Food Sacrificed To Idols

If there was widespread, open worship of the Greco-Roman pseudo-deities in modern America, evangelical Christians, if they were consistent with the rest of their legalism, would think that eating food offered (or "sacrificed") to idols or the pantheons is evil.  Paul addresses this phenomenon in his own era as he writes in 1 Corinthians 8:4-8.  He does not have to mention Deuteronomy 4:2 to be consistent with Yahweh's command to not add to his instructions.  There is no condemnation of eating such a thing, even if the pagan philosophies and practices associated with the sacrifice of food to idols are invalid. 

What might seem like an egregious yielding to paganism is something that Paul, as any Christian theonomist who understands Mosaic Law would realize about this matter, recognizes as permissible: eating meat sacrificed to idols is not problematic if one is not ideologically allegiant to paganism.  Meat is just meat, and offering food to nonexistent or lesser spiritual entities (lesser than Yahweh) does not mean a person is worshipping or entering an agreement with them.  To participate in the consumption of such meat is not to participate in any sort of psychological or outward act of devotion to any pagan being.

Paul affirms that idols have no power because they are mere objects (1 Corinthians 8:4).  He goes so far as to admit that even if there are or were such pagan entities, Yahweh would still be greater and more philosophically central, ultimately because he is the uncaused cause and the one whose nature grounds moral obligation altogether (8:5-6).  Yahweh and Christ are the beings Paul advocates for submission to because they would have authority beyond that of the pagan pantheons, which contain many so-called gods or goddesses who are created beings even according to their own worldviews and stories.  Without elaborating extensively, Paul touches upon this by mentioning how God and Jesus (which he correctly distinguishes as separate metaphysical beings) created the world and by extension its people and animals (8:6).

Of all the things supposedly repealed or nullified by Jesus in Mosaic Law, the dietary laws are among the only things that either by logical necessity are not universal obligations according to Christianity or that are more ambiguous as to whether they are obligatory.  The dietary laws of the Torah, however, only prohibited eating certain kinds of animals not according to whether their flesh had been sacrificed to idols or pagan pantheons, but based on criteria such as whether a creature of the water does not have fins and scales (Leviticus 11:9-12).  Even under the full dietary restrictions of Mosaic Law, it is not the association of the food with pagan worship that is the basis for abstaining from it.

As strange as it might seem to some, as with how many other controversial things are Biblically nonsinful, eating meat that has literally been offered to pagan pseudo-deities or the physical images depicting them is not immoral according to Mosaic Law, the only moral revelation in the Bible that is direct, holistic, and precise all at once on a consistent basis.  Paul acknowledges that this is not ultimately problematic even if it offends or terrifies some Christians.  If a person wishes to eat or do any other such nonsinful thing, they are morally free to do so.  If a person wishes to not eat or not participate in any other such nonsinful thing, they are morally free to not partake.

Wishing To Have Never Been Born

In this life of limitations, the only real reason to continue onward besides subjective motivation or the potentially illusory evidences pointing towards Christianity and its morality is the unknowability of certain things.  Whether morality exists, what its obligations would consist of, whether there is an afterlife, and whether that afterlife has anything to do with whatever moral obligations exist are all of immense importance here.  Other than moral or other extreme existential issues like an afterlife, all of which reduce to logical truths, there is of course absolutely no reason not to kill oneself.  Even without trials, the mere moral meaninglessness of reality, necessary truths included, would entail that there is no objective basis for pursuing life.

As for suffering, there is always either pain or at least the capacity for pain present in human existence in its current form.  No, this kind of desperation and agony was not present in the Biblical Eden until sin, and they are promised to be removed from New Jerusalem (Revelation 21:1-5).  The likelihood of Christianity being true does not always make life easier to endure in the present except by providing a philosophically consistent and evidentially probable support to keep living.  Trials still come.  This is both logically possible, for the very existence of a conscious mind always brings the possibility that from one cause or another it would eventually experience pain, and it is Biblically emphasized.

Jesus does say that there will be trouble in this world (John 16:33).  Indeed, as asinine as the objection to theism or Christianity is on a logical and moral level since it solely is about emotional dislike, the so-called problem of pain is one of the most distressing things in all of philosophy for many Christians and non-Christians alike.  As I have pointed out before, this even spans rationalists and non-rationalists: no one needs to be particularly intelligent or interested in the nature of reality to feel the pain that can be a part of reality.  If there truly is no pre-conception consciousness for humans, which is entirely unverifiable, the only way to escape both pain and the possibility of it is to cease to exist, including by having never come into being.

Either way, the only way to inherently avoid all pain is to never have been in conscious existence of any kind.  When wishing they had never been born, this is ultimately what people are grappling with even if they make assumptions about the matter.  They experience disappointment, loss, sadness, or pain, and they wish in those moments that they never had a mind which would face these burdens.  What they long for is something like the Sheol of the Bible even if they do not realize what the Bible truly teaches, its logical possibility, or the evidence for it.  They hope for either total nonexistence of the mind or for a dreamless, perceptionless state where there is not even comprehension of reason or the self.  This is what Job desired for during his own great trials (Job 3:11-19).

Since there is not even a guarantee that death will bring release, as there are many logically possible afterlives, some of them far worse than anything in this life, only something like Sheol (Ecclesiastes 9:5-10), the annihilation of the second death (Matthew 10:28, 2 Peter 2:6), or New Jerusalem (again, Revelation 21:1-5) would actually end the suffering in their own ways.  One is temporary nonexistence or soul sleep, one is a permanent death of the soul with no resurrection that follows, and the other is eternal bliss.  In truth, anyone who wants an end to their suffering could only have it through one of these three types of fates.

This is not to say that the Biblical afterlives are true by necessity, only that soul sleep, annihilation, or eternal bliss are the only ways for a being already in existence to find a true escape from despair or mental illness or terror or pain.  The only other way to ensure this would be to have never been not just born, but conceived at all.  Of course, if that has already happened, it has already happened, and no human will can undo past events.  All of us who are born can choose rationality or irrationality, and we can to a limited extent shape our life circumstances in accordance with reason, morality, and personal preferences, but suffering, moral obligations, and the metaphysics of potential afterlives are inseparably tied to the issue of why we should continue to live at all.

The Unifying Potential Of Disaster

When two people bond by openness about their trauma, especially if it is something they both relate to, a unique kind of connection can be forged.  If they were friends or acquaintances beforehand, they could become closer.  If this is their first interaction, they might strike an overtly positive relationship from the start.  Psychological vulnerability is feared or withheld by many because of the capacity to be misunderstood or mistreated.  However, when one party takes the initiative, even enemies might reconcile--or explosive circumstances could possibly influence them to perceive each other in a less hostile manner.  A common threat, concern, or enemy can work wonders.  Pain and fear, particularly among the emotionalistic or the pragmatic (for differing reasons), have the capacity to push people into a more neutral standing.

After two airliners hijacked by al-Qaeda terrorists were piloted into the World Trade Center and another into the Pentagon on 9/11, Americans of various racial, political, and broader philosophical factions psychologically united in their collective shock and anger.  Exact feelings or preferences about the following War on Terror might have differed from person to person depending on factors like their worldview, obviously, but there was a reported sense of genuine unity between people as Americans, with other differences rightly (such as race) or wrongly (ideology) being downplayed.  This level of solidarity, whether people contributed out of emotionalistic fury or patriotism or sincere desire to help a grieving country, did not last.  As intoxicating or penetrating as it is, a sense of belonging can fade.

COVID-19, for instance, did not engender the same level of unity due to the heightened political fractioning of America, which started becoming very sharp around the election campaign for Donald Trump.  Since that time, liberals and conservatives in the same country that rallied due to 9/11 have trended towards simply lashing out at the other side no matter what they are believing or objecting to.  Everything from vaccines to masks to working from home and more became an issue many people only held to a position on to spite or deviate from another group of people, rather than because of the objective truth about each individual matter.  No, not even a decade later than 9/11, an event as impactful as the 2020 pandemic brought a changed, divided America more to the spotlight.

Still, great trials or extreme tragedies can inspire a desire to come together with people who might otherwise be cast aside, ignored, or regarded as enemies.  For a fictional example (though neither historical nor fictional examples are needed to know this), there are the utilitarian actions of Ozymandias in DC's Watchmen.  In the original graphic novel and the 2019 HBO show, Ozymandias dropped a giant squid-like animal on a city so that the 1980s public would fall into fear of extraterrestrial invasion and cease the tension that could lead to nuclear war.  Instead of other humans and their governments, the attention was fastened to a seeming alien menace.  In the 2009 Zack Snyder film, Ozymandias instead orchestrates a nuclear explosion that leads to the world averting war by opposing Dr. Manhattan, a hyper-powerful being who can manipulate matter and was blamed for the event.  Manhattan leaves Earth in order to preserve the delicate, deception-based peace, and the volatility of the Cold War calms.  The plot succeeded.

