Survival Of The Cooperative

The concept of survival of the fittest is sometimes misunderstood as the idea that a creature must be ruthless, selfish, and willing or eager to trample on other living things in order to be "fit" enough to survive.  Everything from casual conversation to fictional stories might reinforce this erroneous perception, but being fit to survive does not have to inevitably mean that one animal exploits or abandons others according to whatever is in its immediate interests.  At its core, the concept just entails that a being is fit to survive in some given situation, whatever the means of doing so (however logically or morally legitimate they are).  Those criteria that help that creature extend its life can significantly vary.

In one context, a person might be genuinely more prone to survive by expressing boldness or cruelty; in another context, a person might be more prone to survive by acting timid or reserved.  Physical strength, a thriving immune system, rationalistic intelligence, and sheer luck are among the traits or factors that could contribute to someone having a better chance of remaining alive, depending on the scenario.  So, too, would cooperating with others intentionally and wholeheartedly, contrary to a popular notion about the efficiency of the vicious survivalist who will use or brutalize anyone to stay alive.

Two or more people who can look out for each other can increase their prospects of survival immensely.  For instance, a lone person intent on survival out in "the wild" has no one to share pragmatic burdens with.  He or she must endeavor to find a secure place to sleep that does not leave them exposed to the elements or at heightened risk of unwanted attention from other animals, including fellow humans.  There is no one to act as a guard or watcher on their behalf, which at worst leaves them vulnerable in the case of an intruder.  Even a single additional person taking a turn watching while the other sleeps could bestow great advantages to both.

The strength or observational capacity of multiple people can easily surpass that of a person operating in solitude.  And what if sickness or injury befalls the lone survivalist?  They have no one to assist them in even the most basic actions, even actions that improve the likelihood of their recovery to fuller autonomy.  There are many logically possible survival situations and factors not addressed in this post, of course.  But, when directly confronted with scenarios like these, it is not unusual for people to acknowledge the benefits of cooperation with others when it comes to survival and more general ease of life.

The people in these situations who act cooperatively, though this does not make their beliefs or actions logically or morally valid in themselves, are certainly "fit" for survival in a sense.  Survival of the fittest has no singular manifestation.  Indeed, some people are more equipped mentally or physically to navigate a given perilous situation without losing their life.  One of the means of achieving this, especially in some circumstances, is working together with or directly caring for the needs of other people.

What If Someone Finds Annihilation Appealing?

Logically, it is impossible for eternal torture to be justice: endless suffering infinitely outweighs any individual sin and torture would objectively be worse than many sins being punished as it is.  Biblically, like it or not, the fate of the wicked in hell is death and not the supreme injustice of perpetual torture (Matthew 10:28, John 3:16, Romans 6:23, etc.).  The Bible thus agrees with pure logic on this matter.  But what if someone is eager to be annihilated or to face this punishment precisely because there is no eternal pain, despite the resulting state of death lasting forever?  More specifically, what of a person highly attracted to suicide due to the potential for mental oblivion or the person who would gladly, knowingly sin as long as they expected to eventually cease to exist and not face eternal suffering?

A suicidal person might not care if their sin of suicide was to seal their future damnation to soul oblivion—I am not saying that this must be the outcome of committing suicide, as I am focusing on a logical truth about their potential motivation.  Someone who hates the misery of their life so much that they prefer cessation of mental existence to living out the rest of their natural lifespan could find the idea of annihilation after resurrection and cosmic judgment relieving.  Even if they have to suffer a finite amount of time to reach the final state, they would still eventually be purged from existence, unable at that point to even ponder or regret the choice that led them to true and lasting destruction.  This is precisely what they longed for enough to find suicide appealing.

Alternatively, a wicked person bent on pursuing whatever subjectively pleasurable thing calls to them in the moment might be apathetic towards the final destiny of annihilation as long as the pleasure of their preference is accessible now.  To commit suicide is at least in most cases sinful, but a desperately suicidal person craves nonexistence for the sake of relief while the hedonist or malicious person who wants to do as they like wants nonexistence to escape accountability.  If the latter could know in advance with absolute certainty that annihilation awaits them if they do not repent before their soul is killed, as with the sufficiently suicidal person, their personal attitude could be one of relief and contentment.  The irony is that they could experience none of that contentment once death has arrived.  

For someone still living, true death can seem like a greater state by far in itself or by comparison to any other possibility.  That it is Biblically reserved for the unrepentantly wicked would probably not dissuade either kind of person described even if there is evidence that the Bible is true.  Why should they seek eternal life regardless, and why would it be in their best interests?  Now, if something is morally obligatory, by nature it is what you should do even if you despise it.  If something truly is evil, it should not be done.  If morality exists, whether or not in the form it has on Christianity, there is no legitimacy in doing whatever you wish because you will not have to suffer without an end in some sort of afterlife.

It would not matter if someone does not care that they will be annihilated forever if they do not repent of their sins, as they should avoid evil by nature of it being evil and not strictly to avoid punishment.  However, the kind of suicidal person and egoistic sinner described above at least do not consistently care about pure logic and do not care about upholding righteousness more than gratifying their own subjective whims, as different as they might be.  Necessitated by justice is the fact that any punitive suffering is not eternal, and, again, some people might crave the oblivion that follows any torment in the Biblical hell.

Would you personally want to do what you should and shun what should not be done, when logic and morality themselves require that there could not be morally legitimate torture without end as punishment for evil?  Even if someone was irrational enough to care more about their own preferences than what is true and what is morally correct (if there is morality) for their own sake, on the Biblical worldview, there are still pragmatic benefits to seeking eternal life, the gift to the righteous.  Whoever receives eternal life does not merely exist forever unlike the wicked who perish.  Each individual with eternal life is free to do whatever they would like as long as they do not sin—and those boundaries are much less confining than many people inside and outside of the church assume.

Morality should be lived out no matter the consequences or lack of them.  When the enduring consequence is death of the soul, total extinction of consciousness and thus the very capacity for sadness or pain, this might seem trivial to someone intent on living as they please no matter what because they still can do as they wish in the present.  It is absolutely not trivial.  The eternal deprivation of the ability to experience pleasure in all its nonsinful forms—such as savoring logical necessities, engaging in empowering introspection, knowing God, and enjoying deep friendships—would be a terrible thing.  On the level of sheer personal benefit, eternal life free of pain coupled with existential fulfillment and pleasure always outweighs the unconciousness of eternal death.

With all of this in mind, aside from whether Christianity is actually true, would you really want to cease to exist as opposed to enjoying the multitude of good or permissible pleasures without boredom, pain, or an end?  Independent of preference, one should do and intend to do whatever is good because one should do it, but there are incentives according to Biblical philosophy that objectively would be better on a pragmatic and personal level than simply seizing what is comparatively like a few brief moments of pleasure in this life mingled with the opportunity for unwanted pain, and then dying forever.  The process of dying in hell might be very painful although logic and Christian morality require a maximum severity to justice (Deuteronomy 25:1-3, Luke 12:47-48).  This potential for pain is part of the deterrence.  

