Seduced By Language

If I listen to music or speak with a friend, whatever emotion I experience is not tied to any linguistic knowledge unless I was to choose to focus on words so much that my emotions are oriented around them and my thoughts involve words. Even then, the capacity for emotion precedes the learning or construction of language, and, more significantly, the laws of logic that metaphysically permit possibilities, ground necessary truths, and epistemologically reveal all true knowledge are even more fundamental than emotion.  The construct of words, despite its total irrelevance to the truth or falsity of concepts, can affect how a person feels about something even if this is not permitted to influence their worldview.

Anyone who believes in a philosophical idea because they liked how it was communicated by a speaker, such as a churchgoer who is emotionally persuaded by a pastor or a scientist who is excited by the words of another scientist they assume must be correct, is someone who has been seduced by language to betray reason--emotion and excitement are not irrational and do not make someone forsake alignment with reason, for someone allows this to happen.  No one is involuntarily, imperceptibly forced to believe in certain ideas because of the words they have been exposed to or come up with themselves.  It is one thing to have one's emotional or other perceptions fluctuate as one uses, hears, or reads various words, but to believe in something because words made one feel a certain way is irrational (with the exception of believing one feels a certain way because of words if that is the case, and even then, this knowledge is attained because of reason).

Yes, words can make people feel a certain way or experience something differently about how they think about a concept, and yet language does not stop anyone from discovering a knowable logical truth, prevent anyone from making assumptions or ignoring truths they either know or could know, or recognizing the distinction between having one's emotional states potentially change in reaction to language and choosing to not align with reason on the level of actual belief and proof.  There is nothing irrational or petty about the former.  The latter, in contrast, is to let a social construct that can impact one's subjective emotions dictate what one believes about truths that are ultimately not dependent on either language or emotion.  Language as used by other people, one's own speech or writing, or even privately thinking in linguistic terms does not lead to emotionalism or other forms of irrationalism unless someone lets this happen.

Some might like the cultural connotation of the word or just how it makes them feel.  When understood and restrained properly, this is not something to hate, shun, or fear, in oneself or in others.  There might be certain people who do not even ever have to put direct effort into avoiding the fallacies of linguistic emotionalism.  Words have their practical usefulness for communication between non-telepathic beings (though this is connected with things far deeper than practicality) just as they have their more abstract nature, and none of the communicative, emotional, or intellectual elements of language are changed just because many people let themselves be seduced by language away from reason.  Language itself, after all, is a mental or social construct that has no deceiving mind of its own.  At most, it is emotionalistically influential because the majority of people are far from rationalism already.

As long as a person recognizes and continues to inwardly acknowledge that logical truths are are the core of reality, and that language is at most a logically possible tool for communication and at times introspection (though language cannot even be learned without self-awareness, general experience, and the grasp of reason already being present), then intentionally savoring the emotion that words can ignite is not something irrational.  It is indeed within everyone's power to understand these necessary truths and that language does not ground reason and is not in any way an epistemological requirement to know it.  The laws of logic are of the supreme, intrinsically foundational nature both metaphysically and epistemologically, so there could be nothing more fundamental than them: not God, not the universe, not the human mind, and certainly not emotion or social constructs, the latter of which includes language.

Working To Live

Rationalistic people work to live instead of intentionally living to just work by setting their lives up to revolve around nothing but a career--they will certainly not make work the basis of their worldview or pretend like anything other than logical axioms are the heart of all things, but they might only bother with work at all out of the need for money to obtain other things they need or desire.  Even for people who are not irrational enough to structure their lives this way on purpose, desperation can make it seem appealing to some people as a hopeful escape from the constancy and difficulty of poverty.  All the same, even structuring one's life around work does not typically help people better their lives overall.

They might wake up exhausted from the work of the previous days or weeks, only to devote most of their time or energy for the day to more work, and then they come home just as tired or even more so, needing to repeat the rigid cycle until the arrival of the weekend.  Even the weekend is not always a respite.  Not only is more work looming ahead in a couple of days at most, and some do not even have their weekends completely free, but emergencies or errands might consume the relatively little free time the weekend is supposed to offer.  More substantial things like savoring ones worldview, friendships, mental health, or hobbies 

Of course a person can and needs to psychologically prioritize at least all of these besides hobbies over professional work just to even be a rational person whether or not their workload is enormous--and they can be understood and appreciated even by hyper-busy people (especially strictly logical truths that underpin all things, which are accessible in any place or time).  It is not as if there is any excuse for going years without either discovering or revisiting/celebrating these truths.  However, there might be people who would eagerly throw themselves into relentless work out of boredom or to escape family members or to earn as much money and prestige as they can, but they are for the most part either desperate or stupid, in dire need of more money or irrational enough, if applicable, to think that the social construct of professional business is the heart of human life or the whole of reality, or at least the most important part of it.

Whether or not a person has the desperation or irrationality to blindly accept the standard work cycle, the often inflexible work cycle of American will not even have the same impact on all individuals.  It is possible for someone to be energized or feel empowered by their professional job and for someone else holding the same job to be psychologically and physically drained, with work vampirically diminishing the rest of their lives even as it provides the income necessary to actually do many things outside of work.  The increasing monetization or price increases of everyday things is in part what makes work so often a necessity to participate in society despite its objective intrusion into some parts of life.

Although inconvenient tasks of various kinds are an ongoing part of many people's daily lives, professional work is but a small part of human existence, and one of the least important aspects of it at that.  If it was not for the initial difficulty or unfamiliar nature of growing one's own food, storing one's own water, and arranging one's own shelter with or without the wonders of electricity and other advanced technology, perhaps more people would simply remove themselves from the current state of the American workplace.  Unfortunately, even those who would gladly switch to such a lifestyle could quickly find that even here, already having money at the outset is a major help in getting started.  Who, for instance, could easily obtain the land needed to grow food without some degree of preexisting wealth on someone's part?  Money itself is not the problem, and professional work itself does not have to be incentivized or forced upon people in all the ways it currently is.  It is the typical tendency for workers and employers to try to make work occupy most of their time that hurts almost everyone even if they do not want to realize it.

The First Woe

One of the most severe judgments in Revelation is given the title of the "first woe" (Revelation 9:12), a five month period where the Abyss is unlocked and creatures emerging from it under the domain of the Angel of the Abyss torment people without God's seal, the victims unable to die despite longing for it.  Even if the other judgments of this apocalyptic book are fully literal, such as hailstones of 100 pounds falling to the ground (16:21) or violence and disease killing a fourth of the global population (6:7-8), they do not even begin to rival the suffering that would be involved in this first woe, otherwise called the judgment of the fifth trumpet (9:1).  According to Revelation 9:6, "During those days, people will seek for death but will not find it; they will long for death, but death will elude them."

There are many details of Revelation 9 that are unique or otherwise worth noting, such as the reference to the angel of the Abyss named Abaddon in Hebrew and Apollyon in Greek.  The names Abaddon and Apollyon never receive mention again before or after this in the Bible, and Revelation 9 itself does not specify if this angel is a fallen angel that acts out of malice towards humans, uncaring of how God is limiting its expressions of brutality while still directing them towards or a servant of Yahweh acting at his behest as its legions of locust creatures torment most of humanity.  A being that seems to be an allusion to the devil is said to only be intent on the likes of deception and destruction (John 10:10), but God himself is said to eventually destroy the general wicked in hell in the sense of totally removing them from existence (Matthew 10:28).

In light of this, and because it would still be unclear even without the word destroy being associated with both God and seemingly Satan in different ways, it is unclear if the Destroyer that presides over the Abyss is supposed to be demonic or fully angelic.  Either way, there is a more significant truth Revelation 9 affirms that transcends whether the Bible is true or false.  If someone longs to die from great torment but cannot, they are experiencing firsthand the logical fact true independent of all experience that mere death is nothing compared to many forms of agony, especially pain that cannot be stopped.  One human torturing another is objectively more harmful, more cruel, and more dehumanizing than murder alone could ever be.  If this is true of many kinds of person-on-person torture, is Revelation 9 affirming this and saying people deserve worse than death?

Ultimately, this is not at all the case.  When it comes to divine punishments such as the first woe and the likely much worse but still limited suffering experienced in hell before annihilation (Ezekiel 18:4, Romans 6:23, Mathew 10:28, 2 Peter 2:4, and even John 3:16 are key verses on this), even these potentially great torments are distinctly temporary and have nothing to do with things like the worst kinds of suffering associated with sexual abuse, which is always classified as sinful unlike killing or even some mostly minor physical punishments, or the heretical concept of eternal conscious torment for all unsaved beings that has so many in its grip.  Mosaic Law describes the few acts of physical punishments that are Biblically valid and the rigid contexts and limitations they have.  The punishments of Revelation 9 are more severe because they are directly authorized or caused by God.  All of these things are true of Biblical theology and its ramifications at once.

The first woe might seem to both affirm the grand truth that killing is lesser than plenty of tortures and then insist that unrighteous people do deserve worse than death, but it is not eternal conscious torment that the people of Revelation 9 receive, and neither is the Biblically designated fate of the general unsaved.  Their final status is permanent death of the soul after possible durations of suffering to varying degrees, and not endless torture or torture involving the infliction of the very worst sins that would make one deserve hell in the first place, like rape or prolonged, unjustly harsh physical punishments that would go beyond the limited ones prescribed by God in Mosaic Law.  Everything in the Bible from the Torah to Revelation is either consistent with or directly acknowledges that death is far from the worst fate possible, and this is why there are sins greater than murder alone could possibly be.

