Movie Review--Saw V

"Vengeance can change a person.  Make you into something you never thought you were capable of being.  But unlike you, I've never killed anyone.  I give people a chance."
--Jigsaw, Saw V

"You can dispense justice and give people a chance to value their lives in the same moment."
--Jigsaw, Saw V

"I assume nothing."
--Jigsaw, Saw V


Finally, it's time to resume my reviews of the presently existing Saw films (minus the third one, which I have not viewed other than isolated scenes)!  I didn't want to wait all the way until a time nearer to October 27th--and the scheduled release date of Saw: Legacy--to continue reviewing the remaining movies, so I recently decided to just leap back in.


Production Values

The camera filters seem to change with each (or at least every other) Saw movie, and the aesthetic for Saw V successfully captures more realism than that of Saw IV, which often appeared to possess a strange greenish hue over everything.  As far as visuals go, really, there's not much CGI in the entire franchise--so far, at least, as this year's Saw: Legacy may change that.  The quick montages of multiple angles for the same event remain, but obviously they are part of the series that has stayed since the early days.

Tobin Bell was amazing, as expected.  The gravity, charisma, chills, principles, and control exuded by his character are on full display in this film, with an entire seven minute flashback scene excellently showcasing exactly what makes Jigsaw so unique, thoughtful, and imposing.  Costas Mandylor did great playing the psychopathic detective Hoffman, revealed to be Jigsaw's successor at the end of the previous film.  Not many of the other characters besides a certain FBI agent are developed thoroughly or ever ascend beyond the generic roles they have, but the key characters--Jigsaw, Hoffman, and Strahm--each offer exactly what the story intended.

Charlie Clouser composed a fitting score, as usual, with the final scene accompanied by the latest iteration of his classic Zepp theme as per tradition, enhancing an already fantastic conclusion.  The rest of the audio is handled well.

Now, the traps in Saw V are objectively simpler than the ones from previous movies.  It is largely obvious what the solutions are and how the traps function, so conceptual creativity did diminish somewhat when it comes to the traps everyone flocks to see.


Story

In the opening scene an unnamed man awakens on a table, his neck inside a locked collar holding it to the table, his arms bound and chained but still movable--and a pendulum armed with a blade overhead.  A TV activates to show the face of Jigsaw's puppet, the playing video explaining that the man will need to allow both of his hands to be crushed to release the collar around his neck.

Then the game begins.  Although the man eventually competes his test by crushing both hands, the pendulum continues to descend.  And an eye stares at him through a hole in a door.

Then the end of Saw VI is shown, as agent Strahm finds Jigsaw's corpse and is shut within a room by an unseen person.  Separated from backup, he travels further into the structure--only to be assaulted and sedated by pig face and to recover consciousness to find his head inserted into a box that will fill with water.  There is no tape, and thus no escape.  This trap is intended to kill him without offering a chance to survive.

But to the surprise of Hoffman, Strahm survives due to a very clever self-inflicted medical procedure.  The characters start to orient themselves towards their personal goals in this movie and the ones that extend into the two following films.  Strahm begins to suspect Hoffman of being a Jigsaw accomplice; Jill Kramer receives a box from John's lawyer held from her until his death; Hoffman is promoted in a police ceremony.  He delivers an oration ironically praising the sacredness of life and how we should cherish it

Hoffman also notices a letter under his computer keyboard addressed to him which reads "I KNOW WHO YOU ARE."  Viewers do not actually learn the author of this note until Saw: The Final Chapter.

(SPOILERS critical to the movie are dispersed throughout the following parts of the story section.)

In a separate and isolated location, a group of men and women, five in total, awaken in another community game.  One of them seems to know the identities, occupations, and lives of the others, and not only are the others puzzled at his knowledge, but they also wonder why they are inside traps if Jigsaw's death was broadcasted on the news recently.  They endure five waves of traps, losing members along the way, before they come to know what demons from the past bind them together.

Meanwhile, Strahm conducts Internet and archive research and discovers that Hoffman had a sister who was killed by a man named Seth Baxter, her boyfriend.  A newspaper article accessed online says Jigsaw killed him.  According to the information he unearths, Seth received a 25 year sentence but a technicality reduced it to five, and it appears that Hoffman imitated Jigsaw's methods but created an unbeatable game . . . much to the disappointment and irritation of he real Jigsaw.

During a time that seems set before the events of the first movie, Jigsaw temporarily kidnapped Hoffman and interviewed him and offered him a role as his partner.  First, however, John criticized him for stooping to the level of intentionally killing someone and withholding an opportunity for escape--and therefore an opportunity for rebirth.  This scene is thematically one of the absolute best in the entire series.

Of course, as Saw IV showed, Hoffman does decide to help John.  A series of flashbacks depicts Hoffman aiding Jigsaw in kidnapping victims and preparing some of the games shown in Saw and Saw II.  As the story progresses, Hoffman frames Strahm as the true accomplice, a ruse not actually uncovered until Saw VI.  Before the final scene, even Strahm's superior begins to doubt his true identity.

Now, back to the "fatal five".  The only remaining members of the group learn that all of them were supposed to survive and that the traps could have been easily handled by all of them at once, but the final trap seems almost impossible considering how far their numbers have dwindled down.

Strahm confronts Hoffman after partially listening to a tape in front of an elevated and open glass coffin, with the brief brawl that resulted ending in Strahm pushing his opponent into a glass box the tape told him to enter.  However, Strahm watches as the box closes and retracts into the ground as the walls close in, crushing Strahm while Hoffman lives to continue the games without any pursuing police agents and without John to restrain his psychopathic tendencies.


Intellectual Content

Obviously, much of the intellectual content centers around the moral theories and actions presented in the movie.

For instance, Hoffman intended for the group of five to ignore their "instincts" and cooperate.  Many people try to base their morality upon utilitarian social activities that help the most individuals, sometimes to the exclusion of a minority and sometimes not.  Jigsaw and Hoffman clearly do not agree with that philosophy in all of its ramifications.  This is interesting, because Jigsaw has justified assault, kidnapping, mutilation, and murder for the sake of a goal, yet he discouraged the five from dropping to a moral low point in choosing not to work together.

Even though Hoffman eventually helps John Kramer, at first they have a great amount of ideological hostility towards the worldview of the other.  One particularly potent conversation shows them converse about these differences in person, and I've selected an excerpt to put below.  It highlights the different approach each takes in dealing with people like Seth Baxter.


Hoffman:  "He didn't deserve a chance.  He was an animal."

Jigsaw:  "EVERYBODY deserves a chance!"

Hoffman:  "You didn't see the blood.  You didn't see what he f-cking did to her."

Jigsaw:  "Killing is distasteful . . . to me.  There is a better, more efficient way."


Jigsaw directly implies during this conversation that a significant part of the games is dispensing justice.  Someone in a trap will either succeed or fail.  There are no additional outcomes.  In John's perception, someone who survives will have done whatever necessary to evade death and will walk away purged of evil vices and possessing a renewed appreciation for life.  If he or she dies, then justice was imposed and the world will no longer be negatively affected by the person in question.

"If a subject survives my method, he or she is instantly rehabilitated," John explains.  He and Hoffman have a severe ideological rift--John seeks the transformation and cleansing of evil people while Hoffman wants to destroy them without extending the chance for redemption that Jigsaw does.  During the conversation Hoffman is restrained in a chair with his hands tied by a rope that is around the trigger of a double-barreled shotgun aimed at his head.  Eventually John cuts the cord restraining Hoffman after pulling the trigger to reveal the click of an empty gun, signifying that the threat was a bluff.  John Kramer is a merciful god, at least according to his own standards.  He may condone strapping people into torture devices that will kill them if they fail their respective tests, but he loathes the practice of putting people in in inescapable traps.  He truly does believe that killing, at least other than that resulting from his games, is a universal moral evil, regardless of the victim.

After kidnapping (in a flashback) the man in the barbed wire maze from the original Saw, Hoffman says he felt unexpected remorse in completing the act.  "The heart cannot be involved.  Emotionally, there can be nothing there.  It can never be personal," John immediately cautions.  Of course, Jigsaw has nothing legitimate to orient his moral feelings around--he seems to deny that his morality is grounded in the impulses of the heart because he repeatedly emphasizes how the heart must be separated from these activities, yet he claims that killing is "distasteful" to him, unable to appeal to anything higher than the subjective feelings he attempts to compartmentalize away from his games.  He ends up in a dilemma, despising murder while engaging in it, denying that emotion has moral authority while having nothing but emotion to base his morality on.

In another scene, Jigsaw tells Hoffman, when he says John is assuming that a game will unfold as he wants, that he assumes nothing.  "If you're good at anticipating the human mind . . . it leaves nothing to chance."  Of course, the line "I assume nothing" resembles something that a true rationalist would say.  Jigsaw is portrayed as hyper-intelligent, almost omniscient in his ability to predict all possible outcomes.  Not only does he resemble a deity in how he metes out moral and judicial judgments with finality and authority, he wields an almost god-like mind that allows him to understand human psychology and the possible reactions of individuals in his games with an astonishing depth.

Lastly, Saw V, like the first Saw, ends with the villain walking away to plot more games.  People need to remember that it is absolutely a delusion to think that evil always is defeated.  I've had a Christian tell me that movies like Revenge of the Sith err because it is morally wrong for a movie to not allow the protagonists to succeed--because filmmakers shouldn't ever portray evil as winning.  However, as a Christian and as a rationalist, I have to admit that evil people do triumph.  The Bible, history, and everyday contemporary life teem with examples of this.  I am grateful that stories both fictional and real, Saw V included, remind us of this.


