Evolutionary Reductionism: Survival Is Not The Height Of Existence

Macro-evolution and macro-evolution do not contradict theism in any way, even though they do contradict some specific forms of religious theism.  In either case, non-theistic evolutionists tend to describe mere survival as if it is some grand expression of human accomplishment, something to be celebrated.  There remains nothing existentially special about the survival of humanity for its own sake.  One form of reductionism treats all human endeavors as if they all reduce down to the pursuit of survival itself first and foremost, with all activities being important or trivial based upon how they further or hinder this goal.  Not only is this an unsound philosophy in its own right in that survival does not encompass all of human nature and experience, but it is also primarily asserted in a non-theistic contexts.

Survival itself is meaningless without a theistic grounding for objective meaning.  Now, this does not mean that meaning exists regardless of the divine mind's nature and existence, but that it has nothing to do with human perceptions or preferences if it does exist.  Even God's existence does not logically guarantee that meaning exists, but it is the only metaphysical anchor for values.  In either case, survival for its own sake is one of the shallowest, most pointless things one could ever pursue.  If no deity existed, there could be nothing "meaningful" about survival at all, and even the logically necessary existence of the uncaused cause only proves that objective meaning could exist beyond the fact that such a thing is logically possible in the first place.

Again, there is nothing inherently meaningful about the survival of any species, as only matters of truth and morality could make the existence of even humankind meaningful.  Survival for its own sake is still a superficial concern at best.  The aforementioned misrepresentation of basic evolutionary science (with history, phenomenological psychology, and linguistics being separate from science as it is) is irrelevant to existential matters in an ultimate sense because meaning pertains to metaphysics and values, not to scientific observations of physical objects and creatures.  Any science-oriented framework of values, one that emphasizes survival as the ultimate purpose or meaning of life (and the two are very distinct [1]) is conceptually invalid and incomplete, and therefore shallow.

The struggle to survive in difficult circumstances might still certainly involve deep effort and emotion even if a person's worldview and priorities are shallow; I do not mean to say that there is or can be no depth behind survival alone.  It simply remains true that there is nothing existentially significant about mere survival.  So what if a creature gets to have a longer lifespan or reproduce?  Why pursue life at all apart from an embrace of whatever aspects of objective reality one can discover?  Any philosophy that elevates survival over truth--which evolutionary science does not do in and of itself--undermines itself due to relying on truth for its own significance in the first place!

Whether macro-evolution happened in the past, which is ultimately unknowable and therefore uncertain just like all other events between the coming into existence of the universe and the present moment, the survival of any species that has ever lived is not of automatic existential value.  The continuation of the human race is only of significance if certain objective values exist from which it follows that human life has meaning (at least if lived in a specific way), and objective values cannot exist without a deity to serve as a metaphysical anchor for them.  If survival matters in any way beyond an insignificant, subjective sense of appreciation shared only by some humans, it is only if a certain type of deity exists.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/06/purpose-and-meaning-distinct-concepts.html

Celebrities On Politics

If a celebrity figure well known to the average American interjects on politics, there is often a quick pushback from conservatives, who insist that celebrities need to "stay out of politics" and remain quiet on issues outside of their careers.  The truth is, however, that the person making a claim is at best a red herring to the veracity of the idea.  In a country generally ruled by emotionalistic political beliefs, it would not be unusual for many people to disregard this fact when they encounter an idea associated with an opposing political party.  America is such a country and has been one for some time.

As interviews and videos evidence, yes, celebrities are often inconsistent, philosophically blind imbeciles, but this is true of everyone other than a small minority of genuine rationalists: people from every profession and class tend to have thoroughly irrational worldviews.  Nothing about being a celebrity or changing the topic to politics makes any difference whatsoever.  Celebrities have no epistemological advantage over "ordinary" people, but they are also not wrong simply because of their profession.  Actors/actresses, models, and athletes have the same access to reason as everyone else and the same tendency to ignore it as the majority of people.

More likely than not, those who criticize celebrities for merely commenting on political matters do so out of a dislike of what ideas they claim are true.  In my experience, I have seen conservatives say that celebrities should keep silent about politics moreso than liberals, not that liberals do not do such a thing.  The inconsistency arises in either case when someone selectively calls out celebrities, only insisting on some irrelevant emphasis on their background when they make claims favored by whichever party they oppose.  There is no rationality behind this hypocrisy.  Moreover, there is no rationality in assuming that a celebrity is correct or incorrect because of their line of work to begin with!

To appeal to a celebrity's words as "evidence" or "proof" that a philosophical idea about anything from morality to metaphysics is asinine, as reason needs to be consulted rather than appeals to authority, but to dismiss an idea endorsed by a celebrity just because of the person associated with it is likewise asinine.  No matter who embraces what position, true ideas are still true, false ideas are still false, and unverifiable ideas are still unverifiable.  It does not matter if celebrities, scientists, journalists, politicians, or theologians stand with a concept.  Every rational person comes to recognize the disconnect and its epistemological ramifications 

"This Statement Is False"

Linguistic ambiguity is present whenever words are spoken or written.  In spite of this, linguistic communication is used consistently enough to accomplish a host of social goals.  There are some who like calling attention to just how vague language can be, though, and then there are some who go beyond this.  Such a person might conjure up some variation of the liar "paradox," a statement that is supposed to describe a liar who truthfully admits that he or she is lying and thus contradicts their own claim.  There are few examples of such asinine things to philosophically focus on than statements that can be partly true or partly false simultaneously (which is not contradictory) like the so-called liar paradox.  Not only is it impossible for someone to say nothing but lies, as a lie has to in some way distort or hinge on a truth even if the lie becomes self-defeating, but it is also true that the isolated comment "This statement is false" has no affirmative relationship to anything other than the sentence itself.

"This statement is false" is nothing but a vague, nonspecific phrase some people use to conflate language with logic as if the two are in any way synonymous.  A statement like "I perceive grass to be green," "Some things necessarily follow from specific ideas," or "It is possible for there to be an afterlife" can be true or false, but "This statement is false," without any preceding statement it refers to, provides no specific claim beyond an inescapably unclear comment often meant to confuse more than communicate.  This is why it is almost exclusively brought up in an attempt to argue against the effectiveness of language while using language or even in an attempt to mistakenly attack logic itself.  Regarding the former goal, using language to convey the ambiguity of language is ironic, but it is only self-refuting if the party communicating this means to say that language cannot refer to genuine truths at all.  Of course language can convey truths, yet people can only know which concepts they themselves mean by certain words.

Non-telepathic communication is inherently vague and can never truly bridge human minds in an ultimate sense.  After all, a person can only know with absolute certainty what they mean by their own words, but the words of others, no matter how clear or similar they seem, cannot be proven to correspond to the exact same concepts one would reference by using the same wording.  The words of others can be responded to with words that one knows the exact meaning of: one's own words.  There is no innate meaning of words.  For this reason, even the same words might have different intended meanings behind them, and all that one can rationally come to is that probabilistic communication is capable of sustaining human interactions without ever letting one party know the exact meanings of another party, as only what seems to be the meaning of someone else's words can be known.

No matter what words are used to communicate, every idea and belief are either true or false, and something is false if it contradicts the laws of logic or any other part of reality.  Awareness of logic precedes the use of language [1] and is the only way to navigate conversations without total confusion about which concepts one is referring to and what objectively follows from them.  "This statement is false" does not communicate any particular concept except that of a sentence which fails to make any sort of coherent claim about reality while still claiming that it itself is false.  Thus, there is nothing rational or worthwhile about the statement except its role as an example of how language is secondary and inferior to direct contemplation about reason, concepts, and experiences.

