Spontaneous Generation

The 1859 experiment of Louis Pasteur is widely credited with formally settling, as much as mere sensory observations can, that it is exposure to outside factors that brings organisms to feed on some body of matter, such as maggots with meat.  Today, the position with the most empirical support is that, in the previously mentioned example, it is really that flies are attracted by scent to dead flesh, and the maggots which appear are their offspring from eggs placed in/on the meat, which in turn consume it.  The formerly prominent doctrine of spontaneous generation held that a substance like meat created or perhaps transformed into living creatures as with dead flesh and maggots, or cheese and mice.

The more modern conception of abiogenesis would require that the first life, now commonly proposed to be only organic molecules, did indeed come from nonliving matter, and some assume that this concept would render all forms of theism false if true or that the falsity of spontaneous generation would necessitate that of abiogenesis in the distant past.  This idea of life coming from non-life actually does not contradict theism (which is both more philosophically fundamental and broader in variety than a religion like Christianity) and more importantly does not contradict reason, the axioms of which are the only things that cannot be anything but true in themselves, because of themselves, without reliance on any other metaphysical realities.  As such, since only logical axioms like the fact that something must true (if not, the alternative would still be true!) have to be correct, only things that conflict with them are genuinely impossible.

Just because abiogenesis is logically possible does not mean it ever occurred or will, of course, for this does not follow.  However, abiogenesis in this narrower sense does not require ongoing spontaneous generation such as the kind by which dust would give rise to fleas or dirt to worms.  Rather, life would only have to emerge from nonliving particles once.  With macro-evolution, which is not about the origin of life but its development across generations of organisms over time, life evolves from one round of offspring to another: there is already life or else evolution could not occur in the first place, for there would be no living things to adapt or reproduce.  The typical conception of spontaneous generation being false would not entail the same for a singular, initial event of abiogenesis, and evolution does not logically require primordial biogenesis or abiogenesis specifically.

Neither abiogenesis nor evolution excludes direct theistic creation of the basic matter of the cosmos, or else they would be false by necessity since there cannot not be an uncaused cause in light of the impossibility of an infinite past (and thus an infinite number of past material events or an infinite age of the universe), of self-creation (something would have to exist before it existed to create itself), and of something coming into existence without a cause.  It is just that the universe can be created without life present but with the metaphysical and logically possible capacity to somehow eventually produce life left to itself.  Following hypothetical abiogenesis, there is nothing about evolution that excludes God guiding the development of life after it began, though it came about without any sort of direct creation by a mind.  It is likewise possible for God to have created the first life form(s) and allowed it to evolve unguided or with his involvement.

More foundationally, once again, since only consistency with logical axioms and other necessary truths makes something possible (for instance, the idea of one scientific law might contradict another that is genuinely true, but it could have been the case that the alternative was true and only the inverse law of nature was in existence), abiogenesis is not impossible because logical axioms would still be true in themselves by self-necessity.  Concerning current empirical observation and the evidence against spontaneous generation, not even trillions of years of the same basic natural processes would logically necessitate that abiogenesis being contingently impossible at one time or in a certain context means it is impossible at all other times.  This would be an instance of the induction fallacy.  As long as nothing contradicts the intrinsic truths of reason, however unusual it would be compared to our sensory experiences or evidential expectations, it is possible, as with abiogenesis even if spontaneous generation as popularly conceived is wholly erroneous.  Rationalism and core theism are unaffected no matter what.

What Is Emotional Abuse In Romantic Relationships?

Broad emotional abuse leaves no bruised flesh or broken bones, but it can be personally devastating, albeit in a different sort of way than physical or strictly sexual abuse.  What might surprise many people is that it is an allowed basis for divorce in the Bible as early as Exodus 21:9-11.  When a personal mistake has been made or a marriage partner turns out to be a nightmare they hid from you at first, divorcing a deceptive, unloving, uncommitted, or controlling person before children become involved and before emotional complications only deepen is of course for the best.

Exodus 21:9-11, long before Jesus made his very widely misunderstood comments about divorce, says that a servant woman who becomes the wife to someone's son is to not be deprived or food, clothing, and marital rights if he gains an additional wife, and that if this occurs, she is to go free.  In this case, going free would be a divorce since a marriage is in view.  Moral obligations and rights are not gender-specific (what is good or evil is about the thing itself and not who does them), and since all people bear God's image (Genesis 1:26-27), it is not just women or men or servants or non-servants who have this right to ending their marriage.  Every person has the right to avoid or part from an abusive spouse of the legal or non-legal kind.

Marital rights in Exodus 21:11 is plural, and thus would entail more than one right, while the previous two examples of food and clothing already touch upon neglect.  If depriving someone of food as their spouse entitles the victim to divorce, depriving them of love, the debt we owe to those who are not even our spouses (Leviticus 19:18, Romans 13:8-10), over a long period is far worse.  A spouse who is legalistic (Deuteronomy 4:2), controlling, volatile over nothing, or verbally or psychologically abusive in other ways has not treated their partner as they deserve.  They have betrayed reason most importantly, that which is what makes anything true at all, and they have also betrayed Yahweh and the morality tied to his nature.

This could manifest in ferocious, unprompted mood swings that involve anger towards one's innocent partner, controlling demands that stem from personal anxieties, and disproportionate reactions to trivial or amoral things.  Out of desperation or unjust aggression, they might seek to become the exclusive emotional source of comfort for their significant other.  It is not just things like seeing their partner flirted with by someone else that stirs up gratuitous dread or mishandled jealousy, but perhaps them simply having friends.  Platonic opposite gender friendships, attraction to celebrities, or meeting with same-gender friends could irritate them or ignite outbursts.  If they do not resolve this or put great effort into rationally managing it, a significant other is indeed emotionally abusive.

Without any logical or moral basis, they might oppose spending time with practically anyone else because they want to be the only person one looks to for social support and fulfillment, when to actually want this as anything more than a happenstance, involuntary desire that is never acted upon is indeed deeply selfish.  No one should date or marry unless they are ready to purge or control this.  This ideological or personal selfishness is of course highly irrational.  At the first sign of this, an unmarried person needs to address it directly and thoroughly or break up with their partner.  If married, a pattern of this is emotional abuse that ultimately would justify divorce like all other routine abuse or neglect.

Investment in dating or marriage never legitimizes irrationality of any kind.  Someone who will not regulate themselves as needed is absolutely unprepared for a romantic relationship of any kind and does not deserve to have one.  It is always ideal that they have none of the emotional problems that feed into possessiveness, jealousy, clinginess, slander, or unjust outbursts.  Because rationality and righteousness depend on belief, motivation, and action, not on what one happens to feel, a natural gravitation to the contrary is not itself what makes them abusive.  It is how they handle it.  

Unfortunately, the world is full of people who fail to grasp reason and engage in rationalistic introspection, and thus they will ignore or mishandle their own personalities until they have given their partner a valid excuse to leave them, which is what they are (allegedly) frenetically trying to avoid.  They might even present themselves as doing the opposite for a time.  Under the right circumstances, though, they will most inevitably being to reveal their true selves.  It takes an enormous amount of luck or effort, after all, to effectively pretend to be purely rationalistic over long periods of time.

