An Absence Of Emotion

It is not impossible to be wholly rationalistic whether one was to feel intense, constant, multifaceted emotions or one was to feel no emotion at all (a state that bring a kind of inner lifelessness rather than peace).  If a non-rationalist was able to will some or all of their emotions away or chemically manipulate their nervous system, silencing the emotions correlating with it (though emotions are nonphysical), they might think that they have done what is needed to ensure they are rational.  Just as having emotions does not make someone irrational, the exact opposite is utterly false.  It takes only a moment to realize that neither respectively follows from having or not having emotion.

Full or partial emotionlessness is not rationality because a person has to actually do something on a mental level to be rational instead of just passively lack emotion: he or she has to intentionally come to logical axioms, avoid assumptions, and be open to or able to realize other logical truths that follow from one thing or another.  Lacking certain emotions or lacking emotions altogether does not mean a person has discovered or cares about the necessary truths of reason, the only intrinsic truths.  It only entails that they do not have emotions!

Many non-rationalists do not even try to pretend like they have no emotions at all except perhaps in very specific social contexts, but everything from casual comments to the way that supposedly emotionless robots in fiction are treated suggests that it is not uncommon for irrationalists to think that if only they would only suppress or not experience emotion, they are by default rational.  However, though even a deeply irrational person can become perfectly adjusted to rationalistic thinking (which is about aligning with the laws of logic that transcends thought), rationality is never itself passive.

Rationality is not about humans ignoring or purging their emotions, and reason is the only way to even know the truth about emotions to start with.  Becoming so-called robots is not what makes a person know and submit to the necessary truths of reason that could not have been any other way.  Indeed, artificial intelligence cannot not actually be intelligent (rational) unless it too is both conscious and intentionally grasps the laws of logic directly, avoiding assumptions and recognizing at least some inherent truths about reason simply because they are true.

One must perceive and think to be able to think about reason, but just thinking or the capacity for rationality does not mean someone is rationalistic, with or without emotions of any kind.  Someone could feel and welcome deep, persistent emotions and be perfectly rationalistic, even going beyond the recognition of logical axioms and the rejection of assumptions to discover and savor more truths.  Someone could either despise emotion or feel little to none of it and believe things because of assumptions, hold to contradictions, and misunderstand or deny the ultimate nature of logical axioms.  To despise emotion for ideological reasons is asinine in itself and contrary to reason because experiencing or craving emotion is not at all what it is to believe in emotionalism.

Between Death And The Resurrection

There are only two logically possible fates after death other than some sort of immediate continuation of conscious experience: a dreamless sleep or the oblivion (nonexistence) of the mind.  The experience of either of these things would be the same for people either way.  If the former was true, people would exist as a mind and yet not perceive anything.  If the latter is true, there is no longer a consciousness to do the experiencing.  The Bible very much seems to affirm that, at least before Christ, one of these or the other was the default fate of humans.  Between the death--the earthly death--of a person and their bodily resurrection, the Bible is actually quite meager in its details on one level.  It is far more clear in its statements about the ultimate fate of people: the righteous will be resurrected to eternal life (Daniel 12:2) and the wicked will be resurrected to be killed in hell (Matthew 10:28, Revelation 20:11-15).

Some Biblical and broader philosophical ideas are unaffected by what happens between now and some future eschatological time.  Whether or not the Bible taught an intermediate state of consciousness, the doctrine of resurrection to eternal life or permanent death of the soul (Ezekiel 18:4) would still apply to the bodies of the dead.  Consciousness is immaterial and distinct from the body it inhabits whether or not it dies as the body does; it also would not follow from a period of soul sleep or oblivion that there is not an afterlife to come.  There could still be a resurrection to new life after a brief or even extremely prolonged time of dreamless sleep or nonexistence of the soul, which is what the Bible says awaits both the righteous and the wicked (a resurrection, that is).  However, as will be tackled later, there are very significant nuances in the Biblical position on an afterlife as it relates to the so-called intermediate state.

As for a passage that directly mentions some kind of state after death that is quite different from what evangelical theology entails, there is Job 3:11, 13-14, and 16-19:

"Why did I not perish at birth, and die as I came from the womb? . . . For now I would be lying down in peace; I would be asleep and at rest with kings and counselors of the earth . . . Or why was I not hidden in the ground like a stillborn child, like an infant who never saw the light of day?  There the wicked cease from turmoil, and there the weary are at rest.  Captives also enjoy their ease; they no longer hear the slave driver's shout.  The small and great are there, and the slave is freed from his master."

This describes an apparently common destiny for humans after the first death, even as Job later says (19:26) that after his body has been destroyed, he will see God in his flesh, hinting at an eventual resurrection of the body as is taught in various other Biblical passages.  Job specifically says that death is a release from worry for everyone, the wicked included, and he longs for death himself (3:1-8) after suffering the loss of family members, bodily health, and animals.  Certainly, even if the Bible is true, this could be what Job mistakenly assumed about what awaits people between death and resurrection, but it is neither the only part where the Bible says such things nor is it obvious from the context that Job is only speculating or articulating his preferences.  Like how Jesus later describes Lazarus as sleeping while dead in John 11, Job seems to genuinely expect for there to not be torment before the resurrection for any soul and for there to be relief from painful experience.

In Ecclesiastes 9:4-6, the writer makes similar statements, actually going further to clarify that no one is aware of anything in Sheol, the grave:

"Anyone who is among the living has hope--even a live dog is better off than a dead lion!  For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even the memory of them is forgotten.  Their love, their hate, and their jealousy have long since vanished; never again will they have a part in anything that happens under the sun."

The author of Ecclesiastes once again emphasizes that there is a common fate for the righteous and wicked on one level, with all of them dying and their emotions, desires, and experiences ceasing to be.  Verse 10 of the same chapter adds that people might as well pursue (morally permissible) passions in this life, because in Sheol, where the collective dead are said to go, "there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom."  Again, the author is plainly saying that people do not experience anything after death--at least until the resurrection of the dead that other Biblical figures mention.  Daniel 12:2, for example, which speaks of a general resurrection of the righteous/saved to eternal life and a resurrection of the wicked to eternal shame (which, as I have addressed elsewhere, does not contradict the Bible's blatant doctrine that the wicked will cease to exist in the lake of fire), says the dead sleep in the dust of the world until the day God restores them to life.

The New Testament also clearly indicates that those who die belonging to Yahweh/Christ will see him in paradise right after their biological death in Philippians 1:23 and Luke 23:43.  Does this contradict what the Old Testament so clearly teaches about the "intermediate period" between death and the resurrection?  Not necessarily, though few seem to ever wade into the details of something as far from predominantly popular theology and as philosophically complex as the true Biblical position on what, if any, afterlife people immediately face after they die before their resurrection and final state.  How the very legitimate affirmation of soul sleep/oblivion in the Bible relates to the resurrection to eternal life or the second death is not ambiguous; the details of how it relates to the present time are more complex.  There is much more that will be addressed about this soon.

Controlling Parents

Parents who think not being controlling towards their children encourages kids to believe everything revolves around their personal wishes are usually just doing the same thing, believing and pretending like their own preferences are obligatory for children, and like everything revolves around them as parents.  Even when they hate this kind of parenting, children might be very influenced by the general push for people to overlook family faults and sacrifice almost everything about their lives for the little illusion of intrinsic importance that is family.  They could develop very complicated feelings about the situation despite probably not being rationalistic and thus not knowing how to truly evaluate these ideas as they are.  This in part means that they are not necessarily choosing to realize the difference between what a truly controlling parents is and what a parent who only subjectively seems controlling is.