Conclusion

Saw V served as the needed bridge between the revelatory Saw IV and the splendid Saw VI, with its clever story, great depiction of the aftermath of Hoffman replacing John Kramer as Jigsaw, brilliant appearances of the now-deceased John, and a script that still continues to reveal dimensions of John's personality.  As with earlier installments, Saw V addresses some weighty themes in a manner that is not forced or cliche.  And, as always, watching Tobin Bell act as Jigsaw is a pure delight.  People who dislike the series or the concepts or story so integral to it will probably not enjoy the fifth film, but it fulfilled exactly the role it needed to in regards to the Saw mythos canon.


Content
1. Violence:  There are a few moments of very graphic depictions of gore.  The camera occasionally shows the dismembered corpses of a person blown apart by nail bombs and it does not shy away as survivors of the games lift arms that have been split in two at least until halfway between the wrist and the elbow.  Additionally, a decapitation and several bloodless brawls and assaults are depicted.
2. Profanity:  Many f-words and other uses of profanity are heard from a variety of characters.

An Observation About Cross-Gender Friendship

The fact that many may people believe an idea does not validate the idea in question.  In fact, in some cultures and times, the popularity of an idea may be further reason to doubt the premise.  One of the many false and stupid ideas I have mentioned on my blog, and one which enjoys popularity in my society and time, is the notion that a boy and a girl over a certain age who are not siblings cannot be close friends, much less intimate lifelong ones, without one or both developing romantic or sexual feelings for the other.  This can lead to people who are engaged or married or who just have a "significant other" harboring jealousy over such friendships, ending relationships over them, and always fretting that a partner will be seduced away by some man or woman.

Now, I've already proven that this belief is bullshit, so I want to approach this subject from a slightly different angle.

If 99% of the world's population claimed that non-romantic and non-sexual deep friendships between men and women are impossible or extremely unlikely because that 99% had all experienced difficulty in having such relationships, that proves nothing except that the vast majority of people are unable to enjoy such friendships; it does not prove that intimate non-sexual and non-romantic cross-gender friendships are impossible.

However, even a single friendship between a male and a female that is not sexualized proves that the 99% are incorrect when they make their claim.  No matter what everyone else might tell them, the two know with absolute certainty (due to logic) that there is no inherent link between such friendships and sexuality and (due to experience) that they are in a relationship that does not involve sex or romance whatsoever.

Remember that the majority can never dictate what is true, but can only discover it--if the majority is willing to critically and rationally assess reality.  This applies to ideas besides the one addressed here.  So if you happen to suspect that cross-gender friendships are only possible between siblings, catch yourself the next time you find yourself seeing a boy and a girl or a man and a woman and judging them to be a couple of some kind.  That means don't assume that people are dating or married just because they hang out a lot!  Eliminating the comments and attitudes that people often display towards these public appearances of cross-gender friendships will hopefully alleviate and then annihilate the pitifully fallacious and false idea that men and women cannot or should not be loving but "platonic" friends.

A Christian Error

Whether searching the Internet or conversing in person, Christians can discover that other Christians oppose even investigating certain ethical ideas on the grounds that the one investigating is merely trying to justify a sinful habit.  I want to dismantle and challenge this foolish belief.

After all, defense of an idea does not signify the presence of an ulterior motive to find something good or evil in order to fulfill a pre existing desire or idea.  Someone may have some illicit motivation or desire to legitimize a sinful activity, but that is certainly not always the case!  Instead of realizing this, Christians sometimes imagine that someone else who argues in favor of something they consider sinful (not that Christians generally have good moral epistemology anyway) secretly wants to engage in the behavior in question and is therefore intentionally calling good something that he or she knows is sinful, hoping to find a loophole that he or she can use to verbally ward off intellectual attacks and protect an evil act.

Whether the activity in question is playing video games, using profanity, tolerating public nudity, drinking alcohol, watching R-rated movies, or any other number of behaviors controversial among Christians, people need to stop pretending that those who engage in or defend the objective moral validity of them are simply attempting to justify a practice they know is sinful.  Some people may need this correction, but not everyone does.  Don't commit the fallacy of composition by saying that because one person hopes to legitimize an alcohol addiction or violation of conscience, therefore everyone who wants to drink alcohol, for example, seeks the same goal!

However, regardless of someone's potential personal reasons for investigating an idea, no one's motives make a conclusion true or false; at most someone may approach a correct and sound conclusion with flawed motives, but that never discredits the idea itself.

I can't believe that this still needs to be said, but many Christians dispute which moral teachings are even found in the Bible to begin with, so obviously just appealing to the Bible alone doesn't prove that one is actually reaching Biblical conclusions.  One needs to actually PROVE using logic that a particular "interpretation" is either correct, meaning that its conclusions follow directly from the premises, or at least possible, meaning that any opponents who call it "impossible" are demonstrably wrong.

For those readers who want to know truth by legitimate use of actual logic and not by fallacious reasoning--remember that self-education is about the self first and others lastly.  If you know for sure that you have the right motives when assessing what the Bible says or does not say about the morality of something, then if someone tells you otherwise you already know they are making incorrect judgments about you.  Don't allow their erroneous judgments to interfere with your own quest for knowledge and understanding.

Absurdism In Hamlet

"Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world."
--Albert Camus

"This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart."
--Albert Camus



I have thus far written two respective posts about absurdism, the first explaining how absurdism differs greatly from nihilism [1] and the second proving that a kind of theistic absurdism is the most optimistic thing we can hope for in the absence of special divine revelation from God [2].  As those who have read both posts will know, I, as a rationalist, actually have a great amount of respect for absurdism as a worldview because of its rationality and logicality.  It is not a worldview that people can simply set aside comfortably and without receiving challenge from it, nor is it something that can be denied in a universe where God has not revealed himself beyond natural theology and the proofs of an uncaused cause for the material world found in logic and mathematics.

Absurdism, as I have defined and explained elsewhere, is a philosophy adhering to the idea that existence is absurd.  The reason for this is because we humans have limited knowledge and cannot know what the objective meaning of human life is, if such a thing is even real.  This worldview does not deny meaning exists; it merely (and accurately) holds that left to ourselves we have no way of knowing what that meaning is.  The plethora of claims that various things or concepts are meaningful which people often cling to cannot all be true at the same time, but they can all be false.  As an aside, anyone who wants proof of this idea that existence is not obviously meaningful despite our emotional tendency to hope otherwise merely needs to notice that many claims made about meaning cannot be made without committing a logical fallacy.  Faced with this inability to know the meaning and fulfillment we crave, we must then ask ourselves why we would not kill ourselves.

Because of this, we have three options for how to conduct our lives.  We can lead ourselves to think that we can invent our own meaning, deluding ourselves with a subjective illusion that does not necessarily reflect reality.  We can commit suicide to escape the absurdity of life, potentially discovering the truth about existence on the other side.  Or, last of all, we can defy the absurd by persevering despite the futility of thinking we can discover meaning with our current limitations.  The third option, however, often ends up resembling the first.

While reading Shakespeare's Hamlet this week for a college assignment, I discovered that the titular "protagonist" actually embodies the struggle at the heart of absurdism.  I will quote several portions of the play and provide an understanding of the absurdist ideas present in each.

The first passage I will inspect is in the first act:


"Oh, that this too, too sallied flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew,
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His cannon 'gainst self-slaughter.  O God, God,
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world."

(Page 1772; 1.2.129-34)


Early on in the play Hamlet, the character of the same name, the prince of Denmark, reveals a dissatisfaction with life that manifests itself in the desire that suicide were not a sin against God and a declaration that life is uninteresting and futile.  This excerpt also has significance because it does not omit Hamlet's theological beliefs but admits them in relation to the problem he faces.

This passage does not mark the sole time Hamlet verbalizes the subjective appeal of suicide to him, as he devotes a famous soliloquy later in the play to the very subject.  Ironically, despite his theological beliefs, he will cite the uncertainty of what follows death as a reason why suicide might not be preferable to enduring terrestrial difficulties and trials:


"To be or not to be: that is the question . . .

Th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th'unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin [3]?  Who would fardels bear
To grunt and sweat under a weary life
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveler returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?"

(Page 1802; 3.1.55, 70-81)


Some parts of this soliloquy sound very much like the words written by the absurdist philosopher Albert Camus, as provided below:


"There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest -- whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories -- comes afterward. These are games . . ."


Both individuals, one historical and one fictional, realized the central dilemma of life.  Matters of science, history, and personal matters all pale in comparison to the existentially all-important questions--is life meaningful?  Why not kill yourself?  Can anything objectively justify this existence we have found ourselves thrust into without our own consent?

According to Hamlet, the answer is that humans fear the unknown existence that may await them after the death of the physical body if consciousness lives on.  Why accelerate the arrival of new troubles if you cannot even stand the ones you have now?  This is another layer to the dilemma of the absurdist: not only does one have to 1) decide whether to commit suicide or to persevere in an absurd life while still inhabiting the same epistemological limitations as before, but one 2) must grapple with the fact that if one continues to remain alive (and thus does not commit suicide) then one cannot know certain things about existence or escape the insanity of life, and if one chooses to prematurely die by one's own hand then one also remains in uncertainty about what comes after life.  Uncertainty greets us no matter which path we take.

In this renowned paragraph, Hamlet dives directly into the most pressing and all-engulfing issue.  He displays an existential and emotional honesty and transparency that few ever demonstrate.  Of course, by this point in the play he has determined to feign madness in order to project an image of himself for others to view, and thus readers may claim that his apparent indecisiveness about living--whether he wants to "be or not to be"--is part of the fabricated act.  But, as I showed by quoting an earlier passage from scene two of act one, Hamlet was already expressing a complaint about the supposed immorality of suicide and mentioning that life holds no allure for him.  His reason and experience had already marched him to confront the subject of life's meaning, if one exists, and the urge to relinquish his own life by ending it.

