Game Review--Dead By Daylight Mobile (Android)

"Some embrace the trials while they desperately search for a way out.  Others don't even realize they're imprisoned, and are made to relive an endless cycle of horror.  And still others lose their ability to feel or act and are flushed into the great emptiness that is The Void."

--The narrator, Dead by Daylight Mobile

Dead by Daylight's asymmetric multiplayer arrived on smartphone platforms with great controls given the limitations of the mobile version, portability that is more accessible than even the Switch version since a smartphone is more likely to be carried around, and mostly solid graphics for the "system."  Each match's four survivors have to power five generators scattered around each map to open two electronic gates--with an escape hatch that opens up under certain conditions as well.  The killer has to disable generator progress, hunt survivors, and put them on hooks so that an interdimensional being called Entity can eventually consume them.  The Entity of Dead by Daylight, as described in the opening cinematic, is an outright Lovecraftian being that can pull people out of various universes within a vaster multiverse and constantly pit the survivors against killers, with those who escape one trial only being placed in another.

Production Values

The game itself has been rather faithfully ported to the smartphone class of platforms, though the graphics predictably suffer by comparison to the Switch or TV-only consoles.  Dead by Daylight Mobile is another triumph of smartphone gaming.  It is examples like this that illustrate that console games can be brought to an unconventional platform and that handheld devices, even those not primarily crafted to play games like the Switch or PS Vita, are just a different kind of system.  The most significant issue is simply that the game crashes repeatedly and has so many severe glitches that sometimes it looks as if your character teleports across the map.  Other than this, smaller graphical or technical problems like pop-in effects for smoke or grass are the worst offenders.  Contrary to what could have easily been the case, not even the controls, which are streamlined with changes like automatic sprinting when the killer pursues a survivor, are deficient.

Gameplay

Just as the levels and aesthetic of Dead by Daylight on consoles has been directly ported to smartphones with only minor sacrifices, the controls are unusually efficient for a mobile game of this kind, with only the small size of certain icons and the rigidness of the locked pursuit mode as a killer being consistent issues.  Tapping specific icons on the touch screen drops pallets, passes skill checks while starting generators, slashes survivors, lays down bear traps, and other tasks.  Perks and add-ons modify how quickly or efficiently these actions can be completed, and they also can give special passive abilities that simplify the game for either the killer or the survivors.  For example, one of The Trapper's perks lets him reverse all generator progress by 6% once a survivor enters the dying state, and one of survivor Claudette Morel's perks lets her heal herself.

Killers run faster than survivors, yet survivors can stun them by dropping pallets and can vault away from them, and swinging a weapon, whether or not it hits a survivor, slows the killer and delays a second swing.  Survivors can take two hits without medical kits, self-healing perks, or a fellow survivor healing them; they can team up to start generators faster and to distract the killer by running in to take a blow for a teammate who is one hit away from collapsing and at the mercy of the killer, who can place them on one of many hooks to offer them to the Entity.  Still, other survivors can free them, and there is even a very small chance that they can leap off the hook on their own, but getting hooked three times automatically sacrifices them to the Entity and removes them from the match.

Finishing matches awards experience points both for a central leveling system and the individual character played, with both survivors and killers contributing to the central experience point meter that rewards players with one of the game's three special currencies.  As a mobile game, Dead by Daylight Mobile does have microtransactions, but optional microtransactions were already part of the game before it was released in its mobile format, and the daily and weekly challenges do provide additional ways to secure spendable in-game currencies.  For those who can patiently endure optional ads, extra items and a faster refresh of the mobile game's "bloodpoint" shop are both accelerated and free.  One can play Dead by Daylight Mobile without spending any actual money at all and still access quite a bit of the game even if it takes time.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

The dimension-spanning being called the Entity has pulled numerous killers and people to serve as the killers' victims from various universes in a vast multiverse that includes the worlds of Saw, Halloween, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Silent Hill, and others.  The Entity hopes that the killers will offer their prey as sacrifices for it to consume the bodies and souls of, only to resurrect the dead survivors (according to the wiki, at least, as the in-game lore is very vague most of the time) and place the ones who escape in yet another trial.  In this way, the Entity has a potentially permanent supply to feed on.

Intellectual Content

That Dead by Daylight takes its lore so seriously helps lend existential gravity to the events of the game, and despite there being almost no dialogue or narrative-driven character development, the premise is thoroughly philosophical.  Since it is a multiplayer game, it is not as much of a wasted opportunity to not focus on philosophically foundational, precise, or otherwise deep ideas in the context of a detailed story, whereas this would be an enormous blunder if Dead by Daylight had a single player campaign.  By its very nature, it is supposed to be about a potentially endless cycle of torment that a multiversal being which appears to be genuinely supernatural traps people in.  This premise works very well as a match-based multiplayer game even though the in-universe and conceptual ramifications of these aspects are mostly unexplored.

Conclusion

Dead by Daylight Mobile is one of the more technically impressive mobile games, and free mobile games at that, thanks to its console-transplanted gameplay and (generally) masterful conversion to the smartphone format.  The glitches and server issues carry over as well, but the strengths of the console versions are mostly present.  Anyone more who has played Dead by Daylight on another system and has either made great progress with leveling up characters (or buying them from the game's store) or is used to console controls might not have any need to play the mobile version except to restart or to indulge in curiosity, but the efforts made to take such a game and put it on smartphones seem so generally successful--at least by this point, if not at the time of the original mobile release--that this is an ideal game for someone wanting a more substantial experience on a smartphone.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  The killers spray blood with each strike of a survivor, and blood trails can be seen as victims flee or crawl from their tormentor.

Financial Burdens

Financial burdens are some of the most constant, near-universal trials faced by many groups of people even in modern Western culture, where the poor are supposed to live in luxury by comparison to the wealthy of more ancient times.  Many Americans are only one disease or car/house problem away from being unable to save money for a given month instead of spending all or more than what they make in that period, and the conditions of COVID-19--both the initial circumstances of the pandemic and the inept reactions and overreactions alike--have not helped almost anyone but already wealthy business owners prosper since early 2020.  It is true that capitalism itself is not the selfish applications of it that are rightly hated by so many, but deficiencies already present in American capitalism have been especially exposed in the past two years.

Alongside matters of health, financial matters are some of the most vital of the practical aspects of life, as well as some of the most likely to shape a person's mental health.  As they opposed lockdowns in response to COVID-19, conservatives cited both relative economic standstill and a higher risk of mental illness as supposed reasons why almost nothing at all should be done as a reaction to the pandemic.  The irony is that their own economic ideas bring misery and mental health crises as well--not that liberal politics is the solution, as that has its own deep philosophical flaws.  It is not even very difficult to see that the evidence of conservatives' words and actions actually point to them using mental health as a situational attempt to gain support, not them caring about mental illnesses overlapping with financial woes.

The way to identify the insincerity of conservatives in condemning the 2020 pandemic lockdowns because they hurt mental health (with isolation, inability to see friends, activity restrictions, and so on) is that they do not oppose the current American style of capitalism despite its enormous potential to devastate the mental health of millions.  Even though the American version of the workplace has usually been marked by low pay for long hours, apathy from managers towards severe non-work issues that call for days off, and routine mismanagement by those at the top of many companies, conservatives are often stupid enough to think that any change from the economic/workplace status quo is somehow communism and then oppose it harshly.  Before and during the pandemic they suddenly expressed concern for mental health in, they never collectively wanted to make life easier for workers as a whole.

