible just because they are found in different books of the Bible.  Neither are they consistent by default just because they are each found in the Bible.  Instead, objective consistency and inconsistency is dictated by pure reason.  Some people assume, idiotically as with all assumptions, that the Bible must be entirely accurate, so it could not possibly promote any contradictions (even if the Bible itself is, this would not mean false texts were never added); others assume, idiotically as witth all assumptions, that anything short of identical proclamations every time a subject arises in the Bible entails contradictory doctrines.

Sometimes a Biblical statement and the doctrine behind the words really is clarified by another statement from a separate chapter or even book.  At least, the concepts articulated are entirely logically consistent.  Sometimes, though, what could appear puzzling or contradictory cannot just be dismissed in light of a verse from a different book because it is then unclear if the authors of each book hold to logically incompatible philosophies.  Evangelical pseudo-Christians might rush to overemphasize a verse from a different book and simply assume that the verse they prefer more illuminates the other one even if it there at a minimum appears to be a contradiction between them.  At the same time, anti-Christians might think that the slightest seeming disparity means there must be a legitimate contradiction.  Neither sort of person is anywhere close to properly aligning with the truths of rationalism!

It does not logically follow from something seeming contradictory that it really is, though any actual contradiction must be false because it contradicts logical axioms, the falsity of which would still require their veracity.  And, yes, it is possible for two books of a large volume like the Bible to contradict each other.  Yet in some cases a bizzarre or seemingly contradictory (towards other parts of the Bible) verse is clarified elsewhere within the same book of the Bible.  Take Luke 14:26, where Jesus does say anyone who does not hate their parents, spouse, children, and siblings is not rightly committed to Christ.  The language of Jesus is very blunt, and most explanations by people identifying as Christians are woefully fallacious—not that one should not first look to reason and then to the Bible before seeing what other people claim about the Bible.

Luke 14:25-26—"Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: 'If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple.'"

Surely, many might assume, Jesus could not have actually meant what he says so straightforwardly here because he is "loving."  Aside from the genuine possibility of both loving and hating someone at the same time, which refutes the idea that one can only harbor one attitude or the other towards another person at once, there is nothing about this statement that means Jesus cannot have made it.  Jesus is the person who utters this statement according to the passage.  Does he say afterward that he did not really mean that someone has to hate their family to fully commit to him?  He does not.  There is no purely logical reason and no reason provided in the immediate context that clarifies that hatred is not morally or otherwise necessary to follow Christ.  Luke 14:26 gives no indication that Jesus really means we should just esteem/love our family members less than we do Jesus as so many insist.

However, four chapters later, Jesus says something relevant to whether or not he meant the most forceful aspects of Luke 14:26 literally.  When asked what must be done to receive eternal life, Jesus gives a handful of examples of the commands in the Torah detailing human obligations, obviously (in context) implying that one must adhere to them in order to live forever.  There is a sense in which the Jesus of the gospels definitely speaks as if someone secures eternal life by righteous actions, also conveyed in Matthew 19's parallel narrative.  But as for how this relates to the manner one should regard family, Jesus lists among these examples the command of Exodus 20:12 (repeated and slightly rephrased by Moses in Deuteronomy 5:16) to honor one's father and mother, two of the figures Jesus said someone must hate in order to be his disciple.

His answer to the question gives no hint that he thinks one should automatically hate someone just for being family:

Luke 18:18-19—"A certain ruler asked him, 'Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?'

'Why do you call me good?' Jesus answered.  'No one is good—except God alone.  You know the commandments . . . "honor your father and mother."'"

While it is logically possible to hate someone and honor them in some way, hating one's parents (or other biological family members) just for being family is of course baseless.  This is not about their worldview, intentions, or behaviors, but about the happenstance biological connection people cannot change.  One could not in a broad sense honor one's father and mother mentally as well as through actions because they are one's parents while hating them precisely for being one's parents.  Luke 18 sees Jesus affirm wholehearted honor of parents as mandatory just as revealed by God in the narratives of the Torah.

Matthew 15 and 19 and Mark 7 and 10 all independently portray Jesus as quoting one of Yahweh's commands about how children (in the sense of biological children of any age rather than strictly young boys and girls) should honor their father and mother.  Yes, these two books are not Luke's gospel account.  It is indeed true that Matthew and Mark claiming Jesus affirmed the obligation of children to honor their parents would not in itself require that Luke believed something compatible with this, but Luke 18 is, of course, within the book of Luke.