No one needs language to understand the laws of logic.  Knowledge of reason is at the very least required in an indirect sense to even associate words with concepts or think about any concept in the first place.  In the case of someone who has not directly reflected on logical truths themselves and yet still grasps reason on some level, awareness of and familiarity with reason is incomplete, cloudy, and subject to fluctuations.  This is the exact opposite of reason itself: all-encompassing and inflexible.  When examined rationalistically, sentences like "This statement is false" have no epistemological significance except as an example of pointless nonsense that separates asinine linguistic games from logic and the concepts logic governs.

Sexual Consent In Marriage

There is far more to the issue of sexual consent in marriage than the fact that marriage does not protect anyone from a sexually abusive spouse.  Certain acts that some may consider trivial--and that are somewhat trivial by comparison to outright rape of a conscious subject--are very relevant to the issue of rape within marriage, even though they are by no means as severe as rape itself.  An example that many married people can relate to involves a sleeping partner.

Suppose a wife uses her hands to toy with her husband's penis while he rests naked and asleep on his back, or a husband performs cunnilingus on his wife's vaginal area as she sleeps naked on her back.  The partners are asleep and therefore unable to give immediate consent, so does this necessitate that the husband and wife sexually interacting with their respective spouses are engaging in abusive behavior?  In some cases of this scenario, abuse of some sort is indeed present, but in others, it is not.

If these actions are a continuation of habits both spouses have already discussed and agreed to, then there is no need to wake one's partner up to ask for consent.  If there has never been any discussion about the matter, however, this would be a potentially unwanted course of action, and perhaps even one that would personally wound the receiving spouse emotionally.  Although consent is not required on each occasion, starting the habit without at least some expression of consent is a mild but definite form of sexual abuse.

There is nothing problematic or exploitative about spouses performing less conventional sex acts such as the aforementioned examples as long as there is mutual communication and affirmation on the front end.  Sexual consent is not something that must be verbally requested during every moment of sexual activity.  It is not a restriction that utterly stifles sexual creativity, passion, and pleasure!  Rather, it is a necessity that is more flexible than some may imagine.

Even when a nonconsensual sexual behavior falls short of rape, which is directly addressed in Deuteronomy 22:25-27 and is a capital offense for both male and female rapists, it is still utterly contrary to Biblical morality.  The egalitarian mutuality of 1 Corinthians 7:3-5 demands that both spouses not engage in any activity that violates or sidesteps the consent of either party.  Consent can be established without constant verbal questioning and affirmations, yes, and yet it is not something irrelevant to interpersonal sexual actions other than sex itself.

What Does Not Follow From Logical Possibility

Anything at all that does not contradict itself or any other logical truth by necessity falls into one of three categories: it is true, it is possibly true but unprovable, or it could have been true had some metaphysical circumstances been different.  Something that is not logically possible cannot exist or be true, but something that is logically possible may or may not exist or be true.  Being possible is not enough to make something true by necessity.  After all, it is hypothetically possible for gravity to not exist, for horses to fly, for extraterrestrial life to exist, and for no minds other than mine to exist, but these things are either false (as far as perceptions reveal in the case of the first two) or unverifiable (in the case of the last two).  For certain things, this might seem obvious.

For other things, the distinction is far more nuanced.  What future events might occur, which are always in the process of being constructed and determined until they always happen, and the future events that will ultimately occur are not necessarily the same.  The host of metaphysical and epistemological possibilities which encompass the whole of what does not conceptually contradict reason are not all reflected in the things that actually exist.  In proving to oneself that it is logically possible for a given concept to reflect reality, one has not always proven that the concept does indeed reflect reality.

For instance, realizing the pure conceptual possibility of a "human" consciousness existing without the body that would make it human is not the same as believing that such a thing exists or proving that this is anything more than a possibility.  Communicating the logical possibility of this is not the same as asserting it is true.  Only a fool with a poor ability to understand both others and reason itself thinks that hypothetical examples which prove or disprove conceptual truths must prove that the hypothetical event or existent (an existent is a thing that exists, like a law of logic, a mind, or a physical object) is more than a mere possibility.

Hypotheticals can still indeed prove certain facts about the nature of various concepts even when they cannot prove that the concept.  To overlook this fact is to cut oneself off from recognition of logical truths that establish certain things without the need to ever even attempt to find a concrete example of hypotheticals.  After all, proving that something is possible means no specific examples beyond hypotheticals are needed to know with absolute certainty that specific ideas are or could be true!  At the same time, it does not follow from logical possibility that many concepts are true.  This is the nature of reason.  It has the power to reveal conceptual truths even when those concepts are otherwise wholly disconnected from reality.

Logic, people.  It is very fucking helpful.

Corpses And Substance Dualism: The Metaphysics Behind The Obvious

Metaphysics and epistemology await one at every turn, "hiding" inside and around the most abstract and mundane parts of life alike.  Some of the exact applications of this fact pertain to distinctions between the nature of things that almost everyone will either hear about or think about at some point in their lives.  While there is actually a great deal of philosophical interest in certain aspects of death, one aspect in particular is rarely touched upon openly.  This side of death relates to substance dualism, the (true) metaphysical stance that consciousness is immaterial (nonphysical) and the physical body is made of matter.  The difference between a nonliving human body and a living person establish something that can be proven by rational reflection on the concept of consciousness without any other specific experiences, but conceptual proofs with more practical sides can be effective at communicating ideas to people who are less likely to contemplate philosophical subjects on their own.

Though the concepts of a living and dead body can be distinguished without having ever seen a corpse, seeing a lifeless body provides sensory examples of the distinction.  There would be no conceptual or observational differences between a corpse and a conscious, living person if it were not for the metaphysical distinction between a consciousness and a physical body.  On one level, part of this is so obvious that many people might overlook the ramifications of the metaphysics behind what separates a corpse from a live human.  On another level, it is not immediately evident what the exact differences between consciousness and the body are until one has specifically thought about them.  Thankfully, the issue is not as gratuitously complicated as some philosophically inclined people like to pretend.

It is still quickly apparent that there is a distinction between a lifeless body and a living one.  No one looking at a corpse can be rational if they truly think that what they are seeing is the same as a person who has not died.  However, beyond this, most people would likely have little to say.  The metaphysics behind the obvious can be ignored, but the truth of baseline substance dualism is there for anyone who searches for it to find.  The only thing missing from a dead body, of course, is the mind that animates it!  If a body is a body whether it is live or dead, and a corpse lacks consciousness, then the consciousness intertwined with a living human body is not physical, as a body is.  This is just another way of proving that the mind is immaterial even though the body it resides in is purely physical.

Even something like the difference between a living and dead body has immense philosophical ramifications that can be almost completely avoided by people who go about their lives without any direct concern or awareness for matters of ultimate truth.  Otherwise obvious logical facts that follow from more "practical" aspects of human life can be completely unnoticed for an entire lifetime unless a person seeks them out intentionally.  Death is something most people have either seen firsthand or been told of many times, and everyday language suggests that many people already distinguish between their minds and bodies to a slight degree already, but the connection between these things is not something the typical person is likely to understand quickly.

Movie Review--The Wretched

"Make a salt circle around the tree and if I'm not back in 10 minutes, burn it."

--Ben Shaw, The Wretched

The Wretched twists the story of a predatory witch by appealing to an aspect of human phenomenology that rarely pertains to horror films in a thematic sense: memory.  It also has the bold distinction of clarifying early on what the nature of the villain is.  As is the case with 2016's The Witch, the witch of The Wretched is not hidden in order to tease epistemological themes about the ambiguity of onscreen experiences, but she is openly revealed from the start.  This makes the movie focus on the reactions of the main characters to what is presented as explicitly supernatural rather than have them spend most of the runtime trying to figure out how much evidence there is that they are in the presence of a supernatural entity.  In doing so, The Wretched sidesteps the more conventional approach of many other horror movies and makes itself more unique as a result.