Now, money cannot change metaphysical limitations, remove epistemological limitations, or address moral problems, but it can provide a penetrating level of security that diminishes the impact of many other trials.  After all, who would not need to worry less about getting mental or physical health problems dealt with by visiting doctors, repairing cars, homes, or other belongings, and acquiring necessities like food if they had a monetary safety net?  Many non-financial worries are magnified by financial burdens because some of the only ways to alleviate them cost money.  In this sense, financial security is a pathway to a far more general wellbeing.

Enough money to take care of basic needs and still have leftover savings for other problems is all it might take to prevent a high number of people from ever having broad anxiety or depression about practical life, as they would have the resources to access solutions to various trials that would otherwise be devastating.  It is demonstrably true that money cannot deliver anyone from every problem or give life objective significance.  To think otherwise is to believe in obvious error, yet the role of money in providing personal security and alleviating or even thwarting mental illnesses is usually overlooked by Christians except to ironically call for destructive conservative policies based on materialistic greed.

The False Expression Of Autonomy

Though they almost all cling to some sort of obvious error or set of errors, many people are at least minimally intelligent enough to realize that some sort of autonomy is necessary to have real knowledge, or else objecting to just believing things because others do would not be as popular a thing to condemn even among those who are not even close to understanding its full ramifications.  Liberals and conservatives, atheists and theists, and Christians and Muslims alike might generally at least talk as if they affirm this objective truth.  All the same, very few people are ever able to realize that rationalistic autonomy is not about believing in things because of subjective preference or random thoughts as opposed to groupthink.  It is about looking to the objective truths of reason while avoiding random, inconsistent, unverifiable, and preference-driven beliefs even if the only person involved in the reflection is oneself (and reason is not a mind-dependent, subjective thing at all, so an autonomous thinker is not relying solely on their own mind anyway).

There is nothing rational about autonomous thinking that is not in alignment with reason, where ideas are assumed, random or incompatible ideas are embraced, and no actual attempt is made to avoid fallacies.  Appeals to popularity and thought that is helplessly prompted or forgone in accordance with social whims are asinine, but even autonomous thinking is dead apart from sheer rationality.  Yes, some autonomy is an inherent part of rationality, but autonomy alone does not make someone rational or the ideas they believe true.  It is impossible to understand various logical truths and experiences without having directly contemplated them on one's own, whether or not they are things one could think of without sensory prompting and whether or not one actually did so.  There is just more to genuine autonomy and rationality than this.

Any person that does not look strictly to reason as the source of absolute certainty, the ultimate revealer and grounding of all truths (even if other epistemological and metaphysical factors are connected with some issues), no matter how little they are concerned with others and how philosophically autonomous they are, is thoroughly irrational, just in a different way from the person who thinks nothing can be known apart from social prompting or who thinks that consensus and conversation literally reveal truth epistemologically or make something true metaphysically.  A rational person looks to reason itself, avoiding the erroneous stupidity of looking to either their personal perceptions and preferences or the claims of others as the basis of truth and epistemology.

Whatever random ideas they might otherwise leap to without logical proof do not make someone intelligent, deep, or anything but as ignorantly reliant on logical axioms as the collectivist thinker they might rightly look down on.  This is not because seeking out the broadest consensus to agree with it or thinking that social interactions are a necessity for philosophical discovery and reflection.  If anything, even the random, irrational kind of autonomous thought is still less erroneous than this, if only because it is a perversion of the objective fact that the only person's mind one can inherently know is one's own and this is still ironically closer to autonomously reflecting on ideas without assumptions or constant social prompting.  However, both approaches and the fallacies behind them are still inherently contrary to reality.

The truth is still that no one has to choose between one of two or more philosophical errors.  It is always possible to forsake all assumptions and thus avoid any epistemological error, even believing in something true and logically verifiable without actually recognizing the logical proof for it, and any inherent error, such as contradictory, self-refuting ideas that could not possibly be true no matter what.  Two irrational, untrue philosophical concepts are still untrue regardless of whether one of them is more or less irrational than the other.  Identifying and rejecting multiple errors is within everyone's reach, with the only real problems being unwillingness and a voluntary lack of alignment with reason, the set of necessary truths on which all stands and comes to light.

Blaming Teachers For Other Educational Variables

Rarely, if ever, does formal education touch upon things that are of ultimate philosophical or practical significance.  The quadratic formula, the arbitrary names for taxonomy, and the general historic culture of random civilizations are not at all things that necessary to understand the core of reality (logical axioms and the nature of consciousness) or to live and survive in the modern or ancient world.  Memorizing and regurgitating information that amounts to sheer hearsay, such as all claims that historical events like wars or elections actually happened (as opposed to there being evidence suggesting but not proving that they happened), is not even true rationality, though at least small amounts of selective rationality are prerequisites to even understand relatively trivial things like these claims.

If a student struggles to learn and utilize any of these things and no one is fallaciously thought to be unintelligent, the tendency is for either the student or teacher to automatically be blamed, even though neither of them is necessarily mishandling anything and the fault might not be intrinsically tied to only one or the other if someone truly is at fault.  With as many variables as teaching has and the fact that so many of them could change, it is not self-evident, and therefore not necessarily true, that there even is a party that is doing something wrong if a child has difficulties learning.  Plenty of factors beyond the control of any person could come together to maximize educational challenges.

However, public school teachers are irrationally expected to assume that they are at fault for a student's failure when there is absolutely nothing about being the teacher that means one must be the source of the problem.  Perhaps the student has immense family troubles, physical or mental health issues, or other unfortunate circumstances that impede learning.  Perhaps they are just unmotivated or apathetic even if they do not have these specific difficulties.  There are many possible reasons why a student might not be effectively learning that are not related to the teacher at all.  In actuality, a person is plainly irrational if they cannot understand this no matter how integrated into formal education they are.  Successful learning in an educational setting depends on more than just one thing, no matter what anyone believes or says to the contrary.

After all, if these aforementioned troublesome conditions on the part of the student's life are met, it would not matter if the teacher is clear, concise, and relevant in their communication, if they are thoroughly familiar with the subject matter (as much as one can be given that school subjects are usually not truly knowable beyond possibilities and perceptions thanks to epistemological limitations), or if they are open and friendly with their students and the parents.  The teacher could succeed on every front and the student could still struggle, and even then it might or might not be due to a fault of there own.  Students who still fail to learn despite the teacher's best efforts could still not be wholly to blame.  This is vital but not particularly difficult to realize.

The preemptive desire to blame a particular person whenever a situation like this goes wrong is born out of irrational ideas about the reason for academic struggles, as someone will either be blamed randomly, with a different random person potentially getting blamed in each situation, or they will be blamed simply because they have a role like teacher or student.  There is nothing about having either role, or being the parent of a struggling student, that inherently has the largest or any part in sabotaging a particular student's progress.  It is possible for a teacher to be ineffective, lazy, or ignorant; it is possible for a student to be unmotivated or intentionally reluctant.  It is still not possible for all teachers or students to always have some blame or any at all.

The Marriage Day

Marriage is an especially prominent target of complementation ideologies, whether they are religious distortions or secular distortions of the truth.  There are idiotic wedding customs that directly or indirectly treat men as if they have a special status over women, like the idiotic practice of "giving the bride away," but there are also very overt components of traditional American weddings that treat men as if they are irrelevant to the marriage or lesser than women.  No matter which gender is given precedence over the other, the misconceptions of various kinds of complementarianism are always behind this, with nothing but demonstrable philosophical errors or assumptions behind them.

One somewhat popular misconception is that the marriage ceremony and day are for the bride, a formality meant to make her feel special and treat her specifically with some kind of public honor, but not necessarily the groom.  Some women, irrational enough to submit to stereotypes just to go along with them instead of being authentic, turn this into an avoidable but self-fulfilling "prophecy" of sorts for their own individual lives.  They act as if it is their obligation to plan their wedding around their own personal whims just because they are women or as if the ceremony itself is about showcasing their own aesthetic preferences or physical beauty, as if women are more beautiful than men or could possibly deserve to be treated as such.