There, in the very same book as Luke 14:26, Jesus quotes the very commandment to honor one's father and mother that he cites in Matthew 19 and Mark 10.  This is direct, enormous evidence within Luke that verse 26 of chapter 14 is probably not meant as anything more than very hyperbolic emphasis on how no one should ever allow devotion to their family to compel them to disregard Christ.  Is this clear from Luke 14:26 alone?  No!  What is explicit in this isolated verse is that family is not to be regarded anywhere near as highly as Christ, not that one is not supposed to literally hate all family members to follow Christ as the exact words do state.

For a passage in Luke that less directly deals with this issue on one level but is still of logically necessary significance, see Luke 16:16-17.

Luke 16:16-17—"'The Law and the Prophets were proclaimed until John.  Since that time, the good news of the kingdom of God is being preached, and everyone is forcing their way into it.  It is easier for heaven and earth to disappear than for the least stroke of a pen to drop out of the Law.'"

Of course, the Law is in no way subtle about prescribing that one honor one's parents in the following verses and more:

Exodus 20:12—"'Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.'"

Leviticus 19:3—"'"Each of you must respect your mother and father, and you must observe my Sabbaths.  I am the Lord your God."'"

The book of Luke itself directly and less blatantly points to Jesus not meaning everything in Luke 14:26 literally.  You would not even need to look to another gospel account to find Biblical evidence that Jesus did not really mean that someone has to hate their family by default in order to follow him (although Luke 16:16-17 affirming the Law does not change the fact that the exhaustive details of Law are found in the Torah, not the gospels).  And, yes, different sections of Luke having distinct authors with conflicting intended meanings would not contradict the inherent truth of logical axioms, so it is possible for there to be multiple authors with conflicting philosophies, or for a singular author to be inconsistent, but this seems very unlikely from the text itself.  Sometimes what seems so contrary to other books of the Bible is clarified within the same book.

Constructing A Syllogism

The axioms of reason (such as that one thing which follows from another must be true) cannot be false without there being a logical reason, whatever it would be, involving each axiom and the others still being true.  These supreme truths are still overlooked or entirely rejected by many, either because non-rationalists are so busy fixating on matters of mere practicality and preference or because they mistake some other truth or idea (God's existence, the universe, subjective perceptions, etc.) for the real uttermost basis of reality.  As intrinsic truths, logical axioms depend on literally nothing else, but all else hangs on them.

While everyone relies on various logical facts even if they deny them or never realize this, there are formal ways to articulate certain conclusions which follow from other ideas, called premises, serving as foundations to conclusions.  The wording of these proposed syllogisms, though, is by nature able to be revised, and human words themselves are inventions, constructs of individual minds or societies.  One would have no need for language if not to communicate, or attempt to communicate, precise, abstract concepts and multifaceted experiences to other people, something that cannot be accomplished by the likes of physical gestures alone.  But while words that can convey logical facts are constructs, logic itself is not, for the reason already stated here and elaborated upon extensively in other posts.

The terms, phrases, and sentences that form written syllogisms (two premise statements and a conclusion stating what is supposed to follow from the premises) are constructed as expressions of that which is already objectively true or false.  A linguistic syllogism can be created or reworded, but the underlying logical truths behind a correct linguistic syllogism are true entirely independent of thought, belief, and language.  Someone can construct a syllogism only in this very narrow sense.  I myself used this sort of language when speaking of syllogisms in the past, but I certainly did not mean that logic is some malleable construct of my thoughts or anyone else's.  Then, I increasingly saw how very irrationalistic people use similar language and began both naturally and intentionally distancing myself from them.

Logical axioms, true in themselves, cannot possibly have been invented or be altered, not even by God.  Neither can the secondary necessary truths that spring from these axioms.  But, again, linguistic syllogisms can be contrived or rephrased.  Someone could craft sentences to form a syllogism or arrange their thoughts to recognize a logical fact and assign words to that truth, but every logical fact from genuine axioms onward is true because it could not be any other way (moreso with axioms in that even other strictly logical truths are rooted in them, but the latter also cannot have truly differed or been untrue).  Written syllogisms can be constructed and reconstructed because wording can be amended; logic is immutable because of its inherent truth.

Slavery Among The Germanic Tribes

Among the topics Roman historian Tacitus writes about regarding the Germanic tribes in Germania, he covers their form of slavery.  Even if everything Tacitus wrote about events and states of affairs is accurate, it would not mean that different forms of Germanic slavery did not come about afterward, so his words are irrelevant to anything beyond the exact timeframe he writes about.  It is not as if we can know the correctness of his historical claims regardless.  Only logical facts and introspective states of mind, themselves matters of logical truth and possibility, allow for absolute certainty.  The words of Tacitus still provide genuine but potentially misleading evidence as to what slavery was like among the Germanic tribes.  As a rationalist, I reiterate such things often because, in addition to them being important, so many people overlook such objective truths if they are not brought up to them by someone else, and even then they might deny them due to shock or discomfort.