Hypocrisy With Climate Disaster And The Second Coming

What someone does or does not believe about the future stems from even more foundational parts of their worldview.  A person who is rationalistic can understand the evidential probability or logical possibility of future events without pretending like he or she knows which of the numerous possible events will actually occur, and non-rationalists will instead believe that specific future events will happen on the arbitrary grounds of emotion, persuasion, or mere perception or desire.  How people react to false predictions will likely reflect whatever irrationality is in the rest of their worldview, as in the case of how the typical kind of non-rationalistic Christian dismisses the logical possibility of human-spurred climate disaster because of inaccurate predictions while not treating the Second Coming the same way.

The Second Coming of Jesus might have been predicted falsely many times throughout church history, but it does not logically follow that there will be no Second Coming at all.  Whether Jesus is divine or whether he will return are metaphysical issues that are not dictated by whether fools across history claimed or even privately believed they knew when the return of Christ would occur.  Many Christians would agree with this, but not on the basis of strictly logical necessity, agreeing that false predictions of the Second Coming do not mean Christianity is false only because they are emotionalistically attached to Christianity already, not because they recognize how the invalidity of Christian eschatology does not logically follow from idiots making such claims.  The same is true of environmental disaster of human origin.

Irregardless of whether human-caused climate change leads to some sort of catastrophe, the truth of the matter will not depend on if some environmentalists, like some Christians, made assumptions and proclaimed errors out of misguided zeal.  The way evangelical Christians tend to react to this as opposed to the false dates for Christ's return shows that they are very willing to overlook false predictions when they are made by other evangelicals.  It is not hard to see in the individual cases of climate alarmism and Christian eschatology that there is no such thing as knowledge, as opposed to assumptions, of when major events will happen.  It is not difficult to see that any fool could believe or assert that an event is right around the corner when there is no way they could prove it.

Non-rationalists are certainly prone to fallacies no matter which ones they end up holding onto.  So very easily, fallacious beliefs involve the hypocrisy of treating different groups of people as if one of them is not in the wrong for having epistemological or moral errors.  This hypocrisy could take the form of conservatives criticizing liberals for the misandry they also embrace just as it could take the form of evangelical Christians, who are often also conservatives, thinking that failed promises of ecological disaster invalidate all strands of environmentalism while ignoring the similarities to how they treat the Second Coming.  Insincerity and its more important cousin irrationality are what convince them to have such distinct philosophical standards in their metaphysical ideologies, epistemological frameworks, and moral stances.

Pet Sematary: The Cosmic Horror Of Death

Death is more certain than taxes and human conflict and economic cycles, Louis Creed believes.  The protagonist of the novel Pet Sematary is right in the sense that, as social constructs, the likes of taxes and monetary cycles are not as fundamental as biological life and death, with their overlap with scientific phenomena that could occur without human inventions.  As an initial adherent of scientism who confuses science for reason, evidence for proof, and supernaturalism for an impossibility or unlikelihood, Louis is nonetheless personally comfortable with death, especially as a university doctor.  When his wife lashes out at the very mention of death as something natural, he maintains his worldview with all of its mixture of partial correctness, outright logical falsities, and mere assumptions.

Zelda, the deformed but abusive sister of his wife Rachel, died when she was young, and Rachel has allowed the trauma to make her emotionalistic even as Louis makes assumptions about death and the afterlife.  Their daughter Ellie comes to realize that the family cat Church could die at any time no matter how unexpected it is.  Is there an afterlife for animal consciousness?  For human minds?  These are some of the issues that these characters dwell on or discuss as the novel unfolds.  Church is eventually killed on a road near the Creed home, and a fatherly neighbor named Jud secretly brings Louis to a Native American burial ground behind the "Pet Sematary," a place where local children have buried their animals for decades.

Jud warns him that he might hear strange voices or sounds or see bizarre lights and to dismiss it all as some relatively ordinary event.  The death of a university student named Pascow who, in the moments before his death, warned Louis not to go to the more dangerous cemetery, and subsequent, seeming experiences with Pascow's ghost have already softened Louis toward the possibility of supernaturalism, not that there are not supernatural (literally just nonphysical) things that are knowable with absolute logical certainly, like the necessary truths of reason themselves or the uncaused cause.  Sensory experiences would not prove the supernatural exists except for that sensory perceptions cannot exist without a consciousness, and consciousness is immaterial no matter its causal relationship to the body.  Still, Louis has already started to shift his worldview.

Jud indeed brings him to a Micmac burial site after an abnormal presence stalks the duo.  He does not clarify why, only that Louis needs to bury Church there.  Before long, Church has been resurrected, albeit changed.  As the events happen, the multiple references in the "act" divisions of the book and by the characters to the resurrection of Lazarus by Jesus in John 11 hold up one of the most famous Biblical stories of resurrection.  All people who die, the Bible says, will be resurrected, some to face the justice of annihilation (Ezekiel 18:4, Mathew 10:28, 2 Peter 2:6, Romans 6:23) and some to eternal life (Daniel 12:2), but Louis finds a different sort of resurrection.  The Micmac site distorts the nonhuman animal or even the person that is returned to life.  A Wendigo associated with the area and with cannibalism has "turned the ground sour," offering intended or unwitting resurrection at the cost of the creature's former self.  The reanimated bodies become tainted or possessed by the Wendigo.  According to Jud's stories of his youth and the experiences of Louis, this resurrection has never been a fully positive one or in some cases positive at all.

So great is the cosmic horror of death, of the loss of a fellow person whom one loves, that the still-irrationalistic Louis buries his son Gage when one of his own children is killed on the same road as Church.  Ellie wants God to resurrect Gage.  She has heard that if Jesus had not specified that Lazarus should come forth, all of the dead nearby would have come to life again.  Louis is more open to theism and to twisted versions of Christianity he is familiar with in particular.  He has also seen the power of the unusual burial site, and he hopes that Gage will not come "back" a lesser shell of himself.  Yes, what has happened once from the same activity might not happen again: anything but logical necessities could change at any time, and even scientific laws could fluctuate from one occasion to another even if they never do.  Church's altered status after his resurrection would not by necessity be the fate of Gage.

The evidence short of logical proof still suggested otherwise, and Louis buries Gage.  The very young child returns as a conduit for the Wendigo to conduct murder.  Pascow's warning was made in vain.  This Micmac burial ground that Jud says will outlast modern societies is tied to an eldritch entity of sorts that can influence people to have urges to sleep or act as fits its will.  However, the sheer intensity of grief and despair play a role.  Louis hopes against probability that Gage would not also be corrupted.  It is not the hope itself that is irrational.  It is that he never stopped when all available evidences, as based in perception and thus potential illusion as they were, pointed to the opposite.  Louis has to kill his resurrected baby's body when the possessed vessel kills Jud and then Rachel.

It is not just the Wendigo and the nature of supernaturalism and the laws of the natural world (which the characters frequently make errors or assumptions about) that contribute to the horror of Pet Sematary.  Loss and sadness are enemies of the protagonist just like the Wendigo.  Desperately hoping that if he buries Rachel in the Wendigo's land faster than he did with Gage, he drags her corpse, places her in the ground, and waits.  Even a rational person can be seized by grief (though simple experience of emotions does not make someone rational or irrational).  For an irrational person like Louis, handling not just one death but two could be excruciating and overwhelming.  In a way, the more central cosmic horror of Pet Sematary is not the Wendigo or the possibility of unwanted supernatural beings at all.

It is rooted in how death can claim any creature at any time, how death means survivors must live with an absence, and how sadness can be so crushing that people might, avoidably but tragically, yield to whatever irrational beliefs or actions they think will make the pain disappear.  Many who have lost a friend or family member might relate to at least the temptation to become lost in false worldviews, assumptions, emotionalism, addiction, or isolation in the wake of death.  Death, after all, is not just the natural end of the body.  Either the mind of a person vanishes forever or at some point, in some way lives on, but those still living are left without them in either case.  What happens to the mind is an even greater concern.  The loss of a loved one can be a penetrating horror indeed.

The Passage Of Time

The difference between the perception of a thing, whether it is a logical truth, a physical object, or something else, and the thing itself is a major one: the former is a matter of subjective experience that can be malleable, and the latter is a matter of how something is no matter what a person ignores, assumes, or hates about it.  Epistemological limitations can prevent knowledge of whether particular things are true, such as whether a building one is looking is really there outside of one's consciousness or is just a mental image (the mental image is present either way), but no one believes in assumptions or errors except because of stupidity.

One thing that is commonly confused for perceptions of it or for some other such thing is time.  Some pretend like time is invented by humans with the creation and use of clocks and other timepieces like hourglasses, with people being prompted to design these by the strong but illusory impression that there really is such a thing as duration.  Others believe that because societal units of measurement for time, such as hours and minutes, are created by people, the thing those units apply to does not really exist outside of perception or convention; however, moments still exist and pass without people using words to refer to it, units to track it, and devices to mark it elapsing.