Ocean Life And Climate Change

Some might hear a great deal about the role (as far as perceivable correlations go) plants play in sequestering carbon and keeping it out of the atmosphere.  Through photosynthesis, they take in carbon and produce oxygen.  Each of these things is crucial in one way or another for human flourishing.  Because of its direct relationship with human survival and quality of life, and because even being a lesser creation of God than humankind would not mean the environment can legitimately be trampled upon (Genesis 1:31), vast human emission of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide would need to be counteracted by carbon sinks for the sake of maximizing our wellbeing and that of other creatures.  Too much carbon dioxide from vehicular travel or other modern human activities, and the world artificially overheats to the point of endangering the living things therein.

For all the more open attention sometimes given to trees or wetlands for their capacity to withdraw carbon from the atmosphere, blue carbon, that which is handled by the ocean/coast, would be vital.  From phytoplankton to kelp, there is photosynthesis occurring in the water as with on land, which performs the same basic carbon-storing and oxygen-releasing activities as trees.  The animal life also has various ways of helping.  Fish waste (the feces) brings carbon to the depths of the ocean, while creatures like sharks store this element in their bodies.  A dead shark, moreover, would bring its carbon away from the surface of the ocean as it falls and thus keeps it away from the atmosphere.  Overfishing diminishes the effectiveness of such processes because there are fewer fish kept in the water and more consumed where their carbon is now directed to the atmosphere.

The massive bodies and long lives of whales, though, make them much better carbon sequesters than trees or many other oceanic animals like sharks, which remove less carbon due to factors like size or general lifespan.  Allowing whales to recover after the 1900s helps improve this sequestration.  Beyond simply absorbing carbon during life, whales even contribute to the counteracting of carbon dioxide by promoting phytoplankton.  Their waste provides these microscopic plants with iron, which nourishes these photosynthetic organisms so that they can also absorb more carbon (and release more oxygen).  Areas like the Southern Ocean are particularly benefitted by this since iron is otherwise not quite so accessible there.

Upon a whale's death following a perhaps century-long life, gravity pulls the carcass downward just like with that of a shark.  The descent of a whale corpse brings the accumulated carbon potentially all the way down to the ocean floor and, again, far from the atmosphere where it would participate in the greenhouse effect.  The carbon can be distributed among the deep sea sediment and rest here relatively undisturbed for prolonged periods of time.  In this way, in life and death, whales do much to remove carbon from where it is most dangerous at certain high concentrations--the right amount in the right place heats the planet, after all.

While land-based creatures release carbon when they die and decompose, a lifeless body with this element sinking to the bottom of the ocean redirects it to a much safer location.  Like on land, the seas of the natural world already have ways to reduce or neutralize the danger of carbon dioxide.  Presiding over the natural world with its chemical reactions, animal life, and food chains does not mean that humans have to be ruthless, apathetic, or intentionally damaging to the balance of activity that preserves life on both the seas and land.  Developments like advanced weaponry are not the only relatively modern technologies that need to be used within specific limitations on the Biblical worldview.  The way that people regard and harness the environment itself for business or other ventures, if they are Christians, reflects how much they actually care about divine creation.

"Worker Solidarity"

One might encounter contemporary liberals, or certain liberals at a minimum, who believe that there is no such thing as a worker being justly penalized by an employer or a worker who is not a spectacular paragon of virtue by being part of a generally exploited group.  It is logically possible for all people from various groups can be oppressed even if one of them was hypothetically not being slandered or otherwise mistreated right now anywhere on Earth, so workers are not unique in this sense.  Workers, yes, often face many asinine forms of irrational expectations, crushing demands, unhealthy conditions, and low levels of reward across many industries and roles, but being a victim does not make one a good person.

No one could be rational or righteous based upon a factor like where they fall on a corporate ladder because there is nothing irrational or immoral about being either an employee or an employer.  Individuals from either category could be slaves to assumptions, greed, selfishness, hypocrisy, superficiality, and philosophical apathy, all of which are particular expressions of their erroneous irrationalism, and no one escapes this by being a worker, whether they are oppressed or not.  The only way to escape a life that is without value beyond whatever human rights are there--which a person could never know from conscience or assumptions and which many would rely on while actively disregarding the nature of reality--is to align with the intrinsic truths of reason.

Being an employer cannot exempt one from this.  Being an employee cannot exempt one from this.  If a worker gets mistreated, it does not matter what stupidity they are guilty of; if there is such a thing as mistreatment, no one could deserve it, rich or poor, employer or employee.  However, mistreated or not, a worker is not morally valuable and upright or metaphysically special because he or she is a worker.  Just as they do with gender, race, and age, it is clear that liberals and conservatives often make positive assumptions about people in one group and demonize or trivialize people in another group, all over irrelevant factors.  The truth of individualism renders this false, for it does not follow from these factors that one is rational or irrational, or morally good or evil.

Plenty of liberals will almost certainly not abandon these falsities, perhaps thinking that anyone who does not hate or oppose all employers and stand with all workers in all circumstances are not true egalitarians.  For the sake of "worker solidarity," they personally love and champion all employees no matter how philosophically irrational, self-sabotaging, incompetent, or shallow they are.  Solidarity with fools is never rational unless one only stands with them in their partial, selective rationality and righteousness or affirms their right to never be mistreated no matter their worldview or deeds.  Of course, they sometimes literally deny that employers would have human rights by virtue of being human as well.

There is very entrenched classism in many aspects of American society (and that of other countries), and there is no one direction that it goes in.  In a world full of irrationalists, many employers and employees will inevitably be the predominant members of their respective groups.  None of this means that all workplace exploitation should not end immediately, without any regard whatsoever for how it will hurt the profits or happiness or social advantages held by wealthy people who gained that wealth through oppression.  Workers just are not rational, morally good, incredible human individuals by being workers.

Elohim And Pagan Deities

When Judges 6:31 speaks of Baal, it uses Elohim, the same plural Hebrew word mistaken for "proof" of the Trinity in Genesis 1.  As if Genesis suggests anything about three divine persons that are supposedly different from each other and yet totally the same (a logical contradiction), and as if the Father could not have been talking to himself or angels instead of Christ, who is not the same as the Father anyway (Matthew 24:36), some Trinitarians hold that Elohim is obvious evidence or proof of their stance.  Even if it was evidence, it would not be proof, but it is neither.  There are many issues with the idea that Genesis 1 is Trinitarian, or any other part of the Bible.  With pagan deities, though, the sheer hypocrisy of the Elohim argument for Trinitarianism becomes apparent.

If the same plural Hebrew word is used of Baal, a singular false deity, then why would it be plural only when used for Yahweh?  Does Baal have multiple personality disorder like the evangelical notion of the Biblical God does?  To be consistent, Trinitarians who truly posit that Elohim refers to the conventional Trinity in Genesis 1--when the Bible never teaches this Trinity from Genesis 1 onward--would have to think that Baal is also a "three persons in one godhead" deity.  Of course they do not, because this is not integral to their Trinitarianism.  They need to believe that it must be this way for Yahweh in order to maintain their assumptions.  As long as they focus on something that does not even logically follow from the wording of Genesis 1:26 to begin with, they might not even bother to see that Elohim is used for other deities.