It is not controlling to push children to avoid that which is immoral and pursue that which is obligatory.  However, given that many things feared or hated by the evangelical church (even as they practice many of the same things!), it does not matter if they dislike the thought of their children wearing revealing clothing, having opposite gender friendships, watching violent films, playing video games, using profanity, or any other nonsinful thing (Deuteronomy 4:2); they are in the wrong for forcing or pressuring anyone, including their own children, to do something which is not obligatory or to avoid something which is not sinful.  Even among the many non-rationalists of the world, not every parent necessarily gravitates towards controlling tendencies, and not everyone who does will be controlling to the same extents.  It is just highly common to find parents, Christian or not, who are controlling in various ways.

Children who either think their own philosophical preferences matter in themselves or who blame their parents for their own stupidity and moral failings are just as asinine.  Some children who were raised in a controlling manger (as in raised in an emotionalistic, legalistic manner) think that any form of authority being exerted over them is by default being abused or that their troubled childhood is an excuse to have their own emotionalism.  In one sense perpetuating the stupidity of their parents, and in another sense rebelling against one form of irrationality with another, they might go decades as adults without seeking out the light of reason because they, like their own controlling parents, really just want their own subjective will to be done.

It is easier for many people to more quickly align with rationalism when they are not oppressed by legalistic parents, and yet there is no excuse for someone to remain in irrationalism as they grow older because rationalism "was not taught" by their parents or whatever other pathetic excuses people desperately try to produce.  Reason is accessible to everyone.  Everyone is already relying on it whether or not they know it, though most misunderstand it severely all the same.  Parents, too, have no excuse for being irrationalistic because their own parents were or because many cultures pretend to varying degrees like parents have the moral authority to enforce their whims as opposed to actual obligations.  They nevertheless have the power to remove or avoid certain obstacles that might delay someone coming to the truth, and quite often this is not at all what they accomplish as parents.

Anti-Union Retaliation

As unions are started in unlikely places, companies with massive financial resources and habits of underpaying, overworking, or neglecting their workers can only actively do two things in response.  They can adjust compensation, workloads, and working conditions as needed in order to treat workers as more than disposable, inferior beings used as utilitarian tools, or they can hold onto oppressive workplace norms as strongly as they can and fight unionization, which threatens the traditions they are used to.  Every other response is a mere passive reaction, a waiting to see what happens or an inactivity spurred by a lack of attention on the matter.  That even enormous corporations like Amazon would oppose unionization hints at how powerful its consequences can be.

What unions allow for is for the plight and vulnerability of individual workers to not be so easily exploited by company leadership.  After all, unions are collectives of workers, bound to the same company or industry, giving them more power when they threaten to go on strike or resist genuine oppression.  One worker might seem to be isolated or could be intimidated into silence, but to pay an entire workforce less than livable wages, to engage in everything from petty abuses of power to obvious illicit discrimination, ignore unsafe working conditions, or discourage employee feedback is much more difficult when workers are transparent with each other.  Enraged or terrified by what collective bargaining and openness can achieve, corporate leaders might try to stop unionization efforts or disband unions through several methods.

A branch/location of a company might be shut down right as talk of unionizing is becoming more popular or right as an established union pushes back against corporate oppression.  As long as people who are not invested in supporting unions do not notice the timing, and as long as suppressing a union is not the stated goal of the decision, a company might be able to deter employees from unionizing simply by closing stores (or threatening to close them).  They do not necessarily risk any legal response under these circumstances, and they probably will not until unions become more prominent--something that is already becoming more and more normal with newer unions at certain Amazon or Starbucks buildings.

Another more direct way to attack unions is to simply be brazen in words and actions of hostility towards any workers who participate in or verbally support unions.  Anti-union companies might even somewhat improve pay, benefits, or working conditions for non-unionized locations, perhaps even going so far as to point to this as an example of how unions do not always get what they set out to receive!  They might even try all of these tactics together and see how unions or workers attempting to start unions handle them.  No, it is not true that all companies will oppose unions by default or that unions cannot be corrupt as well, but the process of unionization is unlikely to be a smooth one for every first wave in a revival of unionization.

Anti-union retaliation in America is something that unionizing employees will have to endure in many cases until there are more established unions to normalize the process or until the commonality of workplace exploitation diminishes.  It might be years or decades before more widespread progress is made towards encouraging and protecting unions from corporate vengeance, but the steps towards developing a more stable set of unions are already being taken.  In countries or communities where the government, large businesses, and general stupidity all directly oppress workers, unions are the best way to fight workplace injustices other than embracing reason and justice in all things, but the latter, despite being the most important part, is the part that even unionizing employees will almost certainly never choose to do.

Movie Review--Shazam! Fury Of The Gods

"Magic can kill magic."

--Kalypso, Shazam! Fury of the Gods

Shazam! is one of the best of the post-Justice League DCEU thanks to layering drama, comedy, and even some horror without having these elements war with each other.  There is also the very strong emotional center of the movie expressed through Billy's life as a foster child, the culmination of meeting his mother, and his acceptance by a family that chooses him.  Shazam! Fury of the Gods certainly holds onto some of these traits, but it loses some of the narrative focus.  Thematically, family is the philosophical focus once again and this works wonders for exploring an aging cast of child characters; as far as the plot goes, there is nowhere near the kind of more streamlined storytelling that the first boasted.  This does not mean that sheer randomness does not ever work in favor of Fury of the Gods.  It does with some of the humor.  This sequel also has more overt connections to the established DCEU with references to more than just Batman and Superman, which makes it all the more tragic that the DCEU was so severely mismanaged by Warner Bros. that The Flash is set to reboot the franchise before the leftover plot threads could even be finished.

Production Values

Falling short of the DCEU's special effects apex in the films directed by Zack Snyder, Fury of the Gods nevertheless does not have Suicide Squad's or the theatrical Justice League's level of CGI flaws.  Of particular uniqueness is the way that Anthea's power of manipulating objects for combat or evasion is used, such as when she tries to escape a specific, catastrophic fate closer to the end of the movie.  The dragon revealed in the promotional material also stands out for its wooden composition and the way that it is framed multiple times so that its shape and eyes contrast with darkness that engulfs the screen.  The creatures of the film, often pulled from Greek mythology, are sometimes utilized in ways that sharply subvert tropes affiliated with them.  Popular ideas about unicorns are very cleverly sidestepped here, and the broader comedy is executed more competently than not.  Among the highlights is a scene with Skittles that is among the best of any product placement in mainstream movies, but there are fittingly serious moments sprinkled into the plot.  The key to not having these two tones clash, once again, is in not having them intrude where one needs to remain by itself, and there are several crucial scenes where this distinction is maintained.  Near the end, there is a rather major and dark turn of events that is casually undone shortly after, yes, though the preceding stakes are somber.  The remnants of the old Justice League are even still making minor appearances before Gunn's DCU takes root, in this case at the end, as haphazard as the overall crossover storytelling has been for years at this point.

Greek mythology itself also resurfaces after Wonder Woman and Justice League with the antagonists and newly introduced lore.  As the daughters of Atlas, Lucy Liu is passable (the weakest out of the three actresses for the villains), Rachel Zegler shows conflict and passion beyond Liu, and Helen Mirren absolutely takes masterful charge of her role.  Mirren gives one of the absolute best performances of the entire DCEU in her scattered scenes as one of the villains.  From speaking alone with Shazam to interacting with her character's sisters, Mirren does not waste a single moment of her screentime, handling the gravity of her threats and the randomness of several humorous moments (especially reading from Steve's scroll) very, very well.  Zachary Levi, Djimon Hounsou, Meagan Good, Jack Dylan Grazer, and Asher Angel also give great performances, with Hounsou's role being greatly expanded this time over the much smaller scope of his presence in the first movie.  He has excellent comedic and dramatic abilities that are put to good use.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

The three daughters of Atlas target the Shazam family over the source of their powers: the daughters claim that their magical abilities were wrongfully taken from their father Atlas, one of them comparing it to a person who has their money stolen only for a third person to pick it up off the ground after the thief leaves.  Before this new threat arrives, the family is already dealing with anxieties over early adulthood or with the desire for independence or unity respectively.  The trio of malevolent sisters are themselves not fully united in their intentions and worldviews, and yet they set in motion things that could devastate the human world.