The historical example of 9/11 and the fictional one in Watchmen address how disaster can inspire deep collaboration across vast groups of people or end disharmony between bitter enemies.  Just as two individuals who might not have a lot in common beyond things like their basic humanity might, out of empathy, fear, or sadness, act as temporary allies at the least, so too can nations turn to unity.  The unity might be wholly or partly rooted in erroneous things.  Trials and trauma can still be potent motivators for getting along with unexpected parties.  One person suffering sees themself in another who suffers or cares more about a shared threat than real or imagined grievances against them.

Friendships After Marriage

A spouse who is selected for more than their sex appeal, economic standing, or some other such trait is chosen for intellectual reasons or on the basis of affection.  There is no such thing as a union of non-rationalists worth celebrating, but there is such a thing as even non-rationalists getting married because their partner is a friend they want to bond with until death.  The superior and only worthy kind of marital relationship is one where two rationalists come together in both perfect alignment with the truth and in deep intimacy with each other, and friendship between them is inevitably a major component of this.

In the midst of this wonderful kind of relationship, non-romantic or external friendships are not to be tossed aside.  The relational intimacy found in marriage can be found in separate friendships, albeit without the same kind of romantic or sexual aspects in many cases, and friendship is more fundamental than romance.  Since it can and ideally is in a marriage as well, this and other truths mean marriage and other friendships are not in some war with each other except in the inaccurate delusions of fools.

When one is married, one does and should not (if the Christian worldview is true as it seems) forsake meeting with, texting, emailing, calling, or thinking of outside friends.  When one is married, friendships need and should not be enjoyed at the expense of marriage to a worthy partner (divorce is allowed Biblically, and for more than just adultery [1], but it is not something to rush to casually any more than marriage itself is).  What makes marriage so morally significant, aside from the romantic or sexual parts, is the same as what makes friendship significant: it is at best the unity and affection between philosophical equals or people who care for each other as individual humans, not for their own benefit.

Friendships outside of one's marriage could involve one's spouse as well, or they might not.  It is not a requirement either way, no matter their gender, though one's friends and spouse could also become friends themselves.  Whichever if these possibilities is realized, friendships and marriages in no way prosper because of the destruction of the other.  All of them can flourish and all of them can be understood and accept for what they are, without assumptions and without hesitation to live as if neither is the exclusive form of social interaction or the only way of expressing genuine love.

Marriage can be celebrated with one's friends and friendship in one's marriage.  Friends and spouses can bond all together or independently.  With same gender and opposite gender friendships, there is nothing about maintaining deep, lasting, friendships  with frequent and thorough communication that disrespects a marriage, and vice versa.  Only someone undeserving of both relationships (if morality exists) would neglect or sacrifice either a non-problematic friendship or a non-problematic marriage for the other.  The world is full of non-rationalists, and for willing rationalists, relationships of both kinds can be absolutely, maximally life-giving.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-liberating-nature-of-divorce-in.html

Yahweh's And Allah's Love

The deity of the Quran is neither totally different from the Biblical "Father," or Yahweh, nor totally similar.  What follows is only to put forth several similarities and contrast several differences between Christianity and Islam and not to treat the differences as some inherently obvious moral inferiority of Allah, who is distinctly not loving towards all people regardless of their deeds unlike Yahweh.  Though there is evidence that the Biblical religion is probably true and proof that Islam contradicts its own tenets elsewhere, each of these attributes of God is logically possible on their own, and to be or become a Christian because a degree of unconditional love is personally appealing, as it admittedly is for many Christians, is absolutely idiotic.  Love is only good if it corresponds to the divine nature, and so one cannot know love is good apart from that.  Otherwise, no matter how existentially satisfying or personally alluring it is, there is no basis for thinking love is good rather than sometimes appealing or useful.  Christians tend to start with this assumed premise.

Now, Allah's mercy is frequently referenced in the Quran, such as in Surah 2:159-160, 191-192, 3:89, and 4:175.  This is not at all an exhaustive list of relevant verses.  Mercy, being a withholding of justice when someone has already erred, does not require that one is loving prior to a person's repentance unless love is already morally owed to everyone, which is simply not true on the Islamic worldview.  According to Surah 4:107, "Do not argue for those who betray their own souls: God does not love anyone given to treachery and sin."  The verse before this says God is "most forgiving and merciful," as does verse 110 shortly after.  Mercy is not the same as love, so there is no actual contradiction in the doctrines proposed here.  However, Allah does not love everyone as long as there are people who are unrepentant by the standards of the Quran.  Surah 3:32 also says, just after mentioning divine forgiveness and mercy in 3:31, that God does not love those who ignore his commands.  Yet again, in Surah 3:140, it is clearly stated that "God does not love evildoers."  The Quran does not teach an all-loving God.

There is a difference between hating someone and not loving them.  Someone could both hate and not love another person or could hate and love them together, as well as love them without the additional presence of hatred.  Allah's love is very explicitly conditional in the Quran, whereas the love of Yahweh (Deuteronomy 10:17-18, John 3:16, Romans 5:8), though sometimes accompanied by hatred that is denied by many assumption-making Christians (as mentioned in verses like Leviticus 20:23, Psalm 5:5-6, 11:5, Proverbs 11:20), is constant, universally directed, and such that he was willing to do more than just accept repentant sinners.  He is willing to have his Son die for them (again, Romans 5:8), something Jesus was resolved to submit to because it was the Father's will (Luke 22:42).  The differing (but sometimes rather overlapping) doctrines on the nature of Jesus aside, Yahweh and Allah, though presented as the same being at least up to a point in the Quran, have exclusive qualities.

The Quran, as anyone who reads both it and the Bible without making assumptions can see, is not a book wholly contrary to Christian philosophy as many have heard.  The differences there are still no minor thing, spanning everything from criminal justice to the nature of hell to the ontology of Christ to the love of God.  Love is not the only part of Christian ethics in that it is vague and incomplete on its own, and just as crucially, the love demanded by the Bible is not shallow, subjective, emotionalistic affection, but a commitment to treating people as they deserve as image bearers of God no matter one's circumstances.  According to many Christians, Biblical love is in conflict with the very deeds demanded in the Torah that the Pentateuch and gospels alike say are loving (Leviticus 19:18, Deuteronomy 6:5, Matthew 22:37-40), so they are obviously believing an impossible contradiction.  It is just that goodness is either way grounded in God, and since the Quran repeatedly says Allah does not love people unconditionally, love is not a universal requirement in Islam.  It is owed to the righteous because God loves them and to show it otherwise is an optional mercy.

The Null And Near-Death Experiences

"This horror was the afterlife, and it was waiting not just for the evil ones among us but for all."

--Jamie Morton, Revival

There have been many afterlives in the universe/multiverse of Stephen King's stories, ranging from those of the ghosts in the Overlook Hotel of The Shining to the hub in Afterlife from which people can choose to relive their exact lives or descend into nonexistence.  In other stories of his, as with many general stories across mediums, the afterlife is unaddressed altogether.  Characters die without any direct attention going to whether they have consciousness after death in any form.  King's Revival, if it was the only book in the interconnected stories to touch upon an afterlife, has its main character Jamie Morton receive what appears to be a premature sighting of the Null, a dimension where hundreds upon hundreds of dead humans are said to be marched across a decaying city, naked and terrified, by ant-like creatures that sometimes crawl and sometimes stand upright.  The black sky has holes through which great howls and lights come, manifestations of or companions to a great universal power.  Moreover, enormous, malevolent beings the eldritch entity Mother calls the Great Ones hover above this mirage of a sky, perhaps waiting to consume the humans they seem to observe, or perhaps intent on enslaving them without the hope for a second death.

Seized by fear, Jamie assumes that this is the afterlife for everyone, not just the wicked (as if it could be justice for even the collective wicked of humanity to be tormented eternally as Mother is implied to do to all people for non-moral reasons).  Mother insists that there is no death, no light, and no rest here in the Null, though she was either lying about at least the lights since Jamie sees powerful lights and "living" colors that transcend earthly luminosity or meant light in a metaphorical sense.  She might have lied with her words and sensory projections about the very existence of the Null or other details.  In fact, she has to have only made it seem as if everyone's fate is the Null, although Jamie is irrational to have made any assumptions at all based on the number of people he sees, as the aforementioned afterlives from The Shining and Afterlife and others I have not listed do not involve hellish slavery, physical torment, or a supernaturally sustained eternal life in agony.  Jamie does not have access to this fortunate evidence, doomed as he might be to this afterlife anyway for having previously come into contact with the "secret electricity" tied to a grand energy that is itself connected to the Null, according to his traumatic, supposed look behind the veil.