1 Samuel 5:7 refers to the Philistine Dagon as Elohim.  Is the Bible saying Dagon is a Trinity as well?  I have never heard a single person propose this, though Trinitarians, since their concept is not taught in the Bible, cling to non sequiturs when it comes specifically to Yahweh.  Again, Trinitarians assume that Elohim must mean something different with the Father than it does in other contexts.  More pagan entities are also called by the same word.  Baal, Dagon, and others are referenced using Elohim, and they are presented as singular beings.  No one could read verses like 1 Samuel 5:7 and think that Dagon must have three persons within himself without making assumptions, and ones that are not even hinted at as being true.

Likewise, no one would read of Yahweh in Genesis 1:1, 1:26, or elsewhere and ever think that God is three distinct persons in one, and yet not really three separate persons (Trinitarians are horrible logicians, at least in this regard!), unless they believed something on the basis of asinine epistemological faith.  More crucially, if this is what the Bible taught, that the real deity of reality has three minds within one mind and not in the sense of modalism, then the Bible would be incapable of being true when it comes to this.  Christianity would still have some valid components, such as by merely having an uncaused cause, but other parts would be literally impossible.  The Bible just does not teach any of this.  It neither teaches modalism nor the Trinitarianism in traditional distortions of Christianity.

Galatians 5: Hatred, Love, And Nuance

It is absolutely logically possible to hate and love something at once, like an addiction, a memory, a possession, or a person.  This is a fact separate from whether it is morally right to avoid hatred, but there is no contradiction in this.  Hating someone does not require that one also does not love them.  This refutes one basis for people claiming the Bible's commands to love, which start in the Old Testament's Mosaic Law that is supposedly unloving in its moral stances (Leviticus 19:18, Deuteronomy 6:5, and 10:19, reiterated again in the likes of Matthew 22:34-40 and Romans 13:8-10), exclude hating someone no matter what they believe or do or how one expresses or controls this attitude/emotion.  This is sheer stupidity.

Now, when Galatians 5:19-20 says hatred is among the acts or manifestations of the flesh (sin), it is not condemning all hatred.  This is not even particularly difficult to establish!  First, I will point out the example of another act of the flesh condemned here and how this is limited to a particular context rather than a universal prohibition, and then I will show how what follows in the very same chapter of Galatians already undermines the idea that all hatred is declared evil here, and afterward I will point out the many Biblical passages in favor of hatred on a selective basis.  In fact, it is not that Yahweh is hateful just because he is intolerant of immorality, as some might think.  Hatred for certain people is literally said to be a core part of his character.

As for the aforementioned analogous example, along with hatred, discord is mentioned in Galatians 5:20 as resulting from a sinful disposition.  Nevertheless, Jesus himself came to bring disunity between his followers and their own hostile family members (Matthew 10:34-37), with the Law he himself openly affirms (5:17-19, 15:1-20, 18:16, Mark 7:1-13) requiring that people be opposed to their own family members or anyone else who sins in certain ways (Deuteronomy 13:6-10).  Unity in anything but the truth could only be philosophically invalid to start with since it is erroneous and baseless: this is true by logical necessity independent of the Bible one way or another and is only rejected by shallow irrationalists.  If discord in Galatians 5:20 does not mean all discord, though, the same could already be true of hatred.

Furthermore, when Galatians 5:22 later lists love among the fruits of the Spirit, is it saying all forms and objects of love are good or obligatory?  Of course not!  To love sin is to love that which should not be done, and the Torah clarifies many things well ahead of the often vague New Testament (after all, almost all facets of Biblical morality were already elaborated upon earlier) regarding what is and is not sinful--and it is not what many so-called Christians and non-Christians think in their stupor of confusing hearsay and cultural norms for Christian ethics.  If by necessity not every kind of love is prescribed or encouraged in Galatians 5:22, then not every kind of hatred would have to be condemned slightly earlier in the text.  Even within the very same chapter, there is nothing that would suggest to a rationalistic reader (one who avoids assumptions) that all hatred, regardless of the motivation, expression, or who/what it is directed towards, is evil.

Obviously, other parts of the Bible already very explicitly say that God hates sinners and not just their sin, the latter of which can only exist because of a morally wayward being to begin with.  Sin on the level of concrete thoughts and actions does not merely exist apart from a conscious being that violates an obligation (that which should be done).  Leviticus 20:23, Deuteronomy 22:5, 25:13-16, Psalm 5:5-6, 11:5, Proverbs 3:32, 11:20, and so on say that God does hate specific people.  This does not mean he does not love them, and it is clarified elsewhere that he does and shows mercy because of it (John 3:16, 1 Timothy 2:3-6, 2 Peter 3:8-9), although love is not something he harbors for every person equally (Psalm 103:11).  This is based on their philosophical and behavioral decisions rather than on the unjust delusion of Calvinistic arbitrariness (beyond some of the earlier verses, see Acts 17:30 and Revelation 22:17).

Since righteousness is being in alignment with God's moral nature (which is immutable and devoid of evil according to Malachi 3:6 and James 1:17), hatred cannot possibly be universally, inherently sinful, and some Biblical verses go further to acknowledge this.  David exults in Psalm 139:21-22 about how he hates God's enemies.  Proverbs 29:27 says the righteous and wicked despise each other.  This is intrinsically erroneous on the part of the wicked, but righteous on the part of the truly upright.  Romans 12:9 says to abhor what is evil, and many people themselves are evil, with evil not even being capable of existing apart from a wicked mind (it is still not "nothing" as idiots like Saint Augustine suppose).  Ecclesiastes 3:8 says there is a time for hatred.  Hatred is not something that Galatians 5 or anywhere else in the Bible condemns without exception, and it is very apparent that it teaches hatred can be righteous.  It simply does not prescribe it as mandatory.

Movie Review--The Lazarus Effect

"I spent my whole life trying to make up for one mistake.  I did everything right.  And I still ended up in hell."

--Zoe, The Lazarus Effect

The type of movie that can be made on a very small budget without giving away its budgetary restraints if it is done right.  The Lazarus Effect does not ever look low budget, but it does not make the most of its cast, its premise, and the very weighty philosophical concepts it tries to tackle.  In more capable hands, what could have been a thoughtful exploration of consciousness, resurrection, the afterlife, and scientific experimentation on humans and animals would have avoided jumpscares, enhanced its characterization, and probably had one of its characters eventually realize how metaphysically false or epistemologically invalid many of the ideas asserted by the other characters are.  A longer runtime would have also been ideal for the subject matter and for deepening the characterization: The Lazarus Effect is not even 90 minutes long with credits!  When some of the small cast does not even get to have more than a few lines despite being in much of the movie, less than an hour and a half is not enough.