Sometimes this cultural bias manifests as a total neglect of men's desire to be physically attractive on a wedding day, a denial that they have such desires at all, or an asinine insistence that they just act like women deserve to be treated as more beautiful.  Sometimes this manifests as sidelining the groom's role in planning a wedding.  However it might be expressed, it is folly and erroneous to pretend like marriage is about one partner instead of the other, and, regardless of whether it is a husband or wife that is elevated above the other, it will also set the marriage on perilous ground if the ceremony is intentionally structured to honor one partner more than the other.

A marriage, or one that is not coerced or marked by stupidity and superficiality, is a mutual relationship where a man and woman come together with all of their individuality.  Nothing about this means that a marital relationship or the event of marriage, the ceremony itself, is about the groom or bride more than it is about the other, and anything other than a mutual, equivalent celebration of both excludes this truth.  It is irrational to believe otherwise on any level.  Marriage does not involve one person (even so-called "sologamy" is not a relationship, as it does not involve one person relating to another), so it is philosophically idiotic by default to emphasize one partner more than the other at a wedding unless one of them, due to their personality, would prefer less of the figurative spotlight.

The marriage day is not about the man or the woman specifically, but the public uniting of them as a couple, a pair of individuals who desire each other's presence and intimacy enough to commit to each other.  This would be easy for almost anyone to immediately or almost immediately prove by logical deduction if it was not for years of societal biases for or against each gender, sinking their talons into even something as celebratory as the actual ceremony on a marriage day.  Of course, there might also be women who want to pretend like a wedding is about them out of personal arrogance and men too lazy or relationally uninvested to even put any effort into planning or enacting a wedding.  They are fools who believe or promote the idea that a marriage ceremony is about the bride in particular just so they can make their own shallow selves seem more legitimate.

Logic, people.  It is very fucking helpful.

Micromanaging Workers Beyond The Workplace

The workplace is a social construct that--despite the fact that survival is actually not dependent on it in the strictest sense, as people could survive without the trappings of modern civilization, even if not always as consistently--is erroneously treated as the philosophical and personal focal point of everything in life by so many who are deluded enough to think that submitting to arbitrary social structures makes them deep, unique, or intelligent.  It can also be treated as the focal point of life by people so desperate to get by that they do not think beyond the comparatively unimportant pursuit of wealth.  There is little that is not expected to be sacrificed for the sake of even jobs with trivial pay by many in the workforce and many who manage it.  The inverse priorities shape entire lives.

Instead of actual philosophical truths, friendships, and self-actualization being prized first and foremost (and yes, Christian life intersects with all three, so Christianity is not being excluded here), these things are acknowledged or celebrated to the extent that they are useful for maintaining corporate interests or providing potential to help with finding or keeping jobs.  With Americans so deeply pressured to waste their lives away working jobs that likely do not even pay well enough to support a family without additional income, the national culture becomes one that generally treats work as if it is more foundational or necessary than anything deeper or even more foundational than working for money.  In turn, instead of work being rightly treated as something that hinges on other things, like mental health, a philosophically and relationally positive environment, and support from friends or family, work gets treated as if it is so important that life outside of the workplace still revolves around it.

From discouraging needed visits to doctors during normal working hours to letting relationships deteriorate for the sake of work opportunities to demanding that non-problematic actions outside of work get abstained from, there are numerous ways that some industries or managers micromanage--or at least try to micromanage--workers beyond the workplace.  This worsens with specific jobs, like that of teaching at schools.  Teachers in particular usually get pressured to avoid public activities that are not immoral as far as any philosophical evidence suggests and that do not even have to interfere with their role as an educator, like drinking alcohol in front of the public that might contain their students or the parents of their students.

It is outright stupid to see someone not abusing alcohol and assume that they are, but it is even more irrational to see someone drinking alcohol and think that they must be impairing their work ability by doing so unless they are engaging in some hedonistic rush to drink to the point of drunkenness or are drinking recklessly while working.  For teachers at Christian schools or pastors and their spouses, the church equivalent of this secular trend has the added idiocy of legalistic hypocrisy, of being mistaken for Biblical obligations although the Bible opposes adding to its instructions (Deuteronomy 4:2).  This could be extended to all sorts of Biblically innocent activities like profanity, wearing bikinis for women or forgoing a shirt for men, viewing controversial movies at a theater, or some other nonsinful thing.

It is irrational for an employer to ever enforce this kind of policy.  As long as a person is not in ideological delusions or moral error, there is literally nothing to object to about their lives, and if a person is not needlessly hindering their work performance because of things outside the workplace, what would drive an employer to support this other than irrationalistic entitlement?  With varying degrees of stupidity (including both assumptions and knowing denial of facts) or selfishness behind it, this belief reduces down to an arrogant desire on the part of certain people at the top of the workplace hierarchy to see others give other parts of their lives to make the business leaders feel more secure.  What workers need and their moral freedom to do anything that is not immoral are not less important than an employer's reputation among imbeciles.

Work is nothing more than a means to some sort of practical end on its own.  It is not any more special in and of itself, as much as it is enjoyed subjectively by some people or mistaken for something more, unless there is philosophical and moral significance beyond the mere completion of tasks for money that could hypothetically be exchanged for many other jobs.  Those who do not want to put effort into increasing their own resources might simply demand that others cooperate with random, petty, asinine expectations to enhance their own reputation or earnings.  Of course, this could only be perpetuated on a large scale if enough consumers, workers, or employers go along with this or even believe the fallacies of this idea.

The Motivation Of Moral Superiority

One of the few things that almost everyone on the political right or left or who holds to either moral relativism or realism seems to dislike is one person thinking they are morally superior to another.  Predictably, one of the only reasons someone would dislike this is if they have no basis for thinking they are morally superior to others and are dissatisfied with being morally inferior instead.  Insecurity and subjective dislike are the only ultimate reasons why anyone would object to the inherent connection between the concept of superiority and the idea of moral obligations, as those who keep their moral obligations would have more value than others.  Many people despise this true notion.

Not only is this philosophically erroneous, but in many cases it is also spurred on by personal insecurity about how a person might not measure up to their obligations.  This error could involve ideological stupidity and absolutely shallow motivations.  Any belief held out of personal security or insecurity instead of sheer rationalistic proof is idiotic already, but even a rationalistically verifiable and inherently true belief is invalid in a sense if the person holding to it does so just to satisfy a personal desire--not the idea, but the reason a person believes in it.  Beliefs that are the embrace of true and provable concepts are not invalidated like this if a person enjoys them or develops deep feelings around them, even when it comes to the desire for moral superiority.

A desire to savor the greater metaphysical value of being moralistically superior to those who do not share a rationalistic worldview and/or a high moral standing is only irrational if someone's only interest in morality lies in how they can feel better than others.  As long as the core, primary motivation is to simply do what one should-- as moral obligations, if they exist, are what one should do regardless of personal preference--then looking down on others who do not care about anything beyond their own preferences cannot possibly be an ideological or moral error.  Arrogance is only thinking of oneself as higher than one is, and if one is morally superior to someone else, it would not be immoral or otherwise irrational to savor this.

Some people might reject the very idea of moral obligations because they personally dislike the thought of someone else being morally superior to them, whether or not they have realized that moral superiority is metaphysical superiority.  That is, if moral obligations do exist, the people who understand them without making assumptions and sincerely carry them out have more value and deserve better everyday treatment than those who do not care about or understand them.  The wishes of the latter are objectively meaningless either way.

