Simulation Hypothesis: Hints Of Theism

Many in our time have begun to think that perhaps the universe our senses perceive is a sophisticated sensory simulation--an optical illusion of the greatest scale.  Neil deGrasse Tyson (or as I sometimes call him, Neil deGrasse Lie-son) stands among the scientists who believe this possibility is very probable.  Indeed, the notion is increasing in popularity and acceptance.  But here I will not address the plausibility of this idea or launch into a detailed explanation of why we cannot confirm or refute such a concept.  Instead, I want to explain some rather overt similarities between the simulation hypothesis and theism.

The simulation hypothesis refers to the hypothetical idea that the external world we perceive is merely an illusion projected by someone in the real external world.  This could mean that I am a brain in a vat [1] with wires attached to me and a scientist or a group of them using the wires to simulate my sensory sensations that I am sitting down and writing this blog post, that I am in the Matrix having my energy depleted and harvested by sentient robots, that I am aboard an alien vessel as aliens confuse my senses to make me think I am elsewhere in the material world, that a powerful demon like the one imagined by Descartes is distorting my sensory perceptions, or it could refer to some other comparable scenario.

The intriguing similarity shared by all forms of theism and the simulation hypothesis is that, in both, the external world we perceive was designed by something outside our senses, fashioned for the intent of the creator(s).  In our modern age the simulation hypothesis, like the multiverse, is sometimes invoked as the reason the universe appears so precisely designed.  With a simulated universe, however, one does not need to credit God as being directly responsible for the illusions we perceive, as most versions of this hypothesis have creatures or beings within the actual material world responsible for our sensory deceptions.  Though the idea of a sensory simulation could explain why we perceive the universe as it seems to be, it cannot explain the existence of the objective external world from which the illusion is foisted upon us.

Of course, even if I am in a simulation created by robots or aliens or scientists, whatever material world exists--be it the one I perceive or one I am unaware of--must still have a finite past, thus by necessity needing an absolute beginning and therefore an external cause [2].  And, ultimately, any simulation hypothesis is both unverifiable and unfalsifiable, at least at this point in the development of human epistemology.  But at the core of their ideas, the simulation hypothesis and theism are actually quite similar, for both posit a designer and both hold that the external world we perceive was created with an absolute beginning.  Though few seem to connect theism with the concept of a simulated universe, the simulation hypothesis certainly contains hints of theism.


[1].  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/12/brain-in-vat.html

[2].  Someone can know with absolute certainty--with no way he or she is wrong--that any possible universe must have a beginning by using logic and math, both of which contain principles that are knowable a priori; that is, for certain components of them nothing more than brief rational reflection is required to understand the proof.  It is absolutely possible count down from 5 to 0.  This is obvious.  A person could even count down from 6,000 or 13,000,000,000 (both the general opposing estimates of the age of the universe from different ideologies) to 0, even if it takes a monstrous amount of time.  But no one can count down from infinity to 0 because it is impossible to do so without a fixed starting point.  Otherwise the person would be forever counting and never reach 0.  In the same way, it is impossible for any possible universe to not have a beginning because the present moment of time could never arrive.  Nothing could ever happen in a universe with an infinite past because there would be no starting point to reach any particular event or moment from.  Because the material world--the natural world--had a beginning and nothing can be responsible for its own creation, since self-creation is impossible because something would have to exist before it existed in order to create itself, the cause of the cosmos must by definition and logical necessity be supernatural.

The Bible Never . . .

The Bible never denies that women stand alongside men as intellectual and social equals, never implying that they bear less of God's image than the gender that has so often exploited them throughout history.  Unfortunately, many are lost in ignorance concerning what the Bible actually states about women and their intrinsic value.  An objective investigation into Mosaic Law and other portions of the Bible will liberate one from false ideas about how the Bible views women--and this is needed desperately in our culture.

I have written before about how Mosaic Law protects women from crimes with complete legal equality to men [1], how "modesty" teachings for women are asinine nonsense [2], and that women are ontologically equal to men because they bear God's image just as much as males do (see [1] again).  Anyone familiar with my blog knows I have attacked sexism on multiple occasions, as I ferociously despise it--and the Bible does as well.  I have needed to post more about this, and because of a conversation with a friend yesterday I wanted to list many of the things the Bible does not teach.

Let people see that the Bible does not oppress women in a variety of ways people sometimes assume.  The Bible, in Mosaic Law and elsewhere--in either the prophetic books or the New Testament, never:


Teaches that women are ontologically inferior to men.

Excludes the testimony of women from civil or criminal trials.

Denies legal equality between women and men.

Says that fathers deserve more respect than mothers [3].

Disqualifies women from being prophets of Yahweh or evangelists.

Forbids women from studying Scripture along with men.

Shows Jesus refuse to minister to women.

Confines women to their homes.

Prohibits women from working outside the home.

Restricts women to being either mothers or sexual objects.

Mandates segregation of the sexes--in the workplace, church, or general society.

Condemns or even cautions against deep, intimate friendship between both genders [4].

Instructs men to fear women or treat them with suspicion.

Prescribes forced marriages for women.

Commands that women cover their bodies to a certain degree, either to prevent objectification or rape or for any other reason [2].

Blames women for being sexually assaulted [5].

Treats female sexual consent as trivial or unnecessary [6].

Oppresses or demonizes the female body or sexuality.

Ignores that women are sexual beings just like men [7].


In short, the Bible never teaches many of the erroneous sexist or misogynistic things sometimes ascribed to it by either the church or the secular world.


[1].  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/bible-on-gender-equality.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-folly-of-modesty-part-1.html

[3].  See Exodus 21:15 and 21:17, for instance.  These verses alone prove that mothers were to be honored by children just as much as fathers.

[4].  See:
  A.  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/08/opposite-gender-friendships-part-1.html
  B.  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/09/opposite-gender-friendships-part-2.html

[5].  The Bible does the exact opposite.  See Deuteronomy 22:25-27.

[6].  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/does-biblical-god-care-about-consent.html

[7].  I really need to post about this soon, as the evangelical world is immersed in deep ignorance about and horrendous denial of this.

Happy Birthday, Sir Isaac Newton!

Today is the day I upload my 100th post to this blog.  Today is also the birthday of an incredible person, but not necessarily the one many Christians associate with December 25.  Responsible for the discovery of the complex mathematical discipline called calculus, basic rules of motion, and information about gravity--and for writing literature about Biblical eschatology--Isaac Newton was indeed an impactful figure, born on December 25, the very day westerners celebrate Christmas on.  Well, that date depends on the calendar used.

Anyway, most historians seem to concur that Jesus was not born on what is now referred to as Christmas Day.  It appears he entered the world sometime in the spring, or even later according to some calculations.  This need not prevent Christians from enjoying the cultural association of Christmas with Christianity, for it provides a recognized time to potentially celebrate Christ, but there is little to no historical or Biblical basis for thinking Jesus was actually born on the 25th of December.  But Christians do need to stop believing that Jesus was born on the day that they exchange gifts in his name.  Come to think of it, they also need to stop believing that there is anything intrinsically unchristian or disgusting about saying "Happy holidays!" instead of "Merry Christmas!"  Really, Christians need to stop believing a lot of things.  But that's for another time.

Merry Christmas!

"My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge": The Stupefying Ignorance Of Average Churchgoers

Churchgoers, on average, can't articulate, defend, or verify their beliefs in any meaningful or compelling way.  Ask those outside the church.  Atheists and scientists have known this for a long time, but Christians seem highly reluctant to acknowledge it.  Those who have read my blog and noticed its title The Christian Rationalist will know that I have an epistemology and theological conclusions that are extremely different than what one will find in the worldviews of most Christians.  Amusingly, because of this, sometimes Christians have tried to oppose my priorities or my conclusions.  In the past few years, I've had a Christian yell at me publicly outside of a restaurant for insisting that other Christians focus on intellectual matters and try to learn their Bibles better, I've had another Christian outright deny that Christians are generally ignorant of logic and philosophically naive and unsophisticated, and I've had numerous other Christians scold me for my relentless and overt emphasis on intellectualism and knowledge.

Interestingly, the Bible itself notes that this is not a new phenomenon, as something in Hosea remains very applicable to the modern situation.


Hosea 4:6--". . . my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge."


Regardless of any denial of the widespread ignorance of the Bible and logic one may find in the church, this verse perfectly describes what I think when I converse with most Christians around me, irrespective of what particular church they go to.  I find it fascinating--and very damn frustrating--that Christians so often have no idea what the Bible itself teaches specifically and verifiably about certain issues and ideas, or almost anything at all.