Production Values

Just a couple of truly great or thematically/cinematographically striking shots exist in the entire film, the best being when Zoe (Olivia Wilde) sits up on the experiment table after being resurrected.  Very telegraphed jumpscares and cliched events (doing what has been done before in cinema is not bas if it is carried out well, but the horror is not executed well here) from this point on spoil the promise that was built up.  Before and after her character's resurrection, Olivia Wilde has the central role in this story from seven years before her directorial debut with Don't Worry Darling.  However, she is wasted along with Evan Peters, Donald Glover, and the rest, some of whom have far superior roles in other horror entertainment, like Evan Peters with his early seasons of American Horror Story.  It is ironic in a happenstance prophetic sense that Donald Glover's character Niko is said to have made a "Millennium Falcon looking thing" when Glover went on to play Lando Calrissian in Solo less than five years later, though it is a shame to squander him in a role like that of Niko.  Suffering a worse fate in her characterization is Sarah Bolger.  She has little to do but react with her facial expressions and gestures.  This is, of course, the fault of the writing and plot rather than her fault as an actor, but what a waste the execution of almost everything is in this movie.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

At Berkeley University in California, a group of scientists test a serum that is intended to restore consciousness to the dead to extend the time that doctors can permanently resuscitate people without bringing about long-term mental or physical harm.  A dog used as a test subject comes back to life, though its bodily deformities have disappeared and neurological readings suggest abnormal activity in its nervous system.  Once the corporation funding the research is acquired by another company eager to take legal control of the serum, the team decides to reattempt the experiment with a new creature to provide evidence that they engineered this breakthrough substance, but a scientist named Zoe forgets to remove metal jewelry when handling immense amounts of electricity and is fatally shocked.  Her boyfriend next uses the serum on her out of desperation only for her to display telepathic and telekinetic abilities after her resurrection.

Intellectual Content

The "Lazarus" serum of the film, as is explained in the beginning, uses B-cell tumors to accelerate nerve fiber regrowth, with electrical charges activating the serum.  It is indeed logically posible for there to be a scientific way to resurrect someone despite the inherent metaphysical truth that consciousness and the body are not the same thing.  Either one brings the other into existence or something beyond them does.  Even on theism, God's mind still created and preserves matter and humanity, or at least started a chain of causality that led to them.  Both Zoe and her boyfriend, however, confuse consciousness for neurological phenomena that might or might not bring consciousness into existence or sustain it--this cannot be confirmed either way, though both are logically possible and consciousness and matter are metaphysically distinct either way, matter being nonphysical and matter being physical.  No one can grasp a thought or a perception, and sensory perceptions themselves do not necessarily even match with real physical stimuli (which cannot be proven to exist through the visual experiences most people take for granted as it is).  It is also logically possible for consciousness to exist without a physical shell, a conceptual truth that would not be possible if the mind is comprised of matter.  This does not mean that consciousness does or will exist independent of matter; it just means that the fact that consciousness, as opposed to metal or wood or a tree or any other physical thing, could hypothetically exist without matter.  The existence of consciousness is also absolutely certain when one avoids assumptions even if the external world was an illusion, for most sensory perceptions might be or could have been nothing but mental experiences connecting with no outside stimuli.

Aside from how every character in the movie ignores or misunderstands all of this, the Catholicism of Zoe is established through multiple scenes and was seemingly used to set up how Zoe went to what she thought was hell when she died, except that the hell she describes was reliving the worst day of one's life rather than anything having to directly do with just, temporary punishment for sin.  Catholicism is clearly not Biblical Christianity, just a legalistic, arbitrary set of traditions and assumptions, but even Catholic doctrine does not entail what The Lazarus Effect presents its hell as.  If hell was as Zoe describes, matching the worst day of a person's life, it would follow by necessity that someone whose worst day in existence was being viciously mistreated by others would be forced to experience anything from physical abuse to illicit discrimination to rape to the moments leading up to their murder; not only does the Bible never say this is what hell is like for anyone even as it gives sparse details about hell, but this would mean that hell could involve suffering from experiencing injustice over and over again, not suffering as a punishment for sin.  The contradiction of sin being a righteous, just punishment for sin is obvious, even if the other figures in this kind of hell might not be their own conscious, malicious beings at all, just figments of perception.  Of course, the hell of the Bible is not something humans inhabit forever either way, as they meet cosmic death of the soul (Matthew 10:28, Ezekiel 18:4) despite the realm itself existing perpetually (Matthew 18:8), created for "the devil and his angels" (Matthew 25:41) rather than the humans who bear God's image.

Conclusion

The Lazarus Effect does not live up to the potential its title suggests, and this much is clear after the first third of the film.  With philosophical aspects and a cast this strong, it is almost intentional when the rest of the movie becomes so needlessly predictable in its jumpscares and so tame with its horror imagery that neither the supernaturalism nor the science fiction is brought past superficial powers and the lights flickering on and off.  Embracing almost any of its elements in a rationalistic, artistically elevated way would have worked wonders for this movie, whether it was the scientific, phenomenological, or pseudo-religious parts that were leaned into (yes, consciousness is the soul, which is immaterial, making phenomenology pertain to supernaturalism; it is just that whether consciousness persists after biological death cannot be proven or disproven).  Leaning into little to nothing, though, is a certain way to damn a film to a status lower than it otherwise could have reached.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  Blood leaks out from within a metal locker in a brief scene.  Actually, there is very little violence in the entire runtime.

 2.  Profanity:  "Shit" is used repeatedly.

"I Will Come Back And Take You To Be With Me"

John 3:16, for all of its renown, is misunderstood horrendously by many people.  They think that it teaches that epistemological assumptions/faith are requirements for salvation and that the experience of the damned in hell is unending, when the Greek word for believe means commitment (a rational deity would never demand assumptions of anyone whether or not Christianity is true) and the verse clearly says that those who do not have eternal life, which is contingent for sinful humans on salvation, is to perish, to cease to exist.  John 14:2-3 is similar in a way.  It is fairly famous among Christians and perhaps philosophical outsiders (not that most Christians are anywhere near true knowledge of Biblical Christian philosophy!) and is still glaringly misunderstood.

This is where Jesus states that there are many rooms in his Father's house, adding that he will leave to prepare a place for his disciples, come back to them, and bring them to himself.  Jesus does not say "When you die, you will be with me, and then I will return"; he very clearly says that he will return and then, because of or at his coming, the disciples will be brought back to him, so that where he is, they will be also.  His return is what he says comes first.  This is consistent with what the Bible really teaches about the state of the dead before their resurrections.  The popular idea that anyone is in heaven or hell right now is thoroughly unbiblical.

Jesus cannot reunite the disciples with himself or bring other Christians to him upon his return if they immediately go to be with him after death, unless it is immediate only in the sense that whatever potentially enormous amount of time has passed seems like a moment to a nonexistent or unconscious being.  This is exactly what the dead are described as--nonexistent or unconscious on the level of the mind (Ecclesiastes 9:5-10, Job 3:11-19, Psalm 6:5, 88:10-12).  People sleep in death either in a literal sense or in the sense of nonexistence (Daniel 12:2), of oblivion of conscious experience (again, see Psalm 88:10-12).