The people terrified by this concept cannot deserve to feel at peace as long as the irrational desire to simply have what one wants because one wants it is not set aside.  If there are no moral obligations, no one deserves anything, and if there are moral obligations, then some people are inferior to others while still possessing whatever human rights would exist.  In either case, or in other words, no matter what, those who are so insecure about the possibility of being inferior to others for moral reasons that they never do anything to contemplate or pursue a high moral standing are pathetic.

Logic, people.  It is very fucking helpful.

Natural Diversity

One of the least intelligent and most artistically ineffective ways to include diversity in entertainment is always, on the level of how they are presented, trying to reduce a character down to the trait/traits that just emphasize their diverse status alone.  The closely related error is having the characters draw attention to the person's trait, whether it is their skin color or something else, without having any valid philosophical or storytelling reason to do so beyond simply fitting into perceived cultural trends.  Not every film, show, video game, or book stoops to these pathetic failures, but natural diversity--the kind that both benefits stories in general and directly or indirectly gives vital philosophical acknowledgment of the fact that diversity is already present in humanity with or without entertainment--is what might best provoke thought among sexist or racist people and what objectively deepens worldbuilding better.

Some of the best recent examples that come to my mind of works that have this natural diversity include Zack Snyder's Justice League, which has a large ensemble cast of both men and women from multiple races, from the Amazons to the different members of the titular Justice League itself.  Then there is the 2021 sequel The Suicide Squad, also part of the DCEU, which centers on a set of characters with diverse talents and ethnicity but even features prominent side characters from either gender and with various skin colors.  Even the asymmetrical multiplayer game Dead by Daylight has male, female, white, black, and Asian (and so on) survivors or killers, all without any of them being out of place in the multiverse of the game, as the Entity takes miscellaneous figures from the universes of other franchises and the game's new universe to pit them against each other.

At no point in any of these films or video games does the diversity of the characters get specifically pointed out--of course, some other works of entertainment actually need to call attention to diversity or lack of it in order to make a thematic or artistic point.  The characters of the aforementioned titles, including the various killers of Dead by Daylight, are simply diverse and integrated well into their respective projects.  It was likely an intentional and valid choice to make them diverse, yet a person, and even a person who routinely thinks about philosophical matters as they relate to individual and cultural experiences, could watch or play them and never even be struck by the realization that the whole project is riddled with diverse characters that are not reduced to token characters or stereotypes.

Outside of art that needs to have a specifically male, female, white, black, young, old, or other kind of cast for the sake of historical accuracy, thematic potency, or storytelling purposes, this is exactly what the most natural and impactful diversity looks like: it is so organic that it might not even be until well after a very rational, thoughtful person has viewed the film or played the game that he or she realizes just how diverse the characters were, if it strikes them at all.  For this to happen, the philosophical errors and idiocy of stereotypes must be avoided, but the results are by far the most intellectually and personally insightful.  The humanity (or inhumanity of some creatures), individuality, and characterization of each person is on full display to the point that their gender or race might melt away from one's focus.

The goal, after all, of rational intentions behind diversity in entertainment is ultimately to emphasize the shared humanity of people who might not look like oneself or come from the same chance background, of people with different genitalia, skin color, nationality, or economic class.  The rationality of this intention lies in approaching art and broader life itself without the shallow, epistemologically invalid, objectively false errors of assuming that being a man or woman, white, brown, or black, rich or poor, old or young, or many other such things fates one to have a given personality, worldview, or lifestyle.  People are individual humans and any belief that gender, race, or class defines a person's true nature is inherently contradicted by reality.  When people understand and accept this, they can see parts of themselves in others even though the outward appearances might differ.

Acting As If One Does Not Believe One's Own Moral Philosophy

Just in case some fool makes assumptions about what I am and am not about to say, remember that I am not even anything more than a moral skeptic who recognizes the logical possibility of either objective moral obligations or moral nihilism, recognizes all ideological inconsistencies as refutations of an idea and all personal inconsistencies as stupidity and insincerity, and recognizes the evidence for Christianity as supporting but not proving its very particular set of values.  I am neither a nihilist not someone who pretends to know that there are indeed moral obligations, but I do openly admit the irrelevance of conscience to proving moral ideas or even understanding what logically follows from a given idea.  At most, conscience restrains people whether or not an act is truly evil or merely prompts thought about moral concepts.

Some who begin to recognize just how irrelevant and useless conscience is to almost all aspects of philosophy just make the pathetic assumption that there are no moral obligations (which does not logically follow whatsoever), or they believe the even more irrational tenets of moral relativism, the false idea that everyone's conflicting, subjective preferences are valid at once instead of equally invalid.  Still, even nihilists and relativists lash out all the time despite believing, or supposedly believing, that nothing is truly immoral.  Just as many moral realists will brazenly contradict their beliefs on the level of actions or other beliefs, most moral relativists and nihilists will brazenly contradict themselves on the level of belief or action by reacting to certain things as if they genuinely believe them to be evil.  Most people simply act as if they do not believe their own philosophy of morality, whatever it is, when it gets convenient not to.

For relativists and nihilists, it is as if they desperately want there to be no true moral obligations so that they cannot be condemned in the only sense that matters even as they are so eager for their lives to have moral significance that they are willing to leap into stupidity.  This is often why people contradict themselves in such obvious, emotionalistic ways: they want two incompatible concepts to be objectively true at the same time.  Instead of abandoning one or both, at least until they rationalistically assess whether either of them is even logically possible on its own, they cling to both and are confused or enraged when someone else points out their hypocrisy and broader irrationality.  They are not interested in truth except perhaps in small, inconsistent bursts no matter what they say with words.

The only two foundational moral philosophies that are even logically possible are deontological moral obligations rooted in the moral nature of the uncaused cause (if it has one) or total moral nihilism, as even the existence of reason, the uncaused cause, and the subjective desires of conscience do not make it logically necessary that obligations exist.  All other philosophical approaches to moral ideas contradict and thus refute themselves, like relativism or atheistic moral realism, and most sets of values are only logically possible as actual obligations at best, having neither logical proof that establishes them as true by necessity nor mere evidences that lend support to them.  Only a fool would believe that incoherent or assumed values actually reflect reality.

Moral philosophy is abstract, yes, but it is not so abstract that anyone is truly incapable of discovering all of these logical facts with only the laws of logic and their own willing minds.  The desperation of irrationalists of diverse ideological backgrounds, from atheists to fitheists to cultural relativists to people stupid enough to never realize that their subjective moral preferences have nothing to do with proving moral concepts, tends to reveal itself in spite of their petty facade of moralistic or intellectual superiority, resulting in outward displays of hypocrisy or ideological assumptions and contradictions.  Even those who are more consistent about their selective relativism and who actually believe they can prove nihilism still rarely act as if they believe what they say, and even non-rationalists who look down on such people still tend to think their subjective perceptions and preferences are more than just that: subjective perceptions.

Logic, people.  It is very fucking helpful.

Originality In Entertainment Revisited

Originality can take more forms than novelty both when it comes to philosophical ideas at large and entertainment.  Autonomous conceptual reflection or autonomous creativity, like coming even to ideas introduced by others on one's own or using popular story elements without doing so because of popularity (or outside prompting), are expressions of the capacity to rely on reason and oneself instead of others.  Artistic autonomy is just sometimes denied a little more overtly thanks to all but a few people talking as if they have just assumed that a given work of entertainment must be inspired by or a reaction to some other work rather than merely being the product of a person's own thoughts.

