Evolutionary Psychology

The concept of evolutionary psychology holds that as the physical bodies of humanity have been shaped by natural selection, mental traits or habits have become ingrained in human perceptions and are then expressed behaviorally to aid the likelihood of survival.  For example, feeling repulsed by the sight of an insect like a roach supposedly occurs because our ancestors avoided them to keep safe from diseases or bites.  In turn, even modern people strive to avoid the sight of or contact with such creatures because of those who once did and then passed on their genes, or so holds evolutionary psychology.  It is of course possible that someone avoids insects because of personal experience with being stung or bitten, which has absolutely nothing to do with some mental reaction "inherited" from genetic forbears.  They alternatively could simply dislike the appearance of the organism on purely subjective grounds.

Evolutionary psychology is incompatible with such logical facts.  Another necessary truth it conflicts with is that, whatever the reason, some people might not share such a revulsion no matter who their ancestors were; this does not contradict logical axioms.  Not everyone even necessarily cares about survival or instincts that might appear to promote it anyway!  Someone could be apathetic or suicidal or could enjoy dangerous gambles.  Even so, since it is always irrational to assume anything, anyone who just assumes that survival is good or worth pursuing in some amoral sense is a fool, and evolutionary psychology itself must be assumed since it is not necessarily true, and so cannot be proven.  This brand of psychology treats evolution and physical survival advantages that it brought about as if there are or perhaps must be some corresponding mental beliefs or attitudes, when this is logically not so.

Even if evolution refined someone's starting instincts in a given situation, you cannot know from instinct that a certain animal has a high likelihood of transmitting pathogens that give you an infection.  What you can immediately know through logic and introspection regardless is if you have a personal revulsion to the creature, perhaps on an aesthetic level or because it genuinely seems menacing or dangerous—which is utterly, obviously unrelated to its potential for spreading disease-carrying microorganisms.  This perception is not about some underlying evolutionarily-enforced instinct whatsoever.  It a matter of subjectivity, a matter of individualistic psychology and the immediate experience of one's thoughts and feelings about the animal, which someone can properly distinguish from logical facts and in turn realize that they cannot possibly know which logically possible outcome will result from physical contact with the creature.

Someone naturally having a certain desire, instinct, or perception does not have any connection to what others did generations ago.  They were different individuals, so the person currently alive could have this mental inclination because it is natural to them.  And even so, it would be irrational to ignore reason by making assumptions or ignoring foundational necessary truths because of one's happenstance psychological characteristics.  Evolutionary psychology is neither logically correct (especially in its sexist or racist forms) nor scientific in nature one way or another, since psychology is a philosophical subcategory of phenomenology [1].  The concept and phenomenon of natural selection are not coupled with evolutionary psychology in any way except in that the latter is a fallacious add-on to the former.

[1].  One such post where I focus on this more specifically is this one: https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-car-itself-might-be-moving-forward.html

The Innocent

There are two ways to be innocent if morality exists, for without this no one could be guilty or ethically blameless; all would then be equally without guilt in the absence of objective morality (aka, morality, whatever its exact details are) only because nothing could make one innocent or morally tainted.  One of the two forms of innocence involves being innocent in a specific matter, such as having not committed a particular act of theft one might be accused of, and the other involves innocence in a total sense, that of being without moral error altogether.

As extreme as it might seem, it does not contradict logical axioms for someone to be sinless.  In fact, something one does not have the ability to carry out or avoid (like involuntary thoughts) cannot bring guilt on a person anyway.  They have no choice in the matter and thus cannot have committed some error!  This requires that if the Bible did say that anyone sins by not performing or abstaining from something they are genuinely incapable of achieving, it would be wrong.  Also, there is no such thing as a particular sin that all people must struggle with or give into; the very fact that something is a sin does not mean it is unavoidable, and certainly not some highly specific belief, intention, or deed.  Nor is it by necessity true that if good and evil exists, everyone will at some point sin even if the exact offense differs from person to person.  One person's vulnerabilities have no inherent connection to another's, just as one person sinning has no inherent connection to whether someone else sins.