The type of slavery he reports among the tribes is far more mild than many others that might come to mind as moderners reflect on historical examples, with one very complicating factor to be mentioned later on.  In fact, in chapter 24 of Germania, Tacitus claims that some of the tribespeople would eagerly bet their own freedom in dangerous competitions, which he calls a "bad practice" clung to out of stubbornness despite the people he writes of considering it an honor.  Then, he shifts his focus to a more general slavery practiced among these communities.  That he has just written about the phenomenon of people offering their own freedom as the stakes for competitions is why the quotation below from chapter 25 starts with a reference to "other slaves" besides the ones who consented to gamble their freedom away.

"The other slaves are not employed after our manner with distinct domestic duties assigned to them, but each one has the management of a house and home of his own.  The master requires from the slave a certain quantity of grain, of cattle, and of clothing, as he would from a tenant, and this is the limit of subjection.  All other household functions are discharged by the wife and children."

This excerpt from Germania gives the impression that the slave was to provide animals, food, and clothing to the master.  In Biblical slavery, the master has to provide the slave with sustenance and clothing, not the other way around, though the slave might labor for food or housing-related purposes for the sake of assisting the master's house.  At least, this would not Biblically be the other way around in any other kind of sense, where the slave must specifically hand over animals or clothing, as opposed to tending to the master's or mistress's animals or other resources.

Although the passage is more about the rights and obligations of spouses towards each other, Exodus 21:10-11 is relevant to this with its emphasis on provision within marriage, as the wife of the master in question once worked as his servant.  Of greater immediate clarity is a portion of Deuteronomy 15, where the slave's condition of being well off because of their master's provision is said to be a prerequisite for the optional, voluntary choice of the slave to stay with their master or mistress for life rather than automatically go free in the seventh year, even with resources of their own as a sort of severance payment that would help them establish financial independence (15:13-14).

Deuteronomy 15:16-17—"But if your servant says to you, 'I do not want to leave you,' because he loves you and your family and is well off with you, then take an awl and push it through his earlobe into the door, and he will become your servant for life.  Do the same for your female servant."

There is certainly nothing domineering or dehumanizing about the type of slavery allowed in Biblical ethics both by lack of condemnation and by expressly permitting it, as is the case in Deuteronomy 15 and elsewhere.  The Biblically permissible kind also is rigidly gender egalitarian, which is not emphasized in what Tacitus says about Germanic slavery.  All the same, the form of Germanic slavery Tacitus addresses does not seem especially demanding or confining on its own, since the master receives a proportion of the slave's own personal domestic output, which is otherwise the latter's.  This dynamic is more akin to a ruler receiving a tax from a subject than to a savage form of slavery inherently at odds with the Biblical kind.  It does not necessarily involve any element of brutality, exploitation, or even a sharp difference in economic standing between the individuals at both ends of the hierarchy.  

But the historian notes a marked exception to largely gentle Germanic servitude.  On one hand, he indicates that the striking of a slave or other harsh or punitive measures were very uncommon.  On the other hand, he expressly says that masters often killed slaves out of passion with impunity.  That is, there was supposedly no punishment for the slave killer, at least when the person they were serving killed them (perhaps it was treated differently if someone outside the household killed another person's slave).  Here are the exact words, also from chapter 25:

"To strike a slave or to punish him with bonds or with hard labour is a rare occurrence.  They often kill them, not in enforcing strict discipline, but on the impulse of passion, as they would an enemy, only it is done with impunity."

Does this mean that the masters (or mistresses) frequently killed slaves in this manner, or do the words mean that when a master killed a slave, it was often in a bout of abrupt passion and received no penalty?  The previous comment about how rare an occurrence it was for a master to strike a slave seem to point towards the latter.  It would appear from the summary of Tacitus that violence of any kind, great or small, was seldom practiced in the context of Germanic slavery.

In either case, the killing of a slave was reportedly treated with extreme lack of legal and probably moral uproar in the community.  The fairly relaxed version of service described by Tacitus still did not come with full regard for the humanity of slaves.  Such a deed going without formal punishment is sharply contrary to the human rights affirmed in the Torah's laws, according to which the murder of a slave must be punished.  As controversial as the verse is for not forbidding slavery altogether (but only emotionalism or cultural norms would ever lead someone to think all forms of slavery must be evil [1]), Exodus 21:20 fiercely emphasizes that there certainly should be no impunity when someone kills their slave.