In his "To be or not to be" oration, he mentions for at least the second time in the play a mental struggle with a desire to kill himself.  There may be more such references I did not detect.

Now, allow me to present another relevant idea of Hamlet's, the last that I will dissect:


"What piece of work is a man--how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god, the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals--and yet to me what is this quintessence of dust?  Man delights not me--nor women neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so."

(Page 1794; 2.2.264-270)

"We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots."

(Page 1824; 3.6.21-22)


Hamlet compares humans to animals at least twice, saying the first time that although we are a seemingly magnificent species--one which possesses grand intellect, beauty, and apprehension--we are just dust that ranks among the highest form of animal life, and exclaiming the second time that we participate in an inescapable cycle of life and death just like other observable animals like maggots.  Obviously, if he thinks life is devoid of meaning (strange because he is not just a deistic or agnostic theist but a semi-Christian one), then he will not elevate humanity to some special status above animals, for that reeks of a more overtly Christian ideology that would contradict his despair.

These lines I have collectively shown and assessed are not merely the delusional ramblings of an insane person, but they instead represent a direct confrontation with the greatest questions about existence.  Does existence, human or otherwise, have meaning?  Why not kill ourselves now and thus expedite our journey to whatever afterlife might wait us?  Why think ourselves higher than or more valuable than worms, especially if for all our sophistication we are nothing but the "paragon" of the animal kingdom?

Interestingly, Hamlet seems to believe in a particular type of theology that attributes God with having "set his cannon against self-slaughter," aka, with God having condemned suicide as evil.  He seems to sincerely believe in his theology, because he even abstains from taking advantage of an opportunity to kill his uncle Claudius, who had committed adultery with his mother and murdered his father, merely because he believed that killing Claudius as he engaged in prayer to God would allow his soul to ascend to heaven, and Hamlet wanted him to face damnation after death.  Yet never once does he try to ground meaning for existence in the God he acknowledges at least in his words.  There can be no other escape from absurdism, yet Hamlet does not even appear to ever entertain the possibility.

I appreciated these portions of Hamlet because I have very thoroughly contemplated these ideas in recent times.  I wish other people sounded far more like prince Hamlet than they usually do, as that would indicate that their minds are headed in a direction that will force them to either understand or seek truth.


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

[2].  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/12/theistic-absurdism.html

[3].  The notes in the book I read Hamlet in identified a bodkin as a dagger.


The Norton Shakespeare.  Shakespeare, William.  Ed. Greenblatt, Stephen.  New York: Norton and Company, 2016.  Print.

Apology: The Last Words Of Socrates

"And surely it is the most blameworthy ignorance to believe that one knows what one does not know."
--Socrates, Apology

"Now the hour to part has come.  I go to die, you go to live.  Which of us goes to the better lot is known to no one, except the god."
--Socrates, Apology



At the age of 70--an impressive age for someone living in his era--Socrates confronts a large jury in Athens, condemned as "guilty of corrupting the young and of not believing in the gods in whom the city believes" (23).  Entering the final period of his life, he delivers an oral defense of himself and his lifestyle.

After reading Apology, which records this event, I wanted to post about several things I noticed in it.  I will give particular attention in this short post to the claims of Socrates about epistemology and how he credits himself with not believing what he cannot genuinely know, and I will also both praise and criticize Socrates.  Note that in this context the word apology refers to a defense of something, in this case Socrates, much like the word apologetics means defense of a worldview.

Somewhat early in the oration, Socrates mentions a former friend and conveys an important story of the past.  Here he tells of the renowned event where the oracle of Delphi declared him the wisest person alive.  Chaerephon, the deceased former friend of Socrates in question, allegedly heard the Delphi oracle proclaim Socrates the wisest person (21), triggering in Socrates a desire to refute this absurd claim.  Socrates explains how he sought out men he thought were wise so that he could disprove this statement by the oracle, but he only comes to find himself interviewing wise men only to discover that they are not genuinely wise.  And thus he began a "career" of investigating the truth claims offered by others and testing their veracity and verifiability.  He says he lives in considerable poverty due to his pursuits and priorities, fortifying his claims with lifestyle evidence.  Unfortunately, as he explained, almost anyone who seeks undiluted truth will indeed confront the obstacle other people, both ignorant and "wise", can represent.  It is not uncommon at all to find fallacies in the speech and writings of scientists (Richard Dawkins), theologians (John Piper), philosophers (William Lane Craig), and ordinary laypeople alike.  Because of this, I am not surprised at all that Socrates found abundant fallacies when he began interrogating people about their worldviews.

During this search for truth, Socrates needed to adopt his own epistemology.  He seemed to have become a rationalist.  An adequate description by Socrates of his own epistemology is this: "... he thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas when I do not know, neither do I think I know" (21).  According to him, he does not choose to believe something when he cannot know it.  But did he really adhere to his own standard?  It is certainly the only legitimate logical standard of judging the veracity of knowledge, but did he maintain consistency?

Ironically, this sentence actually contradicts parts of Socrates' worldview as recorded by Plato.  For instance, the "forms" so prominently featured in his philosophy exist outside of human sensory perception and are unable to be proven by deductive reasoning through logic; thus we would have no way of confirming or disproving their existence, leaving them unverifiable and unfalsifiable.  Also, he made claims about ethics--and as thorough readers of my blog will no doubt know, apart from divine moral revelation a man or woman can claim that a moral idea seems true, that it subjectively feels correct, or that his or her society prefers a certain moral framework, but no one can justify the belief that he or she truly knows moral truths left to himself or herself.  Left to ourselves, we only have access to subjective moral perceptions and subjective moral emotions and we can only appeal to either ourselves or some society as indicators of what is objectively right or wrong.  My fallacy detector beeps every time I hear people make moral claims on the basis of these two sources.  Socrates therefore violated his own rationalism because he did believe in things that logic does not permit him to know.

The Sophists are discussed, the Sophists being a group of teachers who taught for money and resorted to proclaiming ideas that allegedly amounted to fallacies and empty rhetoric.  Recounting a story of a conversation with another man years go, Socrates mentions a Sophist named Evenus in particular.  "And if you have heard from anyone that I undertake to teach people and charge a fee for it, that is not true either," Socrates says, distancing himself from the Sophists (20).  I mention this group because they are often associated with fallacies, and perhaps the attempt of Socrates to distance himself from them was partially intended to imply that he did not employ the fallacies of the Sophists in his own philosophy and words.  But as I demonstrated above, he surely did resort to fallacies--even when addressing major issues.

I do want to acknowledge the integrity of Socrates' goals despite my criticism of his worldview earlier.  Socrates does nobly charge the citizens of Athens to bother his children in the same way he has bothered them--by asking questions and challenging ideas--if the listeners grow to suspect that his children care for anything more than virtue.  His logical errors aside, his priorities truly did seem to align with part of the Judeo-Christian worldview.  I can certainly admire and relate to his zeal for truth, yet I cannot declare him the kind of rationalist that avoids fallacies with the same passion that a mouse avoids a cat with.

As a friend of mine from college has stated, Socrates asked the right questions but often arrived at very fallacious conclusions.  Whether it is the non sequitur reincarnation theory he develops while observing a slave solve a math problem in Meno, the belief in a tri-part soul he defends in Republic, or his idea of the forms existing outside of our current surroundings seen in many dialogues featuring him, many of Socrates' beliefs are at best both unverifiable and unfalsifiable and at worst simply untrue.  This does not mean everything he said is faulty or that no truth can be gleaned from his dialogues, but it does prove that even those like Socrates whom philosophers and historians elevate as wise sometimes possess that title only in name--ironically the very thing that distressed Socrates and propelled him forward on his intellectual quest.  Apology may immortalize Socrates' pursuit of wisdom and truth, but it also highlights ironic contradictions in his philosophy.



Plato: Complete Works.  Plato.  Ed. Cooper, John M.  Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997.  Print.

The Omnipresent Burden

There is an inescapable burden we humans bear, whether conscious of it or not, whether we find ourselves content with it or not--an omnipresent burden that affects everything about our lives, aspirations, epistemologies, worldviews, and emotions.

No one needs to endure the loss of a friend or family member, a traumatic vehicle crash, an abduction, or financial anxiety to confront the deepest of fears.  To find true terror all we need to do is reflect on our limitations.  That is enough to not just frighten but mortify us, for there is nothing of greater consequence than deducing the nature of existence and discovering it as quickly as possible--and there is nothing that can ignite more despair over the consequences of this pursuit than recognizing the inherent limitations we humans possess, greatly restricting our ability to learn the answers we seek.  To deny reality and truth is to succumb to the greatest of inconsistencies and impossibilities; to claim to know either one must exercise great caution, lest we deceive ourselves.

Some of my recent posts have been quite existential because I have been directly addressing similar truths in my own intellectual and personal life.  I have written at least briefly about postmodern epistemology and why it is true whether we prefer so or not [1]; I have addressed how a form of theistic absurdism arises from knowing a god exists but not knowing his nature [2]; I have tackled the tension between security and certainty that most, if not all, ideas have to navigate [3]; I have proven the utter meaninglessness, nihilistic amorality, and futility that mark human existence if God does not exist [4].  After 20 years of life, I have recognized and accepted these things.  But many have done neither.  And doing both will not necessarily alleviate the existential and epistemological difficulties of human existence.