Another reason why artistic autonomy--coming up with ideas without directly looking to specific examples of other works even if one might be drawing from emotions or thoughts previously stirred by exposure to entertainment--is trivialized or denied is that there are plenty of examples of works of art that by all appearances by made to imitate something else in a cheap way (as opposed to intentional parody or self-aware storytelling).  Intentions are impossible to know from actions because it is always possible for an artist to have motives that are not what they seem to be based on their work, but some art looks like a greed-driven attempt to profit off of success without any thought behind it beyond fitting into a current trend.

For example, if a story made solely to ride on the popularity of a similar work for the sake of money will usually make minimal changes to the story such as switching up names that otherwise make it almost an exact mirror for something else, but there is nothing clever or artistically sincere about this.  In contrast, even if someone thought of a story where every element had already been used somewhere else but was merely focusing on the quality of the execution and did not mistake it for something conceptually distinct from all other works of entertainment, then his or her story can still be one of excellence and originality in the sense that it is not meant to be inspired by any specific work that has already been released; it was truly their vision.  Thinking of a story oneself or without trying to model almost everything about it on some other work is still originality.

Even though the latter creator's ideas and work are not new or unthought of, they are sincere, can be understood for what they are, and were not derived from any sort of admiration for other entertainment, not to mention the idiotic idea that it is literally impossible to come up with ideas for art without exposure to or inspiration from other art.  It is true that artistic ideas, unlike philosophical ideas purely rooted in awareness of the logical axioms at the epistemological and metaphysical foundation of all things, almost always require some form of experience to be prompted (whereas purely logical truths must be at least indirectly grasped for even slight awareness of anything at all to be had and can be thought of without any sensory, social, or psychological prompting).

Regardless of the exact way a storytelling or gameplay idea is thought of, novelty in entertainment can be less of a strength than sheer quality of execution if handled correctly, not that novelty is impossible even after so much art of different mediums has been made and not that everything that is not new is just an intentional imitation of something established in the artistic world.  Originality in entertainment is too often just mistaken for something completely new (which is almost impossible beyond remixing well-used ideas) when there is more to it than that.  The intentions and methods of thinking behind an artistic idea also pertain to how original a song, film, television or streaming show, book, or video game is and can in fact far surpass sheer novelty in many cases.

Spouses Do Not Necessarily Deserve Greater Consideration Than Friends

One does not have to probe for long to find examples of married people who thoughtlessly cling to their spouses, or singles who cling to the idea of a spouse, at the expense of friendships.  The only reason to elevate marriage above friendships with either gender is inescapably emotionalistic, and thus invalid.  Any rational person can see that having deep friends of either gender does not displace having a thriving marriage.  However, most people do not have relationships built on rationalism and true depth, inside or outside of their marriages, yet they still think that their spouse deserves some special consideration over others even when their spouse is an intellectual insect, an emotionalistic hypocrite without any communicated thoughts of substance, a controlling imbecile, or any number of other such possible things.  It would be easy for my words here to be misunderstood by non-rationalists, but that does not make the ideas behind them any less true and demonstrable.

A generally irrational, hypocritical, selfish, or otherwise petty and shallow spouse could not possibly deserve as much affection or positive attention on the basis of merit as a rational, loyal, just, and caring friend.  This is not to say that people in struggling marriages with irrational partners should not try to reshape their marriages into mutual relationships based on deep intellectual and personal understanding, but any friends of theirs with superior philosophical, moral, and relational standing are more deserving of actual attention and concern in one sense.  Marriage is philosophically and functionally important, but it is not more important than friendships with either the same gender or the opposite gender.  The differences between the two relationship types are more related to the practical affairs of living with a partner and/or the explicitly sexual or romantic side of a marriage (though asexuals can easily forgo the latter and still have subjectively fulfilling and objectively deep marriages).  Friendship is more foundational because a strong marriage is a certain type of friendship, and no one needs marriage as opposed to friendship to satisfy their sociality.

The cultural obsession with marriage and dating has plainly driven many people to unhesitatingly, automatically prioritize their spouse over all others when this is never a rational thing to automatically do.  Even a philosophically competent, morally upright, affectionate spouse is no better of a person than a close and philosophically competent, morally upright, affectionate friend, and thus neither can deserve more love or respect as a person.  This goes beyond the objective truth that it is idiotic to intentionally confine one's social life to marriage (unless there are literally no worthy candidates for friendship): even when there is no substantial difference between the intellectual and personal nature of a friendship and marriage, the marriage is not more important by default.  Again, a spouse and friend of equivalent qualities would deserve equal consideration as the other participants in strong relationships.  A spouse does mot deserve to be thought of more highly or given an unnecessary level of communication to the detriment of friendships just because they are a spouse.

The general church and secular culture tend to, motivated by assumptions which are themselves driven by petty preferences, treat friendships as inherently expendable by comparison to marriages, but someone who will not care for both relationship categories is ultimately undeserving of having either type of relationship.  If someone is too irrational to understand the truth about how marriage has been given an incredibly exaggerated status in Western culture, they are not rational enough to handle marriage or even to be worthy of someone else having an interest in marrying them in the first place.  If they are married already but fall into this state of delusion and unworthiness, it is not as if it is Biblically permissible to divorce without abuse, neglect, or adulterous unfaithfulness of some kind, but until they change as a person for the better, they do not deserve the same kind of affection or respect that a rational, loyal friend does.

Enjoying And Analyzing Art

It is objectively true that liking or disliking art is subjective; whether or not art accomplishes its goals or has a high, mediocre, or low quality is objective.  Both of these are true simultaneously because it could not be any other way.  The idea that subjective enjoyment always corresponds to quality is a myth just as much as the idea that there is nothing objectively excellent or pathetic about various works of art.  This does not mean that it is bad for people to enjoy genuinely bad films or books, among other mediums, but it does mean that how one person or a larger group of people feel about a work of art does not reveal its quality or make it have or lack quality.

Whether I or anyone else enjoys or does not enjoy a particular type of art is entirely irrelevant to whether it succeeds at conveying non-vague ideas it was intended to, has any philosophical substance, has a coherent structure and execution, and so on.  If it is a book, is the writing style repetitive?  If it is a movie, are the acting and visual effects strong?  If it is a video game, are the mechanics deep or clever and does the story bring up philosophical concepts or have no conceptual depth?  These and other criteria for each medium determine if art is truly excellent, mediocre, or of poor quality.

It might offend some people that their appreciation or dislike for a given work of art, whatever the medium, has no actual relevance to either the nature of the art or to the critical evaluation of it, but this is the truth of the matter.  I or anyone else could like a book, video game, movie, sculpture, and so on, and this subjective enjoyment remains a separate matter from whether the work in question is actually excellent art.  Personal appreciation does not change forced acting into natural acting, visually random paintings into realistic paintings, or lackluster gameplay mechanics into nuanced mechanics.

Sometimes the quality of art does at least in part depend on the intentions of the creator(s): a movie meant to satirize bad acting could intentionally use bad acting, for instance.  An ironic comedy could use cheap comedy to make a point about just how stupid that style of attempted humor is when other films or games (or other mediums) unironically lean into it.  There is a major difference between a work that uses otherwise terrible quality in a clever or ironic way and a work that was actually intended to be of high quality.  With the latter, fans will just tend to believe its quality is neutral or high despite whatever deserved criticism it receives.

Of course, one could have one's preferences shift towards wanting art of quality as one reflects more on the nature of art itself and encounters examples of superb art.  No one needs to fallaciously think that their preferences are automatic signs that the real nature of a work of art is the opposite of whatever their feelings would imply.  Liking something is also not an indicator that it is poor art, just as disliking something does not mean it is good.  Personal enjoyment is not proof of quality and vice versa.  This is the fact that so many critics and casual consumers of art only seem to enjoy when rebuking someone else for erroneously criticizing a work that the former subjectively appreciates.