The passage of time is a nonphysical thing without which physical and mental events could not take place.  Existing independently from matter though it was ultimately created by either the uncaused cause or something created by the uncaused cause (an eternal past is logically impossible because the present moment would never be reached), time is not a thought, a feeling, or a preference.  Time can be grasped as it is by the intellect if one looks to the laws of logic without making assumptions, but it is not the same thing as a sense of time any more than a physical item is the mental perception of it.  In actuality, one can realize that the present moment cannot be an illusion, while many particular material environments one and the objects within them cannot be proven to exist outside of one's mind (yet the existence of matter can be proven [1]).

That time objectively exists, both in the sense that it is real and the sense that it does not depend on perception or even events in order to elapse, is still something that can be known amidst a subjective sense of time, sometimes called chronoception.  A dull, uneventful, terrifying, or bothersome experience can make it seem like time is passing more slowly, while an engaging, elating, or desired experience could make it seem like time is passing more quickly.  Common phrases like "time goes by fast when you enjoy yourself" hint at this as they still, if meant literally, would be communicating the erroneous idea of time itself speeding up or slowing down rather than time simply being perceived differently.

Five minutes is still five minutes no matter how thrilling or dreadful the events that occurred during those five minutes were.  Time cannot change in its rate of passage, though the words people use for units of time can be changed, nothing but arbitrary communicational constructs.  Time is not the electronic or mechanical timepieces that are made to measure it, nor is it anything else but the immaterial duration in which events happen, though it does not depend on the events in order to exist.  It is the other way around.  The notions of time being a very thorough illusion of perception, a physical part of the natural world, or a pragmatic, intentional construct for social coordination are very obviously false.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/08/matter-is-not-illusion.html

Near-Death Experiences (Part Three)

If near-death experiences are valid, why does everyone who is medically resuscitated or almost dead not have one?  This needs to be understood as it relates to logical necessity and possibility irrespective of Christian theology and then as it relates to Christianity, the religion that is both consistent with rationalistic truths and that has much historical evidence in its favor.  First of all, it is not true by logical necessity in itself that if there is an afterlife, every single person would receive it.  If Christianity or something similar is true, then yes, all people who die have some sort of afterlife, even if only for several minutes or some other limited duration to receive judgment and then be annihilated (Revelation 20:11-15).  This is if Christianity is true.  Perhaps the uncaused cause only grants some people an afterlife of any sort.  It could also be the case that the uncaused cause allows some other being to arbitrarily decide to bestow an afterlife upon some of the human dead.

Second, just because not everyone mentions that they had a near-death experience does not mean that they did not have one that they distinctly recall.  Moreover, those who genuinely have no memory of such an experience could have still had one.  Whether or not the Biblical afterlife of eternal bliss in New Jerusalem or torment leading to eternal death (nonexistence) in the lake of fire await us, people being revived from death or from near-death states without any memory of an afterlife would not mean that they did not experience a conscious existence.  God or some other sort of supernatural being could have overridden their memories or they could have simply forgotten as the neurological activity correlating to mental phenomena (which is immaterial) resumed.  This epistemological barrier goes both ways--remembering an afterlife after resuscitation does not mean there is one, or that it is that particular kind of afterlife, and not remembering an afterlife does not mean there is not one.

As far as Biblical stories go, however, none of the people resurrected by Jesus, such as the daughter of Jairus in Mark 5 and Lazarus in John 11, say anything about experiencing an immediate afterlife of any kind.  If this was as directly as the Bible touched upon the status of the dead between now and their resurrection (Daniel 12:2), it would not explicitly establish that there is no conscious experience until the resurrection, but it would be evidence for what is sometimes called soul sleep.  In light of the multiple verses that clearly refer to death as an unconscious nonexistence or sleep (some of which are mentioned below), it is very weighty that none of these resurrected individuals hint at the opposite.  Even the spirit of the prophet Samuel, summoned by the witch of Endor in 1 Samuel 28, is surprised when he is called up, perhaps because he was revived as an unembodied spirit by being stirred up before his resurrection.

It is indeed very significant that, in addition to the Bible saying with almost the same level of directness that the dead are not conscious until their resurrection (Job 3:1-19, Ecclesiastes 9:5-10, Mark 5:35-40) as it does that people will come to an end in hell (Ezekiel 18:4, 2 Peter 2:6), its resurrection accounts do not involve people saying they saw a proto-heaven or proto-hell before the final judgment.  To clarify, the doctrines of annihilationism and soul sleep do not have equal directness of clarity because, while the nature of hell and Yahweh's cosmic justice is very blatantly affirmed by prophets, Jesus, and Paul (and on a repeated basis, though only one direct comment is enough), the references to the dead sleeping or being in a state of nonexistence could be the assumptions of people who has not know what comes after death in the case of Job and the author of Ecclesiastes and a metaphor in the case of Jesus and Paul.  However, this seems unlikely, and the people who pretend to take the Bible literally whenever the text is consistent with this are sometimes the first to disregard the literal statements suggesting soul sleep.

Does this mean that all near-death experiences are illusions if Christianity is true?  No!  To a soul that dies and then is resurrected, it would seem like only a moment passed from the death of the body to resurrection before God, and there is nothing logically impossible about a consciousness perceiving the last position of its body upon awakening even if those circumstances happened long ago.  It could still be true that the "dead in Christ" see Yahweh and Jesus immediately upon death because their very next experience is that of their resurrection to eternal life.  Unless there is an afterlife that is vastly different for various individuals, at least some near-death experiences are mere mental perceptions while a person is almost dead, and even then, a person could not know from a near-death experience alone that there is an afterlife.  They would have to be dead and know with absolute certainty that they are dead, something they cannot even have when trying to know if the sensory world of this present life is as they perceive it.

The Utilitarianism Of Caiaphas And Others

Much later than its examples of relativism in the book of Judges, where almost everyone does what is right in the meaningless subjectivity of "their own eyes," the Bible gives an example of a prominent Jewish figure who endorsed utilitarianism in defiance of Mosaic Law.  Caiaphas, the same high priest who opposes Jesus in Matthew 26:57-68 before his crucifixion, states in John 11:49 that it is "better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish."  Speaking of Jesus and the desire to eliminate him to prevent Roman interference with the Jews, he is willing to harm others as long as it contributes to safety.  Of course, the Romans were incredibly utilitarian as well; they practiced what is likely the most absolutely inhumane behaviors of the entire historical record in order to terrify opposition to Rome.

Caiaphas is notably not merely talking like a utilitarian without eventually acting on his erroneous philosophy.  He does later participate in the slander of Jesus, wanting him dead for claiming to be more than just a Jewish human.  Matthew 26:65-67 mentions that Caiaphas's companions begin beating Jesus after Caiaphas calls him a blasphemer, though the text does not specify if Caiaphas committed this physical assault.  For those who did so with his support, striking Jesus physically was in total defiance of the Mosaic Law the allegedly served, where beatings with fists are among the sins punished (in this case, monetarily as according to Exodus 21:18-19) and not the deserved punishment for any sin.  The utilitarianism Of Caiaphas and his kind is on display here, where they are willing to act this hypocritically, abusively, and emotionalistically for the sake of perceived order among the Jews.  The tragedy in this regard is not merely that they struck Jesus, but that they would mistreat any person in this manner.

While the fixed nature of Christianity's moral obligations excludes utilitarianism's situational flexibility and this can be known from logical deduction, Romans 3 does have Paul directly address a form of utilitarianism at a different point in the New Testament.  Divine grace is morally good, though not obligatory, and it can only be shown in a context of mercy, with mercy being impossible unless a genuine offense has been committed and justice has been suspended.  An irrationalist might think that if grace is good and can only be shown in response to sin, then sin is trivial or mandatory because it precedes that grace and sets the stage for it.  Paul does not hesitate to condemn such fools in Romans 3:8: "Why not say--as we are being slanderously reported as saying and as some claim that we say--'Let us do evil so that good may result'?  Their condemnation is deserved."

It seems that there were people claiming Christians live in utilitarian delusion (and less rational, sincere Christians might).  Romans 6:1-2 further rebukes this error of sinning for the sake of receiving more grace, for if something is morally wrong, tied to the nature of a deity whose character does not change (Malachi 3:6), then there is no such thing as being justified in committing evil for the sake of a real or supposed good that will come about.  That which is evil by nature should never be done.  There are very precise, avoidable situations where any course of action is immoral, like the dilemma facing Jephthah in Judges 11 where he has to choose between breaking a vow to God and human sacrifice--but in these scenarios, the right thing is avoiding the objectively greater evil instead of seeking a good outcome through evil things.  Even here, utilitarianism is invalid within Christian philosophy and, more foundationally, is logically invalid in itself.

Utilitarianism is logically impossible in itself beyond what the Bible does or does not say.  If something is morally good, it is good because of its nature as it relates to the nature of the uncaused cause.  If something is immoral, it is contrary to moral obligation or value and thus the deed, belief, or desire in question should not be indulged in.  The Bible just addresses utilitarianism on occasion with a very blatant directness.  It is clear in Mosaic Law that God is revealing obligations that do not shift with preferences, circumstances, or outcomes, but the Torah says more what the obligations are rather than what they are not.  With Caiaphas, though, the New Testament provides an example of a hypocrite who believes in and practices utilitarianism while supposedly adhering to Mosaic Law, and Paul points out how utilitarianism contradicts even the Biblical doctrines of divine mercy and salvation that the Old Testament had already introduced.