Additionally, not everyone is as evil as they could be, for everyone could always be slightly more evil than they are (at a minimum by seeking to more deeply relish or cling to some wicked motive or by carrying out one more sinful act), and not everyone has necessarily committed the worst possible sins—and no, mere murder is not the worst thing that can be done to another person, not by far.  Nowhere does the Bible claim otherwise.  This does not deter some from holding that parts of the Bible like Psalm 14:1-3 and 53:1-3 declare that all humans sin, regardless of how differently it manifests in each individual's case.  The first three verses of both chapters are almost identical in their wording.  Here they are:

Psalm 14:1-3—"The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God.'  They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good.  The Lord looks down from heaven on all mankind to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God.  All have turned away, all have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one."

Psalm 53:1-3—"The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God.'  They are corrupt, and their ways are vile; there is no one who does good.  God looks down from heaven on all mankind to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God.  Everyone has turned away, all have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one."

Reading the New Testament, one can find such verses referenced by Paul in the book of Romans.  

Romans 3:9-12—"What shall we conclude then?  Do we have any advantage?  Not at all!  For we have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin.  As it is written: 'There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God.  All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.'"

The Old Testament, even before the book of Psalms which Paul appeals to, has already given examples of people the very words call blameless or innocent, as I will showcase later in this post.  This helps clarify whether Psalm 14:1-3 and 53:1-3 are hyperbolic, entirely literal but speaking about only the people of the speaker's own lifetime, or entirely literal and speaking about all people from all generations.  Yes, even if the first three verses of these two Psalms were meant to convey that no one alive at the time is righteous or at least fully righteous, it would not necessitate anything about all previous or future people.  But in its more immediate context, Romans 3:9 is primarily if not exclusively setting up a Scriptural refutation to the idea that either Jews or Gentiles are guilty or blameless on the wholly irrelevant grounds of their ancestry/nationality.

Actually, even the more widely touted Romans 3:23 which comes shortly after, saying all have sinned, is explicitly addressing this very issue.

Romans 3:22-24—" . . . There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus."

The context is about how being a Jew or Gentile does not make someone sinless or disqualify them from the salvation of God and Christ, for both Jews and Gentiles have yielded to sin, though Gentiles were not formally revealed the Law that fairly exhaustively details what is and is not sin.  This does not necessarily have anything to do with every single person sinning at some point in their life just because they are human!  So, too, Romans 3:23 does not actually make some incredibly clear statement about how every single person inevitably falters on an ideological or moral level.  Many other verses in one way or another pertain to the same philosophical subject of holistic and constant innocence, and not in a way that contradicts the truths of pure reason already mentioned.

Exodus 23:7—"'Have nothing to do with a false charge and do not put an innocent or honest person to death, for I will not acquit the guilty.'"

Someone who fallaciously holds that no one is truly or ultimately innocent would probably assume that the innocence Exodus 23:7 speaks of is merely a matter of having not committed the exact sin being falsely charged against them by others, or in a broader sense having not committed any sins deserving of being punished by human courts while still being guilty in some separate way.  While the content of the verse is certainly consistent with the idea that some people become or remain absolutely sinless across all categories of their life, other parts of the Bible do more sharply admit that it is indeed possible for some to not sin at all.

The most famous example of a specific person with this standing is Job, though the total sinlessness ascribed to him multiple times in the book sharing his name is not as commonly emphasized as the man himself.  Sometimes, people even try to trivialize the extent of the "blameless" status attributed to him, such as by insisting that he was only perfect in some ways or largely consistent in his devotion to righteousness.  The very beginning of Job does not hint at such partial correctness on the titular figure's part.

Job 1:1—"In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job.  This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil."

Job 1:1 is extremely straightforward.  At one time, a man named Job lived in a given region, and he was blameless at the time of the narrative's beginning.  The verse does not say that Job merely assumed he was blameless or that he called himself as much.  No, it says he was blameless, something that in this case is not limited to whether or not he had committed a particular wrong in a given scenario.  God himself acknowledges this sheer blamelessness in Job 2:3.  Of great significance is that even if Job slipped into irrationality and sin later in the account, leading to his exclamation to God that he repents in dust and ashes (42:6), this would not have any relevance to whether he was morally perfect beforehand.  And, as shown, the opening of Job does outright call him literally perfect by another word, so the concept of innocence seems to very clearly be invoked.

And Job is not the only person in the Bible about which such things are said.  The priest Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth are also called blameless and upright in Luke 1:5-6.  So is Noah in Genesis 6:9.  Now, once again, I want to point out that nothing about unflinching moral perfection is logically possible in itself or contrary to the doctrines of the Bible as clarified by its very literal statements.  Why would anyone ever think that moral perfection is by nature unattainable, if there really is good and evil, or that it is something the Bible denies is within human grasp?  Only because they are irrational due to making assumptions.