Nonetheless, the lasting part of the punishment of hell is being eternally denied the capacity for joy and pleasure.  You no longer exist to regret or repent or find any sort of fulfillment and happiness.  Eternal life alone is not a positive thing whatsoever [1]; Biblically, whoever receives eternal life will be the endless subject of a perfect life with all that human perfection really permits and entails, very much unlike what many conceive of living in heaven being like.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2024/02/to-live-forever.html

Wise (Or Rational) Only In One's Own Eyes

The approval of other people does not make anything true except that they harbor approval.  It could only be stupid, because the concept itself is objectively erroneous, to think that one person or group considering another person to be wise is what means the latter really is such a thing.  The latter individual believing they have this quality is likewise not what makes it so or reveals the truth of the matter to them.  Now, intelligence is not necessarily the same thing as wisdom.  However, the same point would be true either way of rationality (real intelligence) and wisdom, for someone is not lacking in either trait simply by believing or not believing they possess it; they alternatively do not possess it by virtue of others believing or not believing that they do.  It all comes down to whether they truly have the characteristic.  When Proverbs condemns people who are wise in their own eyes, it is in actuality warning against a person having the false belief they are wise, not against anyone ever thinking they are wise.

Proverbs 18:2—"Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions."

Proverbs 26:12—"Do you see a person wise in their own eyes?  There is more hope for a fool than for them."

As with many statements in Proverbs, the claim of 26:12 is extremely hyperbolic.  To be wise only in one's own eyes (according to one's perception/assumptions but not in reality) is to be irrational, and to be irrational is to be a fool, so the person wise in their own eyes, who believes they are what they are not (and thus could only be assuming this), is by nature foolish.  He or she is wise only in their own eyes and not in truth.  Someone who falsely thinks they are wise on the basis of assumptions neglects or denies reason, perhaps rooting their worldview in sheer intentional egoism.  Thinking one is rational or wise is not erroneous if it is true and one is not making assumptions.  These things are true and knowable by logical necessity independent of the Bible and its veracity, of course, but Proverbs 18:2 very plainly contrasts genuine understanding with holding to subjective, preference-based opinions.

There is no way to have anything more than an entirely illusory understanding apart from strict adherence to rationalism, requiring that someone start with recognizing the utter truth and foundationality of logical axioms and make no assumptions.  Anything else is to have a worldview that is unproven or unprovable and that ignores the only things that have to be true in themselves.  Of course a rationalistic person can know that they are rationalistic, and thus intelligent.  Logical truths and introspective states of mind, for the person who is not a slave to assumptions, are absolutely certain because logic cannot be false—if logic was false, it would follow by logical necessity from the nature of reality that it is false, and so it would still have to be true—and one's own mind is directly experienced.  If a person knows reason and knows their own mind, it follows that they can certainly know that they are intelligent, aka rational, aka rationalistic.  This person cannot possibly be rational or wise merely in their own eyes (though wisdom is again not the same as pure rationality, which is pure ideological alignment with necessary truths).

The person who believes in falsities or in assumptions can only be in error, and thus he or she is not intelligent to the extent that they neglect the self-evident (logical axioms and their own conscious existence) or embrace any kind of assumption.  They would be an example of the fool of Proverbs who delights in their own preferences or arbitrary, false, assumed beliefs because they find this appealing, as if reality hinges on subjective whim—not even the whim and power of God can alter what is true by logical necessity.  Someone who believes they are intelligent because they recall philosophically secondary or unimportant information about historical or scientific matters that cannot be logically proven anyway [1] is an example of a person wise or intelligent only in their own eyes.  Though they deny or neglect logical axioms or make a myriad of assumptions, confusing hearsay for proof and history and science for the heart of reality one way or another, they are utterly deluded.

[1].  For instance, see elaboration here:

https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/09/rationalism-is-not-evidentialism.html

The Market Rate

The market rate is not necessarily livable or in any other way rational and just.  Really, it is just the normalized amount employers are personally willing to pay in a given area at a specific time.  Sometimes it is equated with an average of what other employers in a similar business pay, meaning that some of the wages or salaries are even lower than the supposed rate.  Either way, that the "market" pays only a certain amount does not mean that the work does not deserve more simply because it is professional work or because of the nature of that exact role.  This alone is unlikely to deter employers from acting as if whatever minuscule compensation they offer is somehow significantly better than what one would fine somewhere else.  Often, this vague, unspecified amount is just presented on job listings as "competitive."

A wage or salary being better than that of a competitor requires nothing more on its own: it is better, which in this case means larger, than the competitor's wage or salary.  It might be genuinely horrible, which necessitates that the competitor's lesser offering is even worse.  The lower compensation offered by the other company might be so abysmal that almost any amount would be better, so superior pay does not automatically mean excellent or even adequate pay, as some employers might try to mislead applicants into thinking.  Higher standing relative to another similar example is not the same as something being good itself.

The philosophy and actions of one abusive employer—for paying anything less than livable wages is exploitative—are not legitimized by the fact that another employer is more abusive.  Yet the similar range of employers' willingness or unwillingness to pay are somehow considered the proper criteria for whether the compensation is adequate and just.  Hypothetically, all employers in a region could even actively collude to keep compensation low, even if it means giving the outward perception that they cannot afford to pay more when this is far from the case.  Small businesses in particular might be helmed by people who like to complain about how there are not enough resources for raises, or at least not for everyone in the company.  This changes nothing about how anything less than livable compensation is exploitative in itself.

If an employer cannot truly afford to pay workers enough to live, they need/deserve to go out of business or to remain/revert to a sole proprietorship if that is all they can fully fund (which would diminish the scope of the work that can be taken on).  The basic threshold of whatever is livable—not what barely permits literal continuation of survival despite immense financial difficulty and the stress stemming from it—is not some pragmatic or Biblically suggested option that need not be ensured.  On top of the baseline of the bare minimum necessary to survive in a certain place and time without sacrificing stability (this is what the genuine minimum wage would amount to), factors like experience and skill would proportionately increase the fitting compensation.  In my country at this time, even years of experience and immense skill would probably not get the typical worker to the point of being offered enough by their employer to live without sacrificing stability of one kind or another!

The criteria for the market rate, in either case, are not valid.  Someone's willingness to pay a certain amount or their degree of conformity to social norms has nothing to do with whether what they are willing to pay is morally and otherwise legitimate.  Probably, they want fully invested, cheerful workers who go above and beyond when they are not even paid enough to live comfortably, and that is if they have the chance to perform almost any outward activity besides the likes of eating, showering, commuting, and sleeping when they are not professionally working.  The market rate is an arbitrary social construct that some employers use to actively oppress workers while hiding behind the excuse of the arrangement being normal throughout an area.

Eve's Legalism In Eden

The very first seeming legalist presented in the Bible is not a Pharisee.  It is Eve herself.  God tells Adam to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:15-17), and whether Adam told her of this after her own creation or God repeated the command to her, Eve shares this with the scheming serpent in Eden.  However, she tells the serpent that God said not to eat from that tree or touch its fruit, lest she die (Genesis 3:2-3).  Yahweh never said to not touch the fruit, or to never do other things like gaze at it.  Eve wanes here into legalism, the rejection of God's actual commands or the addition of personal preference or slippery slope "precautions" to them.