This penetrating and entrenched ignorance can be easily confirmed.  Simply enter a church on Sunday morning or Wednesday evening and just ask people questions.  You don't even need to ask how they know the Bible or Christianity is true (or how they know God exists, which is a wholly separate issue).  To highlight the lack of simple Biblical knowledge--knowledge of the very book they claim to revere and ascribe to God himself, just inquire into what they believe the Bible teaches about hell, morality, justice, God, the alleged Trinity, and many other things.  One doesn't even need to ask questions about logic, epistemology, or external philosophy to expose the disease of ignorance common in the church.  When asked where the Bible teaches the beliefs that they cling to so passionately and personally and proclaim so loudly and inadequately in our culture they will probably say things like:


"Well, I don't know the verses, but I know my position is Biblical."

"That's a good question.  I need to study this topic more."

"Go ask (my pastor, my friend, etc).  He/she knows this far better than me."

"Ultimately, I/we just have to believe this conclusion is true."

"I've never really thought much about this."

"This isn't a 'salvation issue', so don't get too concerned with it."


See how utterly disappointing and terrifying this is?

If this is the general state of the minds of churchgoers, then it is no wonder that when people ask things like "Does the Bible say torture is wrong?", "Is the Trinity taught in the Bible?", "What does the Bible say about evangelism?", "Is it a sin to have close friendships with members of the opposite gender?", "Is the book of Revelation literal or not?", or "Is this position on pre-marital sex biblical?", there is no consensus, no ability to quickly recite memorized passages or at least passage numbers, no starting from foundational principles and working upwards from there, and often no certainty.  In most cases, at best they will possibly recall a cliche verse that even nonbelievers are familiar with or a vague one few are familiar with and then try to force an extrapolated or irrelevant idea into it or out of it.  This is why people in churches will usually respond when questioned with appeals to ignorance, emotion, authority, popularity, tradition, novelty; this is why they will usually beg the question and resort to circular reasoning; this is why one finds so many non-sequiturs and red herrings and contradictions in their answers and justifications.  The fallacies can seem endless!  The complications only amplify when these ignorant masses base their own beliefs largely on intuition, the teachings of others, personal "convictions", and assumed premises.

All of this is merely one horrifying symptom of the latent anti-intellectualism and alogical priorities in the church at large.  When Christians rarely use reason to defend Christianity or try to learn and know the evidence supporting it, it does not surprise me when they interpret the Bible or hold to particular theological beliefs in the same way.  The sloppiness and fallacies and ignorance of the former are simply carried over and inherited into the latter.  Many things believed and practiced by the modern evangelical church are nothing but baseless ideas that either are demonstrably false or plain unverifiable, certainly foreign to the Bible itself and to logic, which is responsible for enabling us to even understand what the Bible says to begin with.  Reason and applied use of reason (to investigations of the Bible, for instance) alone can reverse this, but ignoring the mounting problems with the ability and willingness of many churchgoers to articulate and defend ideas will not reassure or save or comfort anyone.

The church is perishing for lack of knowledge, its faults and intellectual stupor and ignorance obvious to almost all but protested and corrected by few.  Will it wake up to the screams of concerned people inside and outside of the church?  Or will it continue to neglect the alarms and remain drowsy and lost?

Brief Reflection On Definitions

How crucial are correct or precise definitions?  Very.  But can we know truths even apart from definitions?  Certainly.

It is vital to adequately define terms during debate, personal reflection, and less formal philosophical and theological conversation because otherwise people may equivocate terms, use contrary words interchangeably, or become confused due to use of the same word in different contexts without signaling a change in intended meaning.  If I did not know what I mean when I use the words "God", "morality", "epistemology", and "philosophy", I would not be capable of conveying positions on these things to others.  For instance, in a debate about God's existence, the definition of God employed is of the utmost significance to the discussion because that definition will set the parameters and goal of the debate.  If one party is trying to prove a timeless being exists which is responsible for the creation of the universe and the other party is arguing that there is no such thing as a deity like Ares (who in Greek mythology are not responsible for creation and are not even immaterial or invulnerable to wounds), each side is referring to very different deities.  This hinders conversation and debate and can immensely frustrate both parties.

However, despite the necessity and cruciality of consistent and precise definitions in dialogues, an individual can fully comprehend a concept without ever knowing the definition philosophers or historians or theologians or scientists would ascribe to it.  Before I knew what the words relativism, objectivism, axiom, logical fallacy, absurdism, Occam's razor, empirical testing, and counterfactual meant, I knew the concepts already.  I simply did not know them by their proper philosophical names.  In a world without verbal or written language, I would still know or at least could still discover what these concepts are.  Without definitions or language one may not be able to communicate ideas or thoughts about particular concepts but humans could still know the ideas themselves.

Words are, after all, a purely social construct, even if language itself was created by God.  However, the concepts words are used to express are absolute, objective, and unchanging, not the words themselves.  Definitions are indispensable for communication and conversation but wholly unnecessary for individuals to just know or reflect on concepts.  Define terms well when talking with others, but contemplate known ideas themselves when in solitude.

Game Review--God of War III Remastered (PS4)

"My vengeance ends now."
--Kratos, God of War III

"Zeus!  Your son has returned.  I bring the destruction of Olympus!"
--Kratos, God of War III

"Hope is what makes us strong.  It is why we are here.  It's what we fight with when all else is lost."
--Pandora, God of War III


Few games can rival the sheer spectacle of the God of War games, and few games within the series can rival the spectacle of God of War III.  Marking the end of a fantastic trilogy, God of War III offers more developed gameplay than its predecessors, though the gameplay refinements are unfortunately accompanied by one of the most simplistic stories in the entire franchise.  However, the vicious combat and magnificent aesthetics overshadow the lack of narrative complexity.  It is my pleasure review of one of the most epic and brutal games I have completed in a long time.  As is the case with my other game reviews that feature photos, all screenshots featured are my own.


Production Values

Incredible graphics make this game an amazing visual feast.  This was a game initially released in 2010, yet it still has better looks than some modern games!  Some scenes are breathtaking, with the graphics accentuating the epic nature of the major fights.  Still, the game is a remaster of a PS3 game that appears on the PS4, and thus it occasionally shows its age through outdated smoke effects.  The smooth frame rate holds consistently even in the presence of many enemy units, the detail clarity is very thorough, and the colors can be quite vibrant.

The soundtracks for almost every God of War game are fantastic, this one included.  Almost every soundtrack in the series has a particularly epic and appropriate track, with Ascension's being Warrior's Truth and God of War's being the title theme.  A standout track here is Brothers of Blood, the music accompanying the climactic boss battle with Zeus himself.  The track title makes it seem this would play during the fight with Hercules who actually is the brother (or half-brother) of Kratos, but it does not.

The voice actors did a fine job with their roles, but I want to comment on one of the actor's in particular.  Kevin Sorbo, the man who actually played the cliched atheist professor in God's Not Dead, voices the character of Hercules.  I found this odd and satisfying because he is such a vocal Christian.  Well, at least I'm not the only Christian who has involved himself with the series in some way!


Gameplay

The classic series gameplay is preserved and refined slightly.  Killing mythological creatures is addictive and the controls are simple, as in past entries.  The boss fights and quick-time events will almost certainly entertain series lovers, who have come to expect the signature brutality and spectacle of the franchise from each new release.  Some of the most brutal finishers in the entire series are found in this title.  God of War III even offers players a rare treat: the opportunity to fight bosses that are far more massive than entire regions in other games, something that can be quite a sight to behold!  Unlike prior games, though, magic attacks are tied to particular weapons, meaning you cannot unleash your favorite magic attack without equipping a specific weapon.  Still, the combat is fierce and brutal, whether or not players rely on magic.

The remastered PS4 edition of the game contains an additional unlockable costume for Kratos and an extra set of challenges within the Challenge of Exile.  Previously, these were DLC add-ons, but the remastered version has them from the beginning.  This provides some additional playtime--but no new trophies.

Story

God of War chronology:
1. God of War: Ascension (PS3)
2. God of War: Chains of Olympus (PSP, PS3)
3. God of War (PS2, PS3, PS Vita)
4. God of War: Ghost of Sparta (PSP, PS3)
5. God of War II (PS2, PS3, PS Vita)
6. God of War III (PS3, PS4)
7. God of War (currently unreleased; PS4)


Out of all three of the main God of War games, God of War III has the weakest and simplest story.  Chains of Olympus has an even weaker story due to a large absence of dialogue of any kind (perhaps because many of the Olympian deities and humans were sleeping because of Morpheus?), but God of War and God of War II certainly had more complex and creative tales than the final installment in the central trilogy [1].  This game is practically just a portrayal of the final hours of Mount Olympus as Kratos slaughters almost everything that happens to stand between him and Zeus.  Now, the simplicity of the story does not mean it does not contain highly EPIC set pieces.

(SPOILERS BELOW!!)

Starting immediately where the second game ended, chaos engulfs Mount Olympus.  The three brothers Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades stand alongside Helios and Hermes at the top of Olympus as they watch the massive Titans scale the mountain, carrying Kratos with them.  The introductory cinematic is just a next-gen (when the game was initially released anyway) reimagining of the final cinematic in God of War II, and the same dialogue is included.  Kratos, from the shoulder of Gaia, yells to Zeus that he will destroy Olympus, then engages in a widespread rampage as he commits gratuitous deicide and homicide, targeting Poseidon, Helios, Hades, Hermes, Hercules, Cronos, Hephaestus, Hera, and many smaller individuals in between, slaughtering centaurs, minotaurs, Titans, and gorgons as he travels to different locations.