Production Values

A cast that at least largely falls outside the spectrum of mainstream film actors and actresses (as well as a unique take on the witch's powers) takes the spotlight in The Wretched, qith two main characters receiving more attention than others: Mallory and Ben.  Piper Curda, whose credits listed online include roles in Disney projects, plays Mallory, a young girl who meets fellow protagonist Ben and becomes intertwined with the witch's malicious activities.  Ben himself is played by John-Paul Howard as a concerned youth both curious and cautious enough to investigate strange things happening next door without being led by impulsiveness or desperation (at least initially).  The two are usually at the best of their performances when acting together, and the supporting cast members do not show signs of trouble acting out their own roles.  The actress playing the witch often relies on physical mannerisms to express her characterization when she is not impersonating other characters.  Fortunately, she establishes her malevolence early on.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

A young girl babysitting an even younger child finds a cannibalistic woman eating the child in a basement, after which she is locked inside by an adult man and seemingly consumed herself.  35 years later, a boy named Ben and his father happen to live next door to a witch who hid herself inside a deer carcass and was driven to the neighborhood when a local mom hit the animal while returning from a hiking trip with her son.  Ben notices strange activity the night after the neighboring mom came back, and the mom's baby is killed by the witch shortly after.  The witch haunts the mother's other, older child after taking her form.  This leads to her encountering and threatening Ben to the point of almost revealing her nature.  He is prompted to investigate a strange symbol on the wood by the next door entryway, discovering that a being associated with the emblem is supposed to feed on the "forgotten."

Intellectual Content

Like The Witch, The Wretched shows how the concept of a witch is not that of a safe, benevolent woman, but that of a malevolent lady imbued with unnatural abilities.  In the case of The Wretched's witch, these abilities include the power to make people forget victims who are very familiar to them: this witch specifically erases the memories of her victims from their family members.  Forgetfulness adds a non-traditional layer to the epistemological issues that come naturally to the horror genre.  Ben continually tells people (mostly unheeded) to look in the neighbor's cellar after his own dad is manipulated into forgetting him after his death.  Of course, as long as the witch did not manipulate objects in the external world or other characters' perceptions of them, merely looking in the cellar would have provided great evidence that Ben was not lying or having experiences that did not connect with those of his family and acquaintances, but not only would this hinder the story from unfolding as is, but it also reflects the general reluctance of the masses to intellectually explore anything that deviates from what others tell them.

Conclusion

The Wretched is the sum of many parts that are handled well even if only certain aspects stand out from the norm (not that novelty is a requirement for quality entertainment, as if storytelling is not already long past exhausting most wholly distinct plotline types anyway).  When it comes to those aspects that do stand out, though, a grand payoff is very cleverly set up, one where the absence of foreshadowing evidence is actually a instrumental in utilizing a certain plot twist.  The Wretched thus demonstrates how even very established setups can be used to tell stories which venture into new thematic and cinematic territory.  Even the comparatively barren movie landscape of 2020 did not stop the release of every movie!

Content:

 1.  Violence:  A witch is shown eating a girl in the opening scene, blood covering the child's neck.  She climbs out of a dead deer's body not long after.  She is shown using her powers to harm others again and again.

 2.  Profanity:  "Shit," "bitch," and "fucking" are used.

 3.  Nudity:  Ben is seen naked from behind when he steps out of a pool after a girl nonconsensually removes his underwear in the water on a dare.  Later, the witch is also shown naked from behind.

 4.  Sexuality:  The witch engages in sexual kissing and intercourse with a man after assuming the form of his wife--making the sex rape, even though there is nothing violent or explicit shown.

Nihilism: Truth And Values

Purely logical truths can be distinguished from values--moral obligations, aesthetic standards, and existential meaning--due to the self-verifying, necessary nature of the former and the fact that the latter pertains to something more than the existence of logical truths.  If objective values exist, the truth of logic is a metaphysical prerequisite, or else it could not be true that any values at all are binding or obligatory; however, it does not follow from the existence or truth of logic that there is any set of obligations dictating how people should behave.  Not even the total nonexistence of objective values could erase logical truths.  Somehow, some people have equated nihilism with an idea that goes beyond this.

Nihilism, if true, would not and cannot mean that there is no such thing as reality.  It could not mean that nothing is true or that nothing exists!  Nihilism merely entails that nothing, not even truth itself, has any meaning in the sense of existential significance.  If it contained a denial of the existence of objective truth, or things that are true regardless of perception or awareness, it would be false by default, as objective truth is self-evidently necessary.  To deny the objective truth of logic is to stand on the very thing being denied, and thus any idea that does so is inherently contradictory and therefore false.

Truth is still true; logic still governs all things, and logical truths could not have been any other way.  Nihilism might be true, as proving logical facts is not the same as proving that objective values exist, even if the nonexistence of objective meaning is utterly unprovable--and incapable of being disproven as well.  If nihilism is true, then nothing other than values are affected.  Everything other than values would remain exactly the same as it otherwise would be.  Thus, only a fool would try to twist the concept of nihilism into something like relativism with regards to values or anything else, as some do.

There are people who understand the difference between nihilism and metaphysical relativism or anti-realism, and there are people who use the terms interchangeably, as if a nihilist is someone who believes that nothing at all exists (not even something self-evident like one's own consciousness that must be used in the rejection) or that nothing at all is true (which means nihilism could not be true).  Logical truths, one's consciousness, and other demonstrable things exist even if there is no actual significance to any of them in the sense of existential meaning.  Every idea about values conforms to reality or does not, but certain other things are true regardless.

All claims about values are objectively true or false, as even moral nihilism simply means that all claims that something is obligatory or meaningful are false.  Truths about values are only a subset of truth either way.  If objective values do not exist, logical truths about the nonexistence of objective values would still hold, and the notion of objective values would not contain an inherent contradiction if personal perceptions are not the focus of the idea.  The inherent truth of logical axioms and sound deductions renders all ideologies that contradict them false, with nihilism not contradicting the few self-proving truths that define reality, yet also having no evidence in its favor at all.  Nihilism is thus ultimately a matter of unverifiable and unfalsifiable speculation.

Intelligence Is Not Generational

No individual person is intelligent because of the technological, sociological, or scientific climate of the day.  Even if most people in a given generation or society were truly intelligent, something that may have never been the case, their technological and educational context is irrelevant, and the intelligence of others around them does not reflect their own intelligence one way or another.  People do not become "more intelligent" by virtue of living in a certain generation at a specific time in human history.  They do not become more intelligent by virtue of being surrounded by technology that would baffle most people from a previous generation.  They do not become more intelligent by being connected with others and exchanging their experiences.  Intelligence is rationality, and rationality is a person's grasp of how to understand and use reason.

A man or woman born in 4,000 BC or earlier could have deeply contemplated the nature of reason, their own consciousness, their sensory perceptions, and epistemology as a whole and could have come to true, verifiable conclusions about them--all while engaging in daily tasks of practicality aimed at survival.  Their intelligence may have gone unnoticed.  Perhaps they were not particularly apt at communicating their thoughts, or perhaps apathy about some practical matter was mistaken for unintelligence by others who ironically were too unintelligent to understand almost anything about rationalistic philosophy on their own.  Still, their era, their culture, and the broader state of human civilizations with regard to lack of anything resembling modern technology had nothing to do with their intelligence, which they could look to and develop by themselves.

In contrast, many modern Westerners exhibit little to no independent thinking about anything more than how they will personally react to mainstream ideas put forth by others (which leaves out a great number of vital philosophical issues and truths) about science or their own community politics.  How many people of the present day show any signs of thinking about matters of pure reason, of phenomenology, of ultimate metaphysics, or of airtight epistemology?  Not many at all!  If anyone doubts the philosophical initiative and consistency of the general population around them, they need only to begin probing people about their worldviews to see that they quickly reveal assumptions, errors, inconsistencies, or sheer stupidity that they themselves may not even recognize as such when it is held up in front of them!