She appears to have already stooped to irrationality before eating the fruit in question, just not yet specifically the violation of the direct command from God to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  God does not say in the text that touching the fruit must not be done, just as he never said later on to not touch a living non-kosher animal in addition to not eating it.  Like the Jews who think that consuming any combination of meat or dairy is what is really being condemned in Exodus 23:19, Eve added to Yahweh's commands out of stupidity and sin.

Again, the Genesis account never says that God instructed Adam and Eve to not touch the fruit at all.  The serpent's denial of God's honesty (Genesis 3:4-5) is often focused on, but Eve has already distorted what God told the first humans at the first opportunity to respond to the serpent's question of "Did God really say . . . ?"  She has already fallen into the irrationality of legalism, of misunderstanding Yahweh's commands and then adding to them (Deuteronomy 4:2, 12:32, Proverbs 30:5-6).  That one thing is immoral necessarily requires that other things also are in certain cases.  For example, if eating from the forbidden tree is sinful, so is encouraging someone else to eat from it: though the latter is not what God said, if what he did say is true, this would also have to be the case.

It is not so with touching the fruit or looking at it or thinking about it, or with finding it aesthetically appealing as Eve does (Genesis 3:6).  It does not follow from eating the fruit being immoral that the same must be true of any of these additional things.  Similarly, it does not follow from murder being sinful that anger is (Jesus only condemns anger without cause in Matthew 5), or from drunkenness being sinful that merely drinking alcohol is.  Eve, and possibly Adam, was already a legalist before God specifically touched upon how it is itself immoral to add to his commands in Mosaic Law, as if his moral nature is incomplete or as if he intentionally withheld revelation of moral prescriptions from humans.

Conflicting Stereotypes

All stereotypes are both epistemologically fallacious and metaphysically false.  No, a man who is harsh is not harsh because he is a man.  There is nothing about being an elderly person at the present time in history that entails being a residual racist.  A wealthy person is not necessarily uncaring about those with fewer resources.  A woman who likes to shop, as with all personality traits, either has this mental characteristic because of her individual personality or because of social conditioning, not because she is a woman.  None of these mental/nonphysical qualities follows from having a specific gender, a certain age, and other such things, and one person does not necessarily have the same personality or talents as another even if they have the same gender, age, and so on.  Even so, some people not only believe in stereotypes, but they also propose stereotypes that by logical necessity contradict another stereotype they hold to.  Anything that contradicts logical axioms directly, some other necessary truths, or itself can only be false.

Even if any of these stereotypes were true, and they are by their very nature erroneous, they could not all be true at once.  For instance, men cannot be the financially "mature" ones out of men and women when it comes to the alleged bent of women towards the likes of frivolous, unrestrained shopping, not if they are also be the "immature" ones regarding how they spend money, supposedly wasting it on alcohol or gambling.  Each of these stereotypes, which I have encountered and which are both false by logical necessity for the same non sequitur reasons, is in conflict with the other.  Women are also supposed to be emotionally volatile in contrast with the relative "emotionlessness" or at least emotional stability of men, but men are also supposed to be constantly or easily driven to violence by extreme anger.  However, if men were just the emotionless, empty husks that some people think (something that could only be true on an individual basis), they could not feel anger or any other vehement emotions at all, much less be motivated primarily or exclusively by them as some of the same people might believe.

Not all of the societally entrenched stereotypes have to do with gender, of course.  Black people, according to one stereotype (which also tends to conflate education and intelligence), are naturally stupid, as if the color of someone's skin has anything to do with an individual's grasp of reason.  At the same time, there is the stereotype that black people are "smarter" than white people because they try to very proactively stay out of dangerous, uncertain situations, such as by refusing to investigate a threatening hallway in a movie.  This fallacious idea is said to stem from them being victimized by racism to the extent that they would try to avoid other kinds of trouble at almost any cost, hence the alleged race-related "intelligence".  If one of these stereotypes was true, and none could be, then the other could only be false, since black people cannot be both stupid and intelligent because of their skin color.  They utterly exclude each other and are all logically false for the same aforementioned reasons.

Other examples could be identified.  Women cannot be delicate, oblivious, harmless beings and cold, egoistically manipulative masterminds who seek to financially or emotionally exploit men at the same time.  Hispanic immigrants cannot be a natural psychological "fit" for taking on low-paying or manual labor jobs and be rushing to take jobs away from wealthier, native-born Americans at the same time.  An Asian person cannot both be a collectivist drone and hyper-intelligent due to their race or cultural background.  All stereotypes are logically false, and even on the level of social experience or one's own introspective experience as opposed to strict logical necessity, people from a given racial category, among other things, would never believe or act any differently from one another if their worldviews, skills, and desires truly were tied to their race.  Many of the stereotypes concerning gender, race, age, nationality, and other factors still contradict each other with regard to the same category of people and thus have an additional philosophical flaw.

Game Review—Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter (Switch)

"Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me; the Carriage held but just ourselves, and Immortality."

—Professor James Moriarty

A collection of cases with overarching plot threads, The Devil's Daughter portrays a Sherlock Holmes struggling with how to raise the young daughter of a renowned adversary without telling her of her family ties, that adversary being Moriarty.  It is not the first Sherlock game brought to the Switch by Ukranian developer Frogware.  On a storytelling level, this is far stronger than Crime and Punishment.  Sherlock grapples with adoptive parenting when he is not exactly prepared for the challenge, all while playing cat and mouse with his new neighbor Alice—whom he finds has an enigmatic but dark interest in his life.

Production Values

As with other Frogware games on the platform, The Devil's Daughter is far from the pinnacle of the Switch's capabilities.  Underpowered as it may be, the system has its share of visually excellent first-party games, which I have highlighted over and over as successful in utilizing the strengths of the Switch.  Items that appear abruptly based on walking distance, blurry textures, and noticeable pixelation all mar the production values of The Devil's Daughter significantly.  That said, some moments, as seen in the close-up of Sherlock's facial animation from the opening of the game two screenshots above, do feature much greater, more realistic levels of detail.  This is aside from the sometimes long loading times, however clever it is to load a new area by having Sherlock ride a horse-drawn carriage with the opportunity to review his notebook or engage in "deductions" (as I will of course address more thoroughly, Sherlock is not rationalistic and thus is unintelligent!).  As for the voice acting, I encountered no glitches or deviations from the overall strong quality.

Gameplay

Across the five cases in this title, various gameplay mechanics are introduced, some of which appear sparingly.  A recurring one involves the player examining magnified outward features of a person's body or clothing and choosing which of two possibilities seems the most probable reason for the mark or characteristic (they are not the only logically possible things, though).  Alternatively, the player can see what happens even if they select a descriptive option that appears wrong in light of some other evidence, though little to nothing truly follows logically from these physical qualities except that certain things are probably true about the person.  Sherlock, much like the typical person (a non-rationalist), makes a plethora of assumptions, so it is not that the player has to be truly rational to be persuaded to choose the options the game presents as correct.

Puzzles are skippable: due to impatience, lack of time, or difficulty with analyzing the clues, a player can bypass entire sequences of the game.  Sometimes, the puzzle-related tasks entail noticing physical factors about someone's appearance or attire as mentioned in an attempt to uncover something connected to a murder attempt, among other things.  Other times, you have to determine which order a series of precise events occurred in; this also happens more than once.  The non-recurring puzzles include arranging gears adequately to trigger a mechanism, navigating through a trap-laden pyramid (more on this later), and toggling between perceptions of a room as recollected and in its current state to note items that have been removed.  Quick-time events and dialogue choices account for other parts of the gameplay.  Various developments, which sometimes hinge on the puzzles, bring Sherlock to clues that can in turn be linked on the deduction screen.