Another person in the Bible, Asaph, the author of Psalm 73, describes his own innocence.  Without calling himself morally flawless in all ways at all moments of his life, he does call himself innocent in a way that does not exclude total, constant righteousness:

Psalm 73:12-13—"This is what the wicked are like—always free of care, they go on amassing wealth.  Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure and have washed my hands in innocence."

Asaph claims that he, like Job (though he does not mention Job), has been innocent even while witnessing the wicked prosper despite their evil, which discourages him to the point of wondering if there was any benefit to keeping himself morally pure.  Afterward, he insists that the wicked will be destroyed by God in the same way that a dream ceases to exist when someone wakes up (73:18-20).  Their demise might not have happened yet, but they will not escape annihilation forever.  Of course, the part of Psalm 73 most relevant to the main topic of this post is that Asaph says he has maintained his innocence despite great personal despair.  There is nothing logically or Biblically that means this cannot be entirely literal.

Later in Psalms, chapter 106 more specifically, the author uses the wording of genuine innocence to refer to the children of the Israelites whom the adult community killed in sacrifices to idols.  Nothing about the wording suggests the idea that only children can be innocent, as some might assume, but here it is said plainly that the sons and daughters sacrificed were innocent.  This contradicts the concept of everyone being automatically, hopelessly guilty of sin regardless of their actual thoughts and behaviors simply by being human.

Psalm 106:34-38—"They did not destroy the peoples as the Lord had commanded them, but they mingled with the nations and adopted their customs.  They worshiped their idols, which became a snare to them.  They sacrificed their sons and daughters to false gods.  They shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was desecrated by their blood."

One can find an pair of additional references to blameless people, not in a way denying the possibility of such people, in Proverbs 11.

Proverbs 11:5, 20—"The righteousness of the blameless makes their paths straight, but the wicked are brought down by their own wickedness . . . The Lord detests those whose hearts are perverse, but he delights in those whose ways are blameless."

Some people are called wicked, and some are called blameless.  Again, to be blameless is to be innocent, and to be blameless in an ultimate entails the total absence of guilt on the individual's part.  There is no denial of human innocence either as something logically possible or something already exemplified by certain people to be found in Proverbs 11.  Not that it makes a difference as to what Proverbs 11 says and absolutely not as to what is logically possible or impossible either way, but this is not the only portion of the Bible that clearly labels some innocent, even if not by that exact term.  Some humans are obviously innocent according to the Bible.

In certain cases, fixation on the false idea that no person can be innocent is often paired by its adherents with the false idea that the guilty can be punished arbitrarily by a governmental body, supposedly deserving almost any treatment someone feels like imposing on them (at least, in a criminal punishment context).  This, too, is illogical and unbiblical.  Deuteronomy 25:1 affirms that some people might be innocent even when others are guilty, with only the guilty being deserving of punishment by other people if applicable to their sin(s); Deuteronomy 25:3, along with other passages, emphasizes that not even the guilty deserve to be punished past a certain extent.  If something is so severe that even the guilty cannot deserve it, then it is utterly evil and should never be done to or by anybody.

Not all people are necessarily guilty, no one is automatically bound to sin because they are human, and no one who has made themself guilty by their beliefs or actions will commit additional wrongs just because they have already made some moral mistake.  Innocence is not beyond anyone's reach (Deuteronomy 30:11-14, Matthew 5:48), and even those who are guilty have inflexible human rights to not be treated in certain ways; obviously, at least obviously to anyone who is rationalistic, if something is inherently immoral, it should never be inflicted upon anyone at all.  What lies some will arbitrarily give themselves over to about what objective reason and Biblical theology entail about human nature!

An Idiotic Universalist Objection

The road that leads to destruction, not eternal torture, is wide, and many travel on it (Matthew 7:13-14), the Bible teaches.  This is not what soteriological universalists think.  They suppose that everyone will eventually be saved, which would contradict both the heretical doctrine of eternal torment in hell and the genuine Biblical doctrine of annihilation in hell for unrepentant sin.  Some of them might think that whether or not the Bible is true, both eternal torture and soul annihilation as punishment for wrongdoing are unjust.  There is no way whatsoever to know if morality exists, although the evidence for Christianity establishes the probability of Biblical morality being true, but only one of these two types of punishment is logically erroneous and thus unjust (if there is morality) by default.