If people truly considered the logic and verifiability of their most cherished beliefs, many would find that their motivations, moral ideas, religious choices, and life priorities have little to no logical support and that they are either living for an unverified belief at best and something entirely false at worst.  My greatest frustration is watching other people rarely detect this in their own lives, much less the lives of those around them.

But when we begin to embrace reason, shed falsities and fallacies, and test everything, we come to realize that our own intellectual limitations can terrify far more than the petty concerns that can occupy human minds.  Understanding that you stand on an ideological precipice from which, wherever you wander, you will bear full responsibility for your actions and decisions in the areas of ethics, spirituality, and every other area imaginable would likely horrify people who possess actual comprehension of their condition--and the fright would likely escalate when the realization dawns that we are not equipped very well for our pursuit of the elusive but supremely relevant thing called truth.  Nothing but logic is inherently reliable, yet even logic itself amounts to but a mere candle's worth of light in a vast space of darkness that stretches to unknown lengths around us.

This is the omnipresent burden of humanity.  Left in this vacuum of knowledge--a cosmos in which the existence of an uncaused cause (referred to by many as God) responsible for the material world is logically undeniable--nothing could dispel our ignorance about matters moral and spiritual except revelation from the entity which created us.  The material world and the subjective feelings and consciences of humans could never reveal moral facts, for example; to know these something other than natural theology is logically required.  To know these we need special revelation, similar in concept to something like the Bible or the Quran.  However, knowing that there is no such thing as ultimate moral knowledge apart from what is properly called "special divine revelation" does not inform us of which alleged book of divine revelation is valid.  The candidates--the Bible, Quran, Book of Mormon, Vedas, Book of Shadows, and the others--cannot all be true at the same time, for they make conflicting claims about morality, the nature of God, salvation, the afterlife, and other topics both great and small.

It is matters like this that possess the utmost importance and urgency, yet our limitations will not disappear simply because of the scope or significance of the issue we are investigating.  Matters like this can drive people insane for this very reason.  Inquiring into the possible moral nature or character of the uncaused cause (if it is closer to the traditional theistic imaginings of God than to the entity described by deists), the ultimate purpose behind creation, and reliability of our non-mental faculties like our 10 senses [5] can drive us crazy for the very reason that our epistemological limitations will linger over most of what we search for and conclude.

How will you choose to respond to this, knowing that you will bear whatever consequences result from your decision?


[1].  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/12/postmodernism-clarifying-straw-man.html

[2].  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/12/theistic-absurdism.html

[3].  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/01/security-and-certainty.html

[4].  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-futility-of-existence-without-god.html

[5].  Yes, we have at least 10:
https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/07/more-than-five-senses.html

The Futility Of Existence Without God

Without God, nothing matters.  Some people choose to respond to this by embracing what they call "faith" as a way to escape the nihilism that logically follows if God does not exist.  Some people choose to disbelieve in God and yet live as if something can or does matter.  Some people choose to deny both God and meaning, possibly leading to acts of psychopathy, internal despair, or even suicide.

It's time for me to present the utterly futility of existence without God.

I want to state up front that this post is merely for proving that an existence without God is one devoid of any significance, fulfillment, or purpose.  This is NOT a post where I will prove that a generic theistic entity exists or where I will argue for a more specific deity like Yahweh.

If God does not exist, there is no such thing as right or wrong.  Our moral ideas are either the results of social conditioning or subjective personal preferences or emotions, not a conscience implanted by a moral being--and there is no such thing as any higher reality for these moral longings, feelings, preferences, and consensuses to align with; we merely have or inherited these tormenting longings for a way we think the world should be, even though relatively few humans have the same ideas about this.  Conscience is a futile and cruel condition that leads us to believe an illusion or long for something that isn't real.

If God does not exist, then our sense of beauty does not tap into anything but our own delusions.  There is nothing beautiful about any location, object, person, or idea.  Every instance where someone finds a member of the opposite gender physically attractive and thus initiates emotional and physical bonding with him or her, every instance where someone listens to music that stirs a longing for something more, whatever that may mean, every instance where someone socializes with a close friend, and every instance where someone pauses to admire landscapes or scenery serves as nothing but a cruel mirage--they are all things that tease an illusory hope or meaning that vanishes when we reach for it.

If God does not exist, then there is a way things are but no way things
 should be; there is no such thing as human rights, justice, beauty, salvation,
 or purpose; truth itself has no value, nor do we have an obligation
 to seek or protect it; there is only darkness, absurdity, and chaos outside of
 us and darkness, absurdity, and chaos within us.  If God does not exist,
 then we are organisms with a misguided tendency to think ourselves
 valuable who by happenstance are inhabiting a cold, pointless cosmos
 with nothing to look forward to but death and the extinction
 of our consciousnesses.

The willingness of atheists like Sam Harris to cling to things like morality while denying the only possible ontological basis for them has been demonstrated repeatedly.  In fact, even Richard Dawkins, who in one of his books blatantly claimed that there is no such thing as meaning or morality (now how does he know that?  I sense a non sequitur AND the fallacy of begging the question!), yet spent a significant number of pages in his (hilariously fallacious) book The God Delusion claiming that religion in general, and Christianity in particular, is objectively evil.  Individuals like the New Atheist Lawrence Krauss are either deniers of purpose or skeptical of what any purpose for the universe may be, but they still act as if things like science (in the case of Krauss) have meaning.  In short, few people live as if these things like morality and purpose are illusions even as they reject the only basis for them.  But as you can see, the ramifications of God's hypothetical nonexistence extend into every crevice of philosophy and reality.

If God does not exist, then there is no justification or payoff for our suffering, nor is there anything wrong with inflicting suffering on other beings, be they humans or animals.  One of the largest difficulties some people have in embracing either general theism or a specific religion is the so-called "problem of pain".  If God loves us, why does suffering exist--especially suffering that seems so gratuitous to us?  Not only does this question erroneously assume that if a god exists it must be one with a loving and benevolent nature that will oppose suffering (a huge instance of begging the question), but if there is no god at all then our suffering is nothing more than something that only subjectively disturbs us, with suffering itself having no moral dimension and no good to arise from or after it.

If God does not exist, our yearnings for emotional, personal, social, and even intellectual fulfillment are absurd fantasies.  We may have billions of other people on the planet metaphorically alongside us, but we remain utterly alone in our anguish and despair.  We may pride ourselves in our intellects, only to eventually realize that because of our intellects we can apprehend the absolutely meaningless nature of existence and truth itself.  In a universe without God, there is no purpose, and yet that does not alleviate or remove our insatiable longing for meaning and fulfillment; we simply orient our lives around different pursuits that we all subjectively find appealing, thoroughly deluding ourselves in the process.  Whether we react towards this with rage, despair, sadness, or indifference reflects nothing more than our subjective mental states that do not change anything about reality or conform to any higher reality at all.  No matter what we choose to live for--survival, success, sexuality, power, philanthropy, a sense of self-fulfillment--in the end we cannot escape reality.

Without God, existence is just a desolate state that is no better than
 nonexistence and no worse.  We are beings that enter this existence
 without choice, with our only options being to either pointlessly endure
 our lives of pain and longing with no ultimate reason for doing so or to
end our own lives in order to escape the futility of them.  Either way, we
 are like fog that inevitably dissipates, to be forgotten and forever gone.

Now, never once did I argue that life without God is meaningless and that therefore God exists because without him there is no purpose; I would never use such an obviously fallacious argument!  As I stated in the introduction, this post is merely designed to show the logical ramifications of God's nonexistence.

It is difficult to imagine any person honestly wanting such an existence as this to be the one we live in if he or she truly comprehends the ontological and personal ramifications.  Nor is it "insane" or "taboo" for people to honestly confess the horrors of human life and the fact that God alone can ground meaning.  If God does not exist, then there is only darkness, absurdity, and chaos outside of us and darkness, absurdity, and chaos within us.  Let us all, theists and atheists, skeptics and modernists, postmodernists and fitheists, moralists and sociopaths alike, solemnly reflect on these truths as we acknowledge the complete futility of life without God.

Security And Certainty

A text conversation yesterday inspired me to write this post.  The conversation focused on the psychological effects that result when someone values security over certainty, and vice versa.  A large portion of this post is almost exactly what I texted to a close friend, plus several introductory and concluding remarks, but my texting style actually resembles the writing style on my blog much of the time.

Security and certainty, ironically, are often mutually exclusive, and when one is found in an idea it often signifies the absence of the other.  Other times it does not, but the type of certainty or security will differ depending on the concept in question.  I want to assess the appearance of each in two drastically different epistemologies--faith-based "knowledge" and rationalism.

Many Christians and, indeed, people of many other beliefs derive great security from what they call "faith" [1].  It enables them to feel like their existence and pursuits have meaning.  This security can be very compelling, and I myself know that from past experience when I first became a Christian.  When people have faith in an idea or in a religion or in another person, it can be extremely liberating and relieving to just simply trust something outside of yourself.  The burden of needing to prove everything in order to know it can seem to vanish.  However, this type of worldview often comes at the expense of certainty--and defensibility.  If one cannot know if an idea is true, then one cannot truly defend the idea without appealing to the hypothetical and not merely the knowable.

Rationalism also offers security in the forms of knowledge and proof.  If someone longs for certainty and truth, then it is absolutely--not probably or extremely likely--impossible for axioms and the reliability of deductive reason to fail them.  In this regard, they will never be insecure.  But the amount of things with axiomatic properties is very small, meaning that we can have security and absolute certainty about base epistemology and the core of reality but little more--meaning any longings for ideals, fulfillment, and faith are not secure and therefore can't be trusted.

Note that these two types of security are the exact opposites.  One provides existential and personal security for the emotions, conscience, and desires for something transcendent--but cannot satisfy the demands of logic or a longing for absolute certainty.  The other provides total logical certainty about a limited amount of inescapable truths--but leaves the grand questions about values, meaning, and what people call the "soul" in mystery.