Intellectual Content

Other DCEU films have villains weaponize family against other characters, including Darkseid with Steppenwolf in Zack Snyder's Justice League and Orm with Arthur in Aquaman.  Besides the positive relationship between Kal-El and his adopted earthly parents in Man of Steel, the DCEU usually presents its families as marked by tragedy, troublesome, full of strife, or brimming with betrayal.  Even Billy Batson's own biological mother is revealed in the first Shazam! to want nothing to do with the son she intentionally abandoned years ago.  Fury of the Gods once again, like its predecessor, features a family that might struggle with its unity at times but is ultimately bound by genuine affection.  Indeed, it is one of the most positive portrayals of family in any DC live action media, and a fictional example of how it is logically possible, in spite of the greater commonality of more irrationalistic (the family here is not rationalistic but is at least loving) families in real life, for family to not be a source of nothing but stupidity in the forms of selfishness and abuse.  More than this, both Shazam! films show how the American foster care system does not have to only produce more heartbreak and trouble.

Conclusion

Unlike how Wonder Woman 1984 was a very mixed movie with several major, horrible creative choices that forsook the splendor of the first film, Fury of the Gods does not ever reach this mixed a quality.  More character development for characters like the wizard, incredible acting from cast members like Helen Mirren, and bursts of comedy that can be brilliant in their randomness keep this sequel from going anywhere near the likes of Wonder Woman 1984 or 2016's Suicide Squad.  It is not the best of the DCEU even as it is one of the last remnants of the old, now loosely connected shared universe of films, and it does not need to be to not betray everything that made Shazam! such a well-crafted movie.  Just prior to a very uncertain period of DC filmmaking, there is more than the same level of blunders that crippled the DCEU in the first place.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  Non-graphic physical strikes and magic attacks are used throughout.

 2.  Profanity:  "Shit" and "damn" are occasionally used.

Political Rallies And Marches

Political rallies and marches are a major part of how American political factions gain visibility, express stances (not that a march could ever demonstrate that anything is true except that one is perceiving a march, negating the significance of this expression of ideas at the very start).  Whether the position they are trying to express/win others over to is related to abortion, taxes, or something else, these and other public displays of political ideologies are meant to stir up engagement or perhaps even convince someone to join their philosophical alignment.  There is a major epistemological and logical problem, however.  Only a highly irrational person would actually embrace or discard a philosophical position because of an emotional reaction to a march, and nothing but emotion could drive someone to change worldviews after just seeing a political rally/march.

Since it is logically impossible to know if a major idea is true or even probable because someone else expresses it, much less because an (in all likelihood) emotionalistic frenzy of people express it, the only kind of person who would truly change their worldview or behaviors as a whole just because of a political event is a fool.  If someone had been contemplating the issue in question already without making assumptions and while actually looking to reason to see what does logically follow from various ideas, all while recognizing which of the ideas are true by necessity and which are unverifiable but potentially supported by evidence, then that is different.  Even then, the person is ultimately aligning with the laws of logic and not with what some random crowd or speaker thinks.  Because it is extremely unlikely that some political ideas would even be thought of without experiential prompting after which one can see what logically follows (or if the initial premise is possible and provable), it is not always irrational to embrace a truth after seeing a rally, just not because of the rally itself.

If a rally was formed around a genuine logical truth and not an assumption based on preference, consensus, or even mere evidence that does not reach logical proof (evidence alone, from the senses or from memory, never can because it is not the laws of logic), of course it is not irrational for an onlooker to be roused from philosophical apathy or slavery to errors and fallacies given that the rally only promoted their thoughts but they looked to reason itself after that point.  After all, this is the entire hope of even having conversations with people who talk and act as if they are in the depths of irrationalism, something much more common and relatable to many than participating in or observing a political march, rally, or display!  This is not what many in rallies seem to want, though.  They only want onlookers to be subjectively persuaded to make the same assumptions that they themselves already do.

The fact remains that just looking at a political rally and immediately giving allegiance to a political idea--and all political ideas are ultimately metaphysical, moral, and epistemological ideas as well--on the basis of seeing something like a march is wholly asinine.  It would be like watching a film such as The Matrix and becoming a sensory skeptic not because of logical truths/rationalistic proofs, but because one personally liked the movie, or like thinking a historical event is likely to have occurred not because of the primary source evidence for it, but because a contemporary person or someone else supposedly long after the event believed it did.  Almost all political rallies and marches are objectively meaningless and epistemologically useless in light of this.

"I Desire Mercy, Not Sacrifice"

A major part of Christianity (but one that is still secondary to certain other aspects like justice), mercy can be sought after even by those who trample on it, disregarding it once it is given only to seek it again and again.  The Christian deity is indeed in one sense eager to show mercy.  Hosea 6:6 says, speaking for God, "'I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.'"  The context is ironic because God had mentioned his judgment only right before this, and yet mercy is a voluntary abstinence from inflicting a just penalty on someone.  In this very verse, which comes in between condemnations of insincere Jews, God addresses how even in the era of the Old Testament (as if the Bible does not present him as unchanging in his moral nature and mercy), mercy is something he was not reluctant to extend.

Though Hosea 6:6's contrast between God's priorities does not directly specify everything about why mercy is desired over sacrifice, the reason why is not particularly difficult to discover.  The sacrifice of animals was (in a broad sense) only morally required if a sin had been committed, and thus the only reason a person would need to seek God's mercy again and again is if they continually faltered, perhaps through a lack of sincerity or concern for grand matters.  To sacrifice an animal is in an ultimate sense a mere symbolic admission that the "wages" of sin is death, and that the person on whose behalf the animal corpse is offered has trespassed against the being whose nature grounds morality.  It is not something a Jew should have become comfortable with as a superficial way to seek forgiveness for unrepentant wrongs.  Thus, for someone who has sought reconciliation to God, constantly looking to animal sacrifices instead of honoring the initial mercy would have been abominable.

Even the sacrifices themselves are hollow rituals without a contrite mind.  As the prophet Samuel says in 1 Samuel 15:22, to obey God is better than to sacrifice creatures for sins.  At most, animal offerings were a way to actively seek out divine forgiveness while being reminded that sin demands death (Ezekiel 18:4, Romans 6:23), but to avoid the need for sacrifice altogether is of course the superior course of action.  No one would have needed to present an animal to God for sacrificial purposes if no one violated their moral obligations in the first place.  To show mercy and welcome people back to a restored relationship with him is what the Biblical deity wants more than any noncommittal, gratuitous outward deed of atonement that is treated as a superficial escape from justice.  This also has ramifications for how people are to treat others.

While mercy by nature cannot be obligatory, and thus no one can morally err by not showing it, to show mercy--without trivializing both mercy and justice by universally avoiding the pursuit of justice for anyone--is to mirror God's willingness to pardon the repentant.  In spite of not being mandatory, mercy is still truly good on the Christian worldview.  Hosea 6:6 on one hand means that mercy is what delights God more than all the animal sacrifices that could be made, but it also would on the other hand follow from this idea that openness to showing mercy to others satisfies God by reflecting his character.  To seek justice--both criminal justice and "social" justice as mandated by the precise tenets of the Torah, not by gratifying one's subjective desires or yielding to irrelevant cultural norms--is to be like God; to show mercy without emotionalism or tolerance is also to be like him.