Even when it comes to the more mainstream aspects of science, conversations and educational materials reveal a lack of consistency in the basic conceptual understanding of science in communities that supposedly hinge on it.  Many people treat chemistry as if it is different than physics even though the subject of chemistry is nothing but a particular subset of physics.  Many people confuse their preferred scientists with science itself.  Many people treat scientific education as if it is synonymous with intelligence, which manifested in its purest form when used to reason out philosophical facts that are more foundational and transcendent than scientific facts could ever be.

Modern people generally fall into the same traps the historical record suggests most people of other times have: they seek ideological conformity with most other people around them (even if only on a selective basis), are more concerned with matters of trivial practicality and subjective preference than with matters of ultimate reality, and are reluctant to give up false, inconsistent, or assumed ideas even when the illogical nature of their worldview is called out.  Even if none of this was the case, intelligence is not a generational or geographical quality, but a quality of individual minds, marked by the extent someone understands how to utilize the laws of logic.  Any contrary idea is accepted only by those who lack depth of intelligence.

The Acquisition Of Power

Few things are as hated or feared by those of diverse political stances as power.  Holding a position of formal or informal power is commonly seen as something that merits suspicion and condemnation--at least selectively, with the exceptions usually being whatever undeserving politicians they subjectively respect from the corrupt faction of their choosing.  The acquisition of power is nevertheless not something that deserves criticism or revulsion unless a person harbors irrational motives or abuses that power.  In fact, it is a potential solution to the apathy, stupidity, and hypocrisy in the world.

If someone will not bow to reason and will not pursue justice, they may still react favorably to something else: power.  Perhaps they fear or dislike inconvenience, social ostracism, or the feeling of being different from others.  If any of these things bring them discomfort, a rationalist can exploit their fear or insecurity by using power in a way aimed at driving a wedge between them and others or even between their various desires.  Power, of course, is not the same as tyranny, so no legitimate objection to this can be made; some people will hate this distinction, but they can only loathe it in vain.

The acquisition and exercise of power in a way that does not violate any moral obligations is not a logical impossibility, after all.  There is no aspect of something being a display of intellectual, social, or corporate power (to list only several examples) that by necessity makes it a display of injustice.  As long as a person does not use power to engage in actual sins, like slander, physical abuse, or rape, their possession of it is innocent and amoral.  Only a tyrant, imbecile, or egoist misuses their power.

Since tyranny, irrationality, and egoism are not inevitable in any person's life, they are not fated to appear wherever there is power, no matter how extensive that power may be.  Each person can control how they use the power within their grasp, whether that power is only over their own actions or over an entire country.  The ability to make rational decisions does not vanish as one's power increases.  Power does not override all other aspects of a person's nature unless they allow it to.  This means that it can be used benevolently and pragmatically without error.

Power, by its very nature, can seize the attention of people who would otherwise ignore the person wielding it and that person's worldview entirely.  Anyone who wants to do so little as put the spotlight on an issue or specific truth needs only to exercise whatever power they have with enough forcefulness to shake people out of their ideological slumber, given that they do no wrong in the process.  Guided by reason and justice, power is a highly useful tool in the hands of rationalists.

Agnosticism About Conspiracy Theories

Certain conspiracy theories rallied around in 2020 by conservatives (such as the idea that Donald Trump is the last barrier between global satanic groups) and liberals (such as the idea that American police are almost all racist) have survived into 2021.  A day from the transfer of America's presidency from Trump to Biden, some of these baseless ideas have an increasingly vehement grip on their adherents.  The non-rationalistic people of the country, which far outnumber the handful of true rationalists, almost always take positions of ultimate belief that these conspiracy theories are true or that they are false, when skepticism about their truth or falsity is where reason leads.

Unless a conspiracy theory contains a logical incoherence and not mere inconsistency with sensory perceptions or memories that might not even correspond to external events at all, it is irrational to believe it is false because there would be no way to disprove it--but it would also be irrational to believe it is true when it cannot be proven.  At most, one could contrive a conspiracy theory that is logically possible in that it might be true because it does not contradict any strictly logical truth.  It is impossible to go beyond this or the conspiracy would not only be visible but open, which would render it something other than what is typically associated with the phrase "conspiracy theory."

The mere possibility of something being true does not prove anything more than that it is not inherently false.  In other words, maybe it is true, but maybe it is not.  Conjuring up an elaborate but speculative basis for a conspiracy theory about the "deep state," an international cabal against the West, or any other similarly paranoid idea does not provide support for the claims.  A lack of proof--not mere sensory evidence, but logical proof--makes belief irrational, no matter how grand or personal the stakes are.  Even if a conspiracy theory is both true and has significant ramifications for the politics of one's country, the only rational position is that of not believing what logic cannot prove.

Rationalistic skepticism rescues one from belief based on subjective persuasion, fear, and ignorance.  Perhaps some conspiracy theories that are logically possible are true, and perhaps they are not.  Either way, there is nothing about them that is necessarily true (as in logical axioms) or self-refuting.  The only rational stance is to neither believe nor disbelieve in them, holding to agnosticism about which is the case: these theories are possibly true, but no thoroughly intelligent person pretends to be capable of knowing that which they cannot prove.  Rationalists who have never embraced conspiracy theories might find this easy.  Others who have spent some of their lives deeply immersed in them might find this difficult.  In either case, it is possible for everyone to avoid making assumptions.

The Construction Of Language

Knowledge of reason and one's own experiences, even if a person's grasp of them is very minimal or vague, is required for there to be any communication with others.  Without this, the very beginning of language formation and communication could never even begin.  The issue of whether knowledge precedes language or language precedes knowledge is not a difficult one to wholly resolve--at least not for rationalists who have consistently embraced the light of reason.  It is an important one to address as needed, but it is hardly a paradoxical or challenging subject in the way that some suggest it is.  The very nature of concept-word association could be no other way except in very select situations that come well after someone has started using language.

A person simply cannot construct or learn a language in the first place without already understanding at least some concepts, after all, even if they have never thoroughly contemplated them: they could not associate a word with any kind of concept, thought, emotion, sensory experience, or physical object if they had no awareness of those things prior to using language.  It would be impossible to ever get past the first step of either creating or learning any language at all if awareness of words and concepts came simultaneously or if words had to come first.  One would have to possess knowledge (on at least a conceptual level) that, according to this false idea about language, would be inaccessible beforehand.

No one could ever struggle to find the words to express a concept, thought, or experience they already understand if language was a prerequisite for knowledge!  This is an experience many people can probably relate to, and it inherently disproves the idea that language constructs core thoughts and knowledge.  That a baseline grasp of logic and conceptual awareness are utterly foundational to understanding any experience at all can be known by anyone who reflects soundly on the nature of reason and experience, but anyone who has ever had difficulty deciding how to describe or articulate a point has directly confronted this fact, even if they have never thought of the matter in this way.

There are some cases where language might help guide someone to a concept they would have otherwise overlooked or to a better understanding of a concept they had already thought of or heard from others, but, as aforementioned, this can only happen after someone is already somewhat familiar with both concepts and words.  Any attempt to pretend like the inverse is true is destined to deviate from reason and remain a backwards, impossible pursuit.  Of course, someone who does not make assumptions about language can easily avoid such errors even if they do not directly think about the issue, as only someone who makes assumptions would ever suppose that a logically impossible thing can be true.

Language is primarily useful for communication and communication only.  It is not an epistemological tool, but a communicative one, even if it might occasionally help someone come to or better grasp a given concept.  A position that mistakenly elevates language to a higher role than this accomplishes nothing more than satisfying the emotionalistic yearnings of its adherents and perpetuating their delusions.  Linguistic use is necessary for the most precise kind of communication non-telepathic beings can share, yet it is merely a social and individual construct that expresses familiar concepts.  Any appreciation of language that exceeds appreciating this truth reflects the subjectivity of one's mind rather than the nature of language itself.