Each of these opposing and contrasting epistemologies grants complete security and is completely unfulfilling, but in different ways for each.  This dichotomy is remarkable in its inverse nature, yet few realize that this is simply how reality is.  It is useless and futile to aim for personal and emotional security about values and meaning while neglecting the other kind of security.  What many people who hold to moral or theological beliefs "on faith" do not realize is that people with entirely different moral or theological ideas--in fact, some that cannot be true if their own are--try to justify their separate beliefs using the exact same fallacious arguments.  Security of the first kind is merely an illusion that comforts but provides no substance; security of the second kind actually provides an inescapable foundation for the possibility of verifying and falsifying the beliefs often held because of the former.

Security without certainty has no justification for its existence.  Only logic can reveal what knowledge we can truly access; anything else is either unverifiable or unfalsifiable.  Do you understand the significance of this?  Do you see that the ramifications of this extend into every aspect of human life?

I fear that many do not.  This truth may be quite unfulfilling, but that does not affect its veracity.


[1].  The existence of God is entirely provable through strict logic and thus does not require "faith" to know or believe in it.  But if faith is defined as a leap beyond pure logic, then the vast majority of all beliefs about anything require some degree of faith to accept.

The Fallacies Of Anti-Profanity Christians

It is truly astonishing to me how poor the arguments against profanity found in Christian circles are.  Ask, and you shall receive--receive overtly fallacious reasoning offered as justification for anti-profanity lifestyles.  Although I already addressed this issue once before, I want to again defeat the arguments raised to defend a hollow tradition of legalism.

The inconsistency of these Christians is astounding.  They will often declare on one hand, especially with regard to issues like homosexuality, that if something is wrong because it contradicts God’s nature, the only metaphysical source of good, then it does not matter what any society or individual thinks; the truth about values remains unaffected by their perceptions and preferences.  Then they will turn around and, after soundly rejecting belief in moral ideas on the basis of societal conditioning, proceed to explain that using certain words like "damn" or "shit" is objectively evil just because our society defines them as a class of speech called "profanity."

But is something truly "profane" and wicked simply because a culture decides it is?  Of course not!  Christians seem to forget this fact when it comes to issues like profanity.

Now let me demonstrate the pure subjectivity of calling a word immoral to begin with.

I go to a Christian college, one where certain students object to profanity and believe it is objectively immoral.  If I went up to them and said "poop," I am fairly certain they will not object.  If I instead say "shit," they might correct me for my ostensibly unholy speech.  If I tell them, "For heaven's sake, you scared me," they will likely not mind.  But if I say "For hell's sake, you scared me," they might scold me for my sinful mouth!  If I walk up to a Christian and utter "Dang it," I probably won't receive any scolding.  But if I walked up and said, "Damn it," the Christian might object.

Do you see the utter subjectivity of this?  This reasoning is nothing more than an appeal to emotion, an appeal to cultural ideas about morality, and a fallacious instance of begging the question.  The arbitrary, relativistic nature of calling profanity wrong is only heightened when one remembers that words change meaning over time.  In fact, no particular sound we can make with our tongues and mouths has any inherent linguistic meaning whatsoever.  We define words as we need or want to in order to express objective ideas and concepts.

At this point Christians may say that we shouldn't use profanity because it may offend people.  Not only does this assume that people in general are offended by these words, especially assumptive because people don't even entirely agree on what words are profanity to begin with, but, by their own standard, if people are not offended by certain words than there can be nothing wrong with saying them in their presence to express anger or shock or confusion.  And since I am not offended by such language, anyone cussing in my presence is not sinning.

God condemns blasphemy (Leviticus 24:16).  He condemns cursing your father or mother (Exodus 21:17, Leviticus 20:9).  The Bible's many condemnations of pride by direct extension condemn words of arrogance or words motivated by pride.  Since Mosaic Law condemns degrading another human, even convicted criminals (Deuteronomy 25:3), we should never degrade or seek to degrade others with out speech.  Words intended to provoke or unjustly belittle are not loving.  But never once does God state that a society can randomly and subjectively assign a meaning to a word it invented or inherited and then make use of that word become morally wrong.  And to claim that such words are sinful is to add to God's moral standard, something he explicitly prohibited in the Old Testament (Deuteronomy 4:2) and something that Jesus personally criticized in the New Testament (Matthew 15:3-9).

Is profanity sinful?  No, at least apart from using profanity to attack someone with malicious motives ("Bitch!"; "Bastard!").  When Christians sidestep the morality God instructs them to uphold, all while inventing subjective moral preferences and then defining them as objectively binding, they have forfeited rationality and a correct understanding of Biblical ethics.

The Personal Cost Of Rationalism (To Me)

I haven't often detailed my personal psychology and history on my blog except on rare occasions where I have used myself as an example of why certain limitations prevent us from knowing aspects of reality.  Here I wanted to share some of the costs of my rationalism in a personal sense.  I want others to understand that truth can be agonizing and that discovering it is not always simple or fun, for my rationalism has cost me much.


It has cost me many former beliefs.

Beliefs I once found my identity in I have since abandoned.  Certain things I once viewed as wrong and things I once viewed as right are now understood in the exact inverse.  My epistemology and worldview are dramatically different than they were five years ago.  As someone sheds beliefs, perhaps ones that were instilled from childhood or by everyone ever encountered by him or her, the process can seem extremely painful and uncertain.

It has cost me my conscience.

While seeking to find moral truth through reason I came to realize that conscience, although it can seem almost unspeakably compelling, is nothing more than a subjective impulse that may be correctly oriented and may not be.  This revelation devastated me, for I had always been such a conscience driven person.  Conscience alone had driven me to despise racism, sexism, deception, torture, irrationality, and cruelty.  But when I realized that my conscience and by extension the consciences of others aren't necessarily valid, I eventually ended up slowly distancing myself from conscience to the point where I found myself practically without one.

It has cost me relationships with others.

Truth and logic are so often in conflict with commonly held beliefs, the preferences of our hearts, our feelings, and the assumptions of our societies.  I have experienced some rather dramatic and forceful conversations with other people in the name of truth, and not everyone appreciates my epistemology or its ramifications.  Because of this, some of my familial relationships in particular have suffered.  Also, my rationalism makes it difficult for most people to want to engage in deep friendship with me.

People often refuse to abandon ideas when they are proven to be false, impossible, or unverifiable, and thus I had to choose between rationalistic pursuit of truth and pleasing other people.  I chose the former, obviously.  No one can serve both at the same time.

It has cost me my own comfort and security.

Sometimes rationality comes at the cost of fulfillment.  Since every person will have different perceptions of what is fulfilling, not everyone in their present state will be fulfilled by the truth, even if it turns out to be the most objectively good and beautiful thing possible.  I am not exempt from this.  While I have up until now always adapted my preferences to each truth I have discovered, I have struggled greatly with how my rationalism has sometimes led me to forfeit things I once found personal security in.

It has, at times, cost me my joy.

It can be very difficult, if not impossible, to find joy in many things or ideas when you are skeptical about them.  There have been periods of my life as a rationalist where I have been quite depressed, indifferent, somber, unhappy, and unfulfilled.  In my posts on theistic absurdism I have even declared this to be the inevitable destiny of people who do not have special divine revelation if they truly understand the predicament and absurdity of life that would result in different circumstances.

My Christian worldview enables joy because the two are inseparable, and I have found some comfort from this.


All of these things have been casualties sustained in my quest for knowledge.  I write this post so that readers will not think that I have not personally sacrificed a great deal in my pursuit of truth and reason.  I have understood for some time that truth is simply how things are and that it is futile to attempt to flee from it, and I have adapted my lifestyle, my priorities, and my epistemology accordingly.  But that does not negate the difficulty of doing so at times.

Perhaps some of this information might help those enduring the same circumstances and transitions.

Defining Terms And Positions--More Than Splitting Hairs

Only a few days ago I was charged with "splitting hairs" during a theological discussion.  My fellow dialoguer did not seem to apprehend or comprehend the difference between doing so and merely exercising appropriate intellectual care.  Actually, I would probably have been further accused of splitting hairs had I thoroughly defined the difference between that and using careful definitions and asking what someone means by their phrases.

People can be very careless with what they mean when they say various things.  Below I have some examples of issues that I have debated people about where the truth about reality greatly changes depending on which understanding is correct--caution in deciphering which conclusions logically follow from preceding premises is thus called for.

For instance, does God have foreknowledge of future events or does he directly cause them?

Foreknowledge or causation?  The answer makes no minor difference.  The former enables God to know the future, but the latter makes God the direct cause of everything--and that includes every act of evil.  The latter makes God entirely responsible for every act of human sin and for every human heart that rejects God.  This makes God the ultimate obstacle to human salvation and sanctification, not human pride, unwillingness, or ignorance.

When we say God is good, do we mean that a standard of goodness exists external to God and he happens to be good by aligning with this standard or that he IS good and that good is part of his immutable nature?

If God just happens to be good because of some happenstance alignment with an outside standard of morality, then he is not inherently good and thus could hypothetically be evil.  If he is good by his very nature, however, then it is futile and irrational to reject or morally criticize any moral ideas legitimately originating from God because there is no such thing as another standard of morality to appeal to.

Related to this, does the Bible define morality or does it reveal it?

The former means that if the Bible is true and it had happened to say that rape is good but any use of alcohol is sinful (the exact inverse of what it teaches about these two things), then we must accept this.  According to the latter, though, the Bible does not arbitrarily "make" something true but serves as a method by which God simply reveals how things already are.  This means that the Bible, and by extension God, does not randomly present morals that we arbitrarily are told to follow but informs us of moral facts that exist objectively and independent of our preferences and awareness.