Blind Consumerism

The rich and poor alike are heavily pressured to intertwine their lives with the extreme consumerism that dominates some aspects of American society, though it is much easier for the former to actually live this out without drastic financial consequences.  Whether it is the potential thrill of obtaining new items or yielding to social pressures, if not something else, there is not just one reason why consumerism might be subjectively attractive to the average person.  Consumerism, though, is just the elevation of one aspect of human life and society to the point where people treat it as if is more than truly is.  It is by necessity an irrationalistic worldview and lifestyle, yet one that many people are willing to denounce as they indulge in it at the very same time.  The allure of materialistic pursuit of physical belongings can be strong indeed for some.

People who assume that constantly buying products will inevitably free them from every trial of life or actually align  them with the nature of reality are fools, yes.  To be clear, though, consumerism is not having or loving possessions.  A person could have possessions and not be seized by greed, by arrogance, or by apathy towards more substantial matters.  It is just that consumerism is idiotic and could only ironically be morally good or permissible if this matches up with the moral nature of the uncaused cause, but even then it would not be the foundation of reality, and blind consumerism, the kind many seem to be in the clutches of, is still idiotic because it could only be embraced on the basis of assumptions or preferences, most likely springing from emotionalistic infatuation.  At the same time, the compatibility of owning material things and not making ones worldview, emotions, or lifestyle revolve around them is attainable for everyone.

A person who deeply understands, savors, and builds their life around intangible things like logical truths, knowledge of truths, introspective wholeness and pleasure, and morality (if moral obligations exist) can still have and enjoy material possessions.  There is no hypocrisy in this because there is no conceptual contradiction in these ideas.  Blind consumerism is ideologically and behaviorally idiotic, yes.  Having and enjoying possessions is not the same as embracing economic/consumeristic materialism (distinct from metaphysical materialism/naturalism).  Having many possessions and looking forward to gaining new ones is not necessarily consumerism, much less the blind form of consumerism that only can be accepted on the basis of assumptions, emotion, or social conditioning.

Like any other manifestation of emotionalism, assumptions, or errors, blind consumerism is of course irrational, but so is the idea that material possessions should be shunned or forsaken just because it is possible for certain people to mistakenly orient their lives around them.  Materialistic consumerism is idiotic just like assumed asceticism.  A broad personal library of possessions is utterly unecessary to know the core necessary truths of reason, to understand one's own self, to be a righteous person, and to even obtain some happiness, making consumerism irrelevant to the most foundational things possible, but pursuing material gain and possessions without rejecting these truths is not irrational or consumeristic.

Triumph Over The Natural World

There is a massive amount of factors in the perceived external world that humans can have some control over, even if it takes periods of time longer than many lifetimes to more fully develop this control.  Indeed, a standard human lifetime at this time is not long enough to scientifically advance to where we are now in one generation, especially since scientific correlations must often be stumbled into.  Unlike logical truths, correlations between natural events are not knowable (for non-omniscient beings) without experiential prompting, and even then they are only knowable on the level of logical possibilities, what would follow from certain ideas about nature if true, and what one's subjective sensory perceptions suggest is the case.  There is no metaphysical necessity or intrinsic certainty in the laws of nature or in how one could use them to guard against natural forces, whereas reason is inherently true, absolutely certain, and the only immutable thing in existence.  Reason must be relied on to even know what one can of one's sensory experiences when the inverse is not true.  Even so, it is possible to make great advances based on long-term observations of nature that ironically protect humans from nature.

Communication can now occur across enormous distances due to electronic devices, providing the option to hear someone's voice or see their face without being remotely close to them in a geographical sense.  Modern transportation, despite having its own flaws and difficulties, allows for people to travel local, national, and international distances faster and more safely than before.  Buildings and vehicles can be equipped with climate control capabilities to protect against temperature fluctuations of an unsafe or merely unwanted kind.  Electronic technology can produce lighting and heat, previously accessible from sources like the sun, campfires, or torches.  Medicine can aid the immune system in protecting against disease of bacterial and viral origins, while highly-developed projectile weapons can aid physical strength in protecting against animals and other people.  So much of modern technological triumph over vulnerability to nature, though technology relies on materials that originate in nature, is taken for granted by some of the same people who stereotype the younger generations as ungrateful for the relative privileges of contemporary life.

While humans are still biological creatures living in nature and are still quite vulnerable to its power, a great deal of the threat posed by the environment can be partly or entirely nullified by using human mastery over matter.  Genuine triumph over the natural world has been achieved to some extent.  Still, a hurricane, flood, heat wave, or freeze could devastate even the more developed societies of the planet, if only it strikes at an inopportune time or with enough severity.  All the same, the very existence of most things observed in the external world cannot be proven to exist, only to be perceived as if they exist.  Matter exists, but even the sole way for a human to actually know this [1]--which requires making no assumptions, intentionally discovering the objective truths of logic, and then discovering what logically follows from very specific truths--is something that most people would almost certainly not understand in their current intellectual state or be outright terrified of.

That some sort of matter exists, both in the sense that one's consciousness inhabits a body (whose form and size cannot be known from just perceiving that one has certain limbs, size, or appearance) and in the sense that there is an environment or stimulus beyond one's body, is knowable, but very difficult to actually discover.  It is in fact easier to realize that there is by logical necessity an uncaused cause, even if it is only oneself or the entity that brought oneself into existence.  Since self-creation, matter past-eternally existing without a beginning, and coming into existence without some kind of metaphysical cause are all logical impossibilities, there is an uncaused cause, whether it is the deity of any popular religion or not.

Nature's deity, which either created the physical universe or initiated the causal chain which led to its existence, would be something humans are far more vulnerable to than natural disasters or the obstacles we have only overcome by gradual technological progression.  So many people by all appearances believe at least one of two things.  They probably think that seeing something means it must exist outside of their consciousness, though they tend to have never even realized the distinction between consciousness and the external world; they also likely hold that something must not exist if they cannot see it.  The external world, or as many people might call it instead, nature, is visible, but for the existence of most things within it is utterly unverifiable for humans.  The uncaused cause, on the contrary, is not visible and yet exists by logical necessity whether or not the natural world does.  It might not be the Biblical Yahweh, though there is a great deal of evidence that it is, but there is an uncaused cause, and such a being could wield power far beyond the totality of nature's.  That people worry more about the cosmos than the uncaused cause is because of irrationalistic priorities.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/07/dreams-and-consciousness.html

The Need For Confrontation

There is nothing Biblically wrong with going so far as to enjoy confrontation, as long as a person does not hope for someone to be irrational or unjust so that they can be justified in anger towards them and lash out.  Anger, verbal harshness, and even hatred itself are never inherently irrational or otherwise sinful, but to wish for someone to err just to have the opportunity to enjoy confrontation with them (within the limitations of justice) is to wish for stupidity and evil to be present, and thus is itself irrational and wicked.  Even if they do not actually want for some people to err so that they have someone to legitimately oppose, people could fall into other errors.

Confrontation could intoxicate or terrify people based on their personalities and worldviews, or it might be something that neither excites nor worries a given individual.  Even for rationalists, urges might arise that need to be monitored and controlled, as perfect rationality in grasping logical truths and structuring priorities does not mean that someone will not have the involuntary desire for controversy to exist without need, or that he or she will not flee from controversial interactions even where they are utterly necessary.  A non-emotionalistic kind of intolerance is always the intrinsically rational response to stupidity and sin in all of their forms, but this does not entail hoping for someone to intellectually or morally fail in order to pounce on them, nor does it entail always forgoing confrontation out of timidness or a misguided kind of love.

Literally everything is or could be controversial; everything from the most fundamental and basic (but still extraordinarily deep) truths to their most precise ramifications to every possible experience and deed could offend, frighten, or disappoint someone.  Regardless of the actual nature of the truth or thing in question, subjectivity is all non-rationalists tend to look to.  The world is full of non-rationalists, and their errors on top of errors, their layers of hypocrisy, and their ruthless egoistic devotion to personal preferences make confrontation necessary.  There would be no need to ever confront anyone if all people made no assumptions and embraced the truth.  The unity and personal and societal peace would be unparalleled.

There never has been, as far as all historical evidence suggests, even a single rationalistic society, and there is certainly example after example in the modern world of people who gleefully stir up confrontation where there was no need for it, or who shirk from telling others their faults or even from just resolutely speaking in favor of truth as a whole, no matter how they will be perceived, disliked, or feared because of it.  Wanting someone to choose irrationality to gloat over them (though non-rationalists are inferior to rationalists and deserve to be treated as such) and tolerating stupidity are inverse errors here.  There is no shortage of either in a culture that tries to financially and emotionally profit from outrage or tolerance without regard for anything beyond preferences, assumptions, and cultural norms.

The worst possible error is the denial of the fact that logical axioms are inherently true, and many people will ignore or reject this truth.  There could not possibly be something irrational or unjust about harboring anger or hatred towards them.  Confronting those who succumb to this most extreme kind of folly and the rest of the irrationalism it connects with is indeed a necessity to fully live for the all-encompassing nature of logical truths.  Neglecting or opposing axioms and what hinges on them is at the heart of the numerous errors of non-rationalists, and yet although taking delight in their inferiority or exploiting every opportunity to refute them publicly is no sin, there are certainly ways to approach confrontation and controversy with irrational beliefs or motives.