The righteous or saved dead are restored to bodily life and conscious perception at their resurrection, that of the righteous being preceded by a trumpet (1 Corinthians 15:50-55, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18) at the return of Christ (Revelation 20:4-6).  This is the first resurrection and is received by only those who are already righteous or restored to Yahweh through repentance and commitment.  The rest of the dead are resurrected after a reign of Christ alongside the righteous, and theirs, unless there is some possible final offer of salvation extended which they accept, is the second death (Revelation 20:11-15).  No one is in hell until this point, and before the first resurrection, there is no one in heaven.

No one went to heaven before Christ came to Earth (John 3:13).  Until the resurrection, the dead sleep, as Paul (see 1 Corinthians 15 and 1 Thessalonians 4 again), Jesus (Mark 5:35-40, John 11:11-15), Job (see Job 3 again), and Daniel (Daniel 12:2) say, with Ecclesiastes saying that there is no emotion, desire, knowledge, or perception in Sheol because no one experiences anything at all (Ecclesiastes 9:5-10).  Combined, these texts teach that there is unconsciousness if the soul exists, though it might not exist whatsoever, between death and the resurrection.  Upon the return of Jesus, the righteous or repentant will begin their eternal life and are raised in imperishable bodies (1 Corinthians 15:52-53).

Hiding The Truth From Others

Sometimes, in desperation, anxiety, or terror, a person might want to hide some secret part of themself or their life from someone they care about very personally.  Whatever the thing is might vary.  It might not actually be something that is as terrible or penetrating as it seems to be in the moments it is appealing to hide it.  The intention is that in sheltering someone from the truth, their life will be easier, and they will perhaps be oblivious to the supposedly dreadful secret that is expected to bring them suffering.

The motivation could be one of affection, a desire to spare someone else from as much pain as they can be shielded from.  Even if the secret coming to light is merely pushed back, delaying its discovery might be preferable to someone over telling it sooner to a person they love.  As preferred as it might be, this can not only be very contrary to rationalism as people act like their desires could ever possibly triumph over the truth, but it only traps their own pain without catharsis and, if the other person ever finds out, could be much more difficult for others if or when they discover the secret.

In hopes of avoiding heartbreak, someone might withhold sharing some struggle or truth that they fear could wreak havoc on their relationships.  However, keeping such secrets could be even more devastating when the truth comes out.  Openness and directness in communication--while communicating logical truths or introspective states that are not misunderstood by the speaker--is the only way to avoid this kind of even more distressing revelation.  Some communication can be painful, but it can avert a far deeper, more lasting pain.

There is nothing irrational in wanting to abate or avoid someone else's pain in this manner.  There is nothing irrational about waiting for the ideal time to spring the information.  As for the idea that hiding the truth will always or probably bring nothing but peace, and an illusionary kind of peace at that, this is both false and destructive.  It is erroneous regardless of its impact on people, and still it is not an error without the potential to poison relationships or lead someone to regret not being fully open and honest the moment they had the urge to keep something to themself.

Racist Ideas About Beauty

It is absolutely not racist to be naturally sexually attracted to people of a specific skin color, exclusively or for the most part.  This is true for the same reason that it is not sexist for people to just be heterosexual.  Perhaps someone is attracted more or less to people of a particular race, their own or another, and there is nothing about this that requires them to stereotype people or treat them differently in any other way.  Anyone uncomfortable with this is uncomfortable with an amoral part of reality since involuntary feelings or preferences cannot be immoral.

For people who do have a "type" they are frequently or more often physically attracted to, it still does not follow that they are only attracted to people with a certain skin color any more than a height preference is not by necessity something they would never look past.  It would still not be problematic if they were only attracted to one racial group or another.  Preferences are just not automatically going to be the only traits someone looks for in the body of their partner, and they are absolutely free by Biblical standards to admire other bodies of a similar or different "type."

Sexual attraction of a physical, relational, or intellectual kind is of course not the most important part of a dating relationship.  Pursuit of this primarily is to reductionistically focus on secondary or irrelevant things rather than someone's worldview and personality, the real individual within the body, when choosing a romantic/sexual partner.  Then there is the fact that neither the body in any state of exposure nor beauty of the body is sexual no matter what feelings it subjectively elicits.

Sexual attraction is a personal feeling that has nothing to necessarily do with whether something is sexual, and it also, again, has nothing to necessarily do with whether the recipient of the attraction belongs to a certain racial group.  Alongside stereotypes of someone's personality, worldview, or talents based upon their race, though, there might still be fallacious ideas about how one race is generally or universally more beautiful than another, as if beauty is not possessed in varying degrees by individuals regardless of their race.

No one is aesthetically bland because they are white or physically repulsive because they are black.  No one has greater or lesser physical features because of their skin color or ethnic background, and not only are these ideas false and always just assumed by fools, but they can be incredibly damaging, no less damaging than sexist ideas about beauty (such as that women are exclusively or mostly beautiful and men do not deserve broad sexual attraction from women).  However, in opposition to these delusions, one cannot be rational while objecting to happenstance aesthetic preferences for a certain partner that are not rooted in actual racism.

Mastery Over Language

Mastery over language is only the illusion of rationality if there is not genuinely rationalistic thinking behind it, which is in turn only secured when thought is aligned with the necessary truths of logic.  Formal or unfamiliar words are no indicator in themselves that someone is rational.  Their espoused beliefs, as well as why they believe them (epistemology is of course part of belief, but it underpins the acceptance of truths themselves), are what determine if someone is rational.  As for the attainability of this, every person is already relying on the necessary truths of logic metaphysically and epistemologically, though they might not know this, and thus all a person has to do is give up assumptions and realize what they are already standing on.

It is far more important to know the laws of logic than it is to know the random vocal sounds or written symbols that people use to refer to things like scientific correlations, thoughts, and reason itself.  Words are at most in themselves a pragmatic means to the end of communication, as subjectively enamoring as they could be and as introspectively stimulating they can be--not because the construct of language is necessary to discover or understand logical truths or one's mental states, but because it can help people focus on things they already know (or could know if they tried).  While a rationalist can have both unrelenting rationality and adeptness with words, they do not hold the former because of the latter.

Not only can a person seem articulate without being rational on any level, but someone can be perfectly rational for years and years without being or becoming a master/mistress of language.  Verbal or written communication is a skill, and although there are linguistic incompetencies that someone might only repeatedly slip into without acknowledging their lack of skill because of irrationality, there is nothing about being a total rationalist for any amount of time that means one would develop linguistic talents.  Struggling with precision even as one does not use wrong words could last for a lifetime.  It still remains possible for mastery of language to be acquired over time with intentionality.

Even if a person starts from a point of communicative troubles, it is indeed logically possible to become incredibly precise with one's words in written or verbal form, both spontaneously and with forethought.  Should someone struggle with articulating what they know to be true by necessity because of reason, though, they have held to no error, shirked from no logical truth, and done nothing immoral.  Formal, precise words are hollow on their own.  Deep knowledge of and love of reason do not depend on linguistic familiarity or fluency.  When someone happens to feel like they are irrational because they have difficulty in communicating abstract necessary truths or lesser things, they can rest in the fact that their language skills are often irrelevant to the matter.