Exodus 21:20—"'Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result,'"

No exact penalty is specified here.  But, it is clear from this verse alone (along with logic; I mean this verse apart from other verses!) that to forgo punishment of the master or mistress who directly kills their slave during or as a direct consequence of, for instance, a beating, is wicked.  Perhaps Germanic masters killed their slave more spontaneously than by beating them, but the lack of consequences is unjust.  The ESV uses the term "avenged" to emphasize that the dead slave's illegitimate killing should never be ignored.  Exodus 21:12 and 14 already clarify beforehand that killing someone intentionally outside of valid capital punishment or self-defense (see Exodus 22:3) deserves death, but Genesis 9:6 affirms that murder deserves death fairly early in the first book of the Bible.  And the principles of Genesis 9:6 have no exceptions based on who the victim is.  Everyone bears the image of God according to Genesis 1:26-27 and 5:1-2, men and women equally, and should never be killed by other people outside of very specific parameters.

Exodus 21:22-23 also make it clear that negligently fighting with one person and recklessly harming an outside party, up to killing them, merits the same punishment as intentional harm of the same kind.  Also, Exodus 21:28-32 addresses how failing to take action to save a human life when one had 1) evidence of lethal danger and 2) the capacity to intervene is also a sin deserving of execution.  Beating someone to death with an instrument like a rod as used in the example within Exodus 21:20 is much less removed from intentional murder than this even if it is not purposeful.  A weak or sick person could easily show outward signs that beating them at all or with a particular severity could end their life, for one thing.  Whoever is administering the beating would have to react carefully and immediately to any evidence that the slave is about to die, or they are guilty of murder if it gets to that point.

Is beating one's slave for any reason permissible as long as it does not result in death?  No, though the verse right after Exodus 21:20 is sometimes misinterpreted that way.  Exodus 21:21 generates more dramatic controversy, as it appears to some people to dismiss the condition of a slave as trivial given that they do not die from a beating.

Exodus 21:21—"'but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property.'"

Exodus 21:20-21 accomplishes several things.  It directly affirms that slaves are not exceptions to the right to not be murdered because of their social status, that murdered slaves must be avenged in the proper way by punishment of the guilty master, that the slave's death more than two days after the beating is not to be punished as careless or intentional murder, and that men and women are equal and thus should be treated identically as victims of the same acts.  Regarding the last point, Exodus 21:20 is not the only verse in Exodus that acknowledges gender equality.  Exodus 20:8-10, 12, 17, 21:4, 15, 17, 26-27, and 28-32 all do this as well, often with respect to slaves, and the same principle is the case with free men and women; Leviticus 25:5-7, 44-46, Deuteronomy 5:12-14, 12:12, 18, 15:12-18, 16:9-11, and 13-14 also affirm gender equality when it comes to the moral treatment of slaves/servants.

So many of the explicit words and logical ramifications of Exodus 21:20-21 which uplift slaves and by extension all humans are ignored because some people fixate on the assumption that the Bible permits beating slaves without restrictions as long as they do not die from it.  The latter verse is widely misunderstood to mean any treatment is permissible or at least not deserving of punishment if the slave survives.  Really, verse 21 is about how the master should not be punished for murder if the slave recovers.  If he or she died after recovering, there might be no link between the beating and the death anyway.  Unintententional killing is also not subject to the same outcome as intentional murder when free people are on the receiving end as well (Exodus 21:12-14).  Like Exodus 21:12-14, verses 20-21 are in part about when not to punish for murder.  Someone who beats their slaves only to express personal urges has no refuge in Exodus 21:21 whether or not the slave dies.

Beatings with no basis other than whim are denounced as tyrannical by Deuteronomy 25:1-3, for the recipient must have committed some genuine wrong to deserve flogging.  Deuteronomy 25 is clear that the strikes must fall on the person's back and not, among other things, their face or stomach, parts of the body where the offender would be more vulnerable to lasting injury or lethal damage.  And anything more than 40 lashes at the absolute most is a form of vile torture that no one deserves.  Elsewhere in Deuteronomy, slaves are presented as having the right to flee abusive owners and not be oppressed wherever they go (23:15-16).  Illicit beatings would certainly fall under abuse.