He has therapy sessions in which he tries to cope with the severity of his vision and the seeming evidence that Mother's domain really is awaiting him once he dies.  Because the ghosts of The Shining or Doctor Sleep have not appeared to him, and he would be unable to prove if they are real if he was to see them, he does not even have any experiences with the afterlives that are more directly presented in other stories in the same universe, making contrary assumptions based on incomplete, perception-based evidence.  Jamie is not the only one that makes assumptions about the afterlife; the therapist mentions how many people, including the apostle John in Revelation, have claimed to see an afterlife that does not feature a ruined city or ant monsters or any of the other sights of the Null, and when Jamie pushes back, his therapist is content to assume that all near-death experiences are false if he also dismisses the genuine possibility of what Jamie describes being true (and this or something like it could be true or could have been true in reality, as it does not contradict the necessary truths of logical axioms).  Jamie says that a child who allegedly saw inside heaven saw only one miscarried sister he had not heard of before his experience, but that there were numerous murder-suicides linked with the dangers of the secret electricity on Earth.

Both of these characters in actuality made assumptions based upon potentially illusory perceptions or hearsay.  It is possible for all near-death experiences to be accurate if everyone has a vastly different afterlife in different realms and different mental states, though the correspondence of them to anything other than the hallucinations of a dying person (in cases where someone is not yet actually dead) is epistemologically uncertain, as is whether a multitude of sensory perceptions in this life match with anything beyond mere subjective experiences within the mind.  However, it does not follow from one near-death experience being illusory that others are, especially given how diverse some of them can be despite the reported mass similarities in accounts from people living on our Earth outside of Stephen King's literary mythos.  The therapist disputing the veracity of Jamie's glimpse of the Null--not his experience of the perceptions, but whether the perceptions are anything but hallucinations of a kind--are idiotic since he thinks that if the child who claimed to visit heaven was seeing an illusion, Jamie probably did too.

While the truth about a matter is the truth regardless of if humans can know it, and it is logically possible for an afterlife like the one presented as supposedly real in Revival to exist, the reasons why most people either accept or reject the possibility of at least certain near-death experiences being true are wholly irrational.  It does not logically follow from seeing a chair or a fellow person that they are actually there, the same being true of the details in a real or imagined afterlife where one is not omniscient--or at a minimum free from select epistemological limitations.  It also does not follow from there being evidence against the veracity of a particular kind of near-death experience that the afterlife envisioned is ultimately false.  The only afterlife with anything more than subjective perceptions in its probabilistic favor is eternal life in the Biblical paradise of New Jerusalem or a second death in the lake of fire, the latter of which brings true, permanent nonexistence (2 Peter 2:6).  Jamie's therapist does not realize or care about any of this.  Jamie himself has only assumed that everyone must go to the Null since he saw so many people inside.  This is demonstrably untrue in light of the other Stephen King stories that tell of far less oppressive afterlives, and the evidence of real life points to a very different duality of afterlives.  Near-death experiences are in either case not proof of a specific afterlife, although some of them have significant evidence in their favor (to be addressed in other posts), any more than seeing a smile on a person's face means they are happy.

The Preservation Of The Quran

Muhammad, founder of Islam, initially used oral recitation to companions in order to convey the alleged revelation from the angel Gabriel, the contents of which were eventually recorded in Arabic writing by others and meticulously copied.  The first caliph reportedly had multiple memorizers contribute after Muhammad's death so that the written Quran would mirror the original statements.  The preservation of the original Quran in Arabic--translations to other languages might have to make tradeoffs or exchange a word for a loose equivalent--is commonly emphasized in Islamic apologetics.  Since the events of the transmission entail a historical claim, and not in the logically necessary sense of there being an initial creation event for time and the material universe, of course one cannot truly prove and thus know with absolute certainty if this perfect preservation actually happened.  However, the veracity of this does not actually matter in the way some might imagine.

A book claiming erroneous or partially true metaphysical ideas could be perfectly preserved and still be false.  The mode or strictness of textual preservation is absolutely irrelevant to whether the entire philosophical system therein is correct.  I could make up a religious, a scientific, or a more foundational/abstract metaphysical system that is actually logically possible (as in, it could be or could have been true because it does not contradict logical axioms) tomorrow and have my friends or children, if I eventually have any, copy it perfectly and then have their own friends and family members do the same for many generations.  Total copy-to-copy accuracy in English could be attained with great care even if unlikely.  Nevertheless, unless the ideological system attested to was both logically possible and happened to be true out of all competing possibilities, the preserved text is not true, and even if it was, no one could know its worldview is true if it only contained non sequitur claims or presupposed notions.

Moreover, a book could be mistranslated or partly distorted over time and still convey truths, though perhaps only the original document(s) is fully true to reality in its meaning.  The ideas behind the words align with or deviate from reality no matter the wording used to communicate them, and words are arbitrary, shifting constructs anyway.  Accidental or perhaps even intentional alterations to the text might mean only that the text was not accurately transmitted from one time or group to another.  Logically, there is nothing necessarily true about this invalidating the whole of the text on a translational level when moving from language to language; small errors in some parts do not mean other parts were similarly distorted.  More importantly, none of this requires that the concepts the original words referred to are false.  Epistemology and metaphysics must as always be distinguished here.

The accuracy or inaccuracy of the Arabic Quran to the original documents might be of great significance to whether Islamic tradition/history is honest about itself.  It just does not mean one way or another than the Quran is truly accurate religious revelation from God.  Claiming something is true is not what makes it so, either in the sense of historical hearsay about copying or in the sense of the contents of a text saying this of themselves.  The purity of textual copying is a red herring to whether the text testifies to any real moral obligation when it says to cut off the hands of thieves (Surah 5:38) or to correct details about the afterlife like how people and stones are fuel for hellfire (Surah 2:24).  Is it true that Muhammad was visited by an angel?  Islam has inherent contradictions due to the Quran affirming parts of the Old Testament and yet conflicting with them, but the accuracy of one copy and another is not what determines if Islam is true or false.  Ultimately, it is very simply but wholly irrelevant.

Openness About Compensation

To hide how little some or all employees might be paid, a selfish employer might enforce a policy prohibiting open discussion about compensation between workers.  Not all employers are like this, but doing everything from directly discouraging openness about pay to firing people for bringing it up among themselves is a tactic one might hear of quite a bit.  For those who think there is some grand obligation to honor this, silence about their compensation is the norm, and it might not even dawn on them that they might not be paid as much as they deserve.  A seemingly common "justification" for this is that talking about the similarities or differences in pay between employees could stir up jealousy, though anger or shock is perhaps far more likely.  This policy only ensures one thing, after all.

There is no actual benefit to anyone except for employers who refuse to pay everyone the same for the same kind and amount of work or who do not pay people based on their merit as an individual worker.  It certainly does not benefit workers too naive or distracted to realize that they are being underpaid, and it might instill a false hope that effort, accomplishment, and sincerity alone will earn an employer's positive attention.  Yes, in some cases, being open about one's compensation might stir up some jealousy, but so what?  If someone is jealous over not being paid as much as someone else when they are avoidably incompetent, then they do not deserve to be paid more regardless of their feelings, and if workers are irate over not being paid equally when they are all competent and have the same roles, then anger is not an invalid reaction.

Even incompetent workers are workers, and they are people, and thus they deserve livable compensation as it is, but any merit-based pay differences beyond this are not some injustice.  It is thus not only not true that openness about pay is bound to trigger jealousy or that it follows that this would make such openness immoral, but there are moral reasons (at least on the Christian worldview) why suppressing openness about this matter is itself the injustice.  Structuring society in a way so that a significant portion of one's entire lifetime is spent trying to earn enough money to survive, possibly spend on conveniences or pleasures, and still hopefully have enough to save for retirement is no small thing, and the many people who have to orient their schedules and energy around work do not deserve to be in the dark about how well they are being paid for this.

People work for money.  In a very different sense than they usually seem to mean by the phrase, conservatives are right when they think that people in general do not want to work right now--almost no one would work or would want to professionally work if it was not for needing monetary resources to survive comfortably within modern society.  This is not selfishness on its own.  Unless a person is materialistic/consumeristic or acting in a predatory manner in order to gain more money for himself or herself, there is not anything about wanting money that makes someone greedy.  This is not true of employers who do not pay livable wages/salaries or who do not reward merit beyond this: if they have the resources to pay employees in accordance with both of these factors and do not, they are the ones who are irrational, selfish, arrogant, or apathetic (though some worker might be these things as well).