The Offense Of Blasphemy

Say "oh my god" or "god damnit" around evangelicals after identifying as a Christian, and they will usually look at you as if you have just committed a grave sin.  Some call it the offense of blasphemy, a very serious charge within the context of Christianity.  Blasphemy is categorized as a capital offense in Mosaic Law (I will address this more below), and it is both possible to demonstrate that these phrases are not what the Bible means by blasphemy and that there would be no Biblical evidence that this is sinful even if it was not clear on what blasphemy is.  Like with malice, lust, or adultery, evangelicals misunderstand blasphemy to be far more than a very specific sin, falsely equating irrelevant things with blasphemy just as they do with other sins like lust.

Verbal expressions like "god," "oh my god," and even "god fucking damnit" are not even necessarily referring to God, the actual uncaused cause, so this automatically undermines the idea that the phrases trivialize or attack God at the start.  They could easily be used as cultural wording for surprise, frustration, or anger without anyone thinking about or meaning to refer to any deity, much less the specific chief deity of the Bible called Yahweh.  It does not matter that they are used alongside profanity or as the equivalent of expletives because profanity itself is nonsinful on the Biblical framework of ethics.  If this is not blasphemy, how could one tell from the Bible itself what the Bible condemns when it prohibits blasphemy and even demand the execution of those guilty of it?

In Leviticus 24, the account of a man executed for blasphemy reveals precisely what this offense is: it is not using a generic term for deity like profanity, but actively, intentionally cursing God.  The story of two men fighting mentions how one of them "blasphemed the Name with a curse" (Leviticus 24:11), with a later verse quoting Yahweh as saying "'If anyone curses his God, he will be held responsible; anyone who blasphemes the name of the Lord will be put to death'" (24:15-16).  Uttering "oh my god" or "god damnit" does not even begin to approach the actual malice or selfishness of cursing God, and yet this is what so many people, from typical evangelical imbeciles like Ray Comfort to plenty of casual Christians, say they think blasphemy is.  At the very least, they think such phrases qualify as blasphemy, even if there are worse forms of it.

It is very likely that such Christians have never thought very deeply about the ramifications of any idea in or about Mosaic Law, including its particular handling of blasphemy.  Do they actually think, contrary to what the Bible actually says, that Leviticus 24 says to kill people for exclaiming "oh my god" or some other such phrase?  If that is blasphemy, this this would be true, but it is so clearly erroneous upon direct examination that only a fool would ever think otherwise.  Moreover, if God's moral nature does not change (Malachi 3:6), then the execution law for blasphemy is universally obligatory on the Christian worldview no matter what Christians wish was the case.  These Christians would probably not be so hasty to just assume that "oh my god" amounts to blasphemy if they actually understood this!

Their folly here is comparable to trivializing rape or racism by mistaking (or knowingly misusing words) lesser or irrelevant offenses for rape or racism except for a major difference.  Lesser sexual assaults and even the most minor forms of racism are evil on the Biblical worldview, and yet saying "oh my god" or similar phrases is not.  Because it does logically follow from the idea that cursing God is an extreme sin that saying "god damnit" or "oh my god" is evil, this not even a case like extrapolating from the Bible's condemnation of alcoholism to conceptual overlap with drug abuse, neither of which is the same as condemning alcohol or drug use themselves.  In other words, uttering "oh my god" is not even sinful by extrapolation from what the Bible does condemn because assumptions and fallacies would still be used in the process.

A Clarification Of What Rationality Is Not

One misconception of rationality equates having a mental fog or a struggle to focus on various things with irrationality, which would mean that the other side of this idea is the conflation of having clear thoughts with rationality.  Being "scatterbrained," or scatter-minded, since consciousness thinks rather than the organ called the brain, is not the same as being irrational.  A person could be scatterbrained and rational or have a focused mind and still be too pathetically irrational to even identify and intentionally avoid basic philosophical assumptions.  How well a person understands the epistemological or metaphysical nature of reason and how well they sidestep the idiotic blindness of assumptions is their level of rationality, and anyone could improve their rationality to the point of making no assumptions at all and recognizing that logical axioms are absolutely certain, universally true, and at the heart of all things.  Being scatterbrained might pose its own intellectual challenges, but they do not prevent a person from achieving any of these philosophical victories.

Besides just being another easily avoidable misconception that is still vital to refute, this misconception that holds otherwise is a way for non-rationalists to feel or mistakenly believe themselves superior to others when it is actually they who are irrational, and therefore inferior to rationalists.  To dismiss someone who is legitimately or seemingly scatterbrained as irrational (which is ultimately the same as thinking them unintelligent) and to equate a lack of focus or a jumble of thoughts with irrationality, without thinking of any particular example of someone who supposedly suffers from this, is outright stupid.  Not only is this utterly shallow, not even looking past mere perceptions, which is itself irrational, it overlooks the objective fact that intelligence is just a grasp of reason, having nothing to do with other factors like mental fog that a rationalist could push through despite the difficulty.

Concentration difficulties do not mean someone does not recognize logical axioms or their own conscious existence as self-evident, nor does it mean they have not reasoned out other philosophical facts and ideas or that they have made even a single assumption.  Jumping from one thought to another unrelated thought does not mean someone is irrational unless they believe that unrelated things are related or commit the non sequitur fallacy, assuming that something which does not logically follow from one truth or concept does follow from it.  Having general mental fog for a time or as an unwanted, lifelong experience does not mean someone is irrational because they are still capable of understanding logical truths--they are, after all, still relying on the laws of logic knowingly or unknowingly to even understand anything at all about what mental fog is and is not--even if it will take more effort in some cases.

Misperceptions, philosophical assumptions, and cultural or personal biases embraced out of convenience are the only reasons a person would ever conflate rationality and an absence of mental fog or total concentration one one subject.  Someone who is "scatter-minded" might choose irrationality because of the heightened difficulty of being consistency rational, but it does not follow that they will believe fallacies and hold to assumptions or contradictions.  Logic is the set of necessary truths that are true as self-verifying axioms or that follow from other truths and concepts, and rationality is nothing other than an understanding of logic, of the only self-evident axioms and of various conclusions that follow from things.  Not a single person has to have no concentration issues to be perfectly rational and deeply rationalistic.  Alignment with reason does not necessarily entail a lack of problems with focusing.  It entails an intentional rejection of assumptions, emotionalism, and arbitrary beliefs in direct exchange for direct awareness of necessary truths.

Logic, people.  It is very fucking helpful.

Nihilism And Cosmic Horror

Cosmic horror frequently gets associated with nihilism, as anything particularly grim is routinely mistaken for something nihilistic even though dark stories do not automatically imply that nothing actually matters.  The primary tenets of this subgenre include superhuman entities that can drive humans to madness upon discovery or telepathically bring them to desire an apocalyptic release of the entities, which are often imprisoned in another dimension or deep underground or underwater on Earth.  The creatures, some of which could be explicitly, strictly supernatural and some of which could be advanced aliens, represent how grand truths could be overpowering or terrifying.  The most renowned cosmic horror author, H.P. Lovecraft, identified with "cosmicism," which is very close to nihilism if it is not identical.  Still, only a certain type of cosmic horror either affirms nihilism in its fictional world or is conceived of by storytellers who believe in nihilism.

Consistent atheistic cosmic horror would always be inevitably nihilistic, even though Lovecraft's own atheism did not stop him from putting an uncaused cause called Azathoth at the center of the beings in his fictional universe, with Azathoth's dreams literally sustaining the existence of humans, the Old Ones, and the physical world alike.  I have never once seen this immense irony specifically brought up, yet it contradicts the very basis for Lovecraft's nihilism--not because theism automatically excludes nihilism, but because atheism is inherently nihilistic no matter what individual atheists or theists are willing to realize.  Lovecraft's cosmology is deeply theistic even if Azathoth, as the "blind" deity who slumbers and has no awareness of his incidental creations, is quite different from typical religious versions of the uncaused cause.