The "deduction" screen is about identifying which miscellaneous clues are relevant to each other and then selecting certain conclusions that allegedly follow from them; the erroneous part is that sometimes trial and error rather than true rationalistic thought (that is, in accordance with the objective, intrinsically true laws of logic that thus transcend the mind) can or has to be relied on, and many of Sherlock's conclusions in the story are in reality nothing but non sequiturs that, because they are not necessary truths, cannot possibly be absolutely certain.  They do not follow from some other fact or concept, and the ideas they supposedly follow from are themselves not even necessarily logically demonstrable truths.  Regardless, the clues and conclusions are displayed as if to stand in for neurons and synapses.  The color blue is assigned here to the representation of compatible ideas and the color red to the representation of incompatible ideas.  Now, a thought is not a neuron and neither is the same as logical necessities, but I digress.

Story

The famed Sherlock Holmes acts as the adoptive parent of young Kate, who has not been told the identity of her actual father, though his assistant Dr. Watson insists that Holmes disclose this sooner rather than later.  Living with Watson on Baker Street, he finds himself becoming familiar with a new neighbor, a woman named Alice.  She shows a persistent interest in bonding with Kate, who becomes enamored with Alice's stories and willingness to share her time.  But, as Sherlock works on various cases, evidence mounts that Alice has intentionally secured residence next to his and has some sort of very particular goal involving him.  She even seems to think she can communicate with the spirits of the dead.


Intellectual Content

I will say it again.  Sherlock is not genuinely rationalistic and so is not truly intelligent.  In one of the cases, Sherlock mentally explores an imagined version of a pyramid from Guatemala so as to relive the experiences of someone embroiled in the case from over a decade ago, as if this would in any way show him what really happened in the pyramid!  He is only thinking about one possible way the situation looked and unfolded and still bases major conclusions on what he sees in his mind.  Elsewhere in the story, Sherlock just assumes prison sentences are just.  He also concludes that a boy can read maps because he has one on hand, when it does not logically follow from the child having a map of London in his pocket that he knows how to read maps.

When he finds that Alice has written down Kate's birthday, he exclaims that "women are good at this sort of thing" when any thorough rationalist knows that gender is objectively unrelated to psychological traits like a precise memory for birthdays.  Another time, he mentions in a threatening manner that a pygmy who kills an Englishman will not be treated lightly by the court—though, of course, it is idiotic to assume that the punishment of incarceration is morally correct anyway.  But on top of all his other fallacies here, he mentions a culturally-ingrained discrimination against foreigners without acknowledging the logical errors of the philosophy behind this discrimination.  What a fool!

Then there is the general conflation of logic with science, careful observaton, and historical information, or at least the absence of any clarification that logic itself is not a mental process, the laws of physics, and so on.  Only a true rationalist is intelligent or worthy of deep admiration, even if he or she has little to no familiarity with the empirical trends or social constructs that Holmes really relies on, which can be relevant to cases like the game's but which one must either be omniscient to know and is always metaphysically secondary to logic itself.  While The Devil's Daughter does not even hint at such ultimate, abstract truths directly, it does actually somewhat explore the topic of spiritualism.  Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the original written works featuring Sherlock Holmes, was in fact (as far as historical hearsay evidence suggests) a strong philosophical proponent of spiritualism, so it is in a sense fitting for the game to weave a spiritualist character into the plot.

Is Alice really communing with spirits of the dead as parts of the game tease?  Such a thing is not logically impossible, since an unembodied conscious existence after the death of the body does not contradict logical axioms.  Sherlock winds up holding that she is merely insane and declares as much to Kate in the final case.  Either way, Alice's characterization and Sherlock's interactions with her allow for some excellently-realized tension and twists.  Biblically, she would deserve to die either way, not because she indulges in sorcery or adjacent sins (or attempts/stages them) and happens to be a woman, as some misunderstand Exodus 22:18 to mean about sorceresses; the verse says no such thing despite only mentioning female practitioners of magic and would contradict what reason requires about egalitarian consistency if it did.  Also, Leviticus 20:27 and Deuteronomy 18:9-13 are not subtle about encompassing both men and women who practice the likes of necromancy, sorcery, and divination.  I touch on this here because the idea that the Old Testament discriminates against women who practice such sins or are alleged to is commonly put forth.

Conclusion

The absolute greatest blunder of the game is not even an artistic one, but the misrepresentation of the supreme and absolutely certain nature of logic (its purely self-necessary truth, how anything consistent with logical axioms is hypothetically possible no matter someone's confusion or biases, etc.)—as almost all Sherlock-related media does in one way or another.  But what it does handle better tends to be executed well, the momentum towards the climactic confrontation between Sherlock and Alice and the weight of Kate's connection to Professor Moriarty being two of the very best pillars.  My personal favorite layer of the game is the plot threads dealing with whether or not Alice is communicating with the dead.

The mishandling of what is and is not strictly logical truth aside, should you be interested in a game based largely on investigative mechanics, this title is a great option, and the ability to skip puzzles streamlines the length and difficulty for anyone who gets stuck or does not have the time to assess an object or situation as long as they might otherwise want to.  This latter option does make the game much more accessible than many offerings in this genre probably tend to be.  The Devil's Daughter thus strikes a unique blend of accessibility with nuanced puzzles as it does so with its amalgam of (sometimes irrationalistically presented) detective mechanics and a necromancy story.

The Myth Of A Debt To Society

If good and evil exist, and if an act like theft is evil, and if this act deserves a legal penalty (whatever it is), there could still be no such thing as a debt to society unless a theft somehow involved directly stealing from the society as a whole.  All three of the ideas introduced by "if" can only be assumed by humans because epistemological limitations prevent us from proving that they are true, but setting aside this important fact, an action like many forms of theft only victimizes the victims, not any unrelated party.  Even if there are repercussions for people far removed from the actual victim in a given case, the offense is not against them.  And anyone else in the community/nation who is not impacted whatsoever could not possibly be owed a debt of any literal or figurative kind by the perpetrator who did not target or impact them.

Sometimes, an offense would directly affect a secondary figure.  An invested spouse or dependent child of a murder victim would absolutely be impacted in a much more indirect way, though they were neither killed nor (possibly/probably) the intended victim.  However, murder is still a deed done against the particular person whose life is prematurely ended by the murderer.  Many acts which qualify as crimes under American or Biblical law do not necessarily victimize anyone else past the offended party.  Whenever this is the case, even if all three ultimately unverifiable factors mentioned in the first paragraph apply, the very concept of all crime incurring a debt to society is utterly false.

Whoever is not victimized directly or indirectly could not be owed a debt of any kind, whether one of literal restitution/damages or some sort of nonliteral debt that can only be paid by some other penalty.  Some logically possible actions could genuinely victimize an entire society, but this only entails extremely specific acts in very particular circumstances.  The idea that crime creates some automatic moral debt to society is a philosphical myth, and not just because a community criminalizing something does not mean it is morally correct to make it illegal or impose a punishment.  The rest of society beyond the victim(s) is purely irrelevant.