Within half an hour Poseidon is defeated, with Poseidon's death triggers flooding and waves as Kratos continues undeterred by the loss of life this causes.  Each death of a deity brings about some comparable type of devastation on the world.  The death of Helios plunges the world into darkness; the killing of Hades releases souls from the underworld.  As expected by now, Kratos remains undeterred by the catastrophes his actions directly cause.

Athena has returned from a higher plane of existence and enlightenment following her death to guide Kratos, telling him that humanity cannot prosper as long as Zeus lives.  This represents an explicit change in her ideology since at the end of God of War II she told Kratos that he must not destroy Zeus because such a deed would destroy Olympus.

As Kratos approaches a contraption known as Daedalus' Labyrinth, the story begins to emphasize the them of hope.  A character called Pandora--named after the box that Kratos retrieved in the first game--embodies this virtue and reminds Kratos that hope empowers when nothing else can.  This marked a strange message for a God of War title, yet it becomes more prominent as the game reaches its finale.  The player can locate notes of Daedalus which chronicle his construction of the impressive Labyrinth, similar to how in the first game one could find notes from Pathos Verdes III, the creator of Pandora's Temple atop the back of Cronos.

Of course, eventually Kratos confronts Zeus himself.  After the first phase of the climactic fight with Zeus Kratos goes outside and witnesses the immense destruction he has caused--flooding, storms, darkness, cyclones, souls flying freely in the air.  At this point the game almost echoes aspects of the original's ending.  In one of the stages in the fight with Zeus, Kratos fights multiples of Zeus just as he fought many incarnations of himself at the end of the first game in the trilogy.  After killing Zeus Kratos completes what he attempted at the conclusion of the first game: he stabs himself with a mammoth blade, seemingly killing himself.

Morpheus, Artemis, and Aphrodite are all gods mentioned or shown in the series that escape death, but it is unclear what fate awaits them in a world without Olympus.

Intellectual Content

As usual, puzzles are present and some of them surpass almost any puzzles previously introduced in the series.  Hera's Garden houses one of the most inventive puzzles I've seen in a God of War game.  Stair steps are sprawled flat on the ground at weird angles and the environment seems very bizarre until the player activates an amulet that lifts the camera to a specific aerial position and allows Kratos to walk up the grounded steps, as they now appear to lead upward into geometric pathways that are inaccessible without the amulet's presence.

Hope is indeed the major theme here.  Pandora personifies this idea, challenging Kratos when he says that hope is for the weak by stating that it is all that we have to fight with sometimes.  The inclusion of this theme is remarkable, as it contrasts with the unparalleled destruction caused during the game.  After the death of Zeus, when Athena seeks to release hope to the remnants of humankind, even Kratos thinks that her message is no good with so many dead.  I wish the creators of the game had more thoughtfully developed this concept into something far more dramatic and philosophical than they did.

As I mentioned before, Athena becomes an entity with "higher existence."  Does that mean the other dead gods like Hades and Helios can attain this status as well?  The game never answers this or even asks the question, but it does leave open the possibility of an appearance by the gods in the unreleased future God of War game.  The fact that Athena defended Zeus at the end of God of War II before her death and then helped Kratos kill him because he threatened the wellbeing of humanity--the change arising because she had reached the higher existence after death and now had access to previously unknown truths--highlights that the Greek deities in the game and the mythology it is based on have human limitations and thus are not gods at all in the traditional theistic sense.

At the end of his character arc for the series--at least until the future soft reboot set amidst Norse mythology is released--Kratos has become a being so fixated on selfishness and vengeance that very little seems to exist within him but egoism and malevolence.  In the first God of War, an oracle of Athens looks in his mind and sees "a beast as well as a man"; in this game, the inner beast seems to have come very close to extinguishing all of his humanity, although occasional moments reveal that at least a small ember of humanity remains.  Despite his egoism and psychopathy, sometimes he does expose a buried part of him that slightly resembles his former humanity.  Kratos pauses when Hephaestus mentions that he must know what it is like to care for a child; though Hephaestus was trying to get him to empathize with his own loss of Pandora, Kratos almost certainly thought of his own daughter Calliope whom he accidentally killed years ago.  He protects Pandora, converses with her gently, and seems to fiercely protest when Zeus grabs her, screaming "PUT HER DOWN!"


However, Kratos' savagery is unparalleled here.  In God of War III he gratuitously kills wounded and defenseless beings like Helios--as they even wonder aloud how killing them would assist him in his quest to kill Zeus.  He repeatedly strikes his father Zeus with great force, not out of self-defense but out of deep malicious rage borne from desire for revenge, and in fact the player can decide at one point how many blows to direct at Zeus' face, with the pummeling continuing until the player stops pressing the circle button.  This means that Kratos could relentlessly assault Zeus for hours if the player does not end the sequence by releasing the circle button and not pressing it anymore.

As Kratos kills various deities, causing destructive cataclysms within nature that correspond to the respective domain of each deity, the planet itself is punished for his actions.  When Athena's spirit informs Kratos that all of humanity suffers under this massive destruction, he expresses his near total apathy towards the plight of the other people.  In Chains of Olympus he says "I care little for the world and its suffering!" just before he chooses to save the world.  This time, he does not bother to be so noble.  Helios, the sun god, offers to honor Kratos for previously saving his life (in Chains of Olympus) and states that his death will not further Kratos' revenge towards Zeus, yet Kratos still proceeds to rip his head off of his body.  After he cuts off one of Hermes' legs, Kratos ignores the pleas of Hermes and cuts off his remaining leg to take his boots.  Cronos too asks Kratos to spare him after he severely wounded the Titan, but Kratos kills him anyway.  He uses Gaia and the other Titans as mere tools to facilitate his own vengeance, disregarding them at his whim, and even openly admits to Pandora and Athena on separate occasions that he shouldn't be trusted.  It is also discovered throughout the game that Hephaestus lives submerged beneath the earth with his daughter Pandora separated from him because of Kratos, though this is something he is not directly responsible for.  A note from the sea captain in the hydra's mouth that Kratos killed in the first game indicates the captain's disgust with Kratos for cruelly killing him in God of War and then hurling him back into the underworld in God of War II.  Another note possibly written by Kratos' mother says she failed to teach him right from wrong.

In short, I have never seen a video game so dramatically and honestly depict the results that arise when someone devotes their whole being to vengeance and the self and nothing more.  The God of War series was never just a sadistic excuse to show extreme violence.  It does at times have a much deeper and more complex and tragic story, protagonist, and setting than many people acknowledge.  The series is renowned for being an awe-inspiring visualization of Greek mythology and for pushing the boundaries of almost every system it has appeared on, from the PS2 to the PSP to the PS3, as well as for its mastery of hack-and-slash gameplay.


Conclusion

In a post-credits scene, a foreshadowing shot reveals that Kratos crawled away from the area where he stabbed himself, an area subtly--or not so subtly--marked with an image of a Phoenix on the ground.  A trail of blood indicates that Kratos has left the vicinity and at least was alive long enough to move away.  Now, in the summer of this year, an upcoming God of War title was brought to the attention of the gaming world.  A gameplay video surfaced.  Kratos has survived, and now he has a son.  He is far calmer and more patient.  Will he kill the Norse gods and goddesses?  Has he been transformed by the hope he unleashed?  Will he turn away fully from his past lifestyle of chaos?  No one but the developers will know until some time has elapsed.

For those who played and loved the other games in the series, this one contains awesome references to their events, with lines by Poseidon and Zeus referencing the destruction of Atlantis and Kratos' brother respectively (Ghost of Sparta), a verbal mention by Helios of how Kratos saved Helios from Atlas (Chains of Olympus), a note from the captain of the ship attacked by the hydras recalling something in the first game, and more.  Locations themselves sometimes recall memories of the past games.  In one part of the quest, Kratos visits the Gates of Tisiphone, named after one of the three Furies he kills in Ascension.  It's great to find these references so expertly placed (though, of course, Ascension actually came out after this game did).

God of War III certainly surpasses most games of its generation graphically and technically.  Its sense of scale is perhaps unparalleled.  It is not as short of a game as Chains of Olympus or Ghost of Sparta.  It has plenty of bonus features and unlockables.  It may have a weak story compared to its predecessors in the trilogy but it does show a satisfying end to the main series while hinting at future sequels.  As the remastered version for PS4 includes DLC and slightly enhanced graphics and frame rate, it is the ideal way to play the game for those who missed it on the PS3.

After beating the game, I am thankful that Christianity presents a worldview entirely antithetical the ones portrayed in God of War III and that it is where the evidence leads.  But the different worldview did not hinder my ability to enjoy the game for the graphical and gameplay masterpiece it is.  I would recommend this game without hesitation for all who love epic action games and Greek mythology.