There is no contradiction in this because mercy is not obligatory.  If the opposite notion was part of Christian philosophy, then of course at least that part of Christianity would be false by necessity: justice and mercy cannot both be obligatory at once, and mercy cannot be obligatory at all since it is refraining from treating someone as they deserve in a punitive sense.  Biblical philosophy is not what it is characterized as by some who think it an ideology in which mercy is a moral necessity and justice is the optional thing.  No, it could only be the other way around.  It is still the case that mercy is encouraged alongside this because it, like justice, is a characteristic of God.  Without a moral nature on God's part, there is no such thing as morality and thus neither any sin that deserves particular reactions nor a just punishment for any deed, and without justice, there cannot be mercy.  Justice is the more important thing by far, and mercy still is a crucial aspect of Yahweh's being.

Near-Death Experiences (Part One)

Consciousness is immaterial and metaphysically distinct from the body regardless of which causally creates or sustains the other and regardless of whether the former outlives the latter.  The entire issue of an afterlife changes nothing about these truths, for they are true by necessity whether there is a heaven and hell (and no matter what they are like), whether there is some other kind of afterlife entirely, and whether all human consciousness fades into nonexistence once the body dies.  However, there is the logical possibility--for everything that does not contradict logical axioms is possible--that the mind does survive past the body even if only in a dreamless soul sleep.  With my limitations, I cannot know which possibility is correct, as I am living in what might actually already be an afterlife with no way of knowing the future of events in this life, much less what will come next.

Before addressing near-death experiences (NDEs) specifically, I will emphasize again that because there is extensive evidence for Christianity being true, there is accessible evidence for the Christian afterlife: eternal life with rest and nonsinful pleasure for the redeemed in New Jerusalem and permanent death/nonexistence of the soul and body, potentially preceded by temporary torment, in hell (John 3:16, Matthew 10:28).  The Biblical heaven is not a dull place of intellectual and physical inactivity, nor is the Biblical hell a place of eternal torture for all unsaved humans where demons delight in sadism over people.  Aside from the evidence for Christian philosophy and the clarifications about the afterlife in the Bible, there are the many reported stories of people who died or almost died and were revived to recount seeming experiences with an afterlife.

There are so many knowable philosophical truths that pertain to near-death experiences despite how one cannot know if they are accurate that they could not all be sufficiently addressed in one article alone.  For example, even if none or only some of them corresponded to an afterlife, it is still possible to experience all sorts of things within the mind in the final moments before death.  While nothing can be proven that is not knowable from pure reason, and thus matters like scientific laws or an afterlife cannot be known beyond possibilities, probabilities, and perceptions, there is strong evidence in favor of at least some NDEs being real experiences of an afterlife--some hospital patients have claimed to see very specific objects inaccessible to their bodily senses when their hearts and brains stopped, with doctors having affirmed that the items they saw while dead or close to physical death were present after all.

Also, certain NDEs truly do seem to occur when people are near death, as opposed to dead, while others seem to happen in the interim between genuine death of the body and its resuscitation.  While there are sometimes enormous differences in some of the NDE stories I have encountered, there are also often great similarities despite those claiming to have glimpsed an afterlife coming from people with very different cultures, religious backgrounds, and general philosophical beliefs.  It is even possible that the more abnormal experiences are only experiences taking place strictly within consciousness, like dreams, and that the similar ones provided real glimpses into an afterlife.  With the logical possibility of an afterlife and the veracity of NDEs recognized, some of the most significant of the other issues related to NDEs have to do with what it is that many people claim to experience, as well as whether the experiences are specifically consistent with the tenets of any particular religion beyond beyond consistent with logical axioms (nothing can be experienced at all if it is a logically contradictory experience, since contradictions are impossibilities).

Common things people might speak of when recounting their alleged NDEs are passing through tunnels of light, seeing a radiant, benevolent being, and watching most or all of their lives as if they were an outside observer rather than the person whose life is being witnessed.  Ultimately, many things people speak of are consistent with the Christian afterlife.  Though they will be addressed in subsequent posts, many details do not conflict with anything the Bible says awaits humans after death, and even the fact that some people from non-Christian backgrounds claim experiences that some Christians do might only mean that there is a "second" chance post-mortem to submit to reason and God, which the Bible never actually teaches or denies.  The extreme philosophical significance of an afterlife would either way only be ignored by fools.  Whether or not consciousness or a mind-body unity of some kind continues after biological death and what the nature of that afterlife would be are of immense importance.

Overwhelming Freedom

In both an amoral and moral sense, the freedom to choose beliefs and bodily actions is not necessarily welcomed by everyone.  An irrationalist might want the myth of not being at fault for embracing their delusions to be true.  A person still does not have to be a selfish, emotionalistic, asinine irrationalist to be alarmed by the idea of free will.  Whether I like it or not, I have free will, without which I would not be capable of knowing anything because my worldview would be determined by forces beyond my control.  I could know the intrinsic truth of logical axioms and the fact that I exist as a consciousness with absolute certainty even if I had never discovered any of the other truths that follow by necessity from these, so I have at least control over obtaining and basking in these truths.  Any being that is like me would have my same capacity for knowledge, and though I find security in free will, someone else might not.

Any triumph or mistake or inaction is thus in their control to at least some extent, and the non-moral existential weight of this on its own is enough to paralyze a certain kind of person.  Indecision and the vastness or permanence of various choices could tempt a person to lock up.  The moral responsibility that comes with free will might just increase the personal terror.  While there are epistemological and psychological factors that might complicate a person's attitude towards striving for moral correctness, their actual beliefs and deeds would not be exempt from valid judgment.  They could not always control the circumstances they have found themselves in, but they could always have avoided an intellectual mistake or an immoral behavior.

There is always a core part of oneself that one is able to master and direct.  Rather than the other way around, only the illusion, for some people, of an inability to control their worldview and actions is present.  It is not that people only have at best the metaphysical or epistemological illusion of free will and they are really just pawns of deterministic factors.  No, it is within their power to sidestep every error and, as far as the evidence suggests, to leap into moral uprightness.  Since many people are not used to pursuing ultimate truths or doing anything more than what it takes to appease their meaningless, irrationalistic sense of persuasion, of course genuine autonomy could be quite frightening.

Free will is not something a person must assume or remain skeptical about.  As aforementioned, it follows from truths about both the laws of logic and the direct experience of consciousness, but certainly not in the sense that the seeming impression that I have volition is what proves its existence.  The ability to control some thoughts at a minimum and to control one's worldview in its entirety is there even if there are/were no moral obligations one should choose to follow.  Just as a hypothetical lack of volitional autonomy could be very disturbing to some, having that same volitional autonomy could be disturbing to others.  There is no one to blame, for better or for worse, for one's philosophical beliefs and the way one strives to live them out other than oneself.

Vulnerability In Relationships

Human relationships start and continue with some level of vulnerability.  While deep intimacy can be achieved despite the metaphysical and epistemological separation of minds, especially at first, there is no guarantee that someone will respond to openness or cordiality by reciprocating.  The more two people spend time together and share their worldviews and personalities, the more they know what they can of each other, again in spite of the gulf between minds that prevents one from gazing into the thoughts of one another.  Still, there is vulnerability here in that a non-telepathic being does not know how even a lifelong companion will speak or act in the following moments.

It is the beginning of a relationship, be it romantic or platonic, where this is more easily apparent, however.  If two people meet by chance and begin to converse or observe each other, there is not even a set of memories, as inaccurate as memory might be (all one can know just from having memories is that the memories exist and that they seem accurate), to serve as evidence of this person's probable motives and behaviors.  For each word and gesture, there is not only the possibility that one person will be rejected or disliked by the other without cause, something that persists as long as the relationship continues, but there is also a lack of recalled past interactions to suggest what their reactions will be.