According to American legal/ethical philosophy, crime itself does incur a debt to society that can only be paid by, in many instances, spending time incarcerated.  How does the moral need for incarceration follow from the concept of a debt to society, as illogical as the latter concept already is?  It absolutely does not follow, not in itself, and thus anyone who believes in the justice of incarceration could only do so on the basis of cultural conditioning, sheer personal preference, or some asinine epistemological leap they legitimately find philosophically persuasive past simply preferring that it would be true.  What a delusional person!  Of course, this position is very mainstream in the United States.  The idea that locking someone away from the public, perhaps in very dangerous conditions, somehow repays or could repay a nonexistent debt to an entire nation is not exactly unpopular (how would this fulfill the repayment to those outside the jail/prison anyway?).

The non sequitur of imprisonment being the way to resolve the alleged debt to society aside, American law is, as in various other ways, based on philosophical delusions.  It does not even matter if good and evil exist; no one could owe a debt to someone for what the former did to a truly unrelated party.  Living in the same city, state, or nation as a victim of a crime does not make someone else a victim by extension due to geographical proximity, shared citizenship, or symbolic association.  Only the victim could be owed a debt if some actions warrant repayment, whether literal or otherwise.  This really is quite easy to demonstrate.

The New Testament On Two Or Three Witnesses

In three places, the Old Testament calls for an inflexible requirement of at least two or three witnesses to convict and punish someone of a sin that qualifies as a crime according to the divine moral law, not the legal constructs of human governments.  The first time at least two or three witnesses are prescribed, the numbers two and three are not mentioned, though executing someone for murder based only on one person's testimony is prohibited.  Then, Deuteronomy reiterates this ethical requirement twice in a manner that clearly treats it as not applying solely to executions for the specific capital sin of murder.  More than three witnesses is not problematic, of course.  Anything less than a minimum of two or three is condemned if someone is to have the proper penalty for their sin imposed, but there could be more than three who come forward.

Numbers 35:30—"'"Anyone who kills a person is to be put to death as a murderer only on the testimony of witnesses.  But no one is to be put to death on the testimony of only one witness."'"

Deuteronomy 17:7—"On the testimony of two or three witnesses a person is to be put to death, but no one is to be put to death on the testimony of only one witness."

Deuteronomy 19:15—"One witness is not enough to convict anyone accused of any crime or offense they may have committed.  A matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses."

Portions of Deuteronomy 13, 17, and 22 address in various ways how other evidences besides literal eyewitness testimony are valid, so aside from strict logical reasons why other evidences could have an equal or greater (but still fallible) epistemological weight than the hearsay of witnesses, the Bible itself does not shy away from other means of evidential support for a charge.  None of the demands for multiple witnesses prescribe that people assume someone else is telling the truth if they have another alleged witness agreeing with them, but that as confrontation escalates, two or three witnesses should be involved whenever possible.  Jesus, it might surprise some to find out, appeals to this concept in a context entirely divorced from legal accusation and punishment.  The scenario is that of one person trying to compel an unrepentant sinner who at least calls or considers themself a follower of God and Christ to relent, with Jesus detailing progressively aggressive steps to take.

Matthew 18:15-17—"'If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you.  If they listen to you, you have won them over.  But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that 'every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.'  If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.'"

Reading chronologically as the books appear in modern Bibles, this reference Jesus makes would mark the first time that the New Testament touches on having/needing two or three witnesses when dealing with interpersonal affairs where one party has either sinned or supposedly sinned.  Paul adds two more such references to the New Testament total.  In 2 Corinthians 13, Paul quotes Deuteronomy to a Gentile church to reinforce the severity of him needing to chastise the congregation in Corinth more than twice.  If there was no transcendent moral weight to needing this many witnesses, it would be pointless for Paul to bring the idea up at all.

2 Corinthians 13:1-2—"This will be my third visit to you.  'Every matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.'  I already gave you a warning when I was with you the second time.  I now repeat it while absent: On my return I will not spare those who sinned earlier or any of the others,"

Next, Paul insists in 1 Timothy 5 on two or three witnesses as a requirement for seriously considering a charge against a church elder, something obviously rooted in the concept of witnesses introduced in Numbers 35 and then affirmed as applicable for even broader scenarios in Deuteronomy 17 and 19.  This time, however, while he certainly invokes the principle, he does not directly use the wording of Deuteronomy other than the phrase "two or three witnesses".  The connection is still plain in light of the two aforementioned books in the Torah.

1 Timothy 5:17-21—"The elders who direct the affairs of the church well are worthy of double honor, especially those whose work is preaching and teaching.  For Scripture says, 'Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain,' and 'The worker deserves his wages.'  Do not entertain an accusation against an elder unless it is brought by two or three witnesses.  But those elders who are sinning you are to reprove before everyone, so that the others may take warning.  I charge you, in the sight of God and Christ Jesus and the elect angels, to keep these instructions without partiality, and to do nothing out of favoritism."

This crucial passage [1] from Paul's epistles actually does quote Deuteronomy, but not on the matter of witnesses.  Paul quotes Deuteronomy 25:4 a mere verse before he says to not act against an elder without two or three witnesses, an Old Testament prescription about the treatment of farm animals.  Here, like with his quotation of the same verse in 1 Corinthians 9, he points out that if even agricultural animals should be allowed to benefit from their own labor as with an ox eating from the grain it treads, so too should humans benefit from their own labor, all the more since we are the higher animal.  Then he mentions needing two or three witnesses concerning action against church elders.  However, the absence of a direct quote changes nothing about the clear connection between the concept of two or three witnesses and the same requirement for witnesses in Mosaic Law.  And when this threshold of accusers is reached, as would have to be the case with all matters of logic and justice, one should not spare any elder out of personal attachment or reverence, hence why Paul insists on utter impartiality.

Using the very words of Yahweh's Torah law, Jesus and Paul in fact emphasize the applicability of things like the obligation to rely on at least two or three witnesses/evidences outside of the originally specified context.  In this case, the Old Testament context was explicitly about formal charges of criminal sins and the administration of the only legitimate penalties for those exact wrongs.  The New Testament affirms that this principle is relevant to wider circumstances than legal proceedings.  Whether at an all-encompassing level (such as dealt with in Matthew 5:17-19 and 1 Timothy 1:8-11) or that of various precise issues, and whether someone looks to pure logic or strictly logical facts about Biblical doctrines, there is no escape from the fact that the moral relativism entailed by Rabbinic Judaism and evangelical "Christians" cannot be true, with one moral standard for Gentiles and another for Jews or different standards at different points in history.  At least, the could not be the case unless God was to have changed, which is rejected entirely by both the Old and New Testaments (Malachi 3:6, James 1:17).

Logically, the nature of an action would be morally mandatory or vile for all people in a given situation with respect merely to ancestry and nationality (if morality exists, that is), and neither side of the Bible ever actually says otherwise.  Morality is universal according to both testaments, and the Law provides the details of morality.  Neither Jesus nor Paul claims that the Law was some arbitrary contrivance of God, a pseudo-moral (morally binding, but in a relativistic way) way to culturally distinguish Israelites from Gentiles, or a temporary measure until Christ.  Something like confronting or pushing back against someone on the basis of two or three witnesses would not have its moral nature changed based on who someone is, and it is not just the concern of those with societal power to punish sin.