Now I'm awaiting the next installment with its Norse mythology and new story!


Content
1. Violence:  Kratos can use generic enemies as battering rams, rip them in half, and hurl them.  Set pieces involving larger boss fights include quick-time events where Kratos might pull of someone's head, cut off legs, impale them, or pummel them repeatedly.  Unless one is gutting a centaur general or cutting through the stomach of Cronos, though, there is little depiction of gore, but always plenty of blood.  Sometimes the blood will cover Kratos while he is fighting enemies.
2. Profanity:  Cronos uses a few words our culture would consider profanity during the boss fight where Kratos kills him.
3. Sexuality:  There are two opportunities to engage in a sex minigame with Aphrodite.  The actual sex occurs offscreen, softening the scene somewhat.  Both times the player does not have to choose to play the minigame and can continue walking elsewhere.
4. Nudity:  Gorgons have exposed breasts and Aphrodite, her two female companions, and Poseidon's "princess" do too.


[1].  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/game-review-god-of-war.html

Theistic Absurdism

Theistic absurdism is the natural intellectual result of all theism apart from special revelation from a deity--not that many theists throughout history have realized or acknowledged this.  The only possible solution to absurdism [1] is knowledge that a god alone can imbue life with objective meaning, yet absolute certainty that there is a god--and therefore that objective meaning and purpose can be ontologically grounded in something that does exist--does not in any way mean that we can know what that meaning is.  In fact, theism, apart from divine revelation other than natural theology, will inescapably lead to theistic absurdism. 

Absurdism does not deny meaning and morality; instead it holds that we cannot know what these things are due to inherent limitations in our epistemology and awareness, and that this ignorance makes life absurd.  Absurdism is not nihilism, as the former holds that we cannot know what is objectively meaningful, while nihilism denies that anything is meaningful at all.  And the former is where reason leads apart from divine revelation.

This is the natural end of life without special divine revelation in the form of something like the Bible or Quran.  Reason alone can prove the finite nature of the past and that therefore the universe began to exist and requires an external cause.  Reason alone can prove that there is no such thing as morality or justice or beauty or meaning unless a god exists.  Reason alone can prove that since there is an external uncaused cause of the material universe, morality and meaning can exist and be grounded in this cause if it is personal.  However, even knowing that objective morality, beauty, and meaning exist or could exist does nothing to tell me what specifics are contained in each category.  If I know good and evil exist, does that knowledge alone reveal to me what acts are evil and which are obligatory?  Does that inform me what wrongs should be punished as a crime by the state and what the just punishments are?  Does that tell me how to respond to an overwhelming ethical dilemma?  "No" is the sole legitimate answer to each of these questions.  If I know a god exists, does that mean this being loves me?  That doesn't logically follow.  Does this being necessarily wish to reveal itself more intimately to humans?  No.

Theism or deism alone will always be accompanied by skepticism about values if there is no additional revelation to communicate the specifics and generalities of the morality grounded in God.  Without specific divine revelation, we are only left with nothing but subjective perceptions regarding ethics, aesthetics, and existential significance, and thus we have no idea if our perceptions align with reality--and someone who desires certainty will despise this.  That is the inescapable end of the intellectually honest theist or absurdist who does have a basis for commitment to a particular religion.  Such a person is brought by logic to the admission that he or she does not know what good and evil are, what beauty and ugliness are, what is meaningful, what actions or goals have objective purpose, and what particular religious claims are correct.  This creates a vacuum of certainty and can destroy someone's will to live or discover further truths.

Terror, skepticism, ignorance, and subjectivity are what await anyone who is a mere theist.  This is an unpopular conclusion, but it follows with absolute logicality.  There is no actual basis for values in mere theism.  For values, something far more specific is necessary.  Of course, many people believe in ideas or concepts that give them hope even though they have no idea if those beliefs are true.  This is rationally unacceptable.  Though I am currently a rationalistic Christian, I've experienced the emptiness of a fitheistic blind faith and the despair of ordinary theism.  Neither can produce genuine hope constructed on knowledge and certainty.

The end of general theism is theistic absurdism.  Indeed, it is all that awaits us in the absence of more specific divine revelation.


[1].  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/09/on-absurdism.html

"We are getting what our deeds deserve": A Refutation Of The Thief On The Cross

Luke 23:39-41--"One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: 'Aren't you the Christ?  Save yourself and us!'  But the other criminal rebuked him.  'Don't you fear God,' he said, 'since you are under the same sentence?  We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve.  But this man has done nothing wrong.'"


The thief who spoke these words, called Dismas by some, uttered this sentence with great difficulty as he struggled to breathe, tortured and naked and nailed to a cross for the amusement and deterrence of others.  Did he deserve to be crucified?  Despite the fact that in Mosaic Law the Bible clearly and universally condemns tortures of the kind involved in Roman crucifixion, many Christians seem to think that crucifixion was just in the case of this thief.  Or, at least, I have rarely noticed any moral judgment of the Roman ideas of justice in sermons focusing on the contriteness and redemption of the thief.  In sermons and conversation about this stage of the gospel narratives, most Christians seem very concerned with emphasizing the innocence of Jesus and the significance of his crucifixion with regards to soteriology.  Sometimes speakers and authors will add that the thieves deserved their crucifixions in order to exalt Christ's innocence, refusing to acknowledge Biblical prescriptions about justice and the morality of particular punishments for crime and generally implying that God approved of their crucifixions but not that of Jesus.  And this is Biblically inexcusable, not to mention extremely fallacious.

I need to quickly summarize moral epistemology before I proceed.  Conscience is a purely subjective tool that, alone, proves nothing about the truth or falsity of a moral claim, and, since there can be no morality in a universe without a deity, as there would be no moral authority in its absence, God must reveal moral truths to humans for them to have moral knowledge (Romans 3:20, 7:7, 1 John 3:4, Deuteronomy 4:2).  Whether or not someone feels crucifixion is just or unjust has nothing to do with whether or not it is.  I will prove that the Bible condemns practically everything about Roman crucifixion.  But first, I will quote what others have said about the myth of deserved crucifixion.

I found this posted this online as part of a narrative take on the crucifixion of the repentant thief:


"In the eyes of the law I deserved that cross.

I caught a glimpse of the man I’d seen earlier along the road to the hill, the man who had caught me and had me arrested.
In his eyes I deserved that cross.

In my own eyes I deserved that cross [1]."


Another online author writes:


"Luke confirms this view when one of the crucified says, 'We are getting justice, since we are getting what we deserve. But this man has done nothing improper.' Jesus does not contradict him and say that crucifixion isn't just and no one deserves to be tortured. He doesn't say that the cause of Judean sovereignty is right. His answer is that today he'll be with him in a shaded garden – a Greek phrase meaning paradise.3 Jesus canonizes the rebel who says that Jesus was never one of them – Jesus never opposed Roman authority. Crucifixion isn't wrong per se, according to Jesus, but they have the wrong guy [2]."


I'm uncertain if this author truly knew at the time of writing this what crucifixion actually consisted of or what Mosaic Law allows and condemns, but if he didn't, then he is displaying extreme ignorance of Biblical justice.  God had already revealed what forms of torture are just and prohibited through Mosaic Law long before Jesus came, and crucifixion falls into the category of unjust, depraved penalties.  Besides, this is a purely fallacious argument from one instance of silence on Jesus' part when he was struggling under unspeakable torture himself.

About Barabbas, the man who would have been on Jesus' cross, people have written:


"Barabbas should’ve had the stripes across his back – he should’ve been the one who was bruised and beaten; he should’ve been the one dangling naked from that cross [3]."

"Nailed to a wooden pole, naked, you are left to die in agony, gasping for your every breath until you can breath no more. Sometimes when they are in a hurry, they smash your legs with hammers, so, no longer able to support yourself, you hang by the hands until you can no longer breathe. And in that filthy prison cell, that was the fate that awaited me. They wonder why we hate them.

How I hated the Romans!

. . . He was dying in my place. It should have been me on that middle cross [4]."

"Barabbas knew that he was guilty and that he had done crimes worthy of death. He knew that he deserved to go to that cross . . . [5]."


Still others have stated extremely alarming things:


"The punishment Jesus received is the punishment we deserve, judicially. This is an unequivocal truth of the New Testament. So while we may want to call boiling in oil or running people into hungry wild beasts things the Romans did unjustly and without warrant, the Gospel Paul preaches tells us without any question that the just punishment we deserve as sinners looks like what Jesus received at the hands of the Jews and the Romans — a bloody beating, a public humiliation, a painful suffering, and death.

You cannot deny that Paul says that this is the punishment we deserve [6]."