Profiting From Misfortune

The very nature of business is that the problems of consumers provide opportunities for services and products that can alleviate or perhaps altogether solve the issue.  As individual people try to buy something to remedy isolated instances of problems in their lives, they might forget or wholly overlook the fact that this is what the entirety of business hinges upon.  This is not automatically an exploitative or negative thing, as will be addressed; it is just a truth that is often never realized amidst blind consumerism or one that is misunderstood to be an inherent moral flaw of not just how some businesses could be operated, but of business itself.  It is this that makes businesses and consumers so powerful in their dealings with each other if only they will embrace it, for each has something the other needs or wants, though the bleak landscape of the American business world is usually not structured to honor the fact that nothing about this has to degrade either party.

 

Almost all jobs or services do very overtly, inevitably depend on other people having some sort of problem or at least suboptimal circumstance that needs to be resolved.  Without this, there would be neither a need for most businesses to exist nor anything for consumers to go to them for in the first place.  Even when a dire need is not in view, such as in cases of wanting something that meant more for leisure or additional comfort of living, the "problem" is having the desire for the product or service that a person does not need but still wishes to buy, although this is a very different problem to have than, say, an electrical socket not working or a clogged sink.  Unless a person is carelessly or intentionally spending money just to spend it, not even caring what it is spent on, all consumer activity and product or service offerings from businesses are ultimately about rectifying a problem or satisfying a desire.

An insect infestation in a house, a malfunctioning car, a lack of security systems, and so on either are problems or could easily lead to them, and thus an array of options are there to handle each by paying for a solution.  Exterminators, tutors, mechanics, and more would not be able to profit unless there were actual misfortunes that had befallen other people--or their clients are just insistent on having a given product/service despite it offering them no major advantage or there not being a problem to resolve.  This is not exploration, as neither party necessarily has any malice or selfishness or desire to use the other party as if they are nothing more than a means to a personal end.  However, it is the nature of business.  If there was no practical need or personal desire, there would be neither sellers nor buyers.

Not all business, once again, is itself exploitative of consumers, for it actually enables some problems to be fully addressed and does not have to involve any cruelty or selfishness on the part of the people selling products and services (or performing the services).  Profiting from misfortune can be mutually beneficial to both sides as long as there is no egoism or dehumanization involved.  Additionally, when done right, this process does allow for both parties to prosper beyond what they might ever have achieved otherwise.  It is the system of American capitalism that prompts some people to pervert this by creating products meant to break after a given time or work less effectively in order to convince people they need a replacement product, among other things.  These excesses are where selling solutions to various misfortunes becomes egoistic, avaricious, and dehumanizing to practically everyone involved.

A Couple's First Experiences

The obsession of some people with having a partner who has never done anything sexual or romantic with a previous partner stops them from understanding or appreciating their partner--or both.  In evangelical circles, it is often motivated by allegiance to the unbiblical idea that all sex or other interpersonal sexual activities outside of a legal marriage are sinful; in the secular world, it is emotionalistic, possessive jealousy or egoism that stands behind it, especially when someone thinks whatever they have romantically done is not an issue, all while being suspicious or condemnatory toward their partner for having dated, kissed, or done morally permissible sexual things with former partners.  This is in part how so much of the fixation on entering romantic relationships with virgins endures.

Ironic in this is that one could engage in oral sex, sexual fondling, mutual masturbation, and other such activities while still being a virgin, which pertains only to having sex (intercourse).  Thus, being a virgin does not actually exclude many other sexual behaviors that one could do alone or with a partner.  Despite this, a certain kind of person would not only want a virgin with regard to intercourse as a partner, but they would also want someone who has never done anything sexual before except perhaps with their own hands and genitalia.  They are reacting out of emotionalistic offense either way, but they might be overlooking how they and their new partner would still have their own first kiss or sexual exploration.

It does not have to be either partner's first time dating or exchanging a kiss, among other things, to make it their first time doing so together.  As long as a partner has not done anything that is objectively disloyal or otherwise immoral, there is nothing to object to, and the relationship can flourish regardless of how many people they have dated or done other things with.  Jealousy stops people from enjoying relationships as fully as they could even if there is nothing that actually merits being disturbed, offended, or hurt by in the other person's romantic life up to this point.  A focus on the experiences one has shared with one's partner and that one hopes to eventually share with them, of a romantic, sexual, or other kind, could bring peace and contentment to someone struggling with this.

If a man and a woman have a romantic relationship in which neither of them errs, but the relationship does not work out for some other reason, they have not deprived their future partner--if they will have another one--of something owed to them.  Every subsequent dating bond is a chance to have a new series of firsts that might culminate in a lifelong partnership of rationality, mutuality, honesty, and affection.  There is no need, as much as a person can control it, to allow irritation or insecurity about a partner's past romantic experience (or sexual experience as far as nonsinful things are concerned) to hold an instance of dating or marriage back from its full potential.

Near Death Experiences (Part Two)

If Christianity is true, then some reported, diverse kinds of near-death experiences are false, either hallucinations originating from the mind (or from the brain despite being experienced by the conscious mind) or deceptive perceptions projected by something external to the mind and body.  Others are perfectly consistent with the Bible's highly nuanced details of an afterlife even if many people who believe the Bible to be consistent with them do not really understand the Bible.  For example, while these comments come from stories or reflections, unlike clear statements from prophets (Ezekiel 18:4), Jesus (Matthew 10:28, John 3:16), or apostles (Romans 6:23, 2 Peter 2:6) that at least almost every fallen being ceases to exist in hell (Revelation 14:9-11 and 20:10 might describe exceptions), Job (Job 3:1-19), the author of Ecclesiastes (Ecclesiastes 9:5-10), and Jesus (Mark 5:35-40) all describe the dead as being asleep and devoid of experience.

That the moment of death and the moment of bodily resurrection to face God would seem back to back to a nonexistent or dreamlessly sleeping consciousness would mean that a person still could "immediately" perceive an afterlife without the Bible's seeming affirmation of soul sleep before the resurrection being false.  Moreover, people could have legitimate glimpses of an afterlife in their near-death experiences and simply forget or misunderstand certain aspects of them that would make them all consistent with the Biblical afterlife and the lack of one between the first death and the resurrection of the dead (Daniel 12:2).  Many people are not rationalists, and thus they would be prone to make assumptions even if they really experienced an afterlife and were returned to bodily life to speak of what they perceived.  A great number of people would avoidably allow emotionalism or something else besides logical proof determine what they believe happened unless they become strict rationalists.

Still, a supposed experience of the/an afterlife could motivate people to turn from selfishness and violence, recant of greed and materialism, and maybe for the first time live out an interest in morality, spirituality, and theology.  To have either a peaceful or agonizing experience, whether it is only within one's mind or it is one's mind in an actual afterlife, could be incredibly penetrating no matter how much or little it would overlap with the true Biblical doctrines of eternal bliss for the saved, annihilation potentially preceded by torment, and probable sleep in the interim.  All the same, the Bible does not teach a dull heaven or eternal conscious torment for all of hell's inhabitants, and anything that would not contradict what it does say could be simultaneously true.

Perhaps Yahweh and Christ will give at least certain people an additional chance after the first death to escape the second death.  Nothing about the Biblical doctrines of biological death, resurrection to judgment, and the process of dying in hell as the wicked, unsaved soul ceases to exist logically contradicts the offer of another opportunity to choose redemption, to repent and commit to God and Christ.  The Bible does not have to mention this for it to be true, and it would be something that any genuinely merciful person would actively hope for if they have thought about this possibility.  It could be the case that Christianity is true, as legions of various evidences strongly suggest, and that at a minimum some peaceful near-death experiences of non-Christians are true because God has offered them a "second" chance in his deep mercy.

The specific metaphysical relationship of many near-death experiences to Christian philosophy aside, as unverifiable as hearsay of any kind is (spiritual or scientific), near-death experiences have a great relevance to the condition of living without knowing wit absolute certainty what exactly the afterlife will be like or if there is one at all.  It is significant that whether or not there is a bodily resurrection accompanying it and whether or not it is the same for everyone, if even a single near-death experience is more than a dream or hallucination as the body dies, then there is consciousness after biological death, and anyone who loves truth or even self-interest would almost inevitably be desperately devoted to knowing what possibilities and evidences can be known regarding it--as well as choosing the worldview and lifestyle that would result in a moralistic, blissful afterlife.

The Ambiguity Of The Sabbath Command

The Sabbath law is given such prominence that to work on the Sabbath is one of the few capital offenses of Mosaic Law (Exodus 31:6).  Out of all the Biblical capital crimes, it is also the one that is very likely committed more by Christians than other capital sins.  Even Christians who have not murdered or raped or committed acts of adultery, sorcery, or kidnapping have likely done some sort of prohibited work at one point in their lives, even if it was long before they might have actually discovered the true nature of Biblical commands and the ongoing validity of the Sabbath obligation within Christianity--and its terrestrial penalty.  All the same, the wording of the command to not work on the Sabbath, strictly on its own without the verses that specify blatant exceptions, or without recognizing the logical necessities that follow from various aspects of the issue, is among the most ambiguous out of all the commands in the entire Bible, and especially out of all of the capital offenses.