Spending One's Money

Is there a way in which one should spend one's money, as opposed to just things which one should not spend money on because they are evil by default?  This is separate but related to issues like whether one is morally permitted to buy from corrupt companies, as it is broader.  In the latter, the tension arises between the irrational or evil worldview/actions of a company, perhaps an entrenched corporation with enormous profits, a person's willingness to buy from that company, and whether it is actually permissible or wicked to do such a thing since one would be giving them money.  The former still pertains to those who are not buying from a selfish company, no matter their economic status.

Short of literally paying someone to commit sins, such as kidnapping, adultery, murder, rape, slander, or racism, there is not any particular thing which a person should not spend money on in itself.  Not all ways to misuse money involve paying one person to mistreat another, though.  The ethics of spending one's money would encompass far more than just whether one is giving money to someone else with the intention of motivating them to do something unjust, egoistic, morally apathetic, or generally irrational.  Devoting financial resources to things of relatively low significance or how much one spends on non-necessities would also need to be considered--not that what logically follows about this from Biblical philosophical tenets is especially restricting.

One's own status as a human being with all of the rights and obligations of a human does ground a level of respect for oneself that needs to be embraced.  Wholly respecting and loving oneself as just as much of a bearer of God's image as others would exclude the reckless spending of money on gratuitous or frivolous things when one's basic survival needs are not being consistently met, or at least when there is no evidence that one will be able to maintain these needs in the immediate future.  Someone who squanders money on things that do nothing to promote their ultimate wellbeing as they neglect their legitimate needs of the body or mind would be, in a different sense, morally misusing their money.

Poverty is certainly another relevant factor, as a person who barely has the money to survive would be morally negligent to prioritize gratuitous things over that which preserves their own life as a human being (like water or food, regardless of its nutritional value), but this is not the same as it being sinful to spend money on amoral pleasures after someone has taken care of their basic needs for a time, even if it means they will not be actively saving as much money (or they will not be able to save at all).  There is nothing irrational or Biblically immoral about taking advantage of opportunities to spend money on things that are not morally obligatory or pragmatically needed, but that are still very comforting or enjoyable.

After all, it is not as if a few dollars that go to a restaurant or to entertainment, or even several times that amount, will actually lift everyone out of poverty in itself if only they do not spend it.  Those who are unlikely to climb out of poverty until their society is restructured are not morally ineligible to enjoy or pursue things that bring them joy or ease the difficulties of life under an economic system like American capitalism.  Sometimes, in cases of severe emotionalistic negligence, poverty or looser monetary spending could indeed come about because of moral failings, but spending money on helpful, comforting, or exciting things that one does not need is in no way intrinsically evil thing.

Game Review--Dying Light: Definitive Edition (Switch)

"Chaos is the one true order of things.  To pretend otherwise is the sheerest folly."

--Rais, Dying Light

The fictional Middle-Eastern country of Harran is the combat and acrobatics paradise of Dying Light, a zombie game that can easily span 70+ hours and that offers a deep system of gameplay mechanics.  The Following, included as part of the Platinum Edition, easily adds an additional 20-30+ hours for completionists in the form of an additional (formerly DLC) story about a religious cult that has found a means of immunity to the Harran virus even after getting bitten.  Featuring some of the best gameplay in the zombie and parkour subgenres, Dying Light soars incredibly high at its best, only hindered by a basic main story (in that it does little beyond the standard or easy zombie plot threads) and a presentation of moral relativism that only condemns it for non sequitur reasons.

Production Values

Sometimes, the faces and character models as a whole are rather detailed for a Switch port.  Certain characters like Jade and Rais benefit from this the most.  The environment of Harran is massive and has enough diversity between its different locations and the day-night cycle to ensure that Dying Light is not hostage to an open world with limited design, with the loading times to accelerate the upcoming day or night when using a sleeping area being almost immediate.  Whether slamming a melee weapon into an undead attacker or leaping and climbing buildings in a smooth series of movements, the game tends to maintain a strong aesthetic with relatively high quality graphics and performance.  This is amplified by intervals of natural phenomena like rain and fog that can affect the gameplay--one example is that rain can prime zombies to be hit with electrified weapons.  Great voice acting all the way through, including in the DLC, reinforces the production values even more.  Not every character gets developed despite the many hours of main and side quests, but that is not the fault of the voice cast. 

Gameplay

What Dying Light does right, it does exceptionally well, chiefly its zombie fighting and environmental traversal respectively.  After a point in the primary story, human enemies become more commonplace, but it is the zombies and the risks of using the always breakable melee weapons or guns that can attract more of them with noise that adds deeper urgency to the combat (though the bow sidesteps both of these problems and you can even retrieve arrows that have been shot).  You come to buy and craft far more than just enhanced pipes, with the arsenal expanding to bows and arrows, various firearms, and specialty melee weapons of increasingly high damage outputs.  As the separate combat and parkour experience bars level up, more durability and abilities become available as well.  Eventually, for instance, playable character Kyle Crane can smear corpse blood on his body to conceal himself from zombies, which wears off faster with quicker movements but can be replenished again and again.

This can be used to slaughter masses of undead quietly one by one or to secure time for an escape.  Other things like the capacity to craft shields can be unlocked.  These abilities help you survive much more easily against the droves of sometimes slow zombies during the day; at night, the experience points earned for acrobatics and combat are doubled outside of safe zones marked by UV light, and although every upgrade helps, the zombies are more aggressive--and Night Hunters, patrolling enemies that can chase you relentlessly to a safe zone, lurk.  Death at night does not forfeit XP as it does during the same, the exception being death inside daylight challenges.  Aside from the multitude of missions and challenges in the base game, the Definitive Edition includes Hellraid levels accessed through an arcade machine at the Tower, where a medieval-esque setting with its own themed weapons can be found free of the day and night system.  Hellraid bounties can also unlock weapon blueprints for the rest of the game.  

Then there is The Following DLC, a tale of Kyle departing from his allies to investigate a cult supposedly immune to the virus.  Here, you can actually decrease the amount of Night Hunters by optionally destroying Volatile Hives scattered around the enormous map: however, they are occupied by the Night Hunters during the day, so night attacks are ideal.  Without the introduction of the upgradeable buggy, traversing this new location would take an incredible amount of time: not only is the map very large, but it has very few buildings, so the grappling hook is not anywhere near as useful.  The streets and architecture of Harran are replaced by mostly open roads and fields.  A plethora of zombies are there to be run over by the initially basic vehicle that you can summon from any safe area, but it can eventually be equipped with enhancements like a reinforced exterior, a flamethrower, an electric barrier that shocks every zombie striking your car, or temporary UV lights to create a mobile safe zone at night.  Yes, Dying Light brings more unlockables in this DLC.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

Kyle Crane, an agent of the Global Relief Effort, is dropped into the country of Harran after a virus devastates the people trapped inside.  His mission is to find someone named Suleiman who he is told has information on the viral structure that can be used to fashion a cure.  Turning people into zombies once bitten, the Harran virus is not all that Crane faces--human troublemakers under the command of warlord Rais practice a host of cruel, selfish, and emotionalistic acts for the sake of power.  Kyle infiltrates a benevolent local group situated at what is called the Tower to help survivors and gain more information about what is occurring.