I cannot read anyone's mind.  I thus cannot know if they will or will not respond in a belittling, dismissive way if I open myself up to them.  There is always vulnerability in relationships between beings with this limitation, but the risks of vulnerability and the logical possibility that someone will not respect you do not mean that strong relationships cannot be cultivated.  Nor do these facts mean that it is likely that a new person will automatically be hostile, cold, or uninterested.  Again and again, as two people deepen in a platonic or romantic relationship, there will still be vulnerability as more of their selves is shared, and then there is still vulnerability in the most relaxed, mutual, wholehearted of relationships.

The possibility remains that even the most emotionally cherished and ideologically strong relationships could suffer if one party was to suddenly change.  This is a risk that, once again, is inevitable in friendships or romantic partnerships as long as human epistemological limitations endure, which are themselves rooted in metaphysical limitations.  It is still easier for many people to notice the vulnerability in initially forming relationships and the interactions that immediately follow.  Vulnerability might be frightening in some cases, but without it, there could be no human relationships, including those of the greatest kind.  If only someone is willing to show vulnerability at first, someone else might reciprocate, and a life-giving relationship can follow.

Paul's Misunderstood Comment On Female Teachers

Everyone except a handful of people appears to assume that the Biblical command to execute people for rape, adultery, kidnapping, sorcery, and more is ultimately a matter of personal preference even if Christianity is true.  Of course, if God has a moral nature that does not change and this reflects that core moral nature (Malachi 3:6), then those obligations would not change with time or circumstance.  Other passages, though, no matter if their ideas are thought to be good or evil, are often interpreted only through cultural or personal assumptions, though the popular stance would be at odds with the rest of the Bible or could only be assumed, are treated a core, immutable obligation for all people across history.  Among these passages is 1 Timothy 2:11-14, which is famously regarded as endorsing conventional complementarian restrictions on women by saying a woman should not teach a man.

Yes, 1 Timothy 2:11-14 is the only Biblical passage that truly might appear sexist at first (though sexism is not directed just towards women, women happen to be the focus of these specific four verses), something that is not emphasized by nearly enough people.  There are very blatant gender egalitarian teachings in the Bible as early as Genesis 1 and all throughout Mosaic Law and beyond.  This portion of 1 Timothy 2 is actually an anomaly in that it, unlike practically all other Biblical verses, can actually seem at first like it is prescribing a lone gender-specific moral obligation.  However, not only does the Old Testament, the part of the Bible mistaken by fools to be extremely misogynistic, already speak of divinely-approved female leaders of men (an example will be given below), but most people think 1 Timothy 2:11-14 addresses all women of all time even as they think the criminal justice of Mosaic Law is only a relativistic, time-sensitive preference of God.  These people are such hypocrites!  Deuteronomy 4:5-8 itself plainly says moral issues like killing for kidnapping or adultery is a prescription for all people, as it reflects God's unchanging nature.

If its commands from Paul were broadened to a universal level across all eras of time and geographical locations, then it would contradict what God himself had authorized before: women leading men even in such things as direct combat, as with Deborah in the book of Judges (and she was not chosen because men were unwilling to take her role; Judges 2 says God appointed the Judges).  Paul is clearly egalitarian elsewhere, as he is in 1 Corinthians 7:3-5 and Ephesians 5:20--not sexist against men while trying to masquerade as a gender egalitarian--so he would even be contradicting some of the other ideas he seems to affirm if he truly meant that women are morally prohibited from teaching men.  Indeed, if 1 Timothy 2:11-14 or any other part of the Bible was sexist against either gender, this would very contradict the majority of the explicit teachings about gender elsewhere.

Egalitarians should have no problems recognizing that some women of course should not teach others, as the weaknesses and stupidity of individuals have nothing to do with their gender.  Some women are irrationalistic and incompetent at being sound philosophers, and they have neither the right nor the ability to teach others, though many rationalistic truths are knowable without any sort of educational or conversational prompting to begin with.  Some men are also irrationalistic and incompetent, having the same unworthiness or inability to accurately convey reality or even the tenets of unverified philosophies to others.  In saying that certain women need are divinely prohibited from teaching theology and general philosophy (which theology is but a subcategory of at most), Paul's words do not even in an isolated context have to mean what so many have assumed.

Paul is not being sexist, but in addressing a particular group of women in a particular geographical place and era of time, he is instead being concerned with truth.  How stupid must someone be to think that a letter of Paul, secondary to the Mosaic Law that even Jesus acknowledges as most central in Christian ethics, would contradict Mosaic Law, with its condemnation of adding to God's commands which do not exclude either women or men from positions of authority (Deuteronomy 4:2)?  How stupid must someone be to think that utterly core parts of Christian morality like the specific criminal justice of the Torah would lose its righteousness as time passes but that an eventual Biblical letter to one church is the true cornerstone of Yahweh's moral nature?  Then there is the logical fact that gender egalitarianism is true by logical necessity independent of whether God even has a moral nature or the Bible is true at all, no matter what personal biases or cultural stereotypes some people believe.

Logic, people.  It is very fucking helpful.

Game Review--The Walking Dead: Season Two (Switch)

"No one is safe forever."
--Clementine, The Walking Dead: Season Two

"I didn't know this man.  I never killed someone that didn't wrong me in some way, that didn't deserve it.  I tried to pretend he was a walker, but it's different."
--Jane, The Walking Dead: Season Two


The best parts of The Walking Dead: Season One are all reprised in the sequel, but the core components are developed even further.  The decision-based gameplay has higher stakes than ever before, the exploration of the characters' philosophical stances is deeper, and the world has become more desolate than it was before.  For players who have completed Season One, the game imports save data of choices from the prior entry and continues the story with the choices for Season One as the foundation.  For those who do not have any save data from Season One, random choices are generated, but the experience is far more personalized for those who play through the series chronologically using the same Switch and/or memory card.

Production Values

The color scheme is duller for many background objects in the environment this time, giving some scenes an almost unfinished look compared to the rest of the game, but the frequency of these scenes where only characters or items close to the camera have their normal colors suggests that this was an intentional artistic decision.  This is why some of my screenshots here feature grey colors in the background.  Other scenes, however, are rather colorful, something that pairs well with the cinematic nature of the game.  The realistic vocal performances only add to the cinematic presentation.  This is especially important in a game like The Walking Dead: Season Two, as the bulk of a playthrough has far fewer moments controlled by the player than moments of character dialogue.

Gameplay

The presentation may be somewhat different in some ways, but the controls and general gameplay mechanics are the same as they were in Season One.  Decisions made by players affecting everything from casual dialogue to the very survival of specific characters are the foundation of both the gameplay and the story.  Of course, many of the decisions are more rigid than they would be in real life, as the limited number of responses often exclude the more nuanced or multi-faceted answers and choices.  The options still allow players to influence who lives or dies, which in turn impacts how the major events of the story unfold.  Which characters survive to which points and what the relationships between surviving characters are like are at least partly up to each player.

Story

Several spoilers are below.

After losing her former caretaker and friend in Season One, Clementine travels with Krista and Omid, fellow survivors from the last game.  Omid is shot minutes into the story and the game subsequently jumps to 16 months later.  Clementine meets new survivors after being found in a forest by Luke and Pete, which sets a series of collisions between old and new companions in motion.  She is eventually forced to make some of the most difficult choices in her life when various survivors have a clash of philosophies and personalities.


Intellectual Content

Now that the characters of the game's world have had many more months to reflect on their circumstances and experiences, Season Two gives them more opportunities to discuss the explicitly philosophical and personal ramifications of a world overrun by walkers.  Just as The Witcher emphasizes that humans can be the worst kind of monsters in a land full of vicious creatures, the game emphasizes that humans can be more dangerous than the zombies they are threatened by.  Tensions between central characters build until they explode and force moral dilemmas of great consequences onto Clementine--and, by extension, the players.