An employer like this will try to undeservedly profit off of others by not giving them what is called for by human rights (and conscience and cultural conditioning do not reveal what humans rights are) or by individual merit.  Pressuring or doing whatever he or she can to outright force employees to never share their compensation with other workers, once again, only benefits an employer/manager who gains from having access to earnings that might belong to those under them.  Openness about compensation is one way to fight this kind of exploitation.  It is not oppression of employers to practice this.  It does not even have to entail workers constantly talking about their pay!  What it does ensure is the heightened deterrence of underpayment and the liberation of workers at least from the misleading impression that they are all by necessity being paid equally for equal work and having their individual contributions rewarded.

Nudity In Eden

The creation and fall story in Genesis emphasizes that the first humans were naked and had no anxieties about this state (2:25).  After they disobey God, the man and woman realize they are naked (3:7).  They would have been able to perceive this about themselves before, of course, but their psychological attitude towards their nudity changed.  God makes garments of skin and clothes them (3:21), but nothing is said about nudity being evil or sexual, with the two not being equivalent anyway.  The skins are implied to have come from the sacrificed animals, a reminder of the severity of sin and how it demands death, as well as a way of expressing that God must extend mercy to escape this deserved fate for wrongdoing.  To see, appreciate, or practice extramarital nudity would still be morally permissible (Deuteronomy 4:2).

The evangelical stance is that it is sinful or at least "shameful" to be seen naked by anyone other than one's spouse, as well as sinful to see the nudity of a person one is not married to except perhaps in a medical situation, if even that.  Not only does the text not say this or even hint at it, but if it taught that there is something sexually shameful about nudity, it would be objectively false because nudity is not sexual; sexuality is sexual, and it can be expressed or enjoyed with or without clothing.  As for the text itself, Genesis 3 leaves no ambiguity about whether this was God's intention in providing animal skins to cover the bodies of Adam and Eve after they betrayed him.

That Adam and Eve were given clothes despite being in each other's presence--not that them observing or being observed by other humans, regardless of whether they were clothed, is sinful in the first place--would mean that it is impossible for God's covering to have anything to do with shielding them from the curious or admiring eyes of people outside the marriage.  While holding that strict literalism is the intended meaning of many Biblical passages and that Adam and Eve were the first husband and wife, those who object to this think that the very context of being clothed in the presence of one's spouse for symbolic purposes means that there is a moral obligation to not see nudity or be seen naked by those outside the relationship!

It would also be false that God's good creation of the openly unclothed human body would lose its status of goodness simply because the moral alignment of the first humans' minds had shifted.  Marriage did not become evil because humans had sinned.  The nature of something like marriage has to do with marriage itself and God's nature (and, of course, the logical truths that govern all things).  The same is true of nudity.  Emotionalistic love of tradition even as so many prudish Christians are hypocrites by craving the sight of the human body is what keeps this logically and Biblically erroneous idea in power.  Whether nudity is or is not sexual actually makes no difference here, despite nudity being intrinsically nonsexual--it is a nonsexual thing that can be perceived or used in sexual ways, like many other things.

Even if nudity was sexual, though it is by logical necessity a nonsexual thing that can be enjoyed sexually, human sexuality is still nonsinful according to Biblical philosophy because it is a creation of a God whose nature is moral goodness (Genesis 1:31).  Sensory pleasure of sexual and nonsexual kinds is a divinely intended part of human existence.  To shun the human body or sexuality in any way besides that of personal, non-ideological aversion is to forsake a vital part of Biblical metaphysics and ethics.  Having a subjective preference to not see nudity or be naked before others does not mean someone believes anything irrational or does anything immoral, and nudity is not morally mandatory.  It is instead the highest physical creation of God that all are free to find physical comfort, sensual fulfillment, and sexual delight in.

The Parables Of The Talents And Ten Minas

In the middle of addressing eschatology and the afterlife, shortly after speaking of the increasing intensity of disasters leading up to his return in Matthew 24, Jesus tells a series of parables.  The second is called the parable of the talents, found in Matthew 25:14-30.  With talent here being a name for a kind of money in the parable itself but also standing in for personal skills of individuals, the story pertains to both the variations in circumstances people find themselves in, the wait for the return of Christ, the way Christians handle their terrestrial lives, and the rewards bestowed by God for active commitment.  The parable of the 10 minas in Luke 19:11-27 tells a very similar tale, with some differing details.  The parable of the talents unfolds as follows.

A person puts his wealth in the hands of a trio of servants before he departs for a journey (25:14).  The different servants are given varying amounts of initial money, with one receiving five talents, another two talents, and another one talent.  Verse 15 specifies that each was bestowed this money "according to his ability."  Though ability can certainly be enhanced or broadened in many cases, the starting capabilities of the servants determined what they were given.  Everyone except for the servant who has the one talent uses the money to double their portion of the wealth, while the other servant merely puts the money in a hole to hide it (25:18).  Upon returning, the master says that the first two servants will share in his happiness and congratulates them for their goodness and faithfulness, only to take the last servant's talents, give them to the one who now has 10 talents, and then cast the lazy servant into "darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (25:28-30).

In the similar but very distinct parable of the 10 minas of Luke 19, one person received 10 cities and another only five from their monarch once he returns, but both received cities, whereas the exact rewards in Matthew 25:14-30's story are not mentioned.  The increase of money in the minas narrative only factored into the degree of reward, however, not into whether a reward was received.  As for the lazy servant of the parable of the talents, he either represents non-Christians who have not reconciled to God, yet are faintly familiar with the concept of him, or Christians who squander their lives by simply doing almost nothing.  That this servant is thrown into a place of darkness and weeping (Matthew 25:30) strongly suggests the former even though many parables do not perfectly encapsulate everything in Christianity.  Indeed, if some of them were meant to be literal, they would outright contradict vital parts of Biblical philosophy.

The two faithful servants of Luke 19:11-27, though, are given jurisdictions that are actually closer to what various passages--none of them parables of Christ--say Christians, or at least some of them, will preside over.  "Do you not know that we will judge angels?" asks Paul in 1 Corinthians 6:3.  Revelation 20:4-6 also briefly describes how certain followers of Christ will reign from thrones in this world for a thousand years, sharing in what is otherwise the divine practice of grand judgment from a throne.  Whether it speaks of an actual reign on Earth before the final judgment of Revelation 20:11-15 or is analogous to something that is perhaps even greater, this refers to what might very well be Christians ruling over cities as part of their reward.

Even on their own, the related parables of the talents and 10 minas already touch upon divine rewards for how life is lived, in addition to the basic but crucial prerequisite of eternal life.  As the parable of the workers in the vineyard from Matthew 20 parallels, all who turn to God will receive their eternal life, but beyond this, the extent and types of rewards a person will earn for their righteousness--which cannot erase their past guilt, but is still worthy of commendation--are dictated by their beliefs and deeds.  Rather than intimidate Christians, this should be encouraging: it is not as if life in New Jerusalem is said to be aimless or to not reflect their genuine intellectual and moral triumphs.  For the servants of God who invest themselves more fully into knowing and living in light of reality, the Bible says there are greater splendors that await them.

Receiving And Extending Mercy

The words of Jesus in Luke 6:36 say that we are free to be merciful just as Yahweh, the Father, is merciful.  Just as God is kind and merciful to "the ungrateful and wicked" (Luke 6:35), we are like God in this regard whenever mercy is expressed.  James 2:13 even clarifies that judgment without mercy will be given to those who are not merciful, though showing mercy is not the Biblical way to procure the ultimate salvation from the second death.  Emphasizing the inverse of this, Matthew 5:7 has Jesus state that the merciful will be given mercy.  It is true that receiving divine mercy can prompt someone to extend it to others, yet there is much more to the subject of mercy than might be imagined.

Those who are merciful can expect to receive mercy for acting as God does, yes, though there are certainly wholly irrational reasons to seek or offer mercy, such as out of selfishness (because it can benefit oneself) or emotionalistic appeal.  Many Christians are irrationalists and might only would want mercy from humans or God because they do not want to face a just fate.  The misuse of mercy by most people and the way that almost no one at all actually understands what mercy is and is not does not mean that mercy is problematic, of course.  On the only moral-religious worldview with any evidence in its favor at all, it is a necessity to receive mercy to secure redemption and eternal life.  It is nonetheless not a moral necessity even on the part of Yahweh or Christ.

As a prerequisite to salvation, it is indeed needed if fallen beings are to be pardoned for their sins; even reaching a morally perfect life after the slightest moral error in the past, with perfection being attainable by everyone (reason and the Bible agree on this, as with Job 1:1), would do nothing to erase the guilt of what was once done or believed.  A certain kind of person confuses an optional exemption from true justice as a moral obligation because both justice and mercy are part of God's character, but these are very different types of needs.  If God had never desired to show mercy to anyone, he would not have done anything wrong by letting or causing all the unsaved to descend into oblivion of the mind (Ezekiel 18:4).