Intellectual Content

The main human antagonist--for the "real Harran virus," as Kyle calls them, would be evil, stupid people instead of zombies--is Rais, who plans on making Jade, a renowned athlete before the virus, fight to her death against zombies, cuts a hand off of one of his subordinates for stealing from him, lies to Crane about a deal to give the latter life-saving Antizin (an antiviral drug), and often espouses fallacious, relativistic, egoistic philosophy, sometimes bordering on outright misogyny as well.  A former follower of his even says that eating a human eyeball is required to join him.  Pretending that it is enlightened and grand to disregard all moral notions except for one's own preferences (of course, one cannot make reason false, an impossible thing in itself, by wishing it or nullify moral obligations because it is inconvenient), Rais says he and Crane are in a philosophical war, something Kyle is himself too stupid to understand since he denies it.

An irony of the brutality Rais is seen engaging in on one occasion is that, though he claims that it is weak or invalid to pursue anything less than what is ultimately egoistic relativism, he punishes the aforementioned person for theft with the loss of their hand, a cultural norm in the Middle-East derived at least in part from Surah 5:38 of the Quran, which says to cut off the hand of a male or female thief.  It is untrue that believing or doing something another person happens to believe or do makes one irrational, unoriginal, or weak, but Rais would hold otherwise, and yet he still practices something that he might only have thought of due to religious and cultural influences.  He is a fool indeed, just not merely because he is a danger to the protagonists.  His philosophy is inherently irrationalistic and, beyond this, he is a seeming hypocrite even when it comes to living it out.

Conclusion

Masterfully combining climbing, escape, and combat mechanics as the foundation of perhaps the greatest zombie gaming franchise of all time, Dying Light gets so much right that its at times lackluster storytelling execution and somewhat halfhearted, wildly philosophically incomplete exploration of egoism and moral relativism do not capsize it.  Between the base single player content and The Following DLC, one could also easily play for 100 hours or more, all on a handheld system thanks to the Switch.  These hours are not artificially multiplied or devoid of superb gameplay and landscapes.  More than with many other games, the mechanics and digital landscapes are united excellently.  

Content:

 1.  Violence:  From decapitations with bladed weapons to the removal of limbs and explosions of blood, this is a distinctly violent game.

 2.  Profanity:  Words like "fuck," "bastard," and "bitch" are used.

For Yourself Or The Company

Unless you are genuine friends with your employer or manager or have a rational, non-egoistic employer--a great rarity in certain countries--you will likely find all of your efforts invested into your company are overlooked or under-rewarded the moment there is relational friction, misunderstanding, or lesser financial success.  It is possible for employers and their employees to be actual friends.  Being an employer or manager does not make someone irrational or evil.  But if you ever have to choose between a personal need/priority and the benefit of the company, there is no reason to ever choose the latter in many cases unless there is some other personal reward to make up for it.

It cannot be selfish to seek or do any permissible thing, even if it is for oneself and not for another person or an organization of any kind.  The only requirements are that it is not evil or otherwise irrational.  Working for pay cannot be problematic.  What else are workers supposed to exchange their effort and productivity for?  An employer might pretend like there is some other necessary reason why someone deserves a job, but there is no additional component required.  People, unless they happen to fortunately enjoy what they do or unfortunately bow to social conditioning, work to survive and secure improvements to their life through money, and that is all that they need for plenty of jobs.

Employers overlook this in enough cases for it to be normalized. Since most people are non-rationalists, however, it is not only one's employers that are more likely than not to be driven by assumptions and preferences, but also one's fellow workers.  The epistemological divide between other minds, if they even exist (and I cannot know which logical possibility is true), bars one from knowing if they will betray one in an unjust way--yes, some betrayal is good and obligatory if morality exists (turning against immoral allies cannot be immoral)!  Caution with who is told about legitimate grievances, as opposed to invalid ideas like that all employees are oppressed just by not being employers, is needed.

Moreover, caution is needed in what is conveyed to them.  It is ideal to do what is best for oneself at all times as long as one is not neglecting reason or morality.  Although other employees at specific workplaces might be under the same yoke that you are, out of emotionalistic/irrationalistic folly or the hope of gaining from it, they might intentionally put a target on you.  In a non-egoistic way, do what is best for oneself and not for the company, an organization that could not exist without working people even if it tramples on their moral rights.  There is no Biblical obligation to destroy yourself for a company.

There are many ways people can sacrifice their moral standing, their mental or physical health, their joy, and their freedom for the sake of a job that will never reward them enough to justify anything more than the bare minimum.  It is not irrational or evil to sacrifice the success of a job for the sake of personal flourishing as long as there is nothing problematic about the exact way in which it is done.  Each person can work to better their own life rather than to better the popularity or financial returns of a distant, abusive, or incompetent employer or manager.  Unless they are a rationalist (other than young children and the mentally disabled), no person is worth such devotion.

Foreshadowing In Stephen King's Revival

Stephen King's Revival is a very slow-burn story for the majority of its pages, following Jamie Morton from childhood to his sixties, but as early as the very first of these pages, there is already a great deal of foreshadowing.  In the interconnected web of Stephen King stories, Lovecraftian metaphysics and horror surface more than once.  It is one such tale.  Revival builds up to a far greater type of Lovecraftian horror than almost any other story possesses because it explored the concept of an afterlife where eldritch beings--not beyond the necessary truths of logical axioms no matter what Jamie and King imply but very alien to humans--supposedly have people enslaved or tormented forever.  It is not just about a Cthulhu-like entity awakening and triggering an apocalyptic event.

Much of the book echoes various aspects of the highly existential ending long before it arrives.  There are all sorts of references to ants throughout the novel, for one thing.  How does this relate to the ending?  Using ordinary lightning and "secret electricity" discovered by a former pastor named Charles Jacobs, something he used to heal people of various ailments, Jamie and the ex-clergyman revive a woman to ask what awaits people after they die.  They are shown a hellscape called the Null by a malevolent presence called Mother, described as a dimension where ant-like creatures serve Mother and Great Ones implied to be like her, humans in turn serving as their slaves.  According to Mother, there is no death, no light, and no rest in this place where lights of foreign intensity swirl above and Mother and other eldritch beings observe.

At worst, the Null is only for every human to experience after death in just one of the worlds in King's multiverse, and that is if Jamie's assumption that everyone comes here is true--it could be no one at all or only the people who contacted the secret electricity.  At best, it is an illusion projected by Mother in the same way Pennywise can exploit the fears of individual people by telepathically altering their sensory perceptions.  Revival mentions locations like Joyland and Jerusalem's Lot from other Stephen King stories, and some of his other stories have afterlives that are very different from that of the Null, so there are either different afterlives for various people or the Null is an illusion crafted to terrify two aging men.  In either case, Revival foreshadows this ostensible afterlife of cosmic horror rather well.

Humans are like ants in their holes, Jamie says in the opening, helpless before the greater forces that exert their power over people (what these forces are is not elaborated upon until the ending).  Along with the apostate pastor Charles Jacobs, who was only a Christian on the basis of assumptions before gravitating towards non-religious assumptions to replace them, Jamie eventually sees a dimension where humanoid ants sometimes crawl on their legs and sometimes stand upright, biting at humans who stumble in the lengthy march of what is fallaciously thought by Jaime to be all of the human dead.  He considers if this afterlife realm is/contains an anthill where people are enslaved and then consumed.