If there is no such thing as morality, eternal torture is still the worst category of thing that a person could experience by far.  It involves pain, and it never would end.  The only aspect that could differ from person to person or moment to moment would be the degree of the suffering.  Only a fool would ever reject this, though I have encountered or heard of people who have.  If there is such a thing as morality, eternal torture is one of the only things that would be inherently unjust, as with punishing an unwilling innocent person for someone else's actions (justice is treating people as they deserve, so doing this could only be unjust if moral right and wrong exist at all).  Eternal suffering for any wrongdoing would be inherently unjust because it is infinitely disproportionate to whatever offense or offenses are in question.

It would be worse than any sin being punished.  This is not true of genuine death, which would end pain, as well as the very capacity for pain [1] (although biological death might not turn out be the same as phenomenological death as far as logical possibilities for an afterlife go, this is not what the Bible teaches [2]).  It would also bring a definitive end to evil by destroying evildoers.  There is nothing about this that contradicts any necessary truth about the nature of justice, though eternal torture could only be unjust if morality exists.  If it does not exist, again, there is still nothing worse than this: some forms of eternal torture would be objectively worse than others, but there is no class of experiences worse.

The final penalty (it could be preceded by some amount of torment and the execution itself will likely be very painful) of the Biblical hell is that of death, the permanent exile from conscious existence and the very capacity to experience pleasure and peace because one has been shut out from life itself.  Ezekiel 18:4 says that the soul that sins will die.  John 3:16 and Luke 13:3 and 5 say that those who do not repent will perish.  Romans 6:23 says that death is the fate contrasted with eternal life (with Daniel 12:2 and John 3:16, among other verses, necessitating that if the righteous receive eternal life, the wicked do not).  Matthew 10:28 says that the wicked will have their soul and body destroyed in hell, while 2 Peter 2:6 says that the wicked will be burned to ashes.

Plenty of other direct or indirect affirmations of annihilationism are found in the Bible, including how Revelation 20:15, speaking of hell when the resurrected masses of the unrighteous are sentenced, calls the lake of fire "the second death."  This is very obviously the justice of Yahweh, and it is absolutely untrue that there is an inherent philosophical problem with annihilation as there is with eternal torture.  It is not that death such as the killing of wicked people in hell is just another unjust distortion of Yahweh's character like eternal punitive torment.  Universalists and general theological emotionalists who happen to oppose annihilation on moral grounds just as they do eternal torture are very lost indeed inside and outside the context of Biblical philosophy.

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

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/06/sheol-and-hades-part-one.html

Advantages For Entering The Workplace

Allegedly, the entire purpose of professional work in the modern, Western sense, aside from potential subjective fulfillment, is to make one's life easier than it would be living as a hunter-gatherer or farmer.  In spite of all the obstacles that the workplace itself often interjects into human life, at least given how it is typically oriented, there are ways to enter the workplace with more convenient degrees of preparation.  Fluency with more than one language and the ability to readily use hardwares and softwares one might encounter in the conventional office, when possible, can be major helps.  Of course, without knowledge of and alignment with logical axioms and other necessary truths, nothing is knowable, but this post will focus on skills or experiences rather than on a deep connection with reason.

The multicultural and global relationships in many cities or between countries make communication with a wider audience more pragmatically useful than before.  Being bilingual (or tri-lingual, and so on) poses a significant advantage not only for effectively navigating specific situations, such as when it is easier to talk with a client in a non-primary language one has somewhat mastered, but also for earning a greater income.  For example, doctors who work in areas with high demographic diversity might need to be able to speak more than one language, and their greater compensation can reflect this need.  There is practical benefit and financial gain to be had.  For those who organically learned multiple languages when they were young and did not have to struggle to expand their linguistic arsenal as an adult, the reward is much easier to attain.