Whoever wrote this has committed many fallacies and exegetical errors in his efforts to arrive at this erroneous conclusion.  Paul not only never condoned the Roman justice system at all but, as a Jewish theonomist, he would have opposed Roman ideals.  Mosaic Law resolutely and constantly condemns the very things involved in Roman crucifixion, and the belief that the Bible teaches even once that anyone deserves crucifixion for his or her sins is utterly asinine.  To believe these things I have quoted is to believe in complete bullshit that is contrary to Biblical teachings, and what many of these quoted authors are teaching or suggesting is approval or tolerance of one of the most unethical things I can imagine on the Christian moral system.  I am enraged that a self-proclaimed Christian would say such things.

If the experience of the the thief resembled that of Jesus, then he had been flogged horrifically, stripped naked and physically assaulted by mocking soldiers, reclothed, degraded by having to carry his cross through a hostile crowd, escorted to his public execution site, stripped naked again by eager soldiers, hurled against his cross on the ground, nailed to the cross, hoisted up painfully, his bones grinding against the nails as his body adjusted to the excruciating suffering that would so intimately accompany him for the remainder of his life.  He desperately panted and lifted his body and dropped it in order to obtain new breaths.  His body had been violated not only by the intense torture beforehand but by the involuntary confiscation of his clothing.  If his experience resembled what Cicero, Josephus, and other authors noted about crucifixion, soldiers may have impaled parts of his body and tortured him further while he hung suspended on the cross.  Maybe his cross was outfitted with a sedile, a seat extension that would absorb his weight and prevent him from falling below a certain point, therefore extending his ordeal greatly.  Perhaps soldiers had even nailed his penis to the sedile, as some appear to believe happened at times.

Did he truly deserve the punishment he received?  Can it ever be right to beat people brutally with a cat o' nine tails and fists, expose their naked bodies against their will, batter them with fists, and then nail them to crosses to allow them to endure unspeakable agony for up to days?  Not according to the Bible.  I will confront the idea that the thief or Barabbas deserved this treatment (or that anyone does), demolish it by proving that it is entirely incompatible with what the Bible itself clearly teaches about justice, and show that pastors are careless at best or evil when they repeat or imply this fallacious and unbiblical conclusion.


Crucifixion was meted out upon thieves and bandits, but Exodus did not prescribe any form of physical punishment for theft, much less execution or crucifixion.

As a robber the thief would have stolen from people and likely assaulted some of them in the process.  Roman law fastened the penalty of crucifixion and all that it entailed to any robber or robberess (robberess is my title for female robbers) caught by authorities.  One of the most obvious proofs that the thief on the cross made a false statement when he claimed he and the crucified thief on the other side of Jesus deserved crucifixion is the fact that the Bible itself appoints a drastically different penalty for thieves.  Of course, crucifixion cannot be Biblically deserved by anyone at all even if the speculation were verified that the two criminals in question were not ordinary thieves but guilty of sedition or murder, as I will prove later.

In Luke 10 one can find an adequate description of what thieves in the Roman era would likely have done.


Luke 10:30--"In reply Jesus said: 'A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers.  They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead.'"


Now, below I have listed several verses detailing the authorized human punishments for these sins.


Exodus 22:1-4--"If a man steals an ox or a sheep and slaughters or sells it, he must pay back five head of cattle for the ox and four sheep for the sheep.  If a thief is caught breaking in and is struck so that he dies, the defender is not guilty of bloodshed; but if it happens after sunrise, he is guilty of bloodshed.  A thief must certainly make restitution, but if he has nothing, he must be sold to pay for his theft.  If the stolen animal is found alive in his possession--whether ox or donkey or sheep--he must pay back double."

Exodus 21:18-19--"If men quarrel and one hits the other with a stone or with his fist and he does not die but is confined to bed, the one who struck the blow will not be held responsible if the other gets up and walks around outside with his staff; however, he must pay the injured man for the loss of his time and see that he is completely healed."


The repentant thief crucified with Christ could not possibly have "deserved" his fate: according to God's own moral revelation about how to punish thieves and simple batterers, the repentant thief should have merely repaid his victims for any robbery or assault he committed against them.  The only kind of "thief" whom Scripture demands the execution of is someone who steals a man or woman (Exodus 21:16, Deuteronomy 24:7), not someone who steals mere property of any kind.  Numbers 5, Leviticus 6, and other verses in Exodus 22 clarify the penalty for thieves further.  How fucking ignorant does someone have to be to represent the Bible as supportive of the Romans crucifying thieves?

Though for some reason historians and theologians have often
specifically insisted that the Romans did not crucify women
(without offering any evidence whatsoever), Josephus, for
example, recorded otherwise.  His Antiquities of the Jews mentions
(18:3) that a woman named Ide was crucified at the order of
Tiberius.  I doubt the same pastors who preach that the thieves
crucified beside Christ deserved their torture would make the
same claim if the thieves had happened to be women.

(These two pictures are screenshots from Spartacus that I myself
took.  They show two female characters, Thessela and Kore
respectively, being crucified.)

Crucifixion was intended to be as artificially-prolonged and degrading as possible, with crucifixions lasting hours or days.  Mosaic Law prescribes capital punishments that directly prohibit such cruelty.

Deuteronomy 21:22-23--"If a man guilty of a capital offense is put to death and his body is hung on a tree, you must not leave his body on the tree overnight.  Be sure to bury him that same day, because anyone who is hung on a tree is under God's curse.  You must not desecrate the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance."


Mosaic Law permits the temporary hanging of a corpse on a tree after a criminal was executed, not methods of execution where a live person is nailed to a tree to suffer up to days of sleeplessness, severe sunburn, insect attacks, splinters from the cross, difficulty breathing, the cold of night, exhaustion, starvation, and deprivation of water, as well as the humiliation of forced nudity, having to urinate in a vulnerable position before groups of vicious mockers, and involuntary arousal of the sex organs.  Deuteronomy 21:22-23 does not condone crucifying someone and inflicting these tortures in the name of "justice".  On the contrary, it inescapably condemns doing so.


Deuteronomy 25:3--". . . but he must not give him more than forty lashes.  If he is flogged more than that, your brother will be degraded in your eyes."

Roman punishments were brutal and lacked regard for human rights
and the principles of ethics and justice revealed in Mosaic Law.  In
Rome one could be sentenced to damnatio ad bestias and be killed by
animals in the infamous Coliseum, crucified for the pleasure of
 a hostile crowd, or trapped inside a sack with various lethal
animals and thrown off of a high surface.

No punishment that degraded the offender is tolerated by Mosaic Law, as it in fact prohibits such penalties universally.  Even when sentencing murderers and murderesses and other capital criminals like kidnappers, rapists, sorceresses, capital perjurers and perjuresses, adulterers and adulteresses, people who strike their parents, and more, the Bible merely says to execute them and does not prescribe some horrifically torturous execution method, usually not even mentioning the form of death at all.

Some examples are below:


Exodus 21:12--"Anyone who strikes a man and kills him shall surely be put to death."

Exodus 21:15--"Anyone who attacks his father or his mother must be put to death."

Exodus 21:16--"Anyone who kidnaps another and either sells him or still has him when he is caught must be put to death."

Exodus 22:18--"Do not allow a sorceress to live."

Deuteronomy 22:25--"But if out in the country a man happens to find a girl pledged to be married and rapes her, only the man who has done this shall die."


As you can see, people were not to torture kidnappers, rapists, sorceresses, batterers of parents, and murderers and murderesses.  These criminals were to simply be executed.  These passages never say to take a capital criminal and beat, taunt, and degrade him or her by subjecting him or her to a prolonged, hellacious, belittling death that requires hours or days to fully unfold.  To do so would make the executioners monsters more depraved than practically any of the criminals they kill.  God is morally perfect and cannot instruct anyone to sin (James 1:13), and thus the penalties prescribed in Mosaic Law cannot be unjust (Hebrews 2:2), for any deviation from justice is injustice and injustice is an evil that God condemns repeatedly in Scripture.


Crucifixion was exclusively reserved for non-citizens of Rome.  This contradicts a central ethical principle found in Exodus and Leviticus.

Exodus 22:21--"Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt."

Exodus 23:9--"Do not oppress an alien; you yourselves know how it feels to be aliens, because you were aliens in Egypt."

Leviticus 24:22--"You are to have the same law for the alien and the native-born.  I am the Lord your God."


One of the great injustices and evils of Roman crucifixion was how Rome exclusively imposed it on those who were foreigners--those who had not been born a Roman citizen or paid money to obtain citizenship.  One of the benefits of citizenship was exemption from such horrific legal punishments.  The inconsistency and depravity of this is extremely apparent to anyone informed by Biblical ethics.  The Bible does not discriminate in punishment or in other ways against people of different ethnicities or nationalities, for all people bear God's image and have the same unalienable rights (Genesis 1:27).  Only a very stupid or very Biblically ignorant person would ever say otherwise, yet that is just what the idiots who defend Roman crucifixion do.


Crucifixion often followed unspeakably sadistic pre-crucifixion torture prohibited by the Bible such as perverse types of flogging, forced nudity, and physical assault and battery.  The flogging allowed by the Bible was explicitly limited to forty lashes or under and did not involve forced nudity, the cat o' nine tails, mocking, or physical assault and sexual harassment.