As something that reflects part of his nature, though, mercy is objectively good on the Christian worldview.  It just is not and cannot be obligatory, as it can only exist if justice exists and there cannot possibly be an obligation to not be just.  To be merciful is to imitate the Biblical God knowingly or unknowingly, but what determines if someone is merciful is determined by what is just.  A person is not merciful because they abstain from treating someone as their meaningless conscience or social norms would have them act.  This is achieved when they have not treated a person as they deserve in a punitive sense, which corresponds to God's nature.  To not kill someone for a forms of theft besides kidnapping (Exodus 21:16), for example, is not mercy.  No one deserves to be executed for such a sin even if all sin deserves an eventual biological death (Romans 6:23), so mercy would instead be not calling for the full ratio of restitution, or not calling for restitution or servitude for the debt at all (Exodus 22:1, 3b-4).

Again, there could be nothing wrong about being without mercy, for this is not the same as being unjust by treating people more harshly than they deserve.  It remains true that mercy is an integral part of Christian values in another sense, something that God practices, delights in, and desires even though even he would not need to extend it to anyone in order to be good.  Showing mercy for emotionalistic reasons is still asinine.  Showing mercy out of gratitude for the divine mercy received, out of a sincere love of other people (though love does not require mercy, only that one treats others as their moral rights deserve), or out of the strategic hope that someone might be inspired to turn to redemption are what is rational or morally good.

Movie Review--Predators

"This planet is a game reserve . . . They sent the dogs in, just like you would if you were stalking boar, shooting quail."

--Adrian Brody, Predators

A much better reboot of its franchise than the MCU-style comedy The Predator, Predators takes place away from Earth, showing a planet used as a giant hunting area and expanding the series lore even as it keeps plenty of ambiguity all the way through.  Most of the humor is mild, based in sarcasm instead of outright attempts to make comedy the focus of a scene.  The action only complements the mystery and does not rely on an abundance of CGI.  The performances are strong all around.  Moreover, the film makes genuine additions to the lore, such as its introduction of Predator hunting "dogs," Predators of different sizes, and even the fact that the Predators have an entire planet they seem to have taken over for use as a game preserve of sorts.

Production Values

With the forests of the alien planet (said to have been filmed in Hawaii) as the main location, Predators has plenty of non-CGI areas and scenes that demonstrate the creators were not rushing to fill their project with unnecessary, artificial-looking digital effects.  The cloaking technology and weapons of the Predators are pf course realized with CGI; it just never tries to usurp the emphasis away from the more human-oriented story and the actual jungle around the characters.  As far as the effects go, Predators has very understated reliance on things beyond people and physical sets or places.  Thankfully for the integrity of the series tone, it also has very understated uses of humor that are never the heart of the dialogue.

What of the acting?  Adrien Brody, Danny Trejo, Alice Braga, Walton Groggins, and Topher Grace are likely familiar to many avid lovers of cinema, and each of them, along with several other characters that include a surprise cast member I will not reveal, gets a chance to express their own personalities and contribute to the group.  It is to the film's credit that the core group of characters does not have the same over-the-top confidence of Dutch's group from the original movie.  They overcome intergroup conflict, face obstacles with authentic performances that sometimes lean into multifaceted desperation, and reveal things about themselves in ways the original's story does not allow for.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

A group of seemingly random people find themselves falling from the sky with parachutes that activate close to the ground.  Armed with weapons (with one exception), they overcome initial pressures to fight each other, exploring the forest around them together.  Evidence mounts that they are not on Earth: the sun does not move as quickly as Earth's sun does, exotic planets or moons appear in the sky, and a bizarre species of dog-like creatures attacks them.  It becomes clearer that they were probably taken from Earth to be hunted as trophy kills, examples of diverse human warriors that will provide great sport as prey.

Intellectual Content

Buried in the enigma of the setting and the science fiction trappings is a story about people choosing between survival at the expense of moral firmness and helping others even if it puts them at great risk.  This is never emphasized in a way that disrupts the story; actually, this theme emerges naturally from the story over time.  Issues like the existential significance and epistemological unverifiability of extraterrestrial life (how would a person be able to prove that an alien species is not just an especially exotic species from Earth that they have never seen or heard of?) are set aside in favor of a tale much more focused on how a handful of people personally respond when threatened by advanced aliens.  This, in its own way, has genuine depth.

Conclusion

Better than the original in some ways, which even by 1980s standards had some moments with terrible effects and had less character development, and much better than 2018's The Predator, which abruptly mixes near-constant comedy with the once serious backbone of the series, Predators is excellent as a science fiction movie, as a Predator movie, as a sequel that expands on its predecessor(s), and as a film with a full plot that actually reveals very little about its universe.  It would have been an objectively better springboard for a prolonged continuation of the franchise on practically every level than its 2018 sequel turned out to be.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  In the most violent scenes, people are bloodily disintegrated by energy weapons and Predators have their heads cut off.

 2.  Profanity:  "Damn," "shit," and "fuck" are used, and used quite a bit in the case of the latter two.

Lovecraft's Fixation On The Ocean

The ocean, not only for its relative lack of exploration but also for its very exotic life forms, is much like what an alien-filled foreign planet might be like. There might not be any public evidence for alien life (which would not be the same as logical proof), but the creatures of the open ocean in all of its depths do not always share the more typical features of surface organisms.  While his letter to Donald Wandrei suggests that H.P. Lovecraft was utterly terrified of the ocean and its living things from a very young age, the vastness of global oceans, the "indifference" of the sea (it takes consciousness to be indifferent, and the ocean does not appear to be sentient), and the creatures therein go nicely with the subject of some of his most renowned stories.

Tentacles alone are not Lovecraftian or related to general cosmic horror, but the tentacles hanging from the head of Cthulhu belong to the most widely recognized entity of his cosmic horror.  Cthulhu's appearance is a composite of octopus, humanoid, and dragon-like features.  The Great Dreamer sleeps in the underwater city of R'lyeh, waiting to be released from his slumber.  The 1926 short story The Call of Cthulhu , which directly inspired the 2018 video game [1], has Cthulhu telepathically "call" to humans in anticipation of his ascension.  As one of Lovecraft's grand beings, the Great Dreamer is metaphysically far above humanity, and his very awakening would be catastrophic.

Cthulhu is not the only water-related monstrosity of this fictional cosmos.  The short stories Dagon and The Shadow Over Innsmouth have the Deep Ones, and all of these pale compared to some of his other entities.  Azathoth, suggested to be the deity of this universe, is among the latter.  The transdimensional or supernatural eldritch beings of his cosmic horror are often associated with the oceans of Earth or, if not a plane of existence beyond the physical cosmos, with outer space and inhuman worlds.  The most popular of his extraterrestrial or supernatural entities is nonetheless Cthulhu, and thus ocean waters and sunken cities might come to mind when thinking of him.

As unexplored as they ostensibly still are, the ocean and many life forms within it have been recorded, and the latter can indeed look alien.  Below the waves where buoyancy clashes with gravitational pull and light becomes scarce below 200 meters, the organisms do become far more like what people might think of when imagining extraterrestrial creatures on some distant planet.  Only half a foot long but with a very abnormal head, the barreleye fish of the twilight zone has upward-facing, green eyes that are underneath a transparent forehead.  In the midnight zone below the twilight, larger creatures such as the Atolla (alarm) jellyfish reside, with their potent bioluminescence.  The giant squid, among other beasts, can also be found here, its eight arms contributing to its approximately 30-40+ foot length.

With extreme pressure, darkness that is only dispelled by bioluminescence, great distance from human presence on land, and animals that are rather bizarre, the mesopelagic, bathypelagic, and abyssopelagic zones of the deep sea are the closest thing on Earth to the scope of deep space and the metaphysics beyond it.  The size, physiological functionality, and appearance of many such sea creatures are all but actually extraterrestrial.  Lovecraftian horror goes past focusing exclusively on Earth and even the universe itself with some of the more explicitly supernatural beings, but even the telepathic Cthulhu is bound to the waters of this human plane.  For its partial similarities to the cosmos outside of our planet, the sea was the ideal place to put the Great Dreamer who is but one of many cosmic horrors.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2021/03/game-review-call-of-cthulhu-switch.html

The Xenomorph's Sexual Horror

One kind of sexual horror might try to interweave what is intended to be sexually exciting ideas or imagery with dangerous creatures or situations (while sexiness is subjective and does not even reflect if something is sexual in the first place, this is the goal in this type of art).  Another kind of sexual horror integrates sexual concepts or imagery into its environments or creatures without necessarily trying to present them in a sexually attractive way.  Hostility to human life, the ways that sexual encounters can be terrifying, and the foreignness of non-human beings is more at home in this case.