To be universal, though, an obligation also must not be only for people devoted to God even if they represent diverse backgrounds.  It is not just people committed to Yahweh of any national or racial background who should fulfill obligations like relying on two or three witnesses/evidences when proceeding with charges against a person, either when it comes to legal sentencing or organizations like the church.  With certain exceptions that by their very nature cannot be for all individuals at all times (Leviticus 19:23-25, Deuteronomy 25:17-19), every human is righteous or wicked (or a mixture of both) based on their conformity to the same moral standard.  If Judeo-Christianity is true, that standard was not created when God revealed laws to ancient Israel, but it was communicated to a particular group of people through the Law.  Jesus and Paul alike act exactly as they should if this was the case by promoting the Law in its previously unstated but logically necessary ramifications.

[1].  After all, it addresses not only the ongoing universality of the Law contrary to moral relativism and non-theonomist "Christian" ethics, but also the inclusion of Luke's gospel among the writings of "Scripture" according to the New Testament (quoting Luke 10:7), the sharp distinction between God and Christ as their own entities, and the importance of impartiality for acting in a logically and morally consistent manner.

What A Prenuptial Agreement Is And Is Not

No one knows what will happen in the future with any of their relationships, a consequence of not being able to know other minds or the future, though many non-rationalists speak and act as if they assume, at least selectively, that they truly can know what someone else is thinking or that a certain outcome (which is logically possible either way) will not happen.  A once casual acquaintance could become a close friend or an intimate friend could become a passionate enemy.  Marriage is no exception.  As much as someone might want their marriage to last as long as they live, and as much as all available evidence might suggest that it will, there is no way to know if it will be so because there is nothing logically necessary about this happening.  Within the very next few moments, a genuinely perfect marriage could break down; that it was perfect before does not mean it will be, and many marriages never even reach true perfection to begin with.

Only fools assume (or they are stupid to the extent that they make assumptions), and the only way to believe that a future divorce is impossible is to assume.  All sorts of life directions and events are logically possible, and so there is no way to know ahead of time which possibility will come about.  Signing a prenuptial agreement—a document affirming a predetermined division of money and property, including future income, in the case of divorce or mutually consented courses of action during the marriage—is a way to protect oneself and even one's partner in the case of an unfortunate future.  Yes, formalizing such agreements before legal marriage can be a way to genuinely protect one's partner.

A rational (aka, rationalistic) spouse should all but never object to creating a prenuptial agreement.  There is no legitimate problem with prenuptials themselves, only at most with how they might be executed—or because one person does not want a prenuptial due to not really wanting to get married!  In no way does a prenuptial in itself express an expectation or desire for a marriage to end.  Even then, it can also address matters following the death of a spouse, not just the death of the legal marriage in divorce.  Still, a marital connection can never be guaranteed beforehand to be lifelong, and a prenuptial allows for a greater degree of security before and during the marriage and security and peace if it comes to a premature end.  It is in this way a safeguard in the hopefully unlikely case that a marriage will falter to the point of ending for reasons other than the death of one party or the other.

A prenuptial arranged well ahead of the hopefully improbable circumstance of divorce can indeed make the process of legal annulment smoother.  Particularly if spouses have come to resent each other and are figuratively, or even literally, at each other's throats in the final days of the legal marriage status, it is incredibly helpful to already have key financial details planned upon in a way that does not exploit either party, something that does not at all necessitate a perfectly even split of assets.  There is always the option of a postnuptial, the equivalent of a prenuptial except in that it is formed after a marriage has legally started, yet having handled such matters before the legal recognition of a union does ensure that spouses would already have addressed how they would handle specific aspects of a hypothetical divorce.  Though this would be the fault of an irrational spouse and not an inherent reason to avoid the issue, calling for a postnuptial might also seem more aggressive to certain husbands or wives.

The unknowability of the future alone, which is of great relevance to the possibility of a partner showing their true self or dramatically changing after marriage, means it is ideal to complete this sort of protective agreement as soon as it can be done, which for people not yet married would take the form of a prenuptial.  It is not that a prenuptial is absolutely necessary to protect oneself or, more importantly, to be a rationalistic person (this is about what one believes and the reasons why); it is just a way to better ensure protection before more and more turbulence might arrive.  Also, if one's partner refuses outright to consider or pursue a prenuptial, he or she is irrational, and an irrational partner, before or after legal marriage, is not worth staying with except out of sheer mercy and subjective affection.  How a discussion about prenuptials goes could reveal far more than information about each party's present financial standing!

Yes, The Bible Allows Women To Choose Their Spouses In Both Testaments

In its moral doctrines of marriage, the Bible is explicitly gender egalitarian, contrary to what some expect based upon assumption-based, highly superficial misreadings of a handful of isolated passages.  Only one single verse before the renowned call for wives to submit to their husbands in Ephesians 5:22, Ephesians 5:21 tells all Christians to submit to each other—but this only could be valid when there is no mistreatment or active pressure to sin.  Nothing about this is restricted to husbands and wives, much less to one spouse submitting to the other based on the irrelevant factor of their gender.  1 Corinthians 7:2-5 actually elaborates on very explicit mutual submission in certain matters of marriage.

As for Paul's instructions for husbands to love their wives, there are even more frequent affirmations in the Bible, direct and indirect, of how this would also be strictly gender egalitarian.  He says in Titus 2:3-4 that wives should love their husbands and elsewhere affirms that love is a moral obligation (Romans 13:8-10), which in turn is an acknowledgement of Leviticus 19:18, a gender-neutral command for people to love others like themselves.  Even based upon the very literal wording of Ephesians 5 and Paul's other writings, it is very apparent that, although it might not always be said in one place all at once, there is no complementarian doctrine of marriage in Biblical philosophy.

Remember, Paul freely admits that there is nothing deficient about Yahweh's Torah commands; he says they are righteous in Romans 7:7, 12, 1 Timothy 1:8-11, and many other places.  Marital egalitarianism is not some New Testament "overturning" of sexist imperfect, sexist laws that were somehow obligatory and yet still unjust, a logical impossibility.  None of this contradicts the Torah.  The Old Testament's Torah laws, which are from God and are not contrivances of Moses based on subjective conscience (Exodus 21:1, Numbers 15:1, Deuteronomy 4:2, and so on), as many who think themselves Christians would claim, in fact do not prescribe gender hierarchy in marriage or otherwise.  Besides, New Testament philosophy hinges on the Torah, in actuality, not the other way around.  Either the Torah does teach sexist moral obligations and thus those parts of it are false [1] or it contradicts the egalitarian New Testament that says its commands remain true (Matthew 5:17-19, for instance).

Concerning marriage, which is clearly presented in an egalitarian manner when it comes to things like submission and love, is the Bible also egalitarian in allowing women to freely marry particular men or choose not to marry them on their own, without parental or male oversight?  Nowhere does the Bible prescribe that women should not exercise personal freedom in choosing whom they will marry or condemn men for not initiating marriage without regard for a woman's assent.  At least one of these things would have to taught in order for the Bible to be genuinely sexist against women in this way.  More than just never prescribing anything which logically requires that women should not be allowed to choose husbands themselves, it also gives clear moral permission in both Testaments for women to choose their marriage partners.  More specifically, these verses are found in Numbers and 1 Corinthians:

Numbers 36:6—"'This is what the Lord commands for Zelophehad's daughters: they may marry anyone they please as long as they marry within their father's tribal clan.'"