The sheer ambiguity of trying to discover moral truths using conscience, a subjective tool useful only for helping an individual restrain his or her behavior irrespective of the actual morality of their behavior, is even alluded to in one scene.  In a dream, Lee, a character from Season One, tells Clementine that morality is not like math because there isn't always a "right answer."  Lee seems to mean that knowing the morally right thing to do is not as clear as matters of mathematics, but he erroneously describes moral skepticism as if it means there are situations where all possible actions are both morally obligatory or not obligatory at once.  Even if moral nihilism is true, there would still be "right answers" about the nature of morality.  It would just be the case that all beliefs in the existence of any moral obligation would be objectively false.


Conclusion

The Walking Dead: Season Two does not lose sight of what made its predecessor such a strong game.  It deepens the emotional and philosophical qualities that can lend post-apocalyptic video games (and movies, TV/streaming shows, and books, of course) such profound characterization.  It is indeed the characters that are the strongest asset of Telltale's The Walking Dead games, and everyone who appreciated the emotional sincerity of Season One will find a worthy continuation in Season Two.  Clementine's story is by no means shallow, and she serves as a fitting replacement for Lee as the playable character.


Content:
 1.  Violence:  Physical fights and gunfights are not given as much time onscreen as conversations, but there are still minor and major combat sequences that sometimes involve dismemberment.  There is a scene where Clementine, like Blake Lively's character in The Shallows, gives herself stitches after an animal bites her arm.
 2.  Profanity:  As with the first game, characters sometimes use variations of "damn," "shit," and "fuck."

The Cosmic Horror Of Hell

There are things that are erroneously attributed to the cosmic horror genre, such as the notion that some creatures or facts could possibly transcend logical truths, which some people are stupid enough to equate with the perceived laws of physics that of course could differ from fictional world to fictional world.  Nothing is metaphysically beyond the laws of logic even if that thing cannot be known by humans.  The laws of logic are necessary truths: things are only true, false, possible, impossible, knowable, or unknowable in light of reason, and not because of anything else in an ultimate sense.  Any other things that are true can only be so because it is logically possible or logically necessary.  Another thing mistakenly attributed to cosmic horror is that fear of the kind inspired by the great eldritch beings can only be atheistic or at least non-religious in nature.  Not only do Lovecraft's literary entities feature a literal deity in Azathoth, making the the Cthulhu mythos blatantly theistic, but religions like Christianity already have elements of cosmic horror.

An ultimate being that could reduce you to total nonexistence with a mere thought, as different as Yahweh is from many Lovecraftian entities, is very distinctly Lovecraftian in a sense.  The difference is that Yahweh is not blind to his creation as the deity Azathoth is, for Azathoth is said to be accidentally sustaining the universe as he sleeps, nor does he use humans only as purely disposable tools or objects of amusement like Nyarlathotep or Cthulhu.  Yahweh is, as I have called him, the "benevolent Azathoth" even as he is said to harbor genuine hatred for many who refuse to live for anything more than their own whims (see Leviticus 20:23 or Psalm 5:5-6, for instance).  He is indeed in some ways the type of being that would exemplify many characteristics of conventional eldritch entities.

One key difference, though, is that not even Azathoth is the type of deity that seems to have a moral nature and to have prepared an afterlife of justice for humans.  Yahweh is.  The Christian hell, though it is thoroughly misunderstood by almost everyone inside and outside the church, as well as God's nature itself, is actually rich with cosmic horror for those who do not willingly seek out of embrace the truth about God on this worldview.  I mentioned God having the power to erase someone from existence by only thinking about it.  This is somewhat close to what the true Biblical penalty for sin is for the general unsaved--the eventual, unrevoked loss of consciousness in all of its forms (Ezekiel 18:4, Matthew 10:28, John 3:16, Romans 6:23, 2 Peter 2:6, and so on).  The God who hates entire categories of sinners, not just their sins, allows them to perish or directly brings them to a state of cosmic death.

There is an evangelical misconception of a hell that leads to permanent death of the soul not being something to truly fear.  As a righteous being, in fact, as the very being whose nature dictates whether morality exists and what is or is not good, God would not do that which is unjust in order to bring about a utilitarian goal.  Eternal conscious torment for all fallen beings is objectively unjust by Biblical standards, and whether a person subjectively prefers this or prefers annihilationism has nothing to do with which would be just.  Despite this, there is still much to fear about a hell one would only exist within for a temporary period.

Forever being excluded from every nonsinful pleasure (of which there are many, including a much broader variety of sexual acts than many in the church are comfortable with admitting), from every intoxicating or fulfilling experience, and from the very chance to seek redemption is in no way a minor punishment, and the weight of this might be felt all the more by someone who wishes that they could live forever, just in a more idyllic world than this.  There is cosmic horror even in annihilation of the soul, the ultimate fate for the typical unrepentant being according to the Bible.  Whether this concept is subjectively terrifying or objectively deserving of fear is irrelevant to whether it is just.  It is still the case that the second death and the deity who enforces it in many ways have their own cosmic horror.

Zach Snyder's Steppenwolf

"He will be pleased.  He will see my worth again."

--Steppenwolf, Zach Snyder's Justice League

Among its many storytelling and characterization triumphs over the wholly inferior theatrical version of Justice League, Zach Snyder's Justice League uses what is ultimately a fairly small number of scenes to reveal several key details about the direct antagonist Steppenwolf.  Though Steppenwolf dies at the end, as is the norm in this genre, all it took were a handful of lines to portray the extraterrestrial warrior as a much more conflicted, weary, emotionally vulnerable being that only wants to have what appears to be an extremely prolonged exile come to an end.  Without even needing more than several lines placed strategically, Zach Snyder's Justice League adds much greater moral and psychological complexity to its central villain and exemplifies how to deepen characterization without relying on numerous, lengthy scenes.

As Steppenwolf makes progress in collecting objects called Mother Boxes, he periodically communicates with a fellow alien from the planet Apokalips, DeSaad, a servant of the world's ruler Darkseid.  The film already hints that Steppenwolf hopes to appease Darkseid and regain favor with him, though when he brings it up, he does not clarify just why he has been, in a sense, tossed aside.  It is when he provides information to DeSaad that more of his backstory is verbalized.  Saying Steppenwolf was hindered by his own pride, DeSaad insists that he could have been beside Darkseid if only he had not stooped to a temporary betrayal of Apokalips's leader.

An almost moralistic tone in DeSaad's voice comes out when he emphasizes that this betrayal was done to family, as Darkseid is a relative of Steppenwolf (the New Gods, the natural residents of Apokalips, have varying but humanoid appearances).  Steppenwolf says he repented of his mistake and then killed some of Darkseid's enemies who tried to seize his throne, only for DeSaad to remind him that, as a way of "atoning" for his betrayal, he still needs to conquer 50,000 more planets for Apokalips before Darkseid will perhaps forgive him and allow him to return to his homeworld.  It is never mentioned how many planets have already fallen to Steppenwolf, but upon hearing this, Steppenwolf looks like he is on the verge of tears.

It is also not specified whether Steppenwolf rededicated his allegiance to Darkseid due to thinking the ruler of Apokalips morally deserves loyalty or because it was pragmatic for his own survival, but he expresses what appears to be genuine regret even in private moments where he is not looking at or speaking with anyone but himself.  When he makes his quiet comment about how he hopes Darkseid will again be pleased with him soon after arriving on Earth, he is alone.  This is before DeSaad speaks with him about the reason for his exile and the conditions of his possible, eventual acceptance back into Darkseid's presence.  Just these moments alone solidify Steppenwolf as a far more tragic figure than he is in the theatrical film, wanting to go home to an enormously selfish and cruel megalomaniac despite how he has been treated by him.