As for technology, with the enormous reliance on electronics and software for business operations—everything from basic email functions to Zoom meetings to cloud data storage—experience with using hardware and software, or quick adaptation to them, will help someone immensely with a wide variety of jobs.  Like with becoming multi-lingual, it is easier to develop this familiarity when one is young or when opportunities are presented ahead of one's professional career.  A person in this situation does not have to catch up to such an extent and not necessarily with the immediate weight of financial desperation.  One could always learn through training after getting hired or with the aid of personal practice outside of working hours, but this is the option, when applicable, that does not risk one getting passed over for a role or the possible stress of only learning about technology right when it is most helpful to already be proficient with it.

Already being multi-lingual and capable of utilizing various softwares are not the only things that can give someone an advantage in the workplace, but they are two of the most prominent ones besides just being rational.  Without knowledge of reason, no one actually knows these things as opposed to having assumed beliefs, sensory perceptions, or memories that are mistaken for knowledge of the thing itself.  Still, being in a position to speak multiple languages fluently and requiring little to no technological training to be confident before one starts a career will make the entire affair far simpler from the start.  Besides, it can literally be profitable to be in such a place ahead of time.  With how ruthlessly and needlessly (or asininely or immorally) competitive the business world can be, a rationalist can do select things to make personal benefit more likely in the future, leaving them with more energy and time to directly focus on the things of core philosophical substance outside the workplace or even while they work.

"Fathers [Or Parents], Do Not Exasperate Your Children"

Paul twice mentions how children should act in a way underpinned by the honor all children owe their parents (Exodus 20:12, Leviticus 19:3, Deuteronomy 5:16, and more) right before mentioning how children should not be trampled upon by their parents.  He touches on the ethical duty of children towards their parents in Ephesians 6:1-3 and Colossians 3:20 (also less emphatically in Romans 1:30) and on some of the inverse duties towards one's children in Ephesians 6:4 and Colossians 3:21.  As with all things, a great deal of these passages could be misunderstood by those making assumptions.  The obligations in both directions are vital, but what Paul says about those of the parents has been more prone to distortion among those I have interacted with.

Ephesians 6:4—"Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord."

Colossians 3:21—"Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged."

The phrase "in the Lord" in Ephesians 6:1 clarifies what would already have to be true anyway, that children do not have to do absolutely whatever their parents insist, as parents must direct their children to do that which is objectively morally required alone and not what is in accordance with the parents' own preferences; children only have the obligation to obey their parents when they are not being irrational or immoral, including by imposing their mere whims while thinking their status as parents legitimizes this.  Otherwise, obedience to one's parents, at least as a young child, is a way of expressing them a mandatory level of baseline honor.  The phrase "of the Lord" in Ephesians 6:4, as shown above, makes it clear that parents are to instruct their children only to fulfill actual obligations as grounded in the divine nature.  Anything at all that a parent simply wishes their child to do or not do, such as not watch horror films, is entirely outside the scope of this logically and Biblically.

Even in administering proper guidance and instruction, though, no parent is permitted to do so in a manner that dehumanizes or as much as carelessly provokes their children.  The fact that no such exact command is specified by God in the Old Testament does not mean that God later changed or that Paul is merely contriving a non sequitur conclusion.  A baseless or emotionalistic harshness in parenting or in any other context is already inherently irrational no matter what the Bible says or whether its contents are true.  And, in a variety of ways, the prescriptions involving criminal justice revealed in the Torah parallel the obligations parents have.

For instance, just as someone punished by a governing body must actually have done something wrong and not something an accuser or judge subjectively dislikes (Exodus 20:16, 23:1, 7, Deuteronomy 25:1, etc.), parents should not discipline their children for things that are not erroneous; just as there must be no overpunishment even of evildoers if their sin warrants a given legal penalty (Deuteronomy 25:3), there are inflexible limits to even legitimate verbal or physical discipline, which could certainly exasperate or embitter children in addition to being contrary to reason and punitive justice.

I have been using the word parents, and most translations of Ephesians 6:4 and Colossians 3:21, even the NIV with its conceptually accurate gender neutral phrasing in many verses, simply address fathers before bringing up exasperation or training.  Besides all of the purely logical reasons why an obligation like this would have to be for men and women as I have repeatedly brought up in other cases, what in context points to Paul not denying any such thing?