Are all sins equal or are all sins evil but some are objectively more depraved?

Again, this is no small matter.  The former, if true, means that we have no basis for condemning things like rape, serial murder, and the slave trade with greater vehemence and urgency than we condemn a moment of jealousy or the theft of a penny.  The latter means that we have a moral obligation to punish some sins more severely than others as Mosaic Law does and that trying to ontologically equate sexual abuse to a remark said in an arrogant tone is a heinous abomination.  According to the former, it is unjust and logically and morally wrong to distinguish between any evil as "worse" than any other sin.

Is all killing murder or are some killings morally obligatory?

If valid, the former means that every time God legislated for humans to impose the death penalty for something like kidnapping or murder he was in moral contradiction, commanding us to not kill while explicitly and repeatedly instructing us to do so--ultimately meaning God commanded people to sin.  The latter means that it is just to execute people according to the guidelines in God's ethical revelation and unjust not to do so in certain circumstances.

Is it lust to look at a married person and find him or her attractive, or is lust something else?

The former means that the vast majority of people are unable to not sin simply due to the nature of their instinctual aesthetic judgments.  The latter means that some churches have been oppressing innocent thoughts for decades and that something Christians are hesitant to acknowledge as non-sinful is not wrong.  Some people may object that defining "lust" precisely is "splitting hairs", but it is not so.  Do we discover what the Bible objectively means by use of the word or do we leave it to our subjective preferences and perceptions to arrive at conflicting definitions as we then condemn others for violating what subjectively seems wrong to us.

These issues I mentioned are extremely important to comprehend with clarity and specificity.  As I demonstrated, the options available for each topic do not result in minor theological and moral differences.  Depending on the correct answer, much of reality is different than it otherwise would have been.  There may be people who gratuitously split hairs, but defining positions and words carefully is crucial, not optional--as is knowing the exact differences between the content and veracity of one position on a matter versus that of another.  When people say "The Bible tells us what is right and wrong", do they mean that any moral teaching God just happened to put in the Bible became good or that God revealed through the Bible how morality already is?  When they say "God is good", do they mean that he happens to be good because he acts in synch with a higher standard or because he IS good?  Their explanations will unveil much about their worldviews.

We need to remain alert when we realize that these answers do not "split hairs" but make all the difference.

Game Review--The Order: 1886 (PS4)

"Well, circumstantial evidence can be a tricky animal, my dear Sir Percival.  You may think it is pointing at one thing, but shift your point of view slightly, and you may find it pointing in an equally-uncompromising manner at something entirely different."
--Commissioner, The Order: 1886

"Never accept.  Always question."
--Sir Percival, The Order: 1886

"I have seen things I am condemned to remember.  Civilizations born and destroyed by humanity's incessant greed.  The pride of men slaughtering each other in the name of their so-called God."
--Sir Lucan, The Order: 1886



I was genuinely surprised by this game.  I initially played not expecting anything too grand or unique--and some of those expectations were correct--but the game defied those expectations in some very clever and original ways.  Having completed the campaign, I am pleased I spent around seven hours entering the game's spectacular reimagining of 19th century England.

What did I think of the specifics and generalities?  Read below to see!


Production Values

As expected from a Sony PlayStation 4 title, this game has excellent production values.

The amazing graphics are clear, smooth, and require almost no loading time from what I recall.  Moments where your character picks up objects like a newspaper, pipe, or a gun and rotates them with his hand showcase very realistic hand movements.  Extraordinary voice acting heightens the sense of realism exactly as voice acting in gaming needs to, and when combined with the splendid graphics the wonder of the experience is compounded dramatically.

Also, the music is often beautiful, tonally appropriate, and greatly adds to the impact of some parts of the story.  The title theme, called The Knight's Theme, is somber, haunting, and I perceived certain moments of the track to be stirring.  Listening to it when the title menu appeared after I beat the game and thus finished the masterful and emotional ending, the sadness and emotion of the music became more apparent.  Last Man Standing, which plays at the end of the game, is also a beautiful piece of music.

As an example of the detail and world-building in this game, let me explain what happened once while I was playing.  Once I let my character hold up a collectible document as I read something on my iPad, meaning I was looking away for several minutes, and to my pleasant surprise other characters began conversing in a very lifelike and well-written way.  This completely non-mandatory and secondary dialogue was very natural.  THAT incident alone exudes a very realistic sense of setting and proves that the creators intentionally crafted even minor details with care.


Gameplay

Controls and gameplay style are the generic, expected third-person shooter variety.  The setting, story, and occasional fantasy weapon are undeniably what set this game apart, not the controls.  The combat can be fun but remains generic.  Even a bullet time type mechanic that slows time so the player can fire multiple bullets at high speed into nearby enemies is another feature seen numerous times before in gaming.  Fighting bosses is exhilarating, but some of the minor shootouts can seem mundane towards the end.  Overall, though, the cinematic story and characters are the major strengths of this game, not the aspects I called generic.

Also, a Sackboy doll collectible references another Sony series LittleBigPlanet.  I just wanted to mention that it's fun toying with a cute Sackboy collectible.


Story

The game opens with your character, hands shackled to a stone well-like implement, being dunked in water in a first person perspective.  Saving the plot unraveling for later, the game almost immediately launches into a quick-time event where you escape by pulling your arm from a weak shackle, impaling one guard in the neck, and drowning the other.  Weak and disoriented, your currently unnamed character stages a dramatic escape by bluffing the guards with an empty revolver.  You witness guards shooting at something animal-like, growling and powerful.  You physically fight with a guard.  And eventually you leap off of a high wall into water below, Kratos style.

Then the game begins showing how your character, named Grayson, came to find himself in that scenario.  Amidst the wonderful setting of an alternate late 19th century England, your character serves a group called the Order, presently dispatched to quell a rebel uprising.  He is a Knight, a member of the Order's Round Table dedicated to protecting England.  But this history is very unusual.  Elevators, tesla guns, blimp airships, wireless communications technology--this 1886 England boasts some very impressive technological advancements not seen in the real world until decades and centuries later.  The scientific breakthroughs complement the subtle references to the presence of Christianity in the story [1].

You quickly meet with your close friend and companion Knight known as Lady Igraine.  Conversation reveals you trained her in the past, and the present observations demonstrate that you are at least sometimes partners.  This 1800s England is actually very egalitarian; it lets women serve alongside men and allows them to be partners and mentors to each other.  Yay!

After fighting some escaped convicts you find another Knight named Lafayette, to whom Grayson says "We do not fight men."  Lafayette's response indicates that they combat things called "half-breeds".  Exploring subterranean walkways to find more commits after you split up from Igraine and Lafayette, Grey overhears distant police officers comment in shock about some bloody corpses they found, with one mentioning that a particular body is missing an arm.  Are the escapees responsible for this, or is something more fearsome?

In the underground structure you encounter an inmate who transforms quickly into a Lycan, the name for this type of half-breed.  "One of our escapees is a half-breed," Grayson reports into his shoulder-mounted radio.  After killing the Lycan and overhearing a conversation between a police commissioner and another Knight about how circumstantial evidence can point to truths quite different than what we may imagine they do (this is actually very clever foreshadowing)

The Lord Chancellor credits King Arthur with founding the Order in a council meeting after chapter one.  The Order's members assume the names of Knights of the Round Table--Gallahad, Percival/Sebastian, etc.

A rebellion has surfaced, attracting the attention of the council members, yet the council leader--the Lord Chancellor--seems concerned about internal matters.  "I remind the knights here assembled that the threat to this order comes not only from without, but within."

These words, as the game unfolds, become unknowingly prophetic.

Another use of foreshadowing appears when a terrorized woman complains about how she didn't know until now that someone she was close to was "the Ripper", but I think she was confused and traumatized.

Actually, as the end of the game unveils, she was definitely mistaken.

(SPOILERS!!!!!!)

Eventually, a plot revelation uncovers the fact that the cordial Lord Hastings of the United India Company is actually a vampire and the legendary serial killer called Jack the Ripper, secretly plotting to launch an assault on other regions of the world using half-breeds as biological weapons.  An attempt to expose his identity leads to the discovery that one of Grayson's fellow Knights, Sir Lucan, or Alastair, is a Lycan who has kept his nature from the entire around Table for years.  Failure to stop Lucan and Hastings ends in Grayson's arrest and trial for treason and attempted murder of Lord Hastings, who does a splendid job manipulating people into thinking Grayson had maliciously plotted to kill an innocent leader of an important company.

The escape sequence mentioned at the beginning follows, with a climactic confrontation between Grayson and Sir Lucan, the betrayer, occurring inside Nikola Tesla's laboratory.  Yes, he is in this game!

After defeating Lucan, Grayson questions him.  How could he betray the Order?  How could he lie to his father and the other Knights?

"I do what I must, to protect my kind.  We fight only for our right to live!" Lucan says in response.  "I have seen things I am condemned to remember," he continues.  "Civilizations born and destroyed by humanity's incessant greed.  The pride of men slaughtering each other in the name of their so-called God."

Alastair/Lucan explains that he loves Igraine and his father like his "own blood" just before his father, the Lord Chancellor, emerges and reveals that he has always known Alastair was a half-breed.  Long ago he killed Alastair's father but could not force himself to kill Alastair, who was only a child at the time.  As the scene comes to a very emotional close, the Lord Chancellor gives Grayson a gun and leaves, wanting Grayson to kill Alastair.

"Men were never meant to live this life," he says as he departs.