The former might focus more on humanoid entities that many humans might be attracted to or scenarios that are meant to be sexually enticing; the latter is what the 1979 film Alien belongs to.  In some ways subtle and in some ways overt, Alien features a variety of sexual imagery that borrows from the appearance and sometimes the function of human genitalia, male and female, and makes them a part of its titular extraterrestrial.  Across the different stages of its development, with each successive version of the xenomorph dying as a stage produces the next step, the creature is distinctively comparable to human sex organs (though neither the display nor admiration of human sex organs, of course, is sexual in itself whatsoever).

Xenomorph eggs are like wombs, the camera showing the facehugger suspended inside as it stirs next to a potential host.  The facehugger is seen up close repeatedly once it emerges, and its vaginal underbelly from which it orally impregnates victims is shown directly.  The chestburster implanted by the facehugger is also shown up close, its head already resembling a human penis before it scurries away to grow in solitude.  Depicted more selectively and often in the shadows, this creature's adult form keeps the phallic shape of its head.  It can extend a second, inner mouth that also somewhat resembles a penis with teeth.

Near the very end of the film, this second mouth of the alien protrudes as the protagonist Ellen Ripley puts on the spacesuit over her underwear as if it is the erect penis of a male rapist, the xenomorph just laying on its side watching her in what director Ridley Scott has said were its final hours of life.  This is in the context of the general creature design among the most explicit portrayals of sexual horror in the entire movie.  The xenomorph is in its various stages as an organism a beast that shows how oppressive and lethal sexual aggression can be, and it even acknowledges, intentionally or not, that women and men alike can use their genitalia to force a will on others rather than bring mutual pleasure.

It is the prequel Prometheus that has some of the most obvious sexual horror elements of the entire Alien franchise, but the original film introduces the basic ideas of the xenomorph's sexual horror very well.  Logically possible physical expressions of sexuality, after all, are not limited to the specific ways that humans can interact with each other.  Even the observable animal kingdom in this world show a great diversity of genitals and sexual behaviors.  It is very fitting that a creature like this alien that is born only to pursue savagery or the continuation of its species both parallels aspects of human sexuality and is at the same time so very unlike us in other ways, hence how its reproduction is weaponized against the human victims of its forced sex or sexually suggestive attacks.

Henry Ford's Approach To Compensation

1913 saw the introduction of Henry Ford's moving assembly line, where parts from outside suppliers were put together far more quickly.  Only a year later, be began compensating workers very highly for the time (up to $5 a day, double the previous compensation model) while reducing their workday by an hour.  The goal was that the employees would be motivated to perform their roles well, to stabilize turnover, and could purchase from his own inventory, not necessarily the elevation of the working class.  More applicants, longer seniority, greater output of effort, and the ability for them to directly or indirectly increase his own sales were the consequences.  More financially secure workers have more money to spend, perhaps on vehicles like Ford's, or they can spend more in the local area as a whole, which brings more money to other establishments, which in turn allows them greater flexibility in the broader community buying things like automobiles.

Yes, profit is what remains after all expenses, including payroll, are paid from the revenue, so for the short-term, low wages might boost profit. The moral dimensions of this aside, enough of this either leads to a workforce that cannot afford to pay for the products or services of their own industries (short of perhaps true minimal, practical necessities) or trampled workers that, unless they have corporate "Stockholm syndrome," have no loyalty to their companies.  When the community at large cannot afford what is being sold, company profits will wither.  Now, livable or premium compensation do not have to mean someone is always paid enough to afford whatever their labor provides for others.  A company that creates/distributes cars costing $1,000,000 are not paying their workers unlivable wages if they are unable to purchase a one million dollar product.  What Ford did nonetheless helped expand his revenue.

Ford sidestepped several low wage problems while doing something that would strike many modern Americans as more foreign: his repair workers at one factory were paid only when in the break room and not while enacting repairs.  Once comfortably situated in the room and receiving pay specifically to wait around, they might not exactly want to leave the leisure to go fix a malfunction.  Not only would they have to get up again to perform more labor, something many people like to avoid when possible, but their payable time would stop until they resumed their break.  A way to minimize the number of disturbances would be to simply perform repairs with the best quality work one is capable of.  Thus, there was incentive for both high quality of effort/results and long periods of relaxation.  Not paying workers for actual work is still exploitation of a kind by default, yet the highly atypical approach to compensation here provided incentives of its own.

In the modern American workplace, employers can moreso tend to actively, intentionally underpay workers with the goal of leaving more profits (for themselves or shareholders) and treat inactivity as a sign of inefficiency or laziness.  An employee who has no immediate tasks to fulfill might need to remain on standby, and he or she might only be inactive because they competently handled all of their current job duties.  Because they are good workers, they have nothing left to do.  A great many employers do not acknowledge this.  The multiplication of pointless tasks by employers and workers pretending to be busy just to pass time are what naturally results from this kind of stupidity.  The sarcastic notion of walking fast or looking intently at a computer screen to seem busy is sometimes turned to as a reaction to this madness.

Ford did not bother with this nonsense of automatically treating all workers at ease as useless employees.  Like all non-rationalists, he still had his errors and sins.  The full $5 a day had asinine restrictions.  An antisemite, he wrote four volumes of The International Jew proposing fallacious and slanderous ideas about Jews, which reportedly played a role in inspiring Hitler and by extension the rise of Nazism in post-WWI Germany.  When it came to workplace practices, though, his actual practices were pro-worker to abnormal degrees.  Doubling maximum pay, encouraging leisurely breaks as long as work is finished, and stimulating the local economy all do not have to kill every business and could indeed lead to greater success.  An example from the historical record like Henry Ford's business is not what makes this true or what it is necessary to discover this, and his company remains an example anyway.

Waiting For Christ's Return

Natural cycles like the motion of celestial bodies and the birth and death of human generations repeat over and over well after the ascension of Christ.  Peter predicted as much when he said that the continuation of such cycles would be noted by people wondering if or when Christ's return would occur.  As he puts it in 2 Peter 3:4, "They will say, 'Where is this "coming" he promised?  Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.'"  There are several noteworthy details and ramifications of this passage, which seems to address the Second Coming of Jesus even as it also specifically mentions God and other eschatological events, despite how Yahweh and Christ are very obviously separate beings according to the Bible (such as in Matthew 24:36).  Either way, the contents of 2 Peter 3:3-9 are very much reflective of the Biblical period between the departure and second arrival of Jesus and then the planet being laid bare by fire as verse 10 mentions.

There is an irony in verse 4, specifically, in that anyone who thinks what Peter says "scoffers" will insist is validating at least that part of the prophecy.  Anyone who says that there will be deniers of a prediction, though, will almost certainly be correct even if they could not have known ahead of time, and being right on this point is not the same as the predicted calamity itself actually occurring.  This distinction clarifies the epistemological significance of Peter's claims.  Thus far, there have been people, some of them even Christians, who might deny the possibility or probability of the Second Coming of Christ or Yahweh's final judgment and renewal of heaven and Earth (some forms of amillenialism literally would entail the idea that the Second Coming has already happened in full).  That some people object would again of course ensure that this part of Peter's predictions comes true, but simply encountering dismissal or denial of Christ's return (or other eschatological events that are described more at length in this very chapter) does not mean Christ is just about to come--and does not verify the whole of Christian prophecy.

The "last days," a phrase used in 2 Peter 3:3, at times seems to be used more as a general window of time after Christ's death and resurrection but before the final resurrection and judgement, which are themselves preceded by the return of Christ.  Like with the individual signs listed in Matthew 24, there is no one thing that points to the Second Coming or some other such event being in the very near future on this side of theological history.  These scoffers of 2 Peter 3:3-5 are a prerequisite if the entirety of the Bible is true, but they are not the distinctive marker that some grand eschatological thing is on the very verge of happening.  They are but one among multiple prophetic markers that, since the prediction was made, must come about if all Biblical teachings about the future are accurate.

In addition to the prerequisites of Matthew 24 not being met for the return of Christ at this time (so many things about the world have become better and not always worse!), Peter goes further to insist, in fact, that this "coming" will arrive like a thief (3:10), and what competent thief would come at a time when everyone expects them?  Still, the somewhat unspecified, abrupt nature of his return does not mean that an extraordinary amount of time could not pass between the ascension and Second Coming.  The delay in direct revelation of God or the next coming of Christ, says Peter, is because of divine mercy, as this is the very context in which one finds the renowned statement that God wants "everyone to come to repentance" and for none to perish--in a verse that Biblically refutes both Calvinism and the popular version of eternal conscious torment for every unsaved being all in one sentence (2 Peter 3:9).  This is also the place where another popular statement is made: that a thousand years is like a day to God, and vice versa (3:8).