The Greek term translated fathers in both verses can also reportedly refer to both parents.  However, gender-specific parenting responsibilities would not even be consistent with the idea Paul just held up favorably in the first three verses of the same chapter of Ephesians or the preceding verse of Colossians, appealing to the binding universality of God's moral laws expressed in the supposedly sexist Torah's commands well before the New Testament era, for only fathers to have an obligation to teach or discipline their children.  Fathers and mothers could not be equal as parents while having different ethical parenting responsibilities towards their children (nor, in an ultimate logical sense, could they be equal in standing as parents but not as spouses due to shared humanity and the necessary falsity of gender stereotypes).  A host of purely logical reasons would render this false one way or another, while the Old Testament says nothing about gender-exclusive obligations in parenting.  Nor does Paul.

Deuteronomy 21:18-21 is unflinching about acknowledging the strict mutuality of parenting obligations and the obligations of children towards their parents, including in the discipline of their child and serving as witnesses against their children in cases of capital sins.  In fact, a father and mother serving as witnesses against a child who has resisted legitimate discipline from both parents is precisely what Deuteronomy 21:18-21 deals with.  How could this entail only fathers chastising their sons and daughters or only fathers, not mothers, being obligated to not be arbitrary or oppressive in that chastisement?  It could not, not while still being logically correct and morally just.  Deuteronomy is clear about both parents having the same rights and duties.

Nothing about the nature of a type of instruction or discipline changes with the gender of the parent carrying it out.  And, aside from the Greek term seemingly encompassing both parents and not strictly fathers, Paul never says, "Fathers, do not exasperate your children, but instruct them in the Lord, for you must fulfill this role and not mothers."  Yet this is exactly what some assume the actual Ephesians 6:4 means.  This would contradict pure reason, a host of Old Testament verses like Deuteronomy 21:18-21, and the content and ramifications of New Testament verses like Ephesians 6:1-3 and Colossians 3:20.

It makes no difference whether someone is a father or a mother.  He or she would err by treating their child, whether a son or daughter, in such a way as to deviate from reason and justice, including by sating a personal desire to exert control, by using unduly severe words, and so on.  Not being harsh for the sake of harshness is among the moral duties parents have towards the children they are to raise to, hopefully like their parents, hold to truth and not arbitrary, unauthoritative impulses.  Paul summarizes such things which, unmentioned in the Old Testament, logically stem from Yahweh's revealed moral laws.

A Potentially Enormous Negative Consequence Of Saving Money

A person being financially cautious to the point of not spending any money on non-necessities has limited ramifications for the broader economy.  If only one person spends money in this extremely careful manner, the impact could be very minor.  In the case of many people restricting their spending to only what they truly need, then major consequences could ripple throughout the local or national economy as a whole.  All products and services are supposed to satisfy some need or resolve some problem, even if it is only the problem of wanting a luxury that one does not have, and even if the product or service does not actually fulfill its role well.  But when large numbers of people withhold their money except for things they need to expend it on, entire businesses and industries can lose massive amounts of revenue—restaurants, theaters, and more.

Then, when these businesses or industries struggle to continue in the wake of decreased consumption, the employees are likely laid off, which makes it more difficult for them to get rehired because of woes in the rest of the industry and a smaller pool of potential employers (which might be inundated with applications from other laid off workers).  As the economy further descends into instability, a larger number of people are likelier to begin holding onto money rather than spending it, which leads to and worsens all the same issues that sparked this downward spiral to begin with.  Those who were more freely spending money when a smaller group saved with extreme diligence could find economic conditions deterring them from the (ultimately) luxuries they were accustomed to.

The ironic truth?  Careful, successful financial management that benefits one person or household will probably have negative consequences in some way for another person or household in a society where, contrary to Biblical employment and poverty laws, the economy is needlessly engineered for some people to be oppressed in order for others to prosper.  At least, it is crafted to enable some to prosper even more than they would have at the expense of others.  Living in such a system is not the fault of the lower or middle class person who, without malice or greed or any degree of irrationality, sought to bolster their own financial standing by saving all money they could.  It is not quite their fault, at least not primarily, that parts of the economy stand or fall based upon how much people are willing to part with for things they do not literally need for mere survival and baseline safety.

Is it wrong to save money when keeping it from circulation can have devastating effects?  No, this does not follow logically, and one can hold onto one's money while having genuine concern for the displacement of workers who also need money that will be harder to come by due to the lack of spending on what is not needed to live.  It is not that every industry that does not cater to direct needs like those for sustenance and shelter should never be established either.  On one hand, not everyone can find a job within the industries addressing genuine needs in non-exploitative ways because they do not require that everyone work in them (there could easily be fewer jobs than prospective workers); on the other hand, this approach to society would eliminate many things that inject joy and relaxation into what is otherwise at the level of habitual outward activity a life of monotonous, perhaps suffocating dullness of labor for survival.