In a scene around the middle of the much longer Zach Snyder's Justice League, Steppenwolf interrogates a human as he searches for one of the Mother Boxes.  The human pleads with him, saying that the captives have families, to which Steppenwolf replies, "Then you have weakness."  Whether or not this was on his mind at the time, Steppenwolf's own relationship with family is a very painful one, so he is experientially aware of how having a family can torment someone.  In the context of the rest of the film, which reveals parts of Steppenwolf's past and motivations, this threat to a captured human echoes his own vulnerabilities.  Zach Snyder's Steppenwolf is not as developed as the likes of Thanos or certain other recent villains inside or outside the superhero genre, but he is elevated to a much higher class of antagonists merely for a selection of his lines.  No one needs hours and hours to develop a character well.

Turning One's Back On Family

The catastrophic lie that family members are more valuable as humans because of the random circumstance of which parents or siblings they have can only be embraced on the basis of assumptions or emotionalism.  The notion of this being true is not logically possible but unverifiable.  It is an outright impossibility.  Everyone with a family cannot be worthy of more love, respect, kindness, or loyalty than everyone else outside of the family, or no specific family would end up actually deserving more loyalty than non-family members--though the simple truth that only human rights and individual moral standing could dictate what one deserves already makes this impossible on its own.  If someone rightly thinks that being biologically related to someone else does not make them better than anyone else and yet thinks family still deserves some special kind of loyalty, they are hypocrites who would encourage people to choose baseless commitment as if it was obligatory.  In addition to a disregard for truth, physical or psychological abuse is facilitated and protected in the name of this falsehood, and people who show mercy to the shallow, the arrogant, the cruel, the emotionalistic, or the unrepentantly hypocritical in their family only make themselves vulnerable to the possibility of more direct harm at their hands, not to mention exposure to more stupidity.

Family members, like anyone else, have to earn the right to be treated any better than human rights merit, with no one deserving any more than the baseline treatment called for by these rights unless they choose to holistically, sincerely align with reason at the expense of any pursuit in conflict with this.  People who crave the meaningless affection of irrationalistic family members often fail to even care as much about the actual human rights of others as they do about maintaining a cancerous, idiotic, intrinsically worthless kind of superficial unity with family members in spite of what they believe or have done.  Turning one's back on such family members when it is financially or emotionally easier to do so is not an evil betrayal, but a just outcome that they cannot possibly deserve to be spared from.  Thankfully, it is also a tactic that can be used to manipulate or punish irrationalists who are egoistic enough to think they are special because of a family connection that no one, unless there is some unprovable pre-conception existence, could possibly choose.

To show mercy or not show mercy to emotionalistic worshippers of family within one's own family is a matter of subjective willingness to coexist with them, or a choice to make an impact on them at a key time.  All the desperate pleading or threats of irrationalistic family members only exposes how unworthy they are of the deepest kind of relational love, acceptance, and peace, all of which can only be found in knowing reason and basking in this knowledge with others who seek the same.  With family members who cannot be chosen, which includes all family members besides spouses and potential children, there is no right to be unconditionally loved in a personal sense (as opposed to a resolute commitment to honoring their human rights regardless of who they are) or accepted simply on the basis of a happenstance blood tie.  Is one's sibling, parent, aunt, uncle, cousin, or grandparent rational?  Just?  Sincere and consistent in these qualities?  If not, they are no better than the fools of the world outside of one's family.

As someone who has had conversations with family members that emotionally devastated them, I have personally refused to show mercy in pivotal circumstances.  I have welcomed the pleasure of using words like blades without using them in Biblically unjust ways.  When you do this--not that there are many rationalists to do so--the family member(s) might weep or rage against you, but they, like all other irrationalists, deserve no peace in their delusions and, if they truly care about family even if only out of emotionalism, the knives of those words can penetrate them better than any mercy ever could.  This aggressive but rationalistic defiance is is there for anyone to find even if they are shackled to a family of intellectual and moral insects.  Show mercy if you wish, but to confuse mercy for a deserved sort of kindness is but one of the numerous forms of irrationality that makes someone undeserving of the fullest love in the first place.  Family can no more deserve the undeserved than anyone else; the logical impossibility of mercy being obligatory is so very relevant to how one should or should not treat irrationalists, even if they are your own family.

Human-Instigated Climate Change

As meteorological phenomena occur without any human actions, the climate of Earth can change naturally.  The weather we perceive is not static.  Local and general environmental conditions can change with no direct causal input other than prior physical events, without humans contributing whatsoever.  It does not follow that there could be no such thing as human activities that worsen environmental conditions or create their own kind of destructive climate change.  I will emphasize yet again that scientific events are not the core of metaphysics (that would be the necessary truth of logic) or capable of providing absolute certainty (which can only be found in logical proof), and any experiences with such phenomena are on a human epistemological level nothing but subjective perceptions which could be illusions.  Even so, it is irrational to ignore legitimate experiential evidence, and correlations can be observed in the natural world.  The events that spring up in these correlations sometimes result in nature inflicting damage upon itself, yet people are more than able to harm the environment just as much or more.  Emissions of sulfur dioxide would be an empirical example.

The release of sulfur dioxide from natural events like volcanic eruptions and the decay of vegetation can trigger acid rain when the gas interacts with water in the atmosphere.  While this kind of acid rain is not the same as droplets that literally burn away skin on contact as featured in fiction, it can still harm the environment, such as by eliminating soil nutrients that trees rely on.  Humans can develop respiratory issues from breathing in miniscule particles from acid rain, so people would not escape direct consequences as well.  If humans perform activities which release unecessary or abnormal amounts of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, though, they intentionally or unintentionally would become the reason there is more air pollution.  Some factors that propel sulfur dioxide to the clouds would be natural, yes, but the burning of coal for energy or industry can also produce sulfur dioxide.  This would be an example of human-instigated climate change, even if it only pertained to the climate of a limited area.  Actions like using a car emit further sulfur dioxide and other pollutants like nitrous oxide, which can also lead to acid rain--and nitrous oxide acts as a potent greenhouse gas.  When numerous people drive on a regular basis, even emissions that might not be problematic in smaller amounts would be greatly compounded.

Now, it must always be remembered that anyone who believes that almost anything they perceive through their senses is true by default is irrational, since whether most of the perceptions even correspond to anything outside of the mind is utterly unprovable, but it is still irrational to refuse to acknowledge sensory evidences or pretend like a scientific idea is demonstrably false when, although it is not true by default logical necessity, it seems to be true thanks to scientific evidences.  Still, political conservatives do not appear to understand any aspects of this truth, both assuming that various arbitrary scientific models are verifiably true (at most they could only be evidentially supported and not logically proven) and refusing to confront scientific correlations.  In their case, it is just that they often assume scientific phenomena that do not allow for human-triggered climate change must be true.  Not only is the nonexistence of human-made climate change not true by logical necessity, but it is not even the case that the lesser, fallible scientific evidence suggests that it is not present.  Conservatives might nonetheless believe that things like nitrous oxide or carbon dioxide are greenhouse gases even as they fail to even think about what would logically follow from this if human societies are indeed releasing large amounts into the atmosphere.

In America, this same kind of person who would criticize any sort of rationalistic or moralistic concern about the environment could also ironically be quite comfortable talking about acid rain or general air pollution in other parts of the world like China.  These conservatives who make assumptions about political philosophy based upon personal convenience, emotional appeal, and conscience and then pretend like politics is the foundation of logic and ethics instead of the other way around.  Perhaps because it is easier for them to not be alarmed by the thought of pollution and environmental destruction in distant regions, they might not object as harshly to environmentalist concern over something like China's coal-related acid rain, only to despise the idea of someone in America realizing the need for cleaner domestic energy.  Perhaps it is a desire to not be inconvenienced by dwelling on any lifestyle change that could soften the collective treatment of the planet.  Whatever motivates them, such a person also likely identifies as Christian despite being just as unaware of what Biblical theology truly is as the liberal counterparts they might hate, believing in and living for subjective persuasion, epistemological assumptions, and egoistic pragmatism.  If they took Biblical doctrines and their philosophical foundations and ramifications seriously, they would embrace the kind of environmentalism that perfectly aligns with the blatant, literal teachings of the Bible found as early as Genesis.