People who imagine that the Second Coming is imminent all throughout history are dramatically misunderstanding the actual nature of Biblical prophecies even as they might recognize the obligation to do good until that moment arrives (3:11-14).  Even just in the context of 2 Peter 3, the very fact that scoffers would implicitly believe that natural cycles continuing refutes the Second Coming suggests that it would be an enormous amount of time between the first and later comings of Christ on Earth!  There is no need to fret as if Jesus is likely to come today or tomorrow, and even the Biblical details about his return and the nature of contemporary events together evidence that we are actually in some ways far from that great day as it is described by the Bible.  There is immense irony in any doubting of this return actually validating one of Peter's prophecies, certainly.  There is also far more to Biblical eschatology and related epistemology than just this.

The Desire To Be Sexually Recognized

A longing to be aesthetically and sexually appreciated, which are very distinct despite how they can overlap, seems to be a common desire in humans, even if the intensity differs from individual to individual.  No, there is no desire that is shared by everyone, or at least there is no desire that is by logical necessity shared by every person, but no matter how much society at large pretends otherwise, this is not something experienced only by women.  It is not even necessarily experienced by all women to begin with.  Indeed, though the desire to be physically beautiful or sexually attractive is often ignored or trivialized in men, it is a human experience.  There are neither gender-specific personality traits nor gender-specific moral obligations; Christians who are rationalists should be the first to realize and celebrate these truths.  It is not particularly difficult to discover them as long as one is not making assumptions.

Of course, that men are so frequently denied as beings that can relate to these longings is asinine, though it does not mean that women should have this aspect of themselves be ignored as Western culture finally accepts this fact in a more mainstream manner.  To feel desirable on the level of physical beauty, nonsexually or sexually, and to feel sexually attractive is something that many Christians would probably think more about--and find alluring if it was not for the sexist cultural stereotypes (against women and men), legalistic prudery from the church, and concerns over being objectified or victimized that might get in the way.  A culture of rationalistic Christians would be wholly inviting towards all nonsinful sexual acts or intentions (Deuteronomy 4:2), from masturbation to enjoying mere extramarital attraction, in a way that honors Yahweh's approval of sexuality itself.  After all, Yahweh is presented as directly creating human sexuality or permitting it to develop and then calling it very good (Genesis 1:31).  Only a misuse of sexuality would not have God's approval, and there are so many feelings and deeds that the Bible clearly does not condemn which would shock evangelical legalists.

There is certainly so much about reality and life that is nonsexual, and to confuse even deeply sensual things like human nudity for something sexual in itself is extremely irrationalistic.  All the same, sexuality spans not only physicality, but the human mind with all of its spiritual and existential dimensions.  Without thinking that subjectively appreciating something on a sexual level makes it sexual and without letting sexuality become the primary focus of their lives, Christians who truly understand Biblical theology would welcome that many men and women have the longing to be recognized as sexual beings, perceived as sexy by certain members of the opposite gender, and emotionally satisfied with their sex appeal.  They would not pretend like this is the most central or otherwise important part of human existence, but they would not only not fear it or try to sidestep its presence.  They would embrace all nonsinful manifestations of sexuality as something intended by God.

The desire to be aesthetically and sexually appreciated, to be sexually recognized, is not something to be ashamed of, suppressed, or left unverbalized on the Christian worldview.  Physical sexiness is also but one of the many facets of sexuality, which is all the deeper and more philosophically significant because it is not limited to just an action of the body.  Sexuality brings with it a great capacity for a kind of introspection, social interaction, and even aesthetic pleasure that so many people might never even think of exploring if it was not for sexual attraction prompting it.  Instead of focusing only on sexual feelings towards other people, especially for men who are treated as if they have no interest in being appreciated as aesthetically sexy, rational people realize that sexuality's greatest depths have to do with the mind on an introspective level.  Without bodies or bodily activities, sexuality could still exist as a phenomenological thing and would be no less personal.  Without sexual attraction and feelings in general, sexuality would only be a bland or far less philosophically significant thing.  Wanting to be perceived as beautiful does not have to be related to sexuality, although wanting one's body to be perceived as sexually attractive pertains to the mind at least as much as the body.

Movie Review--Life

"Pilgrim wasn't just seeing things in Mars' soil.  We're looking at a large single cell.  Inert.  Unmistakeably biological.  And, like organisms on Earth, has what appears to be a nucleus, cytoplasm...  The cell wall is thick.  Those hairs look like cilia.  Longer than we're used to seeing on Earth.  More like flagella." 

--Hugh Derry, Life

"These creatures could have dominated Mars for hundreds of millions of years.  But now we know that they hibernate with a loss of atmosphere."

--Hugh Derry, Life

Life is what might be made if Gravity and the original Alien had a cinematic baby.  With the cosmic, cinematic grandeur of the former and a similar one-word title like the latter, it has a directness, elegance, and seriousness that lets it stand tall as a bold combination of philosophical science fiction and horror.  The result is both far more simple than many films about aliens that take their subject matter more seriously than mere thoughtless entertainment and far more elevated than many alien/slasher films.  Life teases and averts tropes like the alien creature attacking a scientist at the first telegraphed opportunity or the black character dying first, and an excellent ensemble cast with Rebecca Ferguson, Ariyon Bakare, Jake Gyllenhaal, Ryan Reynolds, and more do their part to treat the story with all the sincerity and weight necessary to make it a genuinely dark and dramatic movie with an undercurrent of existential awe at the fact that life exists at all.  That Life comes from the director who later helmed Morbius, which was just mediocre instead of the abomination many treat it as, is ironic for two reasons.  It is an example of how director Daniel Espinosa has already risen far above Morbius and it was a film suspected by some to be a stealth prequel to Venom, which launched the Sony-Marvel films that Morbius is part of.  Thankfully, Venom's grave shortcomings do not reflect those of this movie, though it is not narratively connected anyway.

Production Values

Like an inverted version of Gravity that focuses more on the inside of a spacecraft, Life features some broad shots of Earth and the International Space Station together that go far towards showing how the station could be a place that inspires awe before it contains an extraterrestrial horror.  Some scenes seem to echo Gravity so well, which was an incredible film, that I would not be surprised if Life was inspired by it as it was by Ridley Scott's grand science fiction horror movie it pays homage to.  Several ways that this is distinct from Gravity, though, would be the larger central cast and the emphasis on things that happen within the space station instead of outside it.  This puts the focus on characters in peril, such as the one played by Rebecca Ferguson (Doctor Sleep, Hercules), who is, as in every movie I have seen her in, a phenomenal actress who flourishes in dramatic stories.  Ariyon Bakare, Olga Dihovichnaya, Hiroyuki Sanada, and Jake Gyllenhaal are also great at adding personal touches to their characters despite all of them being trapped in the same basic circumstances.  Ryan Reynolds, though, gets the chance to inhabit a more serious role, one where he displays vulnerability and terror, a far cry from the personality of Deadpool he has deservedly become known for.  This was an important step towards establishing his versatility as an actor to a newer audience that might find his range surprising.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

A team of scientists aboard the International Space Station historically recovers soil from Mars, inadvertently bring with the alien soil a form of extraterrestrial life.  At first, the organism is small, resembling a single cell.  It begins growing rapidly while behaving in a docile manner.  Named Calvin by those on Earth who are astonished by the discovery, the creature's multiplying cells can perform multiple functions, and the entity displays a high level of environmental perception and intelligence--in the sense of being able to make use of its surroundings and achieve predatory goals, not in the sense of knowing philosophical truths, of course.  Calvin eventually shows hostility and improvises to escape confinement, searching the space station for water and food as it continues to increase in size.

Intellectual Content

That life takes one form on Earth does not mean that creatures, if there are any on other planets, would animate the same kinds of physical bodies with the same kinds of physical limitations.  The Martian of Life goes through many shapes and appearances that are not standard for terrestrial life, and the only impossibilities here would be that an alien cannot violate the laws of logic by having contradictory physical or mental characteristics.  Any unexpected or foreign trait that is not contradictory in some way is possible.  Overlooking this, one of the scientists on the ISS in the film first assumes that "Calvin" should not be able to survive in outer space without oxygen, but it survives despite this.  Shots from the perspective of the Martian predator also convey that its sensory experiences have a different visual "filter" than that of humans, further differentiating it from humans.  However, as Calvin demonstrates a high capacity for planning, the movie focuses on applications of its intelligence to navigating and adapting to sensory environments.  The abstract, necessary laws of logic are still at the core of all intelligence on a metaphysical and epistemological level, the mere practical applications of rationality being inferior to grasping major philosophical truths that are more fundamental and far deeper than anything that would pertain to biology alone.  While humans rely on these truths even if they are not aware of them and everyone can discover them if they choose to, Calvin shows no hint of caring for or understanding them.  There are of course more abstract sides to biology itself, especially how it intersects with phenomenology, that Life somewhat addresses.