Matthew 27:26-31--"But he had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified.  Then the governor's soldiers took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole company of soldiers around him.  They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on his head.  They put a staff in his right hand and knelt in front of him and mocked him.  'Hail, king of the Jews!' they said.  They spit on him, and took the staff and struck him on the head again and again.  After they had mocked him, they took off the robe and put his own clothes on him.  Then they led him away to crucify him."


This malicious, perverse, cruel, and degrading behavior perfectly embodies what Roman soldiers were renowned for and expected to do.  This was what preparing someone for crucifixion likely appeared like on a regular basis.  Not only did they illicitly flog men and women before crucifying them, they engaged in horrendous abuse like the example described above.  Everything about this contradicts what the Bible teaches about how to punish criminals.


Deuteronomy 25:1-3--"If men have a dispute, they are to take it to court and the judges will decide the case, acquitting the innocent and condemning the guilty.  If the guilty man deserves to be beaten, the judge shall make him lie down and have him flogged in his presence with the number of lashes his crime deserves, but he must not give him more than forty lashes.  If he is flogged more than that, your brother will be degraded in your eyes."


Biblical flogging was never designed to injure or kill; it was never to exceed a fixed absolute limit; it was never to be paired with capital punishment for an agonizing double penalty; it was never intended or allowed to degrade the man or woman receiving lashes; it was not coupled with the sexual humiliation of forced nudity; it was not carried out away from the presence of the judge(s); it was not followed by physical battery with fists.  The only other instances where the Bible allows physical torture of any kind are found in Deuteronomy 25:11-12 and Exodus 21:23-25, with both passages permitting specified forms of permanent amputation of body parts for two particular crimes [7].


Exodus 21:18-19--"If men quarrel and one hits the other with a stone or with his fist and he does not die but is confined to bed, the one who struck the blow will not be held responsible if the other gets up and walks around outside with his staff; however, he must pay the injured man for the loss of his time and see that he is completely healed."


Roman soldiers could beat and physically abuse prisoners before their crucifixions as they did to Jesus.  This type of battery is itself punished in the Bible and is never prescribed as a just penalty, but is instead universally condemned.  If God condemns spontaneous battery during the context of a quarrel, he certainly condemns soldiers inflicting beatings on criminals and prisoners with their fists in addition to the illicit forms of flogging they carried out, especially when they derive actual pleasure and an arrogant sense of despicable pride from doing so.  No one deserves to be physically abused with this type of battery according to the Bible.  If a pastor attempts to justify these behaviors with some appeal to cultural relativism or utilitarian deterrence, he or she has ceased to correctly teach morality, and has embraced irrationality and extreme moral confusion.


Crucifixion could involve varying degrees of sexual abuse.  Anyone tortured by Roman soldiers faced possible rape before the nailing, and, at the very least, sexual violation in the form of forced nudity was part of the legal penalty.

Crucified men and women were suspended fully nude on their crosses.  There is nothing sinful about voluntarily displaying one's naked body in public (Genesis 2:25 with Genesis 1:31, Exodus 22:26-27, Isaiah 20:1-6, and so on), but to force someone to be naked is sinful and unjust, since it deviates from the standard of justice that corresponds to God's nature, the only moral authority, and since it degrades or aims to degrade the victim, which Deuteronomy 25:1-3 explicitly condemns.  Even worse, rape was possibly inflicted by the Roman torturers.  Recall the passage from Matthew cited above where the soldiers abused Jesus.  It seems they did not rape him according to that passage, but what of the other men and women sent to them?  If American men and women sexually tormented Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison facility and American prisons are known for housing rape and sexual abuse when America allegedly holds values that oppose these things, then I'm certain that Roman soldiers, who were known for rape and sadistic behavior and had no legal limitations imposed on their treatment of criminals and prisoners, had little against inflicting both forced sex and lesser sexual assaults on the criminals under their charge.

Deuteronomy makes it clear that no one deserves any form of sexual abuse and that sexual abusers of all kinds should be punished severely.  It prescribes the death penalty for all who force sex on others and even legislates that a woman's hand be cut off if she grabs a man's penis as part of a physical assault on him, even when she is attempting to save her husband from a fight.


Deuteronomy 22:25-27--"But if out in the country a man happens to meet a girl pledged to be married and rapes her, only the man who has done this shall die.  Do nothing to the girl; she has committed no sin deserving death.  This case is like that of someone who attacks and murders his neighbor, for the man found the girl out in the country, and though the betrothed girl screamed, there was no one to rescue her."


According to this passage alone, no one is to be raped--not thieves, enemies of the state, murderers, rapists, captives, or innocent people.  Regardless of the identity of the aggressor or the victim or the circumstances, rape is inexcusable.  All rape is like murder and all murder is prescribed execution (Exodus 21:12-14).  Considering the vicious behavior the gospel narratives and historical records ascribe to Roman soldiers, it is indeed very possible that they raped crucifixion victims prior to their execution.  Regardless of anyone's claimed justification for rape, God called it something at least equal to murder in its depravity and demanded the capital punishment of anyone who rapes another person.


Deuteronomy 25:11-12--"If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, you shall cut off her hand.  Show her no pity."


The assault described in Deuteronomy 25:11-12 is not intrinsically sexual, but it does follow that if the described assault is sinful then assaulting someone's genitals in other situations is also sinful.  If God specifically informed us to punish a woman for abusing or even seizing a man's penis to overpower him when that man is committing battery against her or her husband, he certainly would not approve of sadistic, psychopathic soldiers sexually exploiting the forced nudity of the men and women sent to them for preparation for their executions.  Punishment for all forms of sexual assault and abuse are demanded by Mosaic Law, not used as punishment for any crime.  I am enraged when pastors condemn voluntary nonsexual public nudity from their pulpits with their fallacious reasoning and poor exegesis of the Bible and then speak about how the thieves crucified with Jesus deserved their sentences, which included having their nudity forcibly exposed against their wills.  This is blatant hypocrisy and a logical inconsistency.  Anyone who would preach this is a damn fool.

These cinematic depictions of crucifixion for separate TV shows are
inaccurate.  Men and women crucified by the Romans were deprived
of their clothes and had their bodies forcibly exposed against their wills,
with the mandatory sexual humiliation compounding the torture.  It is
astonishing how many Christians agree with statements like "The thieves
on the cross deserved crucifixion"--knowingly or unknowingly condoning
forced nudity--while simultaneously holding to erroneous ideas that
 voluntary, nonsexual public nudity is a sin [8].

(These two pictures are screenshots from Spartacus and The Bible that I
myself took.)

Conclusion


Rome was a bastion of injustice, cruelty, barbarism, and and abuse.  I have rarely seen any Christians other than theonomists and reconstructionists condemn Roman punishments and the depravity of crucifixion, but the Bible itself contradicts those who say that the thieves crucified with Jesus "received what they deserved" on every level.  I did not merely conjure up a single verse or a set of verses from the New Testament commanding us to love our enemies and use it to attempt to formulate a speculative case against the supposed "justice" of Roman crucifixion; I have thoroughly demonstrated that Biblical morality and justice vomits out the belief that such a punishment could ever be just.  No one--not the thieves like those crucified beside Jesus or traitors or murderers or any other criminals--can deserve the vile mistreatment associated with Roman crucifixion.  The Bible and reason condemn pastors who insist otherwise.

It is very interesting that people who ignore Old Testament moral revelation in favor of that of the New Testament are usually far more willing to advocate the idea that the thieves who died beside Jesus deserved to be crucified, that eternal conscious torment is both just and Biblical, and that there are few objective moral guidelines that govern the administration of criminal punishment in the "New Testament era".  Theonomists strongly object to several of these beliefs, citing Old Testament ethical revelation.  As I proved, there is no Biblical basis for the cultural relativism concerning judicial punishments that some Christians remain comfortable with.  I remember years ago reading about contrary positions on the morality of crucifying the thieves, and I was horrified and infuriated that Christians of all people would ever defend such a cruel practice; now I see just how fallacious, erroneous, and evil such defenses of crucifixion are.


[1].  http://www.andybox.com/?page_id=396

[2].  http://thirdparadigm.org/doc_jesusrebelorimperialist.php

[3].  https://joshuarogers.com/2015/04/03/jesus-loved-barabbas-this-i-know/

[4].  http://www.buccleuchfreechurch.co.uk/he-died-my-death.html

[5].  http://www.middletownbiblechurch.org/lifeochr/lifeoc14.htm

[6].  https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2010/01/open-letter-to-jmr-a-preamble-to-the-discussion-on-torture

[7].  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/12/bible-on-torture-part-2.html

[8].  To learn why these ideas are Biblically and intellectually unsound and irrational, see here:
  A.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-folly-of-modesty-part-1.html
  B.  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-folly-of-modesty-part-2.html
  C.  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/08/bible-on-nudity-part-1.html

Anticipating Rogue One

In two and a half hours I will be watching Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

I'm elated.