Game Review--The Outer Worlds (Switch)

 "The OSI teaches that the Grand Architect set a perfect system in motion at the beginning of time.  Contentment is found by accepting one's role in that Grand Plan."

--Vicar Maximillian DeSoto, The Outer Worlds

The Outer Worlds brings satirical humor reminiscent of Borderlands to a gameplay style that would be right at home in Fallout 4.  Sharing other significant similarities with Fallout, including the companionship of partners and the presentation of computer terminals, The Outer Worlds offers around 35 hours of quests set in a cluster of planets under the heavy influence of major corporatist factions mostly under the shadow of "the Board."  Its comedic dialogue may stay throughout the entirety of the main story and the many optional quests, but the stakes do have grave consequences, and many serious decisions must be made regarding how to interact with crew members, who to help in zero sum situations, and how to stand up to the Board.

Production Values

The blurry textures and very noticeable sudden appearance of vegetation as you walk closer are evident from the beginning of the game, so The Outer Worlds is not the apex of visual clarity on the Switch, even though its shortcomings are quite possibly due to the fact that the game debuted on the PS4 and Xbox One only last year.  Luigi's Mansion 3, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, and Bayonetta 2 are much better examples of the Switch's graphical capabilities, but The Outer Worlds is still a testament to the fact that the Switch can run massive games designed primarily for the more powerful consoles of its generation.  After all, it still contains numerous worlds full of different regions and characters.  The characters themselves are realized through very realistic voice acting.  The player's character himself/herself (the gender is one of the customizable options) never speaks, but many others do, and they bring their own motivations, problems, worldviews, and personalities into a serpentine tale of conspiracy.

Gameplay

Customizing the playable character, a colonist brought out of cryo-sleep, using a very limited number of attribute points sets them on their way to visit numerous planets affiliated with the Halcyon colony.  A host of quests that fall into various classification categories await, many of which have the potential to shift the direction of the game.  Entire side quests are even sometimes devoted to individual objectives in main quests.  Thus, completion of at least some non-primary missions is necessary to beat the main story.  The side quests have additional room to showcase the satire of The Outer Worlds, though, and the parodies of prominent ideas, including baseless fears over an "imminent" artificial intelligence uprising, get direct attention in these secondary missions that might have less immediate impact on the goal of freeing Halcyon from the Board.

Emerging from cryo-sleep has its benefits beyond merely introducing a character to play as.  Tactical Time Dilation, or TTD, can be used in combat and amplified in its duration and effectiveness by spending perk points, just as armor effectiveness, sprint speed, and solo combat ability can be permanently boosted by perk points.  Even companions get their own perk points independent of the player character's total, but almost all of their perks are completely the same across all companions.  A separate point system awards players 10 points to be spent on improving attributes like "Medical" each time they level up.  Based on how many points a given attribute or its sub-attributes have (which is also affected by companion bonuses), new dialogue and action options become available when interacting with NPCs, computer terminals, or gates.  A flaw system can actually lower certain stats in exchange for perk points--thankfully, these flaws can be accepted or rejected on an individual basis!

Not all perks and attributes affect combat, but plenty of weapon types and customization kits can be utilized.  One-handed handed melee weapons, two-handed melee weapons, "science weapons" like a shrink ray, and many more provide numerous different ways to approach specific scenarios.  Brandishing weapons does not alarm most unsuspecting NPCs thanks to a holographic image projector that changes how your appearance is perceived (for a time), and stealth can minimize even what would otherwise be open firefights in less monitored spaces.  Depending on which NPCs are in the area, cooperating with them can avoid fights altogether and raise the player's reputation with that faction, which can make new missions become available and keep companions satisfied.

Story

Some very basic spoilers are below.

A colonist aboard a lost vessel called the Hope, one of many colonists sleeping on board, is awoken from cryo-sleep by a man named Phineas Welles after around 70 years in space.  The Board, representing powerful corporations, wants to apprehend Welles, but he enlists the player's character to recover chemicals to revive all of the other forgotten colonists on the Hope.  This awakened colonist travels the local solar system in pursuit of various objectives that eventually lead them back to Welles and to a confrontation with the Board itself.

Intellectual Content

As players journey throughout Halcyon for the sake of primary or secondary quests, they will encounter a variety of worldviews of varying degrees of rationality.  The company Spacer's Choice, for example, is built on utter corporatism.  The Board and its subsidiaries behind Halcyon go so far as to contractually "bind" their own workers' future children to serve corporate masters and mistresses!  It is this corporatism that the dialogue mocks or describes in satirical comments all throughout the game.  In contrast, the Iconoclasts serve no corporations.  They have devoted themselves to pursuits other than submission to enormous business conglomerates.

The most explicitly philosophical but most metaphysically erroneous ideology met is that of the Order of Scientific Inquiry (OSI).  The OSI is said to be "Scientism," a deistic approach to science and metaphysics based around the Grand Architect, or the uncaused cause, and the supposedly deterministic system of causality it set in motion.  Particle behavior is described as encompassing all of reality, or at least all of reality other than consciousness, which Vicar DeSoto outright assumes is metaphysically dependent on matter.  Not only does he assume that a kind of emergent naturalism regarding consciousness is true (this is logically possible but unprovable), he also ignores other far more penetrating facts in addition to accepting determinism in spite of the verifiability of one's own free will and conflating determinism with order and purpose.

DeSoto either neglects or has not ever discovered that only the laws of logic encompass and govern all of reality--from material objects and events to mental states to all other immaterial things other than itself, like time and space.  Eventually, should one of his later side quests get completed, he has a hopelessly vague, irrationalistic conversation with a seemingly hallucinated version of himself that actually spurs him to accept a kind of grateful acceptance of nihilism.  He is then stupid enough to insist that people are free to "create" their own meaning in an existence where not investigating the concept of objective meaning is ideal.  The Vicar is thoroughly incorrect and prone to assumptions, but he could at least provide entertainment for rational players!

Conclusion

The Outer Worlds manages to combine elements that have already been seen in other popular science fiction RPGs and present them in a universe with its own personalities and unique satirical focus.  There is more than enough content to both resolve the central issues of the plot and leave enough history or possible futures open to warrant a sequel if the developers are so inclined.  The game's trip through Halcyon does not have as many incentives for replays as similar first-person RPG franchise Borderlands has, but the core mechanics are mostly strong and have enough differences to make them stand out at least somewhat.  If Peril on Gorgon, the first DLC expansion to The Outer Worlds, has enough content to merit a separate review, I may address it on its own when it comes to the Switch so that I can write more about the Halcyon colony and its struggles!

Content:

 1.  Violence:  Limbs can actually be severed from some enemies, though it is far more common for corpses to remain intact.

 2.  Profanity:  "Damn," "shit," "bastard," and "fuck," or at least variations of some of these words, are used.

Appeals To Popularity

Appeals to popularity are among the most popular in American culture.  The fact that a plethora of logical and introspective truths can be known without any social prompting is regularly overlooked in similar cultures, with unprovable ideas such as the one expressed by the statement "other people exist" being accepted prior to social discussion instead.  However, as asinine as looking to consensus is, realizing the stupidity of appeals to popularity is only one side of the matter.  A person cannot construct a true worldview on the basis of popularity or thoroughly embrace rationalism on a consistent basis due to dialogue.  Still, this only amounts to one of multiple things a seeker of truth must realize.  The second needs affirmation as well.