"Life's very existence requires destruction," an astronaut named Hugh says--even a vegetarian life form must kill living things to eat, and even plants themselves can kill bacteria.  While all scientific phenomena could have differed in any way that is logically possible, and it is indeed logically possible for there to be or have been a life form that does not need to consume, the life we experience and observe needs to consume to continue.  This does not make other beings equal to humans or deserving of survival if they threaten human lives, but it is something we share with every creature that consumes to live.  All recorded macroscopic organisms happen to require consumption of something.  Hugh says he does not hate Calvin for simply participating in this cycle, while Miranda says she feels "pure fucking hate" for the creature, though she erroneously admits she thinks this feeling is irrational when her real irrationality is that she believes involuntary feelings are irrational, as opposed to beliefs that do not align with reason and actions that do not reflect devotion to rationalism.  Nevertheless, her dialogue here and elsewhere is part of how the film draws attention to how there is so much more to human life than mere survival.  Miranda and other characters usually get at least one or two personal moments that capture how people are conscious beings with the capacity for personal introspection, which is only possible thanks to reason.  Humans are not mere biological machines that eat, reproduce, and die, but beings that can think and feel and understand the very depths of reason, though Life does not go so far as to hold the spotlight on some of the most foundational truths about this.

Conclusion

Life is one of the best films to be inspired by Alien yet.  One thing that helps set it apart is embracing a more realistic scientific approach and a more thoughtful philosophical approach to the discovery of alien life than is typical, and the sincere humanity of even the characters with less screentime makes the desperation of the situation stand out all the more.  An abnormally bleak ending, grand cinematography, and the opportunity for the great cast to showcase drama acting (even for someone like Ryan Reynolds who is normally associated with comedy) strengthen the overall film.  There is a boldness and competence here that is so often missing, at least to this extent.  Yes, Life could have worked as a setup for Venom, but its self-contained, one shot story is in some ways darker precisely because there is no sequel to expand upon what happens next.  The isolation from established franchises left it free to be itself, sometimes mirroring elements of other films and sometimes going in its own direction.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  Blood is spilled in the low gravity setting of outer space again and again as the Martian creature attacks other organisms.

 2.  Profanity:  The likes of "fuck" and "shit" are uttered every now and then.

Diverse Intimacy In Marriage

Intimacy in marriage is frequently used to describe the sexual aspects of the relationship.  Marriages can lack intimacy, however, just as intimacy can be found in purely nonromantic friendships between people of either gender.  There are also many more possible dimensions to intimacy that can be experienced by couples across the full duration of their time together.  Since intimacy is a genuine closeness of the mind or body, anything that fosters this is a mechanism of intimacy, and while sex has its place in uniting couples or strengthening their relationships, this one category of closeness has much more to it than intercourse.  Even sex can be done without a connection between partners, and for those who seek such a thing, there are numerous ways to find intimacy in interpersonal expressions of sexuality.

The deed does not have to be penetrative; sexual fondling and oral sex in their different variations can be incredibly potent at stoking or satisfying sexual longings between loving partners, especially since variety might become more and more desired over time for its multitude of ways to produce pleasure and nonverbally communicate attachment, interest, and general psychological intimacy in addition to physical intimacy.  Sexual bonding can be quite strong and is of course at its absolute peak when both partners are rationalistic thinkers who understand their own individuality and, without forsaking reason or violating moral obligations, aim to please each other and in turn receive pleasure from their relational connection and physicality alike.

There are still many ways that marriage partners can enjoy intimacy with each other that do not involve intense sexual behaviors or sexuality at all.  Affectionate glances, gentle, nonsexual caresses, slow kisses or embraces, written or spoken words, and standing or sitting together can convey intimacy just as much as sex and other sexual behaviors can, and there is thus more diversity to how spouses can interact to show commitment and passion than even the full breadth of sexual acts.  Some situations, such as periods of debilitating disease or exhaustion, might call for one form of intimacy, and other situations, such as sensual atmospheres where a husband and wife are full of energy, might call for another.

As far as deeds short of actual sex go, the same is all true for dating partners, who are Biblically free to engage in all kinds of nonsexual and sexual intimacy without having sex unless they are ready to fully commit to each other for life (Exodus 22:16-17)--short of either party engaging in sexual immorality, neglect, abuse, or abandonment (beyond Matthew 19:8-9, see Malachi 3:6 with Exodus 21:10-11 and 1 Corinthians 7:15-16).  Emotional attachment and physical closeness have many manifestations that can bring catharsis, delight, and great joy to a relationship based on rationality, mutuality, and openness.  Along with the nonromantic intimacy of friendship (though strong romantic relationships are friendships as well, the word is often used in platonic contexts), a holistic romantic bond is one of the grandest pleasures in this life.

The Evolution Of Technology

Along with medicine and other things which perform a practical function, technology is one of the only great uses of science beyond fueling subjective curiosity or satisfaction, as it falls short of the metaphysical and epistemological status of logic in every way.  Across the historical record, mechanical technology and prolonged, demanding tasks have in many cases become replaced by electronic technology and faster, less strenuous labor.  The word technology might be more commonly associated in the present with cars, weaponry, and electronic devices than with strictly mechanical technology like stone gears and pulleys, but there is a broader spectrum of tools and devices than either kind of instrument or machine alone would represent.  For a historical example of the mechanical kind, the alleged defenses of Syracuse employed by Archimedes in 213-212 BC against the Romans would also fall into this category, which reportedly included a crane-like device called the Claw of Archimedes that could lift ships out of the water or help tip them over.

These would be mechanical technologies rather than electronic, but they are still technology all the same.  Even conventional firearms, in spite of their moving parts and ability to launch projectiles, are not electronic in nature, in contrast with the likes of UAV drones, tanks, or tasers, which have their electric components.  Mechanical technology is useful and even today has its strengths like resistance to EMPs, and it has long been part of the historical record.  Technology, however, brushes up against more than mere practicality and subjective scientific awe.  It can reflect the ideological priorities of cultures even as its use has its own moral dimensions.  Ironically, much hostility towards technology in the present era is directed at its electronic forms not on the basis of what electronics themselves are or moral truths, but on the basis of how they might be used or on the basis of how it makes someone feel.  Perhaps people who emotionalistically despise or fear modern technology, in addition to simply being irrational regardless, have not truly seen how much they likely take for granted the pragmatic benefits of the modern age.

Would they want to rely on horse-drawn carriages instead of motor vehicles?  Torches or candles for light instead of electric lanterns or flashlights, the latter of which is even included as a function in plenty of cell phones?  Mail delivered by bird or by horse riders (such as with the short-lived Pony Express of 1860-1861 America) instead of near-instant text messages or emails?  As comparing almost any older technology with its modern counterparts reveals, it is electricity that has so thoroughly transformed technology that convenience and safety far beyond the reach of past generations is now commonplace.  Transportation, lighting, communication systems, workplace compensation, entertainment, and more are more efficient or more developed because of electronic technology.  Contemporary technology indeed has potential dangers in its misuse just as any preceding technology did, but despite its greater reach and impact today, technology itself cannot ever be the problem; it is how people use it.

People who dislike or complain about technology in its more prominent electronic forms of the 21st century either take for granted what life would be like without electric devices or have stupidly assumed that something must be evil because it could be used destructively, or because it makes them personally feel uncomfortable.  Conscience and pragmatic consequences are of no relevance to whether morality exists or how one could know what is truly good or evil, for the former is nothing but subjective perception and the latter is nothing more than what comes about from an action or mental state.  Even on the level of daily life and not strictly the abstract truths that govern all things, those who irrationalistically oppose technology would probably not last a few days or weeks without succumbing to desperation or difficulty if they actually tried to separate themselves from the triumphs of technology.

Nonetheless, newer developments such as the internet or nuclear weaponry make it all the more obvious even to non-rationalists that technology can significantly contribute to the safety or damnation of humanity.  Scientific innovations provide new ways to participate in sins that no one needs technology to carry out.  Fools will think that technology is the problem instead of the people who use it for immoral ends, yet the conveniences offered by modern advances will probably be too enticing for even those who hate current technology to give it up.  The evolution of technology always provides each person, generation, and culture the opportunity to use something that could be an inspiration for more rationalistic reflection for either selfish or rational ends.  Hypocritical dislike of technology from the same people who admire its efficiencies and eagerly use it is what is more commonly found than rationalistic awareness, as unfortunate as this disregard for truth and the destructive consequences of this for individuals and societies are.