With the many similarities between A New Hope and The Force Awakens, I hope this installment will distinguish itself from every other entry, especially since I hear it will choose to depart from the main franchise in several ways.  For instance, I have read that the opening text space crawl will be omitted and that Force-users will largely not be featured.  Since this movie seems different than the other seven Star Wars movies and appears more like a traditional suspense-war film, perhaps it will have more explicit political themes than the other ones.  And no, I'm not referring to things like the senate scenes from the prequel trilogy; I mean that perhaps it will depict the personal and ethical consequences each political faction in Rogue One must confront.  I would love to see a Star Wars film that delves into the ethics and philosophy of politics and rebellion and maybe reveals that the moral lines in Star Wars can be just as blurry and complex as those in real life.  I would embrace a film that explores how moral obligation arises when the transcendent Force is dualistic and thus is both good and evil at once.  Why choose one over the other?  Does Darth Vader think he is evil?  Does the Emperor?  Is the Force just an impersonal, immaterial power one can access if he or she is fortunate enough to be born Force-sensitive or does it have consciousness and a will, making it more like the traditional concept of God?

Yes, I am already thinking about the philosophical and theological components that Rogue One might showcase.  I have only read minimal facts about the story and characters in order to heighten the experience of finding these things out, and the excitement is compounding inside.

I eagerly await the task of finding my seat in around two hours for opening night, wearing a crocheted Yoda hat I wore to The Force Awakens on its own opening night, only minutes away from witnessing what I hope will be the greatest movie of the year.

The Epestimic Uselessness Of Science

After several years of admiring science and viewing it as a very significant part of epistemology, I have realized that, in an ultimate sense, science is epistemically useless.  Useless?  But I'm writing this blog post using the results of science, right?  So how can I declare science epistemically useless?  Well, the only way to know something is true is to know it with 100% certainty, something science can never grant.  Not only that, but there are many aspects of reality that science by its very nature can never access.  All I am covering here is the fact that science cannot ever prove anything and that it is not the true basis of knowledge, meaning I am emphasizing that it is useless to appeal to science for proof of anything and that science does not represent the core of knowledge about reality.  Now, I love science and admire its many facets like cosmology, quantum physics, paleontology, astronomy, and geology.  I plan on incorporating scientific beliefs into certain future posts--as I said, all I mean when I call science epestimically useless is that it is impossible to prove a claim using science.  I am not disrespecting science, just establishing that it does not have the epistemic power and status the western world in modern times can tend to perceive it as possessing.

Science cannot prove:

1. My own existence.  Science can never even confirm to me that I exist.  A priori reflection, logic, and experience of my own consciousness prove to me that I (my mind) exist, not anything even remotely connected to a scientific experiment or hypothesis.
2. The reliability of my senses.  Science can never prove that my senses are reliable and that I am perceiving the external world correctly.  To engage in the scientific method, I have to simply act as if or assume that my senses are reliable.  Since I could be a brain in a vat or asleep in the Matrix, anything I seem to see or touch is possibly not a reflection of actual reality and thus, since I can only engage science through my perceptions, I never have any confirmation that science itself has revealed any grand truth about the universe or reality.
3. The axiomatic nature of logic and math.  Logic (and by extension its counterpart math) is self-evident, self-verifying, and axiomatic.  However, science can do nothing apart from logic because science does not possess these properties.  Science relies on logic, but logic relies on nothing but its own self-evidence.  A priori reflection, syllogisms, and axioms prove logic is true by necessity, but science cannot boast this.
4. Predictions of future occurrences.  Just because in the past an experiment has always produced the same results does not mean it will always happen that way.  Science can never prove that its own most foundational theories and ideas are valid or will always remain constant.  In fact, some of the most dramatic scientific breakthroughs have occurred when traditional scientific views of the day were completely reconfigured due to a new perspective.
5. Information about historical events.  No one can replicate historical events in a laboratory and thus history falls outside the domain of science.  To discover historical facts we must find physical documents or evidence left behind by people in the past, and scientific experiments have nothing to do with this.
6. Moral claims.  Morality has to do with how things should or shouldn't be, while science exclusively investigates how things are in the material world.  Morality is an immaterial concept.  Science is of no use in determining moral judgments due to the naturalistic fallacy and the inability of scientific experiments to even remotely come near to providing insight into anything other than the way the world appears to be in a physical sense.
7. Theological claims.  Specific theological claims fall outside the domain of science into the territory of philosophy.  Regarding arguments for the existence of God, science can offer some very compelling assistance.  For instance, there seems to be immense evidence for the Big Bang, meaning that there is overwhelming scientific evidence that the universe had a beginning, which would necessitate an external uncaused cause because the universe did not always exist and therefore needed a cause.  However, grounding this argument--the Kalam cosmological argument--merely in science will never elevate this from an argument to a proof.  When one exchanges the scientific evidence for mathematical and logical proof that any universe cannot be eternal in the past due to the logical and mathematical impossibility of such a universe, the argument becomes a proof.
8. Itself.  There is no scientific experiment that demonstrates that science is either reliable or that it can prove anything.  Doubters should see number 2 above if they want more proof of this.  Not only can no scientific experiment prove that the scientific method is valid, but if I have no way to know for sure even through logic or experience that my senses perceive things as they are there is no way that science, which I can only participate in by using my senses--which are unverified, can prove that my perceptions of the external world or of the experiments themselves are accurate.



Ultimately, science is of little to no value when it comes to truly
determining if an idea about the universe or almost
 anything is true.  Every scientific belief is open to
potential revision or abandonment and science operates
based upon our sensory observation and input, which
neither science nor philosophy can confirm
the validity of.  Logic, not science, illuminates
 the pathway to ultimate truth.

None of this means that I don't appreciate science or that I don't want to understand it better.  Actually, I personally find science quite fascinating.  It simply means that science can never be the foundational basis for a rational worldview and that I have no problem admitting that anyone who goes to science seeking proof or absolute certainty of anything will never find what they desire.  Logic is the foundation for epistemology, not science.  Scientism is self-refuting; rationalism is self-verifying.  This post has not argued that we should live our lives without regard to what modern science seems to informs us of but that if we want true confirmation or refutation of abstract ideas we should look elsewhere.

Sexual Legalism

As an asexual person, I can't relate to the omnipresent struggle Christians seem to face when it comes to avoiding sexual sin (I exaggerate when I say "omnipresent" because this seems to be all some Christians focus on).  I, left to myself, don't really want to have sex with even my wife in the future when I'm legally married, much less with someone right now while I'm single.  However, many Christians cannot relate to my asexuality and some may have to take the prohibitions of sexual immorality in the Bible very seriously.  But in the process of trying to nobly condemn and prevent sexual evils, the church at large has tried to erect small or large rules in order to achieve that goal.

Legalism is when people take something God has revealed to be evil and either declare that anything that might lead to it is also sinful or that people need to abide by extra-Biblical moral rules in order to uphold what the Bible actually says.  The Bible condemns drunkenness and alcoholism, and the legalistic response would be to call consumption of any alcohol sinful or dangerous.  Of course, this position is nothing more than a massive slippery slope, and one that Scripture itself specifically refutes with its many positive examples and allowances of alcohol use.

In the same way as a legalist might think all alcohol use is sinful, in an effort to combat or prevent actual sexual sins, the church often demonizes or prohibits innocent activities, some of them not even being sexual in nature.

Below I have divided these legalistic restrictions into the categories of things that are not sexual that people still attempt to oppose and limit for the sake of fighting sexual sin, and things that are sexual.

Deuteronomy 4:2--"Do not add to what I command you and do not
subtract from it, but keep the commands of the Lord your God that I
give you."

Non Sexual Activities


1. Opposite Gender Friendships

To teach singles that members of the opposite gender are either sexual temptations or possible spouses is to encourage them to drastically ignore almost every dimension of the humanity of the opposite gender and reduce them to something they are not.  Church leaders counsel people to never have accountability partners of the opposite gender, to never be with them in private without the presence of a spouse or some other third party, to keep conversations with them superficial and not truly personal so that there is little opportunity for emotional bonding, to not talk about certain issues (like the contents of this blog post!) with them, and to generally not get attached to them in non-romantic ways.  Of course, there is nothing sexual or romantic about opposite gender friendships in themselves, although sexual attraction does not make the relationships sinful.

To teach married individuals that all members of the opposite gender besides their spouses are dangerous is to indulge in the same error.  Adultery is condemned explicitly and repeatedly in the Old and New Testaments (see Exodus 20:14, Deuteronomy 22:22, and so on).  However, to tell people they cannot be either casual or close friends with a married person of the opposite gender because it will probably or inevitably lead to adultery is an extremely dishonest and fallacious distortion of what the condemnations of adultery actually teach and of what human nature is actually like.  The only things that are inherently sexual are sexual acts and sexual feelings.  My cherished best friend, as well as one of my only true friends, is a woman, and I scoff at the societal and church bias against such a relationship.