1 Corinthians 7:39—"A woman is bound to her husband as long as he lives.  But if her husband dies, she is free to marry anyone she wishes, but he must belong to the Lord."

Yes, both Testaments, including the allegedly tyrannical, sexist, anti-individualistic contents of the Torah, very clearly say that women are morally free to choose their own marriage partners.  Likewise, what the Bible teaches about divorce is gender egalitarian.  It never actually says that divorce can only be legitimately initiated by one gender.  Divorce or divorce-adjacent passages like Exodus 21:10-11 (which on its own never denies that the rights it ascribes to wives are also held by husbands) with Genesis 1:26-27 and 1 Corinthians 7:2-5, Exodus 21:26-27 with its ramifications for marriage [1], and 1 Corinthians 7:15 are perfectly egalitarian not just in their core concepts, but in their direct wording.  A woman is not treated like she has no right to initiate or end a marriage, including in verses like Deuteronomy 24:1-4.  A husband is also not any more bound to marry or not marry, to marry a particular person, or to remain in an abusive marriage.

Logic, people.  It is very fucking helpful.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2024/12/exodus-2126-27-and-divorce.html

Are Humans Kosher?

There is only one way that the Bible, directly in one sense and indirect in another, actually addresses the morality of human cannibalism, and it does not have to do with humans being a creature metaphysically superior to lesser animals.  As I already wrote about years ago [1], murdering someone to eat their flesh would be Biblically immoral either way since murder is sinful, and a capital sin at that (Genesis 9:6, Exodus 21:12-14, Numbers 35:30-31).  Killing someone who wants to be put to death to feed others would still be murder.  It would not matter if cannibalism among humans is universally sinful for the actions that might situationally precede it to be morally wrong.  This, however, does not mean that one human eating the flesh of another person is itself evil just because behaviors leading up to cannibalism in certain situations are independently condemned.  The issues are connected, just not in every single aspect.

Humans are indeed animals since we are biological creatures like them, albeit very different from other species even if Christianity is not true.  An animal is simply a biological organism; we differ from them in form and possibly in the extent to which our consciousness is complex.  Mosaic Law goes into extensive detail about which animals are permissible to eat and which are not.  Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 are the primary chapters of the Torah pertaining to which categories of animals are morally acceptable for use as food, with some additional food-related obligations being revealed outside of these chapters, like how eating blood is sinful regardless of the animal it originates from (Genesis 9:4, Leviticus 7:26-27, 17:10-14, 19:26, etc.) [2].  Eating the fat of any animal, even if the creature is not sinful to eat by default, is likewise condemned (Leviticus 7:22-24).  Blood and fat are excluded from consumption as parts of the body rather than as types of animals.

Now, the obligations behind the dietary laws are connected to God's nature, as with all moral obligations rather than irrelevant social customs or personal preferences, and his nature is unchanging (Malachi 3:6, James 1:17).  Though they are far from the most important of moral commands, these dietary laws are not overturned by Jesus or at any other time in the New Testament period as it might appear upon superficial examination of the likes of Matthew 15 and Acts 11 [3].  If it is immoral to consume a creature, it would always be immoral on Biblical philosophy, before or after Christ's incarnation, death, and ascension.  His entire appearance in Biblical chronology is utterly irrelevant to practically every part of Mosaic Law in this sense, and Jesus himself admits as much (Matthew 5:17-19).  Many who identify themselves as Christians only deny this because of fallacious church traditions or the inconvenience of adjusting their culinary habits as needed.

As for the types of animals permitted, any animal that walks on land must both have split hooves and chew its cud (Leviticus 11:1-8, Deuteronomy 14:3-8), any aquatic animal must have both fins and scales (Leviticus 11:9-12, Deuteronomy 14:9-10), and there are other divisions for flying creatures and bugs.  Humans neither have split hooves nor chew their cud.  Thus, they would be morally forbidden from consumption, but not strictly because one would be eating the meat or organs of humans in particular.  It is not because humans have a special status above other animals that this would be illicit.  Like with many other issues, still, the Bible does not have to say in exact words that certain things are sinful in order for it to be clear from other exact words.  Another example would be how the fact that drunkenness is sinful (Deuteronomy 21:18-20, though that is not the focus in this passage) would necessitate that intentionally getting high from applicable drugs for non-medical reasons is also sinful.

In the aforementioned post about cannibalism and murder from years ago [1], I focused on how some cannibalism being sinful for tangential reason does not mean it is always evil, as well as how eating an already dead body for survival reasons is not the same as more gratuitously eating other people.  It is true that murder being wrong would not necessitate that cannibalism is immoral in all scenarios or with all motivations.  It also is not the case that something is evil because of subjective revulsion, which is all many could appeal to for this matter.  Whenever there are intentions of malice or degradation (such as eating someone to express disrespect for them as a human), cannibalism would also be Biblically sinful (Deuteronomy 25:3) in addition to when it occurs in the context of murderous practices, but, again, this does not encompass all logically possible forms of cannibalism.  Only the kosher obligations would render all human cannibalism immoral.

When I wrote the other post, and like this one, many posts are written quite some time ahead of their release date (up to years), I had not yet specifically examined New Testament passages at least somewhat connected to the dietary laws.  Matters of core morality, like physical assaults (Exodus 21:15, 18-19, 22-27), blasphemy (Leviticus 24:13-16), oppressing foreigners (Exodus 22:21, 23:9), and so on would not change with time or culture regardless, as well as the divinely prescribed punishments of the Torah tied to them.  If the act remains wrong, then the attached terrestrial penalty could only remain just and binding on all people and nations at all times.  The kosher laws deal with something far less crucial than the likes of these.  I had still realized that it clearly does not logically follow from murderous or malicious cannibalism being evil for separate reasons that cannibalism itself is inherently sinful on the Christian worldview.  It was nevertheless only after that post was written that I thoroughly analyzed passages that could be misinterpreted to "support" abolishing the dietary laws of the Torah.  This category of Mosaic Law and the ramifications focused upon in this article had yet to be fully incorporated into my worldview.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2022/09/the-morality-of-cannibalism.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2024/02/life-is-in-blood.html

[3].

A.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/09/that-which-defiles.html  B.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2024/01/kill-and-eat.html

The Woman Who Cannot Afford A Lamb

A very brief chapter of Leviticus, the shortest in the entire book, focuses entirely on the connection between a woman giving birth, ceremonial uncleanness afterward, and sacrifices to God in Biblical philosophy.  Early in this chapter, Leviticus 12, it is said that giving birth to a boy renders a woman temporarily unclean so that she should not enter the sanctuary of Yahweh until after her purification (12:4).  There is a seven day period of uncleanness (12:2) followed by another 33 days (12:4) after the boy's circumcision (12:3).  Upon giving birth to a girl, the mother is unclean for an initial 14 days followed by an additional 66 days (12:5), exactly double the duration of uncleanness for giving birth to a boy on all fronts.  The woman is to eventually bring animals to a Levitical priest after the applicable time has elapsed and complete her ceremonial purification (12:6-8).