The story them ends briefly after with a brilliant shot and chillingly haunting music as Galahad reluctantly pulls the trigger and shoots the man he once called brother.


Intellectual Content

The existence of Lycans and vampires, of course, is of obvious cryptozoological relevance.  I hoped the game would try to explain their origins, but, as I explained concerning wendigos in my review of another epic PS4 game called Until Dawn, the primary legends about the birthplace of both are not really incorporated.  I love cryptozoology, so I appreciated the inclusion of these types of "half-breeds".  As for their existence in real life, as with wendigos and aliens, I am an agnostic on the matter.  Could these creatures exist?  Of course; there's no logical impossibility that prevents this from being the case or that proves they never existed at one time.  But we cannot currently know either way.  Still, I enjoyed their presence in this game.

The commissioner' statement about circumstantial evidence (quoted at the very top of this review) ends up brilliantly foreshadowing a massive plot twist.  The second half of the game excellently shows that we do not truly know people we believe we can trust.  Lord Hastings was secretly both a vampire and Jack the Ripper and was additionally planning a takeover of distant areas.  Protected by his renown and public image, he is never suspected at all during Grayson's illicit arrest and trial.  Indeed, evil people can prosper when their evil is concealed just enough so as not to arouse widespread panic or awareness.  Even the mid-credits scene does not indicate that anyone else has discovered the true identity of Lord Hastings, possibly implying that, despite the minor setback of the warehouse burning caused by Grayson and his companion, he will still release half-breeds into unsuspecting territories.  As with stories like the first Saw movie, The Order: 1886 is the rare tale where the villain(s) either triumph or are left to freely continue in their villainy.

I want to dissect the end of this game.  The ending cinematic is surprisingly emotional as it depicts three people with different motivations and ideals baring themselves and revealing their demons and their struggles.  At the finale, following the fight where Grayson confronts Lucan as described in the "Story" section, he asks Lucan how he can justify the depravities committed by his kind, the Lycans.

Alastair responds, "My kind are no more evil than yours."

The truth of this statement gets absorbed by Grayson.  And with good reason, for this is no minor charge.  The moment highlights two things: 1) although the humans viewed the Lycans as inhumane brutes, at least some Lycans (or one) are not heartless monsters and 2) the humans have at times been just as brutal and evil as the creatures they treated as outcasts.  How often do people demonize others, only to practice the very evils they think they denounce in a different, more subtle form?

I will end this section with comments about how the Lord Chancellor handles the situation when he finds Grayson and Lucan conversing after their brawl.  The Lord Chancellor ultimately seeks to suppress the truth about Grayson's innocence and the presence of a Lycan within the Order's Round Table--all to ensure that there is no uproar that destroys the Order.  Like Alfred Pennyworth at the conclusion of Christopher Nolan's masterpiece The Dark Knight, the Lord Chancellor sacrifices truth for superficial peace in a time of chaos.  He appears during the end scene, explains himself, and then leaves after handing Grayson a revolver and telling him to shoot Alastair because he cannot bear to do it himself.  He embodies for the story the type of person who believes that an obligation to conformity and stability is higher than an obligation to truth itself.

"So I am to be sacrificed.  How many more must die to insure an eternal silence?" Grayson asks.

The Lord Chancellor replies by verbally confirming his commitment to utilitarian ethics.

Sometimes truth seems unbearable--after all, it can shatter our preferences, deny us our longings, and contradict our hopes.  Truth has the power to devastate us or to liberate us.  Sometimes it can seem easier or even morally right to conceal the truth in the name of bringing comfort and hope to others, but we must remember during those moments that there is ultimately no such thing as an escape from the truth.  Eventually, in one way or another, it will hunt us down and force us to acknowledge its existence and its inescapability.  We can spend so much of our lives hiding from truth.  If we desire to know reality and God, then we cannot be like the Lord Chancellor.

As Alfred later realizes in The Dark Knight Rises, "Maybe it's time we all stop trying to outsmart the truth and let it have its day."


Conclusion

The Order: 1886 may have generic controls and largely standard formulaic third-person shooter gameplay, but these features are not negative, just generic.  The story, setting, characters, and unique science fiction weaponry set this game apart from other games that have identical controls and style.

It may be a brief experience--it takes about 6-7 hours to complete, there are no bonus features like in Sony's God of War games, and there are no replay incentives besides missed trophies and simple desire to see the game again--but it can be very enjoyable if the player allows himself or herself to be immersed in the story.  This version of 1886 England is creative and intriguing indeed.  Still, I would hope that any possible sequels include additional game modes, rewards for replaying the game, and a longer glimpse into this beautiful but dark digital world.

If you want a lengthy open world game which you can replay again and again and still seem to discover new aspects of the world each time, this is not the game.  But if you desire a game with superb atmosphere, a unique alternate history, an immersive cinematic style, and a story that reveals how fragile and hollow our trust in other people can turn out to be, then do not hesitate to experience The Order: 1886.

When I engaged in my first playthrough, I played in a noisy environment where I couldn't hear very well and thus didn't understand the narrative very well, and the impact of the game was lessened.  But when I became familiar with the story and studied the visuals upon a second playthrough, I was astonished anew at the quality of the storytelling and graphical detail--and when I saw the ending for the second time I almost cried as the camera faded to black.  In fact, while watching the final shot I was overcome by a sense of moral outrage over the escape of Hastings, the charges against Grayson, and the fact that a conflicted man had to kill someone he viewed as a brother in order to preserve a society he had been permanently banished from.

I cherish games that can provoke such internal thoughts.  The world needs more of them.

This game certainly demonstrates the power of the PS4 and the capacity for video games to tell incredible stories in almost-living worlds.  If you want a deep and fascinating story, prepare to enjoy this title deeply.


Content:
1. Violence:  A third-person shooter, this game involves shooting and killing human and Lycan opponents.  There are also brawls and some blood, especially in scenes where the player confronts large Lycan full-breeds.
2. Profanity:  Some of the knights of the Order sometimes say "F-ck" or other words classified as profanity by our society.
3. Sexuality:  At least twice the main character passes through a brothel (not to sleep with prostitutes, however), and for several moments a mostly clothed woman is shown sitting on top of a naked man's lap.
4. Nudity:  In the scene described just above, the player's character Grayson fights the man who had the woman atop him, the woman having only one breast uncovered.  The man, however, is nude and his entire body, including his exposed penis, is briefly shown (and I do mean briefly) when he stands up.


[1].  For instance, a promotional poster in Chapter 3 with a cross on the top advertises an upcoming event called "RATIONS, RINSE, AND REDEMPTION", where a play called "FOUR PENNIES" will be presented and the viewers will receive a meal, "SLEEP ACCOMMODATIONS", and the "COMPASSION OF THE LORD".  This seemed to be targeted towards the poor and homeless--and it made me smile to think of the church doing such a thing.  When the Order could not address the problems of the poor in this alternate historical timeline, the church did so instead.

The Foundations Of Racism

Readers of this blog will know that I despise racism.  This post would not mark the first time I have proven that the Bible explicitly condemns racism, but it will mark the first occasion I have addressed the foundations of this deplorable atrocity.  I have recently thought about two potential motivators for this evil and I wanted to write about them here briefly.

Arrogance is one major root of not only racism, but sexism, nationalism, and many other manifestations of sin.  Individuals or entire tribes or societies can come to think so highly of themselves that they act as if or believe that those who have a different ethnic background, physical appearance, or nationality are inferior to them.  To reach this threshold of depravity one must suppress the obvious intellectual fact that all humans--black, white, Hispanic, and so on--are whole people that share many traits.  Equality of humans is one of the cornerstones of human rights, and racism tramples on the status that all people share simply by nature of being human.

Fear can be a foundation of racism also.  While pride surely serves as motivation for a great deal of racism, fear can also be a powerful impulse that fills the same role.  It is not necessarily uncommon for people, especially those who have absorbed certain social conditioning, to fear what they do not understand.  With this mindset such people may respond to those with different skin colors or backgrounds with fear because the objects of that fear are foreigners with whom they are unfamiliar.  Totally ignoring the fact that these beings are men and women just like the fearful ones are--who possess intellects, feelings, aspirations, and volitions just as they do--they may allow their fear to escalate into the cruel discrimination and oppression of racism.  This kind of fear forgets that we humans physically and spiritually have much more in common than the rather superficial differences we can sometimes become frightened by.

Neither pride nor fear justifies looking down on someone else simply because of their ethnicity, skin color, or other racial differences.  Other roots of racism may exist--insecurity, irrational hatred, faulty worldviews--but I suspect that arrogance and fear often form the foundations that lead to this grievous sin even if other factors are present.

Although the Bible is sometimes accused of racism or "xenophobia", I have repeatedly emphasized on my blog that it explicitly and repeatedly teaches that ALL people bear God's image (Genesis 1:26-27), that salvation is for ALL people (Galatians 3:28), that legal discrimination against foreigners and certain ethnicities is evil (Leviticus 24:22), and that mistreatment of people for ethnic differences (as well as their country of birth) is an abomination (Exodus 22:21, 23:9), and that the obligation to love one's neighbor (Leviticus 19:18) extends to those of other "races" and nationalities (Deuteronomy 10:19).  The Bible's teachings do not at all even near racism.  Indeed, it is asinine and irrational to insist otherwise.

Those who despise racism will certainly find that the Bible concurs with them, for, from the point in Genesis where God imbues his image into all humans to the verse in Revelation where God has redeemed people "from every tribe and language and people and nation" (Revelation 5:9), specific commands and theological principles alike viciously oppose the scourge of racism and all the evils that can accompany it.