Obviously, even if all employers paid their workers well (not just better than the abysmal compensation at another company), it does not follow that all workers will save money or spend carefully albeit not with total restraint beyond non-necessities.  All the same, many workers never received compensation that covered all of their survival and basic living expenses and left enough afterward for significant saving while still leaving room for flexible spending on non-necessary things.  Economic downturns like the cycle described in this post, even when they are spurred on by someone being financially responsible or rational, only make it more challenging for those already suffering from the commonplace oppression of workers or from their own asinine consumerism and lack of self-control.

Unless there is an an economic system or set of safety nets in place that truly benefit everyone (Leviticus 19:9-10, 15, Deuteronomy 24:14-15, etc.), even saving money can have a terrible impact on the economy as a whole, putting one's own gains made by saving money at risk.  Damned if you do, and damned if you don't?  Well, that is how the American economy is increasingly structured to be for those who are not already wealthy enough to not be personally affected by major instability or to relocate to a more stable city, state, or country.  A string of happenstance expenses could nullify years of consistent saving anyway.  Sometimes, though, saving money itself sets in motion things which unfortunately deteriorate an economy at a widespread level.

Everything That Has Breath

Across its 150 chapters of poetic declarations, Psalms comments on the praise and worship of Yahweh frequently.  The final verse of the entire book, Psalm 150:6, centers on this subject, following five verses that all begin with encouragements to praise God in various ways.  The very last verse calls for everything that breathes to praise the divine being, in one sense directly calling upon Gentiles to do exactly this, though the communities separate from national Israel did not specifically enter a covenant with Yahweh to receive prosperity and protection for doing what is righteous and disaster for doing what is wicked.  No one is an exception to what the Psalmist says, as the words emphasize the more overtly egalitarian philosophy of the Old Testament without going into specific examples of demographics:

Psalm 150:6—"Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.  Praise the Lord."

The scope of everything that has breath necessarily includes Gentiles, who are no less human than Jews and bear Yahweh's image just like them (Genesis 1:26-27, 5:1-2, 9:6), meaning they would have to possess the same rights and obligations.  "Everything that has breath" also encompasses men and women, the young and old, the rich and poor, and so on.  Logically, this is entailed by the concept the wording points to without the verse saying it quite so specifically.  But another portion of Psalms does offer a more exhaustive description of what the idea behind Psalm 150:6 would already require.

A mere two chapters prior, Psalm 148 is incredibly explicit about how it is fitting for everything in the natural world to praise Yahweh, from seemingly inanimate physical substances like snow and clouds to every human inhabiting the world, regardless of ancestry, gender, or age.  That the text specifies "all nations" and "all rulers on earth" directly puts forth the universality of this when it comes to geography, nationality, and race.  Of course, if praising Yahweh is a human duty, it is also obligatory for women, not only for men; this form of egalitarian consistency is likewise celebrated in Psalm 148.  It would already be entailed by the very nature of Yahweh (as the one deity according to the Old Testament) and moral obligation that praising the divine being would be everyone's ethical responsibility.

Psalm 148:7-12—"Praise the Lord from the earth, you great sea creatures and all ocean depths, lightning and hail, snow and clouds, stormy winds that do his bidding, you mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars, wild animals and all cattle, small creatures and flying birds, kings of the earth and all nations, you princes and all rulers on earth, young men and women, old men and children."

Jews and Gentiles, men and women, rulers and the governed, and the old and young are all in view by explicit acknowledgment.  Other subcategories of humanity like the rich and the poor or the sick and the healthy also have to be equally relevant, although not every single subcategory is directly specified.  Collective humanity can literally do what the probably unconscious structures like mountains, hills, and trees cannot do: verbalize their respect and adoration for the supreme being, without whom they would not exist as contingent entities.