Whatever ambiguity there is in terms for other sins like murder or rape, there is usually far more immediately accessible clarity in the concepts behind the words.  Murder is not the accidental killing of a fellow human; it is the intentional killing of a person outside the contexts of self-defense or just capital punishment, and the Bible itself even clarifies that murder is not the same as the accidental tragedy of manslaughter (Exodus 21:12-14).  Rape is not rough sex or even lesser forms of sexual assault; it is nonconsensual sex, no matter which gender is the perpetrator or victim and no matter how gentle or rough the sex is (Deuteronomy 22:25-27).  The offense of working on the Sabbath is not this clearly understood from the isolated command to kill those who work on the Sabbath because there are legitimate Biblical or logically necessary exceptions to most broad concepts most people define "work" as.  The word work could refer to the professional kind used to earn an income, the mental effort needed to merely reorganize thoughts or household objects, or the kind needed to save lives or overcome other spontaneous obstacles.

The specific Sabbath case laws given target physical labor (even having a day of rest to imitate Yahweh after creation was finished would be contradictory in goal if it did not allow for thinking, breathing, eating, drinking, and so on, with the latter two examples here being necessary for health or survival in some cases), yet Jesus acknowledges that it actually is morally permissible to perform physical tasks that heal the sick on the Sabbath even as he himself heals on this day [1], just as he points out how the priests of the temple were authorized by God to make offerings on the Sabbath (compare Matthew 12:9-14 with Numbers 28:9-10).  Not all physical effort is described as sinful on this day.  What, then, of making money if it does not involve physical labor but is not through totally passive forms of income creation?  That hospital workers might be exerting great physical effort to save lives while working for money on the Sabbath would be an exception that meets the Biblical qualifications, yes, but what of jobs that involve merely speaking or writing, things that require minimal physical effort or that people might do on the Sabbath anyway for pleasure or communication?  These, too, are not by necessity included in the kind of work the verse refers to or in the examples of condemned work that come up in Biblical stories.

Since God's core moral nature does not change whatsoever (Malachi 3:6), only a fool would think it is Biblically valid to think that the Sabbath law in Exodus and Leviticus would somehow cease to be obligatory, but only someone who has never read the relevant parts of the Bible or made a plethora of assumptions along the way would actually think that the Biblical doctrine is to kill people for healing, breathing, speaking, or many other similar activities on the Sabbath.  Unecessary or specifically prohibited physical labor (there is the particular example of someone killed for picking up sticks on the Sabbath after they would have been warned not to do such things beforehand) is in view here, and nothing else.  When even the Bible itself clarifies that certain activities are not condemned with the Sabbath obligation, and some other forms of even professional work are identical to what families or friends might otherwise do on the Sabbath (like just talking with each other), it is clear that the Sabbath law, in the Bible's own descriptions, is not against all activity, just a certain kind of gratuitous activity.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2022/11/healing-on-sabbath.html

Paid Time Off

At its best, paid time off is one of the greatest benefits in the workplace.  People work for compensation of one kind or another that these days mostly takes the form of money or something directly exchangeable for money (like stock shares).  To mentally or physically labor in a professional sense without payment--unless an employer or employee voluntarily forgoes it because of special circumstances like charity--is to go unrewarded.  Paid time off allows for a break from work without a gap in compensation.  As significant of a benefit as it can be, it often comes with major restrictions and can still be a means of workplace exploitation when it comes to having to get it approved by hostile or petty managers.

For one thing, the accrual rates can be so slow for some businesses that it would take months and months just to have enough PTO to cover a single day or two's worth of working hours, and there could be caps so that only around 40 hours of PTO can be held at a time--enough to approximately take a single full-time workweek off while still receiving compensation.  As for employers as opposed to overarching corporate policies, some of them might deny "requests" for PTO even though the accrual and use of it is a benefit they themselves offered to their workers, perhaps lamenting how time away could affect the remaining employees who supposedly always have to work harder during the absence.

A worker has the right to use their paid time off whenever they wish except if they have promised to commit to a task only to use PTO to deceive an employer.  After all, they earned it, and they are not the ones to blame if a manager or employer did not hire enough people to actually keep their company functioning when an employee uses this promised benefit--especially when paid time off is used in the case of a sudden, unplanned emergency.  The kind of manager that would object to this is either an egoistic, arrogant person who tramples on others to exercise power or is an utterly incompetent leader who cannot utilize other resources when someone is away.  He or she is irrational either way.

They can respectfully ask the employee to consider a different day to use their PTO, of course, without demanding that they comply and without denying them something they have already earned.  It is also not oppressive to deny or place additional conditions on granting PTO that has not yet been earned, for the worker would have to labor in order to make up for what they have been paid for without working.  More than just these few scenarios might be all too common in different workplaces, however.  Paid time off is advertised as a useful benefit to attract workers and can still be held out of reach by all sorts of arbitrary requirements or manipulative policies.

For all of its faults as a company, Amazon actually has very flexible and accessible paid time off options for even low-level white or blue badge warehouse workers.  Submitted through an employee app without having to notify an overseer, PTO can be applied a few minutes at a time to cover portions of a shift if someone has to arrive late, leave early, or take a break in the middle of a shift.  Other companies offer something else: unlimited PTO, which could be withheld by asinine management or end up discouraging workers from using this benefit since they have no accumulating balance that caps out or does not carry over from year to year, which provides a basis for urgency.  As appealing as unlimited PTO might seem at first, like ordinary PTO and other workplace benefits, it can be used as a trap or a tool of exploitation by a specific kind of irrationalistic manager/employer.

Adult Friendships

As a child, a person's ability to spend time with or even digitally communicate with their friends might be controlled at the whims of adults.  As an adult, despite what is for some people almost the illusion of more freedom of time and resources to invest into relationships, there might be far more problems that demand attention or pastimes that serve as petty distractions.  Adult friendships that were not already formed in earlier years can become more and more difficult to find, and it is not as if there is an abundance of people who deserve to be pursued as the closest of friends.

In contemporary America, work is part of the reason why adult friendships can be difficult to initiate or maintain, leeching too much time away from things of vastly greater substance.  Commuting time, the uncertainty of on-call waiting periods, and work during hours that could be trimmed out of a schedule thanks to automation are all obstacles to spending more time directly enjoying relationships based on deep matters like rationality and psychological intimacy.  Aside from the time spend working, there is also the lack of energy after professional labor that could motivate a person to spend time alone.

An irony here is that work is also one of the best places to meet people in that it at least puts people in proximity with others (for many jobs), since plenty of people spend so much regular time in their workplace and away from their families, established friends, or other things.  Other contexts where there could be routine interaction with the same group of people, though they will of course likely not be rationalists, are church or academic settings like college or graduate school.  The workplace is a terribly unlikely way to meet people who are anything more than the shallow, emotionalistic, assumption-driven irrationalists one is more likely than not to find anywhere else.

It is a rare thing to find a friend or dating partner (which is a friend which one romantically acts towards) through any of these avenues who is more than this kind of wasted potential.  In the right personal and societal context, adulthood would make it even easier to find people who are willing and eager to prioritize philosophical truths, truths about friendship among them, and relationships oriented around celebrating these truths.  As it is, adulthood might bring more burdens and obstacles to forming new friendships of depth, and other adults are seldom better than young children at fleeing from assumptions and emotionalism.

Better access (in many cases) to digital technology, vehicles, and an income of course has the potential to make friendships all the more easy to seek out or bask in if one's adult life has the right circumstances, and yet both from within and without, finding worthy new friends or even seeing treasured longtime friends can be almost more difficult as one grows older than it is when one's schedule and transportation might be dictated by parents.  It does not have to be this way; if more individuals in their respective society were to forsake irrationalism and pursue relationships rooted in deep, open mutuality in addition to rationalism, friendships could blossom more frequently and deserve more effort to cultivate them.

The Burden Of Consciousness

To exist as a consciousness is to have the capacity to suffer, and the many great metaphysical and epistemological limitations of human life allow for very particular forms of suffering.  Limitations of memory, the senses, and the ability to know what other minds are thinking, if they exist at all, allow for a great deal of suffering through manipulation, forgetfulness, or deception.  Even aside from navigating the events of life with these limits, the existential agony they can lead to might be even greater: what cannot be known about moral obligations, the sensory environment, other minds, or oneself can be terrifying to the right person.

It is possible to exist and not suffer even if some people would idiotically scoff at the idea due to their own experiences.  Just because one person has a difficult life does not mean life cannot have its respites or its pleasures, and even if every person was in extreme, unrelenting psychological and physical pain, it would of course still be logically possible for the suffering to disappear or for it to have never happened.  There is nothing logically necessary about the trials that can devastate us or prompt, for irrationalists, a journey towards reason, self-awareness, God, and moralism.

Still, by simply having a mind that is not within a dreamless sleep, there is always the possibility that someone who is not experiencing pain will suddenly have to confront it.  No matter where it originates or whether it afflicts the mind or the body, the possibility of enduring pain is there, and the only way to escape the capacity for suffering is to have never existed as a consciousness at all or to fully cease to exist (and even a dreamless sleep could be interrupted by intrusive nightmares or by waking to trials).  There is no such thing as another logically possible escape.  Even the best happenstance or intentional reliefs from pain in life are not fully within a person's control.