Game Review--Resident Evil: Revelations (3DS)

"We are Veltro, vengeful messengers from the depths of the inferno.  'Abandon hope all ye who enter here.'"
--Jack Norman, Resident Evil: Revelations

"We must bring hell to the people, or the scales will not fall from their eyes."
--Bernard Corti, Resident Evil: Revelations



I've had this game for about seven months, yet I never got around to finishing more than the opening two hours when I first purchased it.  I had always heard great praise directed towards it--but now I've been able to spend far more time immersing myself in Resident Evil: Revelations.  Below you'll find me explain how the game succeeded in the usual four categories!

Photo credit: Inkdrocket on Visualhunt 

 /  CC BY-NC

Production Values

The graphics surpass those of Capcom's previous Resident Evil game for the 3DS (The Mercenaries 3D).  Jill's character model and the reptilian Hunter enemies in particular look great, especially for such an early game on the 3DS.  I must add that sometimes the colors are quite dull and could have been brightened or presented with more vibrancy, and during some elevator trips the game slows significantly (loading times?), these two things unfortunately marring the otherwise splendid visuals.

Although the dialogue is sometimes bland and generic, the sound itself remains amazing.  The enemy sound effects especially aided in immersion.

Capcom certainly appears to have done its best to produce a stand-alone game for the 3DS that is truly console-quality--and it succeeded beautifully.  In fact, this is supported further by the fact that the game was later ported to consoles like the PS3 and Wii U.


Gameplay

This game is a well-crafted shooter and survival horror game.  The gameplay largely involves exploring the large interior and exterior of a ship called the Queen Zenobia, shooting enemies, and collecting items, using a new device called the Genesis scanner to discover some of them.

Some moments in this game in particular deliver exactly what you might desire from a game of this type.  For instance, escaping a bedroom you are locked inside along with a creature near the very beginning when you have no weapons.  Or fighting a specific boss as she crawls through the ship's ventilation system, with you entering a completely dark (besides what your shoulder-mounted flashlight illuminates) and fairly narrow bathroom only to hear her emerging from the vents, realizing that you have little room to maneuver and diminishing ammo.  Or swimming around in both large and tight spaces with limited oxygen as infected creatures latch on to you, forcing you to release some of your air and dragging you down unless you complete a rapid quick-time event.  Or standing in a locked hallway right next to another identical hall, glass allowing you and your partner in the other hall to see each other as a bipedal beast with some sort of shield and a blade cuts its way into your claustrophobic hallway.  The gameplay is varied and engaging, with the story finished in episodes about 30 minutes to an hour in length that always end with cliffhangers, adding more incentive to continue.

The campaign took me just over 11 hours to complete on normal difficulty, and I spent a portion of that time scavenging as much ammunition and locating as many weapons, reserve  ammunition extension cases, and attachment kits as possible.  When three consecutive episodes of the single-player story mode are completed, multiple areas are unlocked in the brilliant additional feature called Raid Mode.

Co-op Raid Mode is awesome and rewarding.  Really, Raid Mode is a great mode even when playing solo.  As of this time I have spent almost 10 hours playing it, have reached level 40, have played several online cooperative matches, and have purchased and found some wonderfully powerful weaponry.  Unlike the largely monotonous gameplay in Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D, which was released before this game, Raid Mode has significant depth and can be very addicting.  As I just mentioned, you can level up (with myself currently being at 40) and thus obtain higher-level weapons and attachments.  With 25 Raid Mode achievements, 21 levels on Chasm difficulty, 20 on Trench difficulty, and (I believe) 20 on Abyss difficulty, scores of weapons, enhancements, new characters, skins, and multiplayer, Raid Mode was a very intelligent and fun addition.  The unlockables alone might compel you to play for hours--and drastically improve your character's statistics.  For example, "Body Armor 4" grants an 18% reduction in damage taken.  "Decoy Holder 3" allows you to carry 50% more Decoy grenades than before.  Upgrades for the carrying amount of healing herbs, miscellaneous grenades, weapon storage space, body armor, and ammo capacity of all types abound.

You can place your 3DS in sleep mode by closing it and, if you walk by someone else doing the same, you can receive bonuses.  Even playing online co-op will grant you additional items for the single-player campaign and will unlock new achievements for Raid Mode.

About the achievements (called "Missions"): in Raid Mode there are 25 slots for the achievements.  Many of them involve killing a certain number of specific enemy types, and these missions will be offered more than once even if you've already completed one of them.  Do not worry.  I initially thought I had encountered a glitch and proceeded to save an older file over the one I was playing, but found the same "glitch" later on.  You can delete the unwanted missions to clear room for new ones, so don't panic over this.


Story

Two government agents, Jill Valentine and Parker Luciani, use a speedboat to travel to a cruise ship called the Queen Zenobia afloat in an ocean somewhere on the globe.  Their superiors have dispatched them to retrieve two missing operatives, Chris and Jessica, whose last reported location matched the ship's current coordinates.  But the Queen Zenobia's interior does not reveal anything promising.  Corpses lay in various spots.  A thick white liquid substance is spotted several times.  More intriguingly, something inside the pipes above you moves and creates loud noises.  A mutation of some sort attacks Jill and Parker, indicating that something atrocious may have happened.

Soon, a flashback to a year earlier (2004 according to the game) shows Parker fighting alongside the now-missing Jessica.  Inside a floating aquatic city called Terragrigia that utilizes solar power and Eco-friendly technology, they find themselves confronting biological weapons--a terrorist organization named Veltro has assaulted the city.  Terragrigia is eventually destroyed in what becomes labeled the "Terragrigia Panic".  But after its decimation, strange organisms, some alive and some deceased, wash up on a nearby beach.

As the game progresses, evidence mounts suggesting that Veltro seems to have resurrected or perhaps never died to begin with.  Interestingly, many of the terrorists think they are doing something objectively morally good by engaging in their biological terrorism.  They seem to have found some moral fault(s) in humanity at large that are great enough to warrant catastrophic retaliation.   This is discovered from their notes and journals and the televised words of one of Veltro's members, a man named Jack Norman.  Bernard Corti, a Veltro agent, wrote, speaking about the opulent Queen Zenobia and its sister ships, that "These luxury liners are symbols of the degradation of humanity, and will be fitting vessels for the distribution of the virus that will purge humanity."  "We must bring hell to the people," he writes, "or the scales will not fall from their eyes."

Apparently Veltro operatives, or at least some of them, believed they were morally obligated to carry out some sort of purge.

The rest of the story is somewhat complex--and I also want to avoid spoilers about some of the revelations (see what I did there?) uncovered during the second half.

Ironically, the Dan Brown book Inferno (the movie adaption of which was just released this year and starred Tom Hanks and Felicity Jones), named after Dante's first entry of the same name in his Divine Comedy, also has a story about someone fixated on the poem Inferno who quotes it while referring to a virus he created.  And that wasn't the only thing that seemed familiar about the game.  The Genesis scanner reminded me of the scanning mechanic in the spectacular Metroid Prime series (I must have played those games about seven years ago!), which at the time was revolutionary, and that wasn't even the only thing that reminded me of Metroid.  Jill Valentine's blue diving suit resembles the zero suit of bounty hunter Samus Aran in the Metroid series.  And of course, since I just posted my review for Dementium Remastered very recently, the parts in Revelations where a flashlight is needed to penetrate otherwise complete darkness seemed familiar.  But I'm not calling these things negative, just noting parallels.


Intellectual Content

The tremendous danger of bioterrorism stands out as a major theme of much of the game.  From the bioterrorism assault on the city of Terragrigia to the eventual possibility of a ship carrying the "T-Abyss virus" sinking and thus infecting at least large amounts of the globe's oceans with the virus, the campaign provides examples of the devastating effects of viruses and biological weapons in the hands of evildoers.

The virus in the story does not necessarily create "zombies", though the behavior of infected organisms can appear very zombie-esque.  Technically, many of the beings you fight in the game are not zombies because they are not corpses that were reanimated post-mortem; on the contrary, many of them are living things infected with the T-Abyss virus.  A few enemies, like the boss/sub-boss Rachel, may be legitimate zombies, though, as they appear to have died before receiving the infection.

Another thing that may deserve recognition here is the repeated use of references to Dante's epic poem Inferno.  Each of the 12 campaign episodes opens with a quote from a canto of Inferno.  But the presence of the poem does not stop there, as multiple characters quote the poem at various points, especially the renowned words the poem ascribes to the gates of hell: "Abandon hope all ye who enter here".  You can find more such quotes in journals of Veltro members.  A primary NPC (non-playable character) protagonist has a copy of the Divine Comedy on his desk.  Bernard Corti's notes about bringing "hell to the people" probably have to do with Veltro's quotation of the classic work.  Since only last semester (the fall of 2016) I read all three entire books in the Divine Comedy, I appreciated these references!


Conclusion

Resident Evil: Revelations is a very impressive game, the fact that it was originally a 3DS exclusive before it traveled to consoles only testifying to its great quality.  It showcased the ability of the 3DS around a year after the system's release and proved just how graphically and technically superior the 3DS is to the DS before it.  The boss fights are spectacular.  The story is serpentine and complex.  Raid Mode is an extremely wise addition that will extend gameplay time potentially by many hours.  If you have a 3DS, do not own this game, and do not mind some survival horror, obtain this game soon.

After investing 20 hours into beating the campaign for the first time and playing Raid Mode, I'm still playing--and now I'm strongly inclined to purchase Resident Evil: Revelations 2 for my PlayStation Vita!


Content
1. Violence:  Expect to fire many bullets into various grotesque creatures, blood appearing upon their deaths and often while you are hitting their living bodies.
2. Profanity:  Words like "Sh-t" make infrequent verbal appearances.