Water And Life

Life on Earth is said to have originated as organic molecules in the sea and evolved into more complex manifestations from there, eventually coming to also dwell on land, and even Genesis 1:20-25 describes God as creating water-based life before the animals of the surface.  Now, it is not as if evolution and theism contradict each other: theistic evolution entails both evolution and either an initial act of divine biological creation or the divine manipulation of life's trajectory after abiogenesis.  Moreover, there is an uncaused cause no matter the exact mechanism that brought life into being, for otherwise nothing that is contingent or chronologically finite could have ever come into existence [1], including the universe in which abiogenesis and evolution would have occured.

Many people think of mere theism and evolution as incompatible when it is only certain kinds of theism and certain kinds of evolution that are exclusive.  For instance, of course atheistic evolution contradicts theism.  In evangelical or secular circles, one might still encounter the belief in the concept that all versions of the two are inherently opposed.  Each of these respective factions cites inferential or hearsay evidence filtered through subjective persuasion that falls short of logical proof anyway, while often seeming to believe that this evidence is somehow the same as "proof" all along.  This post will explore a water-related example of how various scientific correlations do not on their own suggest non-theistic evolution (which would still require theism for there to be an initial cosmos at all) or direct divine creation of life.

Take the dependence of creatures such as humans and