But within Exodus 21 itself, verses 26-27 are stark about how slaves, and anyone else for the same ultimate reasons, must be allowed to go free for mistreatment.  The examples in these two verses are permanent harm to an eye and the loss of a tooth, which a wild beating driven by a master's or mistress's emotionalistic, baseless rage could result in.  According to Exodus and broader Mosaic Law, there is no impunity for masters even in singular instances of abuse that do not kill the slave.  The slavery of the ancient Roman Empire could be far, far more cruel than anything Tacitus attributes to the Germanic tribes, so Biblical morality uplifting slaves as humans with all the actual rights thereof distances Biblical slavery from the Roman kind even more than from the relatively benevolent Germanic kind.

[1].  Maybe there is no such thing as good and evil.  Maybe Biblical morality or something very similar is true.  Or, perhaps slavery is morally required (which would render Biblical ethics incorrect on this matter since slavery is never prescribed with the exception of certain scenarios of military victory [Deuteronomy 20]).  All of these things are logical possible, so it is not obviously true that all kinds of slavery are evil.  The irrelevant feelings or intuitions some people have which make it seem as is slavery is an inherent wrong are just that: irrelevant.

Does The Sabbath Start At Twilight? (Part Two)

The first post in this series was centered on how an annual Biblical holiday, Passover (which leads to a day of rest akin to an ordinary Sabbath), starts with onset of the evening at twilight.  This on its own has no ramifications for the timing of the Sabbath each week, despite conventional Jewish practice reportedly entailing that the weekly time of rest from work starts at twilight or sunset, one way or another around the evening time.  Similarly, they often propose that evening (whatever precise moment they mean by this) marks the beginning of every day, Sabbath or not.  The closest thing to a statement in the Bible affirming this Sabbath habit is in Leviticus 23 regarding the Day of Atonement, or Yom Kippur in Hebrew.  More specifically, Leviticus 23 indicates that the period of rest tied to this holiday should stretch from one evening to the next—not necessarily with sunset precisely, but from evening to evening.

Leviticus 16:29 says to do no work on the Day of Atonement, reiterated in Leviticus 23:28-31 alongside details about other holidays, with verse 31 of chapter 16 adding that this holiday is a "sabbath of rest".  Similar phrasing about rest appears in Leviticus 23 as well.  The Torah very much affirms that there must be a time of rest with defined boundaries for Yom Kippur.  Leviticus 23:32 again calls the Day of Atonement a sabbath, a sabbath of rest, and only in this verse it is specified that this exact duration without work lasts from the evening of the ninth day of the seventh month until the next evening.

Since the tenth day specifically is the Day of Atonement itself on which work should be abstained from according to Leviticus 16:29-30 and 23:27-28, that the Bible prescribes a sabbath beginning on the ninth day actually refutes the idea that each Biblical day starts at evening because then the special sabbath starting on the ninth day would not overlap with two separate days, but would encompass a single evening-to-evening period that is identical to the entirety of the tenth day alone.  The evening of what the Bible calls the ninth day would then really be the start of Yom Kippur, the tenth day.  Yet the Bible both says this annual sabbath begins with the evening on the ninth day and says that the next day, the tenth day, is the Day of Atonement on which one should do no work.  This sabbath does not really overlap with the entirety of either the ninth or tenth days, but a portion of both of them.

Clearly, the time of sabbath rest in this case really includes part of the ninth day and most of the tenth day.  The Bible itself says it spans two distinct calendar/natural days, albeit not quite as directly as I have worded it.  Also, the singular yearly sabbath connected with the Day of Atonement clearly begins and ends with an evening, but does this mean all Sabbaths do?  Not at all.  As with the annual days of rest associated with Passover (Exodus 12:14-16, Leviticus 23:5-8), that something central pertaining to Yom Kippur begins at evening has nothing to do with the regular Sabbath.  It does not follow that the weekly Sabbath also starts at evening or that each day itself begins with evening, as some traditionalistic Jews and Christians influenced by the baseless traditions of the former—and this conception of what constitutes a day would indeed contradict what Leviticus teaches about the distinction between the ninth and tenth days anyway.

The qualities that make a day a sabbath of whichever kind must be shared by all of them, whether they occur every week or once a year.  However, the qualities of a special, annual "sabbath of rest" do not necessarily apply to the ordinary Sabbath that occurs from one week to another.  Leviticus 23 prescribing the Day of Atonement's sabbath from the evening of the ninth day of the seventh month to the evening of the tenth day thus in no way requires that the weekly day of rest really starts with the evening.  It seems like the real reason why so many adherents of Rabbinic Judaism think all Sabbaths begin at evening is because they believe, on the basis of nothing but assumptions, and ideas that are incorrect in addition to being assumed, that every day starts at evening.  In the next installment of this series, attention will shift to how none of the Biblical prescriptions of a day of rest for every six days of work mention the evening.  The normal Sabbath is never said to initiate at twilight!