To trivialize or to deny either suffering or the possibility of it is irrational; the same is true of thinking that it gives a person an excuse to fall or remain in emotionalism, hedonism, or any other example of irrationalism on the level of belief or behavior.  The burden of consciousness has been tasted or could be tasted by us all, and yet no desire for joy changes the nature of reason or anything else about reality.  How we will live while suffering and why, in the sense of what worldview will be adhered to and on what basis, are what humans can dictate.  Suffering is one of the things that an irrational mind would likely think excuses them to disregard whichever of these truths it finds inconvenient.

When Conservatives Reward Laziness

It seems to be a common complaint that managers or employers in general get rewarded for doing very little, perhaps almost nothing at all, while workers underneath them on the company hierarchy do not get recognition or raises for doing far more intensive or relentless physical or mental activities.  There are indeed many industries or many roles where these things could be true.  Political and theological conservatives might nonetheless deny the very logical possibility of something like this ever being true in any scenario, or just assume that there must be something about the employer that makes it morally permissible for them to be rewarded, monetarily or with praise and respect, for relative inactivity or even outright laziness, while their employees deserve minimum wage, little to no work-life balance, and being overlooked for raises despite them perhaps doing far more in their jobs.

It is not true that if someone is a manager they must be inattentive, lazy, and uncaring about their employees as liberals are more likely to believe--though even conservatives talk frequently about how much they despise their career situation, even as they might go out of their way to fallaciously defend the current structure of American business as a whole.  Being abusive or inactive does not logically follow from being a manager.  It is still true that conservatives frequently look down on people performing strenuous physical or mental labor for "entry level jobs" for not working "enough" or "well enough" to deserve persistently livable pay, but they are at the same time often eager to praise managers or employees simply for having their titles, even if they literally just sit around doing very little on most of their working days.

Having an easy job or a job where one monitors others with minimal effort is not the issue.  The exploitation of lower workers and the hypocrisy of praising some people for doing less and condemning those who do more for supposedly not doing "enough" to deserve recognition are the issue.  In a job where a manager mostly has to periodically check worker progress as they sit down, watching feeds or perhaps occasionally submitting reports, does involve far less effort than even a restaurant waiter/waitress or many other jobs.  They too can be a victim of underpayment by their own managers if they are not the very top of the hierarchy, but it is untrue that just having a certain title means someone automatically would deserve to be paid more than those who in one way or another do more.

However, conservatives are infatuated with power as a whole, and this is probably why so many of them have incoherent stances on it when it comes to business and other things.  Like liberals, they fear or despise power when someone else not like them holds it, but they absolutely love to wield it even as they might simultaneously believe that power is evil or corrupting, which is itself false because power cannot be evil, only how someone expresses it or their motivations in doing so.  Conservatives perhaps hope to hold managerial or executive power themselves, which in turn keeps them locked into the assumption that managers and general employers or corporate leaders deserve special respect by default.  In such cases, they simply want to do the very thing they condemn: get rewarded for laziness or a lesser level of activity in the workplace.

Even bringing this up to them is likely to only be met with more assumptions or emotionalism oriented around traditions.  The conservative obsession with keeping the social constructs of business and money exactly as they are or were in some imagined golden era of the past (after all, conservatism is indeed about conserving traditions rather than knowing necessary logical truths about metaphysics and epistemology) leads them to favor the status quo, which sometimes does involve rewarding laziness on the part of management and trivializing the effort of lower level workers.  They misunderstand any flaw in the status quo or objections to it, right or wrong, to be a rejection of business, to the rewarding of effort, and (if they are Christians) to the genuinely Biblical idea that every able-bodied person does need to work in some way in order to survive put forth in 2 Thessalonians 3:10.  This is all intentional misrepresentation or misrepresentation due to the utter stupidity of not even wanting to understanding what really logically follows from something in the first place.

A Personal Turn Towards Mercy

Almost no one would care about mercy as strongly as evangelicals do, or for the same reasons (emotionalism), if they did not hope to receive mercy for every applicable thing they or someone they personally love has done.  In other words, they care about mercy or care about it in the way that they do for the sake of real or hypothetical benefit for themselves, or at the expense of caring about rationality and justice.  I have long appreciated my tendency to not show mercy, especially to the glaringly unrepentant among the church or outside of it.  Non-rationalists were my personal enemies for their betrayal of reality, and I could not have been in the wrong for simply being unmerciful as opposed to being unjust.  Unexpectedly, very unexpectedly, the permissible hatred I harbored for them changed.

Yes, if anyone is not willing to live, kill, and die for the truth, they do not love it above all else as they should (and a love of truth without assumptions attached is the love of reason, since truth is grounded, dictated, and revealed by reason).  If truth does not have moral value, then nothing does, and thus they are in error for believing that anything does or would have moral value apart from this, including kindness, tolerance (which is not kindness), or affection.  Only an irrational person indeed would choose anything less than to live, kill, and die for the truth--the truths of reason and whatever moral obligations exist, more specifically, not happenstance scientific laws or the truth that something is traditional or subjectively preferred--and it is logically impossible for them to be the equal of a rationalist even if human rights exist.

All the same, while my worldview has remained identical to what it was before, I have experienced a major change in my attitude towards people as a whole.  With rationalists and friends, no error or sin was formerly beyond my desire to forgive and show mercy towards, but with non-rationalists, I was knowingly, intentionally, increasingly brutal with them in my words and attitudes over the years.  The belittling things I said about them here or elsewhere as those years passed, although never once did I make assumptions, believe in an error, or slander anyone, reflected my intensifying hatred of a rational, just kind.  I would have been perfectly content and happy to have unrepentantly lesser people shocked or frightened by me as long as I had my small number of close Christian rationalist friends.

However, several factors brought about an active, eager turn towards mercy in me not just for an elite handful of fellow Christian rationalists, my truest brothers and sisters, but for all people: the ideological improvement of certain people in my life, a sudden and intense focus on the afterlife and how I do not want anyone to perish (literally, to cease to exist in hell as the Bible really teaches), and a close relationship with a concerned person that exemplified how I might be perceived by even allies.  Of course it is by necessity true that mercy does not trigger redemption in others and it would be erroneous to care about it for utilitarian reasons, not that people need assistance to discover many logical truths as it is, but I now have the desire to not be as harsh with people.

It is vital that to be merciful does not mean one is emotionalistic or that one shuns justice.  To forsake justice is irrational and sinful, but not to forsake mercy.  Still, I am an overtly, actively merciful person at this point.  I now enjoy it and seek out ways to express this.  It will take many months before the blog posts I have already written and scheduled out will reflect this in their less confrontational, belittling writing style, for I have many posts completed ahead of time (through next year).  Gradually, regular readers can expect for there to be far less utter brutality in my words to match my turn towards mercy, a turn that is not obligatory and yet one I crave now.  I wanted to affirm these things before the currently scheduled posts arrive with their remnants of my past intensity.

The Ability To Kill

In a world full of irrationalists, a rationalist needs to be not only as they can be to put into words the necessary truths that refute their ideas, but to be ready to physically defend themselves from non-rationalists who think their whims entitle them to treat others however they want.  It is vital to everyone's safety to be physically able, when applicable, and psychologically prepared to kill whatever non-rationalist will succumb enough to the irrationality of emotionalism and egoism that they carry out the worst interpersonal offenses.  At the same time, it is ideal that rationalists would never once have to kill for self-defense or justice, yet the stupidity of those who refuse or ignore rationalism makes this necessary.  To be able to kill does not mean that one is eager to kill or that someone lacks the self-control to keep from doing what those worthy of death would practice, though plenty of people not need to control themselves because this is not a temptation for them.

Outright ending the lives of every single non-rationalist is of course the supreme utilitarian manner of improving the world, though almost no utilitarians, if any, seem to realize this.  It is nonetheless not rational to carry this greatest of genocides out (greatest both in terms of its scope and its morally charged removal of genuinely inferior people), for not deserving to exist is not always the same as deserving to be actively, directly killed by fellow humans, and neither the approval of conscience nor desire proves that such a killing would be morally permissible.  All the same, all rationalists, as much as they are physically able, have reason to be prepared to kill those whose stupidity makes them enemies of truth and willing to treat others only as their emotions or cultures would lead them to.

The most egregious of cruelties are only a whim away from an emotionalist's support.  If only they have the means to do as they wish, they will almost certainly act on their assumptions and hypocrisies.  Even if a rationalist wanted to murder or assault or do some other unjust thing to such a person, he or she, if they are consistent with their valid worldview, would refrain from acting on subjective impulses like those of mere conscience.  They know or are capable of knowing that their desires do not make something morally good or bad, and they can restrain themselves accordingly, even if it is difficult.  Non-rationalists do not have this knowledge or they do not care about this or any truth.  They are ruled by arbitrary beliefs and emotions, which they allow to lead them to the assumptions and contradictions they confuse for knowledge and truth respectively.  They neglect reason even as they inevitably rely on it.