Default rejection of an idea just because one's family, local community, or nation at large accepts it is just as asinine as looking to consensus as the revealer of truth.  Agreement neither proves something is true nor proves it is false.  An intellectually competent person will not think something true simply on the basis of uniqueness or its potential for social controversy.  They will instead look for ideas that meet two requirements: the ideas must both reflect reality and be logically verifiable, as concepts that do not reflect reality cannot be proven and even genuine truths that are not knowable cannot be rationally believed.  Nothing more determines if reason leads to a belief.

Consensus is irrelevant, not a sign of either truth or falsity.  While autonomous reasoning will never become unecessary or unimportant, meaning that an individual's philosophical initiative and utilization of reason are always needed, mere ideological separation from a group does not mean that someone has a correct worldview.  A group might collectively hold to ideas that are true, but the ideas never reflect reality because multiple people agree or believe that they do.  Whether their true ideas are thought of independently or first encountered from them, personal, rationalistic reflection is an epistemological necessity in all cases.

A sense of empowerment derived simply from standing apart from popular philosophies is incomplete if one dismisses truths when the majority embraces them (a very unlikely thing, admittedly), just as it remains incomplete if one has not examined the unpopular or otherwise undiscovered truths one affirms.  Aligning with truth for its own sake is the only way to achieve genuine philosophical depth and soundness.  Subjective satisfaction of ego is one of the only "gains" brought by regarding group consensus any other way than a total red herring to matters of truth.  Some people may feel at peace when they ideologically resemble others, and some people may feel excited at having minority worldviews, but both can align with reason without looking to others first and foremost.

There Is No Science Of Introspection

Even a deeply, consistently introspective person has not seen any sort of electrical signals, neurons, or other particles or material phenomena by looking within their mind.  Their introspection focuses on their consciousness and its contents: thoughts, psychological feelings, attitudes, mental imagery, and so on.  No amount of analyzing one's thoughts yields perception of whatever neurological activities might be occurring behind those thoughts.  It does not even matter how aware one is of scientific hearsay and concepts associated with contemporary neuroscience; looking within one's mental faculties illuminates one's consciousness and not any scientific laws or information about the external world.  Introspection has nothing to do with science.

There can thus be no such thing as the "science of introspection," even if there are scientific phenomena that occur behind introspection.  The distinction is actually metaphysically and epistemologically vital.  What is at stake in understanding the objective distinction?  Those who do not grasp the basic difference fall prey to neurological reductionism: they misunderstand the blatant nature of consciousness and equate it with something that actually occurs behind the scenes of consciousness.  Such a fundamental, easily avoidable error will almost certainly spill over into other aspects of their lives and worldviews.  One of the most severe and blatantly false errors it could feed into is the objectively false notion that science grounds all or most knowledge of reality.

Some fools might flare up in frustration upon encountering this, likely from happenstance conversations with others and not due to their own philosophical initiative, as well as from a subjective sense of appreciation for science.  Their lack of intelligence and philosophical consistency may keep them from believing or admitting that introspection and the scientific method are entirely separate, despite whatever background correlations there might be, but they rely on introspection to even think about their own neuroscientific reductionism of consciousness!  At any time, they could simply contemplate the matter without assumptions or emotionalism and see that the mind which metaphysically grounds their own perceptions is more philosophically primary than science could possibly be.

The former provides absolute certainty and deals exclusively with the contents of one's consciousness, whereas the latter provides no certainty whatsoever beyond one's sensory perceptions and deals exclusively with the physical world or perceptions of the external world outside of one's consciousness.  Thus, on a metaphysical and epistemological level, the two are almost entirely different!  Moreover, introspection is more philosophically foundational and important than science in other ways.  The mind must exist for the senses to perceive, but the senses cannot be active apart from the mind.  This would be true even if all epistemological limitations surrounding science were removed (limitations like not knowing if correlations signify true causation, not knowing if the external world is as it is perceived, or if scientific laws will or have changed).

Science cannot be conducted without a mind to do the observing and an external world to be perceived--or perceptions of an external world.  Even if scientific facts about an external world exist in the absence of human minds, the scientific method purely hinges on the minds who use it.  The mind of an individual is always before them as long as they perceive anything at all, from emotions to particular thoughts to dreams to sensory perceptions.  Whatever scientific laws govern the material world must be sought after by using the mind and the senses together.  It is just that the only one of the two that is required for the other to even function is the mind.

America's Democratic Elements

America has a constitution of mixed philosophical and theological validity that supposedly serves as a foundation for its entire governmental sphere.  This is one of the central features of American politics--not that a constitution should be revered simply because of tradition or emotion.  A constitution does not preclude elements of democracy, yet there is some controversy that one might encounter when describing America as democratic.  Various claims about the structure of American politics insist that the government of the United States is a democratic republic, a constitutional republic, or simply a republic.  The first two descriptions are the most thorough, and neither is false.  Democracy is a part of American politics as the former suggests even though there is more to acknowledge about the system than its democratic aspects.

No, America is not a pure democracy where the majority whims of the entire civilian population determines every law and policy so that a 51% consensus would trigger an immediate shift of policy.  The impact of voting in America is limited to appointing specific people to various positions for set periods of time.  While it would be erroneous to think of America as nothing but a democracy in the strictest sense of the word, it is also erroneous to think of America as nothing but a "constitutional republic."  It is possible for a government to be a mixture of political systems.  Indeed, America is democratic, but to call it a mere democracy would leave out many aspects of its political operations.

If America was not partly democratic, there would be no citizen voting at all.  This should not be difficult for anyone to understand, and yet some people will directly insist that America having a constitution and the structure of a republic prevent its political framework from overlapping with democracy.  To say such a thing expresses a deep misunderstanding of democracy.  Just as there are different forms of monarchy, there are different degrees and manifestations of democracy.  Democracy encompasses a spectrum.  A political body could be wholly democratic, meaning the majority decides everything about the country's governmental setup and activities, or it could be partly democratic.  America falls into the latter category.

The voting system is among America's most problematic issues: logical truths are unaffected by agreement and are therefore not reflected in democratic approaches to politics.  Even scientific and moral truths, which are just epistemological or metaphysical subsets of logical truths in one sense, have nothing to do with consensus.  It follows that no majority deserves to have their preferences etched into law by virtue of being the majority.  Unless any person or group, no matter how great or small, has reality on their side, their political ideas are meaningless.  Democracy pretends otherwise by protecting the majority's interests no matter how irrational, hypocritical, or dangerous they are.

The Errors Of Mere Christianity (Part 13)

Other than the moral argument, C.S. Lewis has not made many explicit arguments for God's existence even 130 pages into Mere Christianity.  In his chapter on hope, that changes: he introduces an argument for some kind of afterlife grounded in theism.  It is one thing to describe the possibility of an optimistic afterlife in which every righteous individual would find all of their existential longings fulfilled, but Lewis fallaciously argues that the desires of some humans for an existence beyond the scope of life in the natural world (the world of logical truths already transcends the natural world and is accessible to all, but an afterlife is different) is probabilistic evidence that humans are created for a heavenly sort of existence:


"The Christian says, 'Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists.  A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food.  A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water.  Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex.  If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.'" (136-137)


Lewis's predictable, incomplete emphasis on male sexual desires instead of male and female sexual desires aside, the Bible never teaches that all desires creatures are born with must be capable of being fulfilled, much less that a longing for another world or a desire that all ordinary experiences cannot satisfy truly points to another world.  The desire argument for God's existence, as this has been called, is riddled with assumptions and non sequiturs.  Nothing about having a desire indicates anything about it being possible or probable that one can satisfy that desire on any level.  A desire "which no experience in this world can satisfy" is also highly vague on its own, as there are many ways someone could long for something beyond the universe without desiring anything remotely resembling the Christian God.