Are these differing durations sexist against women?  For one thing, the identical sacrifices of verses 6-8 after giving birth to either a son or a daughter contradict the idea that sons are more metaphysically valuable than daughters.  Women also have ceremonial uncleanness tied to menstruation as clarified in Leviticus 12:2 and elsewhere in the book (in chapter 15), so perhaps the double length of the uncleanness for giving birth to a girl pertains to this, which is affiliated with anatomy and physiology and entirely unrelated to illogical ideas like gender stereotypes and double standards.  But if one sees Leviticus 12 brought up at all by a non-Christian, it is very likely for the purpose of promoting this asinine notion that the chapter belittles women.  By both non-Christians and those who claim allegiance to Christianity, something important tends to go unnoticed despite its distinct relevance to gender egalitarianism—or at best unmentioned.

Here are verses 6-8 of Leviticus 12 in which the often unmentioned details are stated.

Leviticus 12:6-8—"'"When the days of her purification for a son or daughter are over, she is to bring to the priest at the entrance to the tent of meeting a year-old lamb for a burnt offering and a young pigeon or a dove for a sin offering.  He shall offer them before the Lord to make atonement for her, and then she will be ceremonially clean from her flow of blood.  These are the regulations for the woman who gives birth to a boy or a girl.  But if she cannot afford a lamb, she is to bring two doves or two young pigeons, one for a burnt offering and the other for a sin offering.  In this way the priest will make atonement for her, and she will be clean."'"

In a blatant but casual manner, Leviticus 12:6-8 absolutely does call for the woman herself, not her husband or any male biological relative such as her father or brother, to pay for and bring the animal as her offering.  Whether the woman (as with any other man or woman bringing a sacrifice) bought the animal with money specifically for this purpose or selected an animal from those she already possessed, she is the one who can afford the creature.  She has her own resources or means of obtaining them.  If she cannot personally afford the initially required animal, she is to substitute a pair of the specified clean birds [1].

In fact, nowhere in the entirety of Leviticus 12 is any husband mentioned.  Alive or dead, married to the woman or not, the father of the son or daughter is simply not referenced.  This is not unusual since the context is about how a woman who has given birth was to ceremonially cleanse herself under the active Levitical priesthood.  It still reinforces that the focus really is on the woman from the birth to her offerings in accordance with what she can afford.

This does not mean that if the woman is in a committed relationship and especially if the man is the father, the husband/boyfriend should never offer to help with the cost of the animal or the woman automatically sins by asking for such assistance.  She is the only one who has to present the offering because her birth-related ceremonial uncleanness is what the offering is for, something tied to female biology (not psychological stereotypes about either women or men), though the husband is still morally free to accompany her.  This is actually the case with Mary and Joseph in Luke 2:22-24 (also given direct attention verse 27).  Both go to Jerusalem for this purpose.

But the woman is clearly not prescribed financial dependence upon her husband or any other man.  The wording here, along with that of other passages expressly mandating that women make restitution (Numbers 5:5-7) or give their own animal sacrifices (Leviticus 15:28-30, Numbers 5:5-10, Numbers 6:1-2 with 9-18), is very plain about this being her responsibility and, in turn, the woman having access to animals or her own money to purchase them with.  For still other affirmations of the moral legitimacy of women having their own property according to the Law, see verses like Numbers 27:5-8, Deuteronomy 15:12-14, and Deuteronomy 24:17.  Luke 15:8-10 in the New Testament, moreover, features a woman's personal property ownership as a fundamental component of one of Christ's parable.

Also, even as women are not prescribed financial dependence on a male relative or significant other, they are not forced to grapple with crushing poverty while making inflexibly expensive purification offerings regardless of their relationship status.  There is the permissible option of making a less costly offering, a pair of doves or pigeons in place of a lamb in the case of Leviticus 12:6-8.  Leviticus 14:21-22 addresses flexibility in making an offering to be fully ceremonially cleansed in the instance of certain skin conditions, while Leviticus 5:6-13 goes two layers deep into the reduced requirements for what to bring to the priest.  The poverty of a man or woman was never to be a total obstacle to either ceremonial purification or atoning for moral misdeeds.

No one sins by seeking or having financial autonomy, irrespective of their marital status.  Gender certainly has nothing to do with this logically or Biblically.  Men and women alike are ethically allowed to pursue property of their own, given that it is not something morally illegitimate as with an idol for worship, and men and women alike were to make offerings from their own resources during the active Levitical priesthood.  Financial independence without extreme vulnerability is precisely what Leviticus 12:6-8 acknowledges is a woman's and by extension every person's right.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2025/04/the-offerings-of-poor.html

A Statement In Isolation

If someone said, "Michael never has a problem with angry outbursts," there is no singular thing that must be meant by the words, and not even simply due to the inherent arbitrariness of language (any word could have any meaning based on the speaker's intention).  Sometimes, when it comes to individual words or phrases, it is clear that a certain meaning is probable based upon societal norms of language and conversation.  There are two quite different things that the provided statement about Michael could literally suggest, however, even at a more straightforward level: either that Michael never struggles with angry outbursts or that he has no ideological or personal hesitation with expressing his anger openly and perhaps very loudly.  How different these two meanings are!

But how could one actually tell from the statement alone which meaning is intended?  I do not simply mean that one must look to logic in addition to the words so that in this exact way it is not the statement alone one is looking to (this is still obviously correct), but that one cannot tell at all from hearing or reading the words which meaning is more likely.  In this case, another statement must offer clarity, or one would have nothing to directly point to one intended meaning or the other.  Oh, you still cannot know what another person means even with elaboration from the speaker or in the case much less ambiguous statements, since someone's words ultimately mean whatever they mean by them, however pragmatically ineffective their communication might be in light of their community's linguistic norms.

Context is always necessary to illuminate statements like the one in view here about Michael not having a problem with getting angry.  More specifically, preceding or following statements are the best at providing whatever maximum degree of clarity language can convey (though without being telepathic, one still cannot know with absolute logical certainty what those statements mean rather than what they very much appear to mean).  When it comes to in-person communication or pre-recorded words as opposed to written words, additional factors like tone of voice can point towards layers of intended meaning like sarcasm or sincerity—it is just that this cannot eliminate all ambiguity.

So, according to the sentence in quotation marks, does Michael never outwardly erupt in anger or does he is prone to explode with anger?  It remains unclear to an extent with or without separate clarifying statements, but the sentence in isolation is incapable of even pointing to either aforementioned literal meaning.  The true flexibility of language is almost invisible to a person until they rationalistically assess the nature of language and certain individual statements, perhaps after reading or hearing specific phrasing that prompts them to see just how explicitly vague many statements actually are in isolation, including those about things besides hyper-abstract philosophical concepts.

The sentence about Michael not having a problem with angry outbursts is but one example of something relevant to all communication using language, something more overt in some instances than in others.  You cannot truly know someone else's meaning from their words alone.  With examples like the statement about Michael, you cannot know from the words which particular meaning is even most probable!  The meaning of its own words is the only linguistic meaning a being not connected to other minds would ever have total access to.  Pay attention to the words others use without making assumptions, and example after example should manifest before long.