Ants and other things related to this vision come up again and again between these two points in the novel.  Once Jacobs cures Jamie of his drug addiction with the secret electricity he has found access to, Jamie sporadically experiences strange but usually harmless periods of what appear to be distant telepathic mind control.  On one occasion, he wakes up naked other than a sock and is lightly jabbing at his arm with a fork.  Also after receiving his cure from Jacobs, when he sleeps, he sometimes has a dream where large ants crawl out of a birthday cake while corpse-looking versions of family members stand nearby.  Each of these things foreshadows some aspect of the Null or at least in the first case happens to parallel it.

The human souls have replacement bodies in this so-called afterlife that Jamie and Charles see, and the people are naked.  In this context, their nudity is not about comfort or sensuality or autonomy, but it does serve as an amplifier of their vulnerability to the assaults of their ant-like tormentors.  The ants Jamie sees in his nightmares are, like the rest of these dreams, tied to the secret electricity, which is itself tied to the Null where the universal power greater than even the secret electricity is seen.  Though they or course hint at the "ant-things" of the Null, the ants from the nightmare are described as large versions of ants from Earth.  The bodies in the dreams foreshadow how, according to Jamie, all of the dead wind up in the Null to perhaps suffer eternally.  One of Jamie's friends as an adult (Hugh) also has prismatic visions that include seeing other people as if they are giant ants, a side effect of his own exposure to the secret electricity when he was healed of a condition.

Now, it is not the ant-creatures themselves in particular that make the Null Lovecraftian, but the general nature of the Null, the atmosphere it has in the story, and Mother and the Great Ones who reside there in physical forms (at least Mother has what looks like a body when she reaches a leg down).  Together, they contribute to a seeming afterlife that is a universalist, non-theological hell according to what Jamie assumes even though this cannot be true in light of other novels, despite how he never is said to have assigned those exact words to it.  With the sporadic hints from Charles that he wants to use the secret electricity to uncover the afterlife and all of the repeated ant imagery and more, one of the most oppressively cosmic horror twists of all storytelling is telegraphed in part from the beginning, no matter if this was only noticed afterward.

People Who "Need" Analogies

All things have relationships of similarity or dissimilarity with all other things.  Reason is what it is, intrinsically true and immutable, and thus it is different from the laws of nature that only exist if there is a world of matter.  Even then, the laws of physics could have been wildly different.  The laws of logic could not have been any other way because they are true in themselves and transcend all else.  This is a dissimilarity between logic and scientific laws even though both would be a part of reality and are governed by reason, which are similarities between them.

There are many people who will or would likely never pinpoint a great many demonstrable truths without prompting or without such analogies and distinctions.  With analogies, a partial or largely shared characteristic between two things is used to either express admiration for a truth or as a way to become more familiar with one thing or the other.  The similarities and differences between various separate concepts or issues, for them, are things they feel dependent on to lead them onward, and they might think analogies are necessary for knowledge or are far more important than they are.

Appreciating or in certain cases looking to analogies for clarification is not irrational, given that the person is not making any assumptions and is aligned with/submitted to reason the entire time.  People who think they need analogies instead of pure necessary truths or direct concepts are unintelligent and in the wrong, though.  They have made themselves "dependent" upon secondary things when they could always look straight to reason and then discover or savor analogies from the foundation of actual prior knowledge instead trying to hopelessly go about things the other way.  Such people are not competent philosophers and they are certainly not even trying hard enough.

Any truth about analogies is after all only knowable in light of reason and not because of the inverse.  Logical axioms are self-evident because they are true by necessity.  From them, other necessary truths follow, though these additional strictly logical truths are not evident in themselves, only in light of axioms.  Anyone can realize or cling to these because even on the level of epistemology, there is no true barrier to discovering that which is inherently true and thus self-evident.  Analogies can only be true because reason dictates it, so purposefully going to analogies instead of direct logical truths about the nature of a thing is a backwards, invalid approach to reality.

Irrational people of course might be deeply hurt or offended by these truths.  It is not as if they even know or are devoted to logical axioms, or else they would not be irrationalists, but rationalists.  The wonderful and liberating truth is that their psychological status is irrelevant.  Reality is not about them; it is about reason, God, whatever moral obligations exist, the external world, and the nature of every other truth or being that is contingent upon separate things.  Analogies can be true.  Analogies can be useful for personal reflection or for conversation.  Reality is still far more metaphysically foundational and epistemologically accessible than analogies all the same.

A Perfect Marriage

A perfect or near-perfect marriage is the only one ever worth exchanging singleness for.  While single, there might be great loneliness for certain people, but the same could be true in a marriage of mismatched spouses.  While single, there might be moments of boredom in the absence of a romantic partnership, but boredom could also grip people who are married if they choose poorly or allow their marriage to descend into disarray.  The only inherent difference between being single or married is the relationship status itself.  Every emotion, good or bad, could be experienced in either context.

Happiness, fear, isolation, fulfillment, loneliness, and more are not tied to whether one is single, dating, or married.  In fact, no matter how bleak singleness seems to some, it is always the freer, more life-permitting condition out of the possibilities unless a marriage partner has a flawless or almost flawless worldview, total honesty, and genuine, holistic commitment.  Any sort of attachment to fallacies, emotionalism, or apathy always hurts a relationship, and of course one could not endure these kinds of trials of one is single.

Someone could be so desperate to find a romantic relationship that they fail to do all that they could have to have ensured an ideal marriage to begin with.  It is a tragedy that being single is often regarded as a curse to be thrown aside at the first opportunity.  What a destructive approach to what could be a lifelong connection of bliss!  Besides being irrational in itself to settle for a non-rationalist or aimless romantic partner, in dating or marriage, such a course of action does no favors to the health of a marriage--the health that will have a direct impact on their lives as long as the marital bond persists.

To be single is to be free from whatever problems a marriage might bring; to be married is to be free from whatever problems singleness might bring.  Nonetheless, being single is clearly the less restricting option compared to a confining or abusive or merely pointless marriage.  A romantic relationship characterized by philosophical delusion, halfhearted attachment, or delayed transparency is not only based on an inferior foundation, but it is also poised for absolute, swift failure or for a drawn-out, disheartening decay.  Truly, if perfection is not the goal and if the partners are not rationalists who actually make no assumptions about perfection or anything else, there is nothing worth pursuing about marriage.

It is often regarded as a delusion to seek after perfection in things of actual substance, like worldview and relationships.  It is really the other way around.  Irrationalistic and anti-pragmatic at the same time, striving for anything less makes someone a fool for ever having given up their singleness.  A subpar marriage or even dating relationship is a special kind of hell in this life, one that only ends with improved maturity on one or both parts or when the relationship is dissolved altogether.  Since few are rationalists, almost no one truly wants or understands what must actually be done to become prepared for marriage.  It takes so much more than wanting to have sex or hoping to have a roommate.