Since a desire for another world naturally connects with the concept of heaven, Lewis next addresses a straw man understanding of the Christian heaven, only to respond with more errors of his own:


"All the scriptural imagery (harps, crowns, gold, etc.) is, of course, a merely symbolic attempt to express the inexpressible.  Musical instruments are mentioned because for many people (not all) music is the thing known in the present life which most strongly suggests ecstasy and infinity." (137)


There is a vast difference between unknown and inexpressible, and nothing fully falls in the second category.  At least a few people may have difficulty communicating specific ideas, but the ideas themselves are not incommunicable.  Moreover, music does not have a special ability to communicate truths about spirituality and metaphysics.  It is not even a language at all!  Music in no way suggests infinity, even if specific individuals feel subjectively prompted to contemplate infinity when they hear certain forms of music.  Lewis also blatantly assumes that this, even if it was true, is the exact reason why the Bible utilizes musical imagery.  How could he know?  He couldn't!

The Contemporary Obsession With Quantum Physics

The word quantum can be seen or heard everywhere from entertainment to science and philosophy articles to conversations, contributing to the general Western perception that quantum physics is the epitome of scientific inquiry.  Even though a typical person probably does not even know what the phrase quantum physics is supposed to refer to, they might think it must be important simply because of the societal craze based around it.  People with little to no genuine autonomy and intelligence are more likely than not to be shaped by popular ideas and words, which leaves them particularly receptive to the widespread obsession with the speculative physics of a world that cannot even be seen and yet is embraced all the same, promoted with a host of red herring statements at many levels of culture.

Filmmakers, scientists, and writers throw the word quantum in front of random, wholly irrelevant words as if every concept is philosophically tied to the physics of a scale that one cannot even see with one's eyes.  On the contrary, quantum physics is not even relevant to much of macroscopic physics--which is itself irrelevant to many philosophical truths--except as a hypothetical set of interactions between matter and energy at such a miniscule level that the inferior nature of empirical observations cannot cast direct light on them!  Even if matters of core metaphysics and epistemology (dealing with things like logic, one's own consciousness, the basic existence of an external world, and the uncaused cause) are ignored by those fixated on mere matters of science, it is not as if one must contemplate the quantum world to understand everyday experiences with something like gravity to the most direct empirical sense possible.

The contemporary obsession with quantum physics appears to be driving miscellaneous people to associate quantum physics with almost anything they can think of.  As logic, introspection, and cursory sensory observations of macroscopic objects reveal, there is simply no way that anyone could ever even link any knowable fact to a quantum world without a completely different scale of bodily existence or without complete speculation or references from others.  Quantum physics, in other words, is nothing but a grand red herring to both the important aspects of philosophy in many different categories and the fundamental aspects of practical life.  Other than hypothetical practical benefits and unverifiable speculations which at most explore certain characteristics of the physical world as far as pure metaphysics goes, the ideas most commonly associated with quantum physics are just the result of cultural infatuation with a new trend in the scientific community.

Now, even the basic model of an atom and descriptions of what lies behind electrical phenomena involve physics at a scale so small that the true events therein cannot even be seen, so quantum physics is connected to certain theories behind some observable laws of nature.  I do not mean that there is no connection between whatever scientific events may actually occur at a quantum scale and those which occur at a macroscopic scale.  I mean that there is no way to get from strictly logical truths or direct sensory experiences to notions that resemble anything like what modern ideas about quantum physics entail.  This in no way suggests that a quantum scale does not exist, but it does expose the epistemological and conceptual limitations of quantum physics.  When the broader issues of physics are irrelevant to logical axioms and deductions, immediate phenomenology, and absolute certainty, there is nothing whatsoever for quantum physics, a mere subset of physics rooted in current hypotheticals, to philosophically stand on that merits such a cultural obsession with it.

Suicide And Hell

Human life is neither inherently pleasurable nor inherently crushing, as personal circumstances and subjective psychological reactions to those circumstances inevitably determine if someone feels like life offers promise or despair.  Whether human existence is meaningful is a separate issue from that of whether it is perceived positively or negatively by a given individual, and thus, either way, not everyone will necessarily have the same emotional and volitional reactions to the same approximate experiences.  Christians, being people, are not exempt from having various distinct feelings and attitudes towards their own lives.

Even Christians might feel so overwhelmed by or dissatisfied with their lives that they consider whether they even wish to continue living at all.  For some who have no inherent desire to press on through the trials and uncertainties of human life, a longing for death could drive them to directly think about killing themselves.  Misconceptions they may have heard from other Christians could easily make their personal trials far worse, especially the idea that suicide somehow disqualifies even an otherwise committed Christian from eternal life.  This unbiblical myth potentially makes certain people feel trapped between the threat of hell if they kill themselves and the threat of "hell" on earth if they continue enduring their circumstances.

First of all, the Biblical theology of hell has been thoroughly distorted by the majority of Christians: the Bible does not teach that all unsaved humans spend eternity in conscious torment.  It teaches that the opposite is the true fate of unsaved persons [1], with a handful of potential exceptions [2].  Thus, the way that hell is described to Christians as a whole is already problematic.  The arbitrary association of suicide in particular with hell only compounds the theological problems.  Never once does the Bible define suicide as some "unforgivable sin" or insist that there is another unforgivable sin in addition to the one Jesus said is the only one holding that status.  In fact, the very notion of more than one sin being unforgivable contradicts what Jesus states in passages like Matthew 12:30-32 and Mark 3.

If the so-called "unforgivable sin" is in its own category, it follows that every other sin, including suicide, cannot be an automatic damnation to hell if a person truly has a restored relationship with God (and I say this as someone who knows moralism is more important than salvation ever could be).  This is, of course, if salvation is not forfeited by sin in general, something the Bible does not clarify one way or another--but suicide in particular is not described as having some especially vile nature that would undo salvation itself.  Indeed, there are far worse sins that could be committed according to Biblical ethics, such as a number of deeds that express far more disregard for others than merely murdering them, which itself might be far worse than the unjust killing of oneself.

Nothing at all in the language of the gospels hints at suicide equating to blasphemy against the Holy Spirit for either Christians or non-Christians.  Moreover, damnation to hell for a failure to commit to Christ means that this is the one sin that God deems unforgivable, or else blasphemy against the Holy Spirit would be a second unforgivable sin, an idea that contradicts Matthew 12:30-32 as described above.  Suicide is nowhere close to having the status of an act that irrevocably condemns a person to destruction in hell and the simultaneous forfeiture of eternal life according to the Bible.  If anything, there are other sins that merit a far graver and harsher reaction than the self-killing often sought out of sheer desperation and deep exhaustion.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-truth-of-annihilationism.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2020/03/revelation-149-11.html

Sexism And Abortion

Abortion and sexism are issues that do not overlap whatsoever on their own, but certain people make it necessary to specifically clarify the exact relationship between the two.  It is indeed possible for sexism against women or men to constitute part of the framework in which some people assess abortion, but this is not due to a genuine conceptual link between the two, as it is individual stupidity and cultural pressures that have led to this perceived, non-existent connection dawning in the minds of random people.  Perhaps one of the most fallacious defenses of abortion related to this is the assertion that no one would condemn abortion unless they were at least partially motivated by misogyny.

If both men and women could give birth and yet people encouraged or discouraged abortion strictly for one gender or the other, sexism would obviously lurk behind their selective condemnation.  However, this is not the case.  It follows that it is not sexist to contemplate the morality of abortion despite the fact that men cannot bear children.  When it comes to this particular issue on its own, one of the only ways someone could be sexist towards women would be to literally denounce abortion solely because it is a woman who carries a baby--not because of the nature of abortion itself.

The far more outwardly common kind of sexism displayed in discussions about abortion is the claim that only women should be allowed to talk openly about or hold moral positions on abortion.  This is such a blatantly sexist idea that the tendency for Western culture to ignore sexism against men is the reason it is not refuted more frequently.  That is not to say that there are not misogynistic pro-life advocates whose pro-life positions and sexist attitudes against women are not mistakenly regarded as things that belong together.  Of course this could be the case!