After all, on the Christian worldview, not only does the environment have objective value as a creation of the deity whose very nature grounds goodness, but it is something the humans made in God's image depend on for safety and comfort.  To disregard the environment would be to directly or indirectly harm the humans within that environment who have value far beyond some seemingly inanimate cosmic sphere.  In fact, since conscience has nothing to do with grounding or proving if morality exists, most environmentalists, neither being rationalists nor Christians, have nothing but subjective preference for a certain kind of environment to drive them to environmentalism.  The very first few chapters of Genesis, on the contrary, make it so that there is nothing Biblical about trivializing or opposing environmentalism itself as opposed to the misanthropic, emotionalistic, or otherwise irrationalistic versions of it.  This is a more practical kind of philosophical subject than the more important abstract topics at the heart of all metaphysics and epistemology, yes.  The logical possibility for humans to influence the climate (which is known through logic and not science, as everything that does not contradict logical axioms is possible) and the genuine evidence that humans are already doing so are not things rational, sincere Christians would deny.

Relentless Trials

Life is often one long series of somewhat relentless trials, at least if one is not fortunate.  These trials might not all be a person's fault, though all of them have the power to drain someone of their delight or contentment with existence as a conscious being.  The near-universal experience of suffering combined with the almost as widespread scourge of irrationalism is what makes the alleged philosophical "problem of suffering" so appealing to many.  It is really about lashing out in anger or pain at philosophical truths and possibilities that they do not find comforting, such as the idea that God might not care about their suffering or that their suffering could in some of its forms be deserved or amoral.  Most people are not rationalists and are indeed quite stupid, not even recognizing the extent of the contradictions, errors, and assumptions in their false or unverifiable worldviews.  Sometimes stupidity becomes alluring as a seeming distraction from their pain, but it is a biting truth that someone does not have to understand the depths of the nature of suffering and its relationship with other philosophical matters in order to suffer.  Were this not possible, and the fact that it does not contradict logical axioms is all that makes it possible, there would not be so much distress, for most people are far from rationalism.  This can be understood even as one realizes what does and does not follow from suffering.  No one has to choose between knowing that suffering is painful and, for instance, that suffering does not have to be an evil in itself.

A person might experience the agony of guilty over something they have done that is legitimately wrong, not that guilt is anything more than a subjective emotional reaction that has nothing to do with whether there are moral obligations to violate and nothing to do with knowing that something is good or evil.  Or what of an irrationalistic fool who brings about significant mental health problems like existential depression because they are too stupid and weak to face reality without a worldview of fallacies and assumptions?  Such a person could not deserve to be at peace, for if truth matters, they have disregarded or avoided it as much as they want to, and if truth does not matter, then their feelings do not matter.  Moreover, if there is such a thing as right or wrong, people deserve whatever penalty corresponds to God's moral nature either in this life or the next.  A Biblical example would be that the mental suffering brought about by awaiting execution for kidnapping (Exodus 21:16) is not unjustified suffering, though it is crucial that Biblical justice on Earth (as prescribed to all people by Mosaic Law) and in hell, where the default human fate is eventual annihilation (Ezekiel 18:4), do not involve the cruelty that are culturally misassociated with them.

In all of these cases, though, suffering is either a byproduct of personal irrationality and the selfishness of evil.  There is also suffering brought about by events in nature, such as floods, that are not by necessity the fault of God or any human intention or deed--but since there is no morality without God or if God does not have a moral nature, even if the uncaused cause did directly cause a natural disaster, there would be no wrongdoing.  There could not be wrongdoing in that instance.  Even then, the only reason most people are so drawn to the idiotic philosophical errors of the "problem" of suffering/evil (and evil and suffering are not necessarily identical as it is) is really just because they subjectively do not want to suffer and are willing to reject actual logical proofs and possibilities in order to feel justified in their emotionalism.  The Bible never teaches that God will not allow people to suffer either justly or unjustly, and more foundationally, there is nothing about the basic concept of an uncaused cause from which it would follow that suffering would never be permitted or never capable of occurring.  Christian or not, only a true fool would let the burdens of life interfere with their beliefs about metaphysics and epistemology beyond things like the possibility and direct experience of pain.

All the same, once again, someone does not have to be particularly rational in order to suffer extensively, and this is part of why the so-called "problem" of suffering (suffering cannot be a true philosophical problem for theism because there is no such thing as a contradiction in both suffering and a deity existing) is so popular.  Both the rationalistic and the many irrational people of the world can suffer, and even if some suffering is not personally overwhelming or due to evil, that does not always make it any easier for one to bear.  There is nothing unbiblical about doing whatever one can short of something involving irrationality and other sin to avoid suffering.  Being completely on the right side of reality when it comes to one's worldview is no shield from the trials of life, whether a trial takes the form of loss or disease or mental anguish or abusive treatment.  It helps to be rationalistic, of course, as it does with everything except avoiding the frustrations of living amidst fools, but even the most stupid individual can taste the sting of trials, and lacking a rationalistic worldview already puts them at an inherent disadvantage: they will likely not emerge from this irrationalism to understand or better cope with trials.  The pains of life will only leave them confused or oblivious, though a superior way of navigating suffering is there for them to seek.

The Malleability Of Language

The objective nature of language, knowable by anyone who looks to reason itself without making assumptions, is that there is no such thing as a word with an inherent meaning.  All linguistic meaning in a cultural sense relates to customs that could have differed and all linguistic meaning in a personal sense reduces down to what a specific writer or speaker intends.  Since every culture is comprised of individual people, the former sense is only an extension of the latter, for even the broadest and most conventional norms of a language only have that status because individual people tend to use the same words in the seemingly same way despite words having no meaning other than that which is intended by them (however, concepts are objectively fixed and do not change).  In light of this, societal language patterns only last as long as people voluntarily use them.  At the same time, even within the same language, era, and culture, the same word can have numerous intended meanings.

This is why a word like demon has come to refer specifically to fallen angels by Christians in a Biblical context, to malicious spirits in a broader sense in art or in the context of certain non-Christian spiritual worldviews, to personal trials that psychologically torment people (difficult situations or just undesired emotional states themselves could be the concept here), or perhaps even to an exotic animal of extreme size or ferocity.  Demon refers almost universally to something negative, but these are all very distinct intended meanings in other ways.  This is only one of a vast number of examples of how the same word, complete with identical spelling and pronunciation as well, can be used within the same culture in ways that are not interchangeable and are quite unrelated on some levels.

For a less directly philosophically charged concept than those behind the common usage of the word demon, there are words like bat.  Two different noun forms of the word bat refer either to a sports tool used to hit an incoming ball or to a biological creature associated with echolocation and caves (though not all of them are supposed to live in caves).  However, it is spelled the same in either case and is pronounced without any distinction in the sound of the spoken word.  At some point, like with words such as demon, the word bat came to be used in reference to very different concepts without one meaning totally replacing another.  Both meanings simultaneously survived.  The sheer randomness that plays a part in assigning symbols or sounds to a given concept or experience is on full display in this case as well as in others.

If words did not have arbitrary meaning, spelling, and sounding--things that are part of their inherent nature even apart from centuries of linguistic social conventions and that can be known from pure reason without specifically dwelling on particular long-standing societal trends--they would never come to have different meanings over time or be used with multiple definitions in the same regions and generations.  This arbitrariness is unlike the necessary truths of logic, which by necessity cannot be false and do not change no matter what words are used to communicate them.  If someone wants to know the true nature of reality, at least the logical truths that can be known, he or she must look past language to actual truths, ideas, and experiences in order to not allow language rather than reason and introspection to shape their worldview.  The necessity of logical truths and the fixed nature of concepts do not share the malleability of language.