To understand why nihilism is not necessarily part of general cosmic horror, though, one has to of course know what the concept of nihilism is.  Nihilism is the idea that nothing has significance in the sense of objective value, not the idea that there are no truths (which refutes itself), that no truths are deep (which is easily disproven by deduction), or that various goals are futile, though some foolishly use the term to refer to multiple or all of these and switch the meaning from case to case.  An endeavor could be futile and yet still have objective meaning; there is no logical contradiction here.  Inversely, an endeavor or belief might have no futility in the sense that the goal can be accomplished, but absolutely nothing is existentially meaningful.  All of these are logically possible in themselves, and to think that one could know from mere perceptions and preferences if meaning does or does not exist is utter folly.  Only preferences, logical possibilities, what logically follows from various existentialist concepts, and the evidence in favor of an existentially charged worldview like Christianity can be known.

When it comes to cosmic horror, a story must only render awareness of or efforts to oppose the eldritch being(s) futile, but there is no inherent aspect of the story that automatically endorses or suggests nihilism, in part since futility and a lack of objective meaning are not even the same thing.  Neither the characters in the story nor the author need to believe in or flirt with nihilism for a cosmic horror story to remain authentic to its general subgenre.  If anything, absurdism is a better component of cosmic horror because then the themes and intentions of the author do not have to embrace anything that is an assumption, just an honest exploration of the fact that there is no way to prove whether or not anything is truly meaningful.  The insanity-inducing sight of Cthulhu and the potential of Azathoth to wake and destroy the very universe and all other minds besides his own work just as well or better with absurdist themes instead of nihilistic ones.

The epistemological dilemma over whether human existence has any objective meaning in spite of the presence of Azathoth and the lesser eldritch pseudo-gods (Azathoth himself is God), something that could not be verified or falsified, is no less valid an approach to cosmic horror than the assumed nihilism the subgenre is associated with.  The fact that something is temporary does not logically establish that it is therefore meaningless, after all, so even an eventual triumph of the eldritch beings over humanity would not prove that humanity's existence has no objective meaning.  An absurdist approach to cosmic horror is both fully compatible and free of philosophical errors, for nihilism is logically possible but unprovable, yet the absurdist stance that the possible existence of objective meaning is epistemologically unknowable because of human limitations is correct.

The Subjects Of Jokes

Almost as far back as I can remember, I have always heard jokes about murder, ranging from the standard sarcastic comments about wanting to kill someone to more general joking about unjust killing.  This is actually a norm across everyday life in conversations among friends and humor in entertainment.  Out of various subjective preferences, this kind of joking might be accepted among many people who would internally or externally react in a very hostile way to jokes about some other act like sexual assault.  Some actions, beliefs, and attitudes are far more destructive than others, and murder ends suffering rather than prolong it, but one thing being worse than another thing like murder still does not shape everything about every person's sense of humor or else there would be no variations.

In other words, some things might trigger a sense of moral revulsion more than others in some individuals no matter how comparatively trivial or important the issue involved in the joke is.  Of course, moral feelings, or conscience, are subjective and have nothing to do with whether or not moral obligations exist or what they are.  What this subjectivity of conscience and subjectivity in perceiving things to be funny manifests in is people arbitrarily objecting to some humor as immoral while enjoying or excusing other attempts at humor based around treating a sinful thing as comedic.  The truth is, however, that there is nothing Biblically objectionable to making jokes about anything at all as long as no one believes anything false or endorses anything sinful.

An unexpected laugh or an intentional participation in a style of humor that involves jokes about sinful activities is not actually sinful on its own apart from meeting these requirements.  Just like how an action being immoral does not mean it is immoral to portray or watch it in a film, it does not logically follow from an action (or attitude or motive) being immoral that it is automatically evil or stupid to joke about it.  In light of this, it is the intention of a person--the worldview that they are expressing--in telling a joke that would truly dictate its moral standing.  Even the Bible tells people to not add to its commands in Deuteronomy 4:2 while never condemning an entire genre of humor or saying any particular subject is something to never joke about.

Suicide, sexism, murder and even potentially worse things like rape or prolonged torture are not subjects it is wicked to joke about as long as it is just that--joking.  It is when hypocrisy such as thinking it is alright to joke about some stupid stereotype of men or women (and all of them are stupid) but not for the other gender, the fallacies of moral emotivism/relativism (thinking it is alright to joke about whatever one perceives to be acceptable simply because one perceives it that way), or a genuine philosophical misunderstanding of a topic arise that a specific joke becomes problematic.  This is still not because of the base joke itself.  Subjectively finding something funny or offensive is irrelevant.

No one has betrayed Christian morality by expectedly or unexpectedly laughing at a joke that either refers to some sinful thing or uses it merely for comedic purpose with no true belief in anything evil or false, and neither has the person who voiced the joke--unless they have some irrational belief about the subject matter or believe that something which is immoral is amoral or good.  These are the only moral lines that one could derive from Biblical ethics.  All else is personal preference that has nothing to do with the nature of comedy or moral concepts which are both coherent and not assumed.  Some jokes will offend some people no matter what they wish was the case about themselves.  Even so, the only reason to avoid joking about the subjects in question around them is for their sake, not for some inherently obligatory moral reason.

How Self-Preservation Is Not Always Rational

The right circumstances could force almost anyone to reevaluate their will to live in either an ideological or a personal sense.  Some people at least talk as if they believe that it is epistemologically "obvious" that one should persevere in spite of trials, and they might even look down on those who grapple with the existential issues of absurdism (as an epistemological stance, absurdism is true) or with mental illnesses that could impede their eagerness to keep living.  There are many assumptions in the idea that self-preservation is clearly worth pursuing.  Some, furthermore, who believe these assumptions could very well have never suffered as severely as some who do not prize self-preservation.  Of course, I am only pointing out the asinine errors and assumptions in this belief.  I am not encouraging a lack of self-preservation!

What if it turned out to be immoral to preserve one's life?  Many people have assumed the opposite to be true on the basis of moral feelings, social pressures, and personal preferences, which is ironically highly irrational.  It is not that it is logically provable that one should not prolong or improve one's life, of course.  It is just not rational to assume anything at all and the belief that someone should automatically strive for self-preservation is an assumption.  Moreover, personal crises can make people who once loved life wonder if they even want to continue living with or without an objective moral reason to do so.  Many are persuaded to endure for the sake of people who would mourn their absence without ever actually going beyond assumptions or preferences.

Assuming that one should want to live because of some practical consequence like pleasing family members or because one feels happy or morally stirred by the thought of self-preservation is contrary to reason.  This is also true of assuming that there is anything about preserving one's existence that justifies casually harming others or treating them abusively in order to benefit oneself.  All assumptions are epistemologically invalid, but these are false assumptions because practicality and personal interest are irrelevant to truth, proofs, and obligation.  However, it is asinine to deny that it is possible for there to be a reason one should live regardless of feelings or consequences.  These are just things a person could believe about self-preservation that are irrational no matter how appealing or commonly believed they are.