Whatever their form of delusion, there is no non-rationalist that is actually rational, and thus there is no non-rationalist that is able to genuinely be on the right side of logic or morality.  Even if they were to know of an important truth, they would only acknowledge or submit to it when it appeases their feelings or preferences, or when it benefits them.  They are the reason why things like kidnapping, rape, and even greater kinds of cruelty are perpetrated, either because they think that whatever they want to do is permissible or because they do not care.  They disregard everything from the necessary truths of logic to the just treatment of anyone they are not subjectively attached to.

As long as they feel or want something to be true or just, they will believe it or carry it out.  Rationalists most importantly have the superiority of intentional alignment with reason, but they also need to be, whenever possible, prepared and able to end the lives of any non-rationalist who crosses the threshold to a capital sin.  It is not irrational to have no desire to kill or to lament the need for non-rationalists to ultimately perish.  Not everyone is able to easily take a life even in self-defense.  This is not what reason and justice demand of them.  What is necessary is that they do not oppose killing on emotionalistic or otherwise fallacious grounds and that they affirm the need for some rationalists to have the ability to kill, whether or not they have the desire. 

Striving For Eternal Life

The longing to "live on" past death has inspired everything from oral traditions of telling historical stories to trying to upload human consciousness into the new body of computer hardware (a likely impossible thing)--or the hope of creating AI programs that talk or act as if they are a specific living/once-living person.  Having others remember you through stories and digital personalities, even if the latter was truly conscious, is still not the same as obtaining eternal life.  Having others remember you or think of you generations after your death is not eternal life, and neither is dying and then having a separate AI imitate your personality.  You are still dead.  All the same, there are distinct trends across historical time periods where many people hope to somehow, by one means or another, achieve some kind of eternal life that will transcend the death of the body.

The Bible does not teach what many assume about this.  Yes, it does acknowledge the deep desire to exist forever that some experience (Ecclesiastes 3:11), and it brings this up in the most directly existential book of the entire Bible, all while being very transparent from Genesis onward that death of the human body and soul is the natural consequence of breaking alignment with the source of all contingent beings (the very existence of creation is metaphysically tied to God's existence so that if he wished otherwise or ceased to exist, all of humanity and nature would vanish as Acts 17:28 somewhat addresses).  To live forever, one must have an unbroken or restored relationship with God, and it is obvious that the Bible presents general humanity as being too selfish and stupid to care about more than their own convenience or whims.

There are many ways that the Bible makes it as clear as language can that eternal existence is not something that everyone has or will have.  Not only does it say in many verses that cosmic death awaits the unsaved (such as in Matthew 10:28 and Ezekiel 18:4), but it also repeatedly affirms that humans do not live forever by default.  It is not as if the Biblical stance on the issue is that all humans exist forever and whether they will reside in heaven or hell is the crucial part.  No, the Bible, even the New Testament that suddenly talks more directly about the afterlife than the Old Testament, affirms that to live forever is the grand reward for the saved and to perish is the deserved fate of the wicked (with the seeming exception of demons like Satan in Revelation 20:10 and perhaps the subcategory of humans mentioned in Revelation 14:9-11).  Jesus and Paul are rather open about death and eternal life being the contrasted destinies of general humanity.  For instance, Romans 2:7-8, even in isolation from other verses, establishes key details about the Christian afterlife and what is truly meant by the phrase eternal life:

"To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor, and immortality, he will give eternal life.  But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger."

Romans 2:8 does not clarify what exactly this wrath of God will result in as passages like 2 Peter 2:6 and Ezekiel 18:4 do, but Romans 2:7 has already clarified that eternal life is not the birthright of fallen beings.  It must be received.  That which a person already possesses by virtue of being a person is not something they can gain because they already have it.  Of course, this is just in part a restatement of what Jesus already says in verses like John 3:16, namely that eternal life is the merciful reward for commitment to Christ.  After human sin in Eden, there is no such thing as a person who automatically has the eternal existence that so many Christians have claimed everyone has whether they wind up in heaven or hell.  Eternal life is something gained, and it is indeed gained by doing something (committing to Christ), just not by deeds like serving others or carrying out just actions (Ephesians 2:8-9 would contradict other verses if it meant literally no mental/physical action whatsoever, including choosing commitment to Jesus, secured salvation).

As Paul puts it, eternal life is something that some people strive for and others forfeit by their worldviews and deeds.  As Jesus puts it, eternal life is something derived from a specific king of standing towards him (John 4:13-14), not by whether one is human.  Otherwise, eternal life would not be a divine gift for the righteous or the saved, but something all people possess with or without an amended relationship with God.  Immortality is not the norm if most people are on a pathway to destruction (Matthew 7:13-14).  On the contrary, immortality is the privilege of the saved.  This is not even particularly difficult to discover in the text of the Bible.  It actually takes ignoring the many relevant passages scattered across the Bible or making assumptions about the concepts and wording to lead someone to the evangelical theology of soteriology, hell, and eternal life.  References to eternal life for the saved and to permanent death for the unsaved are almost never hard to find in the Bible wherever the afterlife is the focus.

The Possibility Of Plant Consciousness

Can something be alive but not conscious, having no thoughts or perception of any kind even as its physical substance reorients itself around various external stimuli?  It takes only a moment to realize this is indeed logically possible, as on a metaphysical and epistemological level, matter and consciousness are distinct.  This is why it is possible for even the fellow humans a person spends a great deal of time with are not proven to be conscious just because one perceives them move, speak, and appear to think--outward observation can never demonstrate what a being is specifically thinking or if it is actually thinking or experiencing anything whatsoever.  The same is true of animals, even more removed from a being like myself than other humans: that they appear conscious only entails by necessity exactly just that, that they appear to be conscious.  Even more removed from humans on an outward level are the many kinds of flora that grow on this planet.  Plants in their various forms one can observe in everyday life do not walk around, howl, stalk prey, or in any way appear to be conscious in the ways that even insects do.

Many plants, contrary to dogs or sharks or spiders, are rather inactive on the level of external observation, though some of them can move in correspondence with things like points of light--such as when they grow towards light (positive phototropism).  Carnivorous plants like the venus flytrap or the pitcher plant go so far as to catch and digest creatures like flies or frogs, all while remaining stationary as they use colors or smells to attract prey.  Of course, to grow at all, plants must be capable of movement, though not all plant movement is as distinct or dramatic as a flytrap closing its jaws.  It could be so gradual or subtle that it goes unnoticed.  Plants are nonetheless as alive in one sense as humans and non-human animals, just in less prominent ways.  It is this lack of obviousness in the external movements of many plants, except when something like wind or human touch is responsible for moving them, that makes it easier to focus on humans or animals when contemplating the metaphysics and epistemology of other minds.

Now, I do not know if other minds exist and I unfortunately cannot know.  This has ramifications that go far beyond not knowing the full nature of plants and animals, or even not being able to experience the perfect human psychological intimacy that could result from two telepathic persons gazing into each other's minds.  One of the most major ramifications has to do with the nature of God, the uncaused cause.  It is logically verifiable that there is an uncaused cause and it is logically necessary that my own mind exists as long as I perceive anything at all.  Both of these things can be known with absolute logical certainty, although only my own consciousness out of the two is self-evident in that I must rely on my mind's existence if I wished to deny it.  Still, I cannot prove that I am not the uncaused cause because there is no way for me, a non-telepathic being, to know if other minds exist (or if I am a telepathic being, there must simply be no other minds!).  There is thus no way for me to know if my own consciousness is the uncaused cause of every initial created thing and I somehow created a body of flesh and an extended world of matter to live in, or if the uncaused cause that must exist in light of contingent things like time and the universe is a separate entity--but all evidence points to God being a separate being even if the alternative is logically possible.

Similar to this, knowing that it is possible for plants to be conscious does not actually prove whether plants truly perceive or merely grow as inanimate life (and there is also the issue of perceived external stimuli like plants not necessarily existing except as perceptions of one's mind anyway).  However, plants not only might be genuinely conscious no matter how things seem to onlookers, but it is possible for a plant to have a consciousness just as devoted to understanding the necessary truths of reason as rationalistic humans.  There is no way to tell.  All that sensory perceptions can reveal about plants is strictly on the level of mere perceptions about how their bodies look and behave, which might be illusions.  Deep familiarity with a plant would not establish if it, like myself, is a consciousness in a body rather than just a mindless physical object that happens to grow.  The same is true of any animal or other person one might encounter in one's life.  Unless the epistemological limitation of not seeing if other minds are there was removed, only possibilities, what does or does not logically follow from them, and the fallible evidences of sensory perceptions of their bodies can be known.

The possibility of plant consciousness is knowable.  Whether plants are or are not conscious is unknowable because it does not logically follow from anything self-evident or that stems from logical axioms or one's own existence that plants must by necessity be conscious.  While examples are unecessary to realize and fully understand this, there are many examples that can clarify or typify this.  A wind-up toy is not necessarily conscious just because it somewhat behaves as if it is.  A computer program is not necessarily conscious just because it features a voice that resembles human speech.  A highly lifelike android would not necessarily be conscious just because it imitates many outward human behaviors.  If plants of all things are ultimately able to think, feel, or perceive, regardless of the extent, it would be an extraordinary thing.  It simply is unverifiable and unfalsifiable due to human limitations.  Not even another person that seems to share one's capacity for emotions, desires, sensory perceptions, and the grasping of reason can be known to have their own mind.  With plants, there is an even lesser form of sensory evidence that this is the case.