To many Christian readers (real or alleged Christians), it might not be surprising to see affirmation of all people worshiping God, at the very least by praising him in a manner unfitting for any other being.  Even those who pretend like the Bible teaches a kind of moral relativism between Jews and Gentiles or men and women would probably accept this easily.  However, it likely would shock or puzzle many in the American church when Psalms insists that only the living have the capacity to praise God.  The dead do not and cannot praise God because they perceive and do nothing (Ecclesiastes 9:5, 10, etc.).  Psalms addresses this throughout its many chapters, as in Psalm 6:5 and 115:17-18.  The ESV includes the Hebrew word Sheol in its English translation of Psalm 6:5, Sheol being the "realm" or state of the unconscious dead, so that version is displayed below (all other verses shown here are from the NIV).

Psalm 6:5 (ESV)—"For in death there is no remembrance of you; in Sheol who will give you praise?"

Psalm 115:17-18—"It is not the dead who praise the Lord, those who go down to the place of silence; it is we who extol the Lord, both now and forevermore.  Praise the Lord."

Everything that has breath can and, as far as humans are concerned, should praise God to some extent.  Yet when the dead breathe no more, their ability to reflect on and favorably acknowledge God comes to an end.  According to the Old Testament, there is no afterlife where the righteous or repentant go after their bodies die so that their spirits praise God.  As their conscious thoughts cease, so does their praise.  This is echoed by King Hezekiah in Isaiah 38 (verses 18-19) after he recovers from an illness that was set to bring about his death.  Only the living have the power to think and act.

An eventual resurrection to eternal life solely for the righteous (eternal life is solely for the righteous, not a future resurrection) means that they at some can point praise God further (Daniel 12:2), but death Biblically deprives everyone of the ability to direct attention to God.  Worship in all of its forms is within the grasp of none but the living.  While the opportunity remains, while we still breathe, let us praise God.

Can A Material Really Break The Laws Of Physics?

There are multiple ways someone could come to wonder about the universality of scientific laws (physics).  They could see trends like the "rising" and "setting" of the sun or the way objects fall to the ground and reflect, whether rationalistically or not, on the nature of these phenomena.  Or, they might encounter publications with titles that claim some discovery reveals exceptions to or the falsity of some familiar scientific idea.  Sometimes, such headlines might really be conveying, albeit in a very "clickbait" manner, that the version of a law of physics assumed to be true by scientists or for which there was evidence actually has previously undiscovered nuances—or that in addition to a given law of physics there is also another one at play in a particular situation.  Neither of these things quite means that a law of physics was literally observed to be violated or turned out to be false to begin with.

However, it should not surprise a thorough rationalist if scientific laws were to not apply to all matter even at the same scale (microscopic versus quantum, etc.).  It is logically possible for differing laws of physics to apply to different regions or objects within the universe, and yet the matter in each region or object would be bound to their respective physics.  Logical facts alone are universal in themselves; it does not follow necessarily that any scientific laws, laws that have no inherent truth anyway and thus could have differed from their exact current manifestation, must be true of the totality of the cosmos.  But as for laws of physics that are in place, though there is no intrinsic necessity to them and they could abruptly change, can any physical substance really "break" them?

For something to truly violate the laws of physics, it would have to involve the manipulation of matter by a non-material cause.  Otherwise, whatever the phenomenon is, it would already have to be outside the scope of physics, meaning it could not violate the laws of physics as opposed to transcending them altogether (like logical necessities or the basic existence of God).  That is, if some matter of truth is not a matter of physics, none of the laws of science are suspended or altered by this fact on its own.  Only an intervention by a supernatural entity can break or violate the laws of physics in the ultimate sense.

So, a material cannot ever actually break the laws of physics by itself, even if the laws of physics governing one region of the cosmos, one universe, or one material differed from the physics governing some other region, universe, or material.  However matter naturally behaves in a specific location or concerning a specific material is what the laws of physics dictate for that applicable area or thing.  It might shock some people, especially non-rationalists, if evidence was to arise that the physics of some other planet or an even more distant corner of the universe function quite differently than those of Earth, but the laws of physics would still not be broken, but simply not universal, which is already logically possible.

All you have access to when it comes to which scientific laws are present, short of being omniscient or much closer to it than to human limitations, is perceptions of how the physical world behaves.  Only logic and introspection and anything illuminated by them can truly be known.  There is no way to know if one's experiences through the senses like sight, hearing, and taste accurately match the real external world, much less how large the universe is or if the laws of physics differ somewhere far removed from your ability to observe with any of the senses.  Since logic does not require that physics must be the same everywhere or that even the physics one immediately perceives must be more than an illusion, there is truly no way to know which possibility is the case.

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.