It is irrational to assume anything at all, including that one's life automatically has value greater than that of strangers--which can certainly drive people to seek self-preservation at the expense of others--or that doing something immoral is fine as long as it benefits oneself.  Self-preservation or self-gain motivated by any kind of assumptions about logic, morality, one's own self, and other things is inherently irrational, in fact.  The idea that benefitting oneself or even wanting to continue existing is self-evidently what one should do is outright false.  So too is the idea that it is rational to believe in any set of values, including egoism, short of absolute logical proof, which is unattainable given human limitations.  Value systems can only be disproven if they are inconsistent (self-contradictory) or supported by evidence, such as how the evidence for Christianity is evidence for its values being true (this is the only value system that has any evidence since all others epistemologically reduce down to having no evidence or just being preferences).

The idiotic belief that it is rational to always seek self-preservation is based in nothing but assumptions, and false ones at that, meant to motivate a person to arbitrarily desire to continue life without ever actually thinking rationally about the matter, in an irony that is not at all surprising to an established rationalist.  Living is only easy if one already wants to live, and many people have likely never thought about self-preservation beyond personal desire.  The idea that self-preservation is obviously good, especially in all circumstances, ignores the fact that preference does not prove obligation (meaning those who prefer to live are not morally or intellectually valid simply for having a natural preference), the fact that a person who lacks the will to live and does not intentionally preserve their life is not being fully irrational in the way some might think, and the fact that if certain moral obligations exist, it is actually irrational and unjust to preserve one's life at the expense of fulfilling those obligations.

Christianity: The Religion For All

There are far more ways to misinterpret a text and its ideas than there are ways to soundly and correctly evaluate it.  In the case of the Bible, an enormous number of distortions have arisen inside the church and been asserted by non-Christians.  One might hear of claims that Christianity is a "white person's religion."  There are claims that Christianity is ultimately for men (based on the asinine idea that God appointed men some special spiritual leadership status in families) and does not appeal as much to women, and then there are contrary claims that Christianity is for women because it is supposedly not enticing for men--as if there are even any gender-specific personality traits or philosophical stances that this could possibly arise from.  There are many conflicting ideas about who Christianity is "not for."

Christianity is not a "white person's religion," nor is it a religion for just black people, a women's religion, a men's religion, and so on.  If true, it is for everyone, and even if it is not true, its own tenets are plainly egalitarian in nature and written of as if they apply to all people across history.  Its moral commands are presented as obligatory for all people and its salvation is offered to all.  The will of Yahweh as described in the Bible itself is for every person, every bearer of the divine image (Genesis 1:26-27)--no matter their gender, race, age, nationality, physical appearance, sexual orientation, social standing, language, psychological health, or family background--to willingly choose reconciliation to him and receive eternal life, without which the fate of general humanity is to eventually pass into eternal nonexistence [1] according to the Bible.

In fact, one description of heaven in Revelation 7 refers to a mass of redeemed people from all tongues and nations, confirming that Christianity is not meant to give any specific nation, ethnic group, or race a moral or soteriological advantage over the other.  Of course, one can even find this aspect of general egalitarianism in the very Mosaic Law that is the target of many asinine misrepresentations.  The same moral obligations and rights Yahweh revealed to the Israelites were for cultural outsiders, as core moral obligations and the rights they connect with are tied to the nature of a deity that does not change (Malachi 3:6) and that wanted Mosaic Law to be an example for all (Deuteronomy 4:5-8).  The hypocrisy of treating humans better or worse because of their ancestry or geographical background, among other things, is outright condemned repeatedly in the Torah (Exodus 23:9, Deuteronomy 10:17-19).

There have still been irrational fools who, as Christians or non-Christians, treated Christianity as if at least some kind of sexism or racism was part of its teachings instead of a universally condemned sin.  According to the actual Bible, both the moral and the soteriological parts of Christianity are not bound to a Christian's genitalia, skin color, or cultural background.  If something is morally obligatory, it is good for anyone to do it and it is sinful for anyone to abstain from it.  This much is true by logical necessity even if the Bible is not true.  Then, if the salvation of all is the will of God (2 Peter 3:9) factors like gender are irrelevant to redemption.  On both a moral and soteriological level, therefore, anything other than gender and racial egalitarianism is contrary to Christian theology.

Again, Christianity is either for no one at all, if it is false (beyond the aspects of it like the existence of an uncaused cause that are true with or without the rest), or it is for everyone, if it is true.  Anything else is simply in opposition to what the Bible actually claims about its own philosophical ideas and the nature of moral obligations and grand metaphysical ideas.  Galatians 3:28's affirmation that there is "neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" is part of the very core of Christianity from start to finish.  In the first chapters of the Bible, all humans are said to bear God's image.  In the last book of the Bible, a massive group with representatives from very diverse ethnic backgrounds is presented as having a place in heaven.  The only way someone would read the Bible and think it is anything other than deeply egalitarian is if they made obvious assumptions along the way, and assumptions the text blatantly contradicts at that.

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

Math Is Not A Language

Mathematics reduces down to logic, not the other way around, yet people in general still continually distinguish the two while treating mathematics as more fundamental or knowable, when it is logical axioms and logical truths as a whole that are more fundamental and still more easily accessible than numeric truths.  Rarely does a person make just one philosophical error with regard to an issue.  Where there is one delusion, contradiction, or assumption, others are typically embraced as well.  Because math so commonly gets erroneously thought of as separate from logic, it is in a sense natural for non-rationalists to leap into other falsities like the idea that mathematics is in any way a "language."  This wholly contradicts the actual nature of numerical truths.

The symbols and words used to communicate or, in some cases, simplify understanding of them are part of languages, yes.  Just as the experience of pain is not the word pain and a logical truth about friendship is not the words that could be used to express it, mathematical concepts and truths are not language.  The ideas words express transcend words and written numeric symbols alike.  The former can come to one's awareness by pure reason or through thoughts promoted by experiences and guided by reason, but one must contrive or hear about words to assign to various concepts.  Language is always a mere reaction to concepts that people have already thought about or that they could have already thought about beforehand.

The most abstract truths about the laws of logic can be understood perfectly without any words to prompt recognition or aid in it, but it would be extremely difficult to conceive of massive numbers like 5,000,000 or particularly random numbers like 709,836,912 without relying on a numeric symbol and imagining it.  This still only means that languages and the accompanying numeric symbols are used to facilitate thought or communication about mathematical facts and ideas.  Numbers and the logical truths that both extend beyond numbers and underpin all of mathematics are not a language, or a social construct of any other kind.  Epistemologically, one must understand them to even assign words to them.  Metaphysically, their nature goes far beyond the momentary epistemological convenience many people regard them as.

They are true whether or not any language exists to convey them--or whether or not any conscious beings exist to grasp them, including God, and whether or not any natural world exists to be confined by the necessary truths of mathematics.  The logical axioms and deductive chains that ground mathematical truths must be used to even doubt or reject them, so they cannot be false no matter what else is.  One of the more precise and grand ramifications of this is that logical truths, including mathematical truths, are not just true of other things like consciousness or matter as long as the latter things exist.  They are the only things, or aspects of the only thing (the collective laws of logic), that could not not exist.  They are a metaphysical thing that does not depend on the external world or on any mind, including God's, and they would continue to exist even if the natural world and God ceased to exist.  This is not true of any language, and thus this fact serves as another proof that mathematics could not possibly be a language.

The kind of person who mistakes mathematical truths for a language might also mistake music for language--but pure language communicates precise ideas through written or verbal words.  Even in terms of how the word "language," is commonly used, not every vocal sound, like grunts, is part of a language, and not everything that could be used to convey (or try to convey) a message from one person to another is linguistic.  Objects left out to communicate without words or physical motions, but that do not spell words, are not a language.  Physical gestures meant to communicate precise meanings are not language in the purest sense, although sign language is called sign language.  Even if these alternate attempts at communication were language, the ideas being communicated are not, and so numbers and logical truths about them are not a language by default.