Sexism might be directed at either gender within the stances certain people have on abortion.  Perhaps some who oppose abortion truly do despise women and see pro-life philosophy as a way to express their own personal misogyny.  Pro-life ideas are still about the rights of unborn humans, not about oppressing either men or women.  Perhaps some who support abortion truly do despise men and see pro-choice philosophy as a way to express their own personal misandry.  The validity of a concept or belief still does not have anything to do with the identity of the person who proclaims or believes it.

In either case--and nothing about being sincerely pro-life has to do with the gender of the adherents--the sexist attitudes are the product of stupidity and are irrelevant to the philosophical issues related to abortion.  To say that abortion is immoral with the goal of restricting women just because they are women is to take advantage of a consistent philosophical idea for the sake of a philosophically invalid one, and to say that men should not discuss or condemn abortion because they are not women is to take a philosophically invalid idea and use it to protect another fallacious idea.

Abuses Of Capitalism

There are many ways for people within a capitalist system to exploit others or engage in purely selfish pursuits.  Indeed, it is not difficult to find stories of egoistic corporate leaders, and some have come to see selfishness as either a part of capitalism or as capitalism itself.  On one hand, capitalists tend to misunderstand criticisms of how Western capitalism is often handled, thinking them to be calls for socialism (as if the United States does not already operate on a mixture of capitalistic and socialistic practices).  On the other hand, those who condemn capitalism fail to realize that they tend to only be condemning abuses of capitalism instead of capitalism on its own.

The latter group might instead be simply calling for a more livable minimum wage for the entire workforce, the end of corporate greed, or a higher emphasis on other things other than money and careers.  Opposing the opposite of these things is, on its own, not actually an assault on capitalism itself in the first place!  Capitalism as an economic and philosophical concept is not by necessity linked to any kind of exploitation in practice or in motive.  As an idea, it merely emphasizes freedom of sellers and consumers from governmental coercion.  How various people act and react within a capitalist society is up to them.

In other words, just as there are different forms and degrees of socialism, there are different forms and degrees of capitalism.  Free markets can be implemented or sought in ways that promote selfishness, but they can also be implemented in ways that promote generosity and selflessness.  Anyone who recognizes that socialism can be voluntary, forced, or a mixture of both should be able to see that capitalism encompasses several different approaches to economics that share an emphasis on free markets.

Similarly, there are different motives behind why various people identify as some kind of socialist or capitalist.  Some socialists might truly want to be rewarded without doing anything at all to justify what they receive, but some might have more explicitly philosophical intentions.  Some capitalists might truly hope to profit from the misery and losses of others, but some might wish to avoid trampling on others.  Motivation is tied to each specific individual, and it does not necessarily reflect the nature of a philosophical concept.

The fundamental concept of capitalism is compatible with either greed or altruism.  What many people are ultimately condemning when they attack capitalism are certain ways of implementing capitalism or certain motivations of individual capitalists.  Abuses of capitalism are far more commonly acknowledged than the nature of the core idea itself.  Distinguishing between the two can easily attract the kind of moronic perception that regards all differentiation of capitalism from selfishness as if the only reason someone would clarify such a thing is to defend capitalism at all costs, but that is not the goal of a consistent rationalist.

The Myth That Ego Motivates Rationalists

Rationalism and egoism are entirely at odds: the first is about reason and objective reality and the second is the elevation of one's own preferences, desires, and conveniences over reason and morality.  All selfishness is derived from at least partial egoism, and genuine, consistent rationalism is the opposite of this--it is about realizing the various ways in which logic and reality as a whole are not subject to one's whims.  In spite of this, rationalists might sometimes find themselves slandered by those who think no one pursues rationality for anything but ego or personal gain.  This kind of fool thinks that the rationalist pursues reason consistently and thoroughly at least in part out of a desire to seem elevated above others or benefit their own life.

No one would align with the very thing that reveals their preferences are meaningless where they deviate from reality if they were just living for themselves.  The nature of reason is that it transcends anyone's individual desires!  No one could think, live, and speak as a rationalist only to be motivated by ego without being tainted by deep hypocrisy at best.  It should take no more than a handful of consecutive moments for anyone to realize this, but there are some who would rather accuse thorough rationalists of being motivated by pride--as if motivations invalidate any of the philosophical claims of a rationalist anyway--than simply admit that they are ideologically mistaken, inconsistent, and shallow!

If a rationalist does feel or think that he or she is superior to anti-rationalists, they are not the one mistaken.  They do have a superior grasp of reason and bent towards truth, which puts them closer to the thing without which nothing is true: objective reality.  Either truth matters or it does not.  If it does matter, non-rationalists are not aligned with the only thing that has significance (yes, any objective meaning is grounded in God, but objective significance still could not exist unless logic permitted it); if it does not, rationalists still possess a true worldview and a superior intellect by default.  Non-rationalists are on a lower ideological status than rationalists either way.

All fallacies, assumptions, contradictions, and errors of any kind are embraced out of a baseline level of sheer stupidity, but perhaps an additional reason stands behind the claim that rationalists seek recognition to inflate their egos.  When a non-rationalist sees insincerity and inconsistency within himself or herself, they might choose to assume that no one else could escape the same flaws, as if any given flaw is inescapable in the first place.  In other words, it often takes an egoist to suspect that a genuine rationalist simply wants to appear deserving of acknowledgment and praise.  Projection of one's own deficiencies onto others is, of course, to commit the fallacy of composition and make mere assumptions about others.

No matter the angle from which it is approached, the objection that rationalists merely want to appease their own egos by feeling superior to others is objectively erroneous and irrelevant to the inherent truth of rationalism as it is.  This represents yet another attempt to slander or sidestep rationalists rather than simply confront the fact that absolute certainty and genuine consistency are not unattainable.  The deficiencies of the objectors only reveal their own errors.  It is one thing to be wrong, but to cling to an error compounds the problem by introducing the true egoism.  Ultimately, it is anti-rationalists and non-rationalists who are slaves to their own preferences, assumptions, and apathy towards reason and truth, making them egoists of a sort.

Logic, people.  It is very fucking helpful.

Why Artificial Intelligence Cannot Enlighten Humanity

As subjectively fascinating and practically useful as artificial intelligence may be in some cases, AI does not have the ability to help humans overcome their epistemological limitations.  Not even the most exhaustive information storage systems or calculating machines with true sentience could provide much more than new sensory information to process: information that largely pertains to perceptions instead of ultimate reality.  Moreover, would an AI truly have fewer epistemological limitations than humans?

A genuinely conscious artificial intelligence will still in all likelihood not have the ability to confirm the conformity of its memories of past events or sensory perceptions (if it has any), making it epistemological equivalent to humans in these areas.  Perhaps it could be used to perform elaborate or mundane equations, store information, or simply test the realism of human-AI conversations.  All of these are valid goals for the use of AI, but none of these actually grant humans knowledge of anything more than their perceptions of the AI they brought forth.

Even if it could truly think and perceive rather than only appear to do such things, humans could not prove the AI is telling the truth about which particular physical objects or environments exist beyond human sensory perceptions, which past events have occurred (other than the universe, time, and other contingent things beginning to exist), whether its own consciousness exists, and so on.  It would not matter if the AI could prove these things to itself--which would still be very unlikely at best; humans would not be able to prove that the machine is providing true information.

In other words, even the creation of a conscious AI will neither help humans escape epistemological limitations nor be likely to result in something else that does not share our epistemological limitations.  AI can be useful for practical purposes like data retrieval, simulated friendship, and job automation, certainly.  It can represent the developing scientific research of electronics.  It can fascinate those who hear of it or interact with it (whether it is truly conscious or not).  In spite of every achievement AI encompasses, it cannot free humans from ignorance of that which cannot be proven beforehand by reason.