2. Being Alone With The Opposite Gender

The infamous "Billy Graham Rule" is one of the most asinine obstacles to treating members of the opposite gender like equals.  On multiple occasions, Jesus himself was alone with a woman, as with the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4 and Mary at his own empty tomb in John 20.  I don't even have to resort to other logical proofs that there is nothing sinful about being alone with the opposite gender because Jesus himself, the man Christians claim to be divine and perfect, affirms that there is no sin in being in the presence of the opposite gender when no one else is around.  It is so amusing how evangelicals tell everyone to strive to imitate Christ, only to arbitrarily rebuke people for doing just that by being alone with someone of the opposite gender without any sexual motivations or activity!

I have noticed that this legalistic rule is often applied to the realm of dating.  Some Christians try to keep dating couples in the presence of at least one additional witness just in case they can't remember that there is far more to life and romantic relationships than just sex.  This is troubling because some very introverted people will not open up relationally and emotionally except in one-on-one conversations, meaning introverts subjected to the Billy Graham Rule may never get a chance to even know the people they are dating until they marry them!  Do evangelicals not detect the obvious flaw with that brilliant rule?  What, do the adherents to this rule really believe that if I am a sexually pure person in mind and action, the circumstance of being alone with a girl to whom I am not married is going to suddenly cause me to transform into a seducer, adulterer, or rapist?  Logic, people.  It is helpful.

Is something like this going to result every time an unmarried male
 and female are alone together?  Of course not!

3. Attraction

Attraction is not necessarily sexual in nature and may be nothing more than mental recognition that someone is physically and aesthetically attractive.  Beauty has been misrepresented as a sexual thing by my damn American society, to the point where people can have difficulty understanding that not all attraction or admiration of the human body involves a sexual dimension.  Women can admire beautiful men and men can admire beautiful women without any sexualization of the experience, even while perceiving someone to be aesthetically gorgeous.  For instance, women can (and do, despite astonishingly inept church ignorance of the matter) visually enjoy the bodies of shirtless males at the beach and males can enjoy the bodies of bikini-clad females at the beach without any sin or any sexualized feelings, merely appreciating the beauty of other individuals.


4. Public Nudity

Once someone realizes that nudity is a biologically natural (and theologically natural--see Genesis 2:25) non-sexual state, he or she realizes how objectively asinine much of what society and the church says about nudity is.  Evangelical Christians are notorious for their anti-nudity positions which are rooted in distortions of Scripture, a negative and false view of sexuality, asceticism and discomfort with the human body, and subjective cultural ideas--not to mention notorious for how the church erroneously treats sexual desire as something men are submerged in constantly but women rarely experience.  Much talk of the "dangers" of nudity is aimed at males despite no Biblical or rational basis for believing in various bullshit cultural constructs about male sexuality and despite logic refuting these myths in full.  The Bible itself teaches a pro-nudity message consistently and clearly when one removes absurd assumptions about the text from interpretation [1].

Nudity has nothing to do with sex in and of itself, though of course it could be sexual in certain circumstances.  It can be a very sensual thing nonetheless, but this property does not equate to it being intrinsically sexual.  Despite evangelical insistence to the contrary, the Bible teaches only that married people have the exclusive right to sexual relations with their spouses, not that they have the exclusive right to intimate friendship with them or to see and admire their bodies--or even to be sexually aroused by or sexually attracted to them.



Sexual Activities


1. Erotic Literature

First of all, the Bible clearly does not oppose all erotic literature, as demonstrated by the fact that it contains an entire book solely dedicated to this genre: Song of Songs.  Because of this, it is very idiotic when some Christians denounce all erotic literature as sinful and depraved.  Second, just because someone reads erotic literature doesn't mean he or she will want to commit some sexual sin because of it.  On its own, there is no sin in creating, reading, or enjoying erotic literature, as it just happens to focus on an aspect of human existence often demonized and misunderstood by secular and religious people alike.

Any erotic literature that was written to promote practice or acceptance of sexual acts that are objectively immoral like objectification, bestiality, pedophilia, adultery, incest, rape, sex with an engaged person, homosexuality, casual sex, or sex trafficking is sinful, not because such sins are mentioned but because of the intent behind the authorship.  Note that a story that features these things as plot devices or for historical accuracy or to convey a positive moral point would not fall into this category.


2. Masturbation

Some Christians have a very difficult time addressing this subject rationally.  Christians sometimes acknowledge that masturbation may even greatly aid singles or even married people struggling with the desire to commit sexual sins, while others might condemn it as a manifestation of "homosexuality" or some selfish act or even some sort of betrayal of a current or future spouse.  Alone, as with many of these things I am mentioning, there is nothing sinful about a person sexually stimulating his or her own sex organs for pleasure or release.  Yes, women engage in solo sex too.  Gasp!!  I have given up trying to understand why society and Christians are so surprised that women have deep and powerful sexual impulses and desires just like some men do.  There are many myths about masturbation that Christian and secular people sometimes preserve [2].


3. Sexual Arousal

If a man or woman becomes sexually aroused on a nude beach, it is an illogical assumption to think that he or she must want to sleep with those around him or her.  The involuntary condition of the body's sexual arousal does not mean the mind desires to have sex.  Male and female rape victims may experience sexual arousal during their abuse, but does this mean they WANT the sex?  Hell no!

But even if a man or woman at, say, a nude beach did become sexually aroused, physiologically speaking, and did want release through some sort of sexual activity (which does not have to mean sex with the other people), he or she could channel that sexual desire into sex with a spouse or into masturbation.  There is no sexual sin or lust should the person choose to do these things.  As long as the person has not objectified another person by mentally reducing them to nothing but their sexuality, no sexual objectification has occurred.  As long as the person has not desired to take someone's spouse for himself or herself in the process, no coveting/lust has occurred.  There is no reason whatsoever to view arousal of the sex organs in and of itself, in public setting like a nude beach or in private, as anything more than a healthy, natural occurrence that does not at all indicate some mental desire to commit a sexual sin.


4. BDSM

BDSM is not necessarily nonconsensual, meaning that it does not inherently contradict the principle of sexual consent honored in Deuteronomy 22:25-27 and elsewhere in the Bible.  Husbands and wives are free to engage in consensual role playing and "bondage" behavior, as this does not amount to rape or sexual exploitation.  If spouses want to subject themselves to erotic confinement or sexy scenarios to find a more creative outlet for sexual desire, then they are morally allowed to do so.  For example, if one spouse is stripped naked and the other remains fully clothed, the contrast can be used for a charade of a power imbalance, which can be perceived as sexy by both participants.


5. Premarital Sex

In the most basic summary of its position on premarital sex, the Bible merely teaches that unmarried and unengaged singles who sleep together should get married unless the parents strongly object (Exodus 22:16-17).  I have dealt with this more extensively here [3].  There is no prescription of capital punishment or any other penalty.  Of course, this does not justify casual, noncommittal sex, but someone unmarried can sleep with another single person.  As long as he or she is willing to be committed to that person for life unless some occasion for legitimate divorce arises, the couple has not sinned.  If they do not marry, though, then sin has occurred--the sin is not in having sex outside of a legally-recognized marriage, but in refusing to get married.



Conclusion

If truly necessary to avoid sexual sin ("objectification, bestiality, pedophilia, adultery, incest, rape, sex with an engaged person, homosexuality, casual sex, or sex trafficking"; see above), of course people should abstain from anything they think really does make it easier for them to succumb to sinful temptations or that they don't trust themselves with.  However, a person's struggle in an area or inability to understand how someone could engage in an activity without sinful thoughts is no justification for calling these protective boundaries objective moral necessities which people sin when they ignore.  This would be to commit the fallacy of composition, in concluding that because one person will sin in an area given certain circumstances then therefore everyone will; it would be blatant legalism to believe that God's moral revelation is insufficient to live a righteous life when God himself commanded humans not to add or subtract from his law (Deuteronomy 4:2); it would be a slippery slope fallacy to say that because someone drinks alcohol that person will get drunk, and arguing that opposite gender friendships or nudity or attraction will by necessity lead to sin commits the same fallacy.

If you need an extra-Biblical boundary to ease a particular temptation, then, by all means, go for it!  Just don't elevate that personal conviction or need to the status of some objective and universal moral requirement for other people who can't even relate at all to your specific sin struggles.  Sexuality has been a common target for legalists, with them even prohibiting things that have absolutely nothing to do with sex or sexuality in the effort to fight a set of sins they themselves seem to think is unconquerable.  Is any sin unconquerable?  No, but that is thanks to sanctification and inner resolution, not because of irrational, contra-Biblical rules of human origin.


[1].  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/08/bible-on-nudity-part-1.html

[2].  See here:
A.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/07/sexual-self-stimulation.html
B.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/09/myths-about-masturbation.html
C.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/11/more-myths-about-masturbation.html

[3].  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/08/on-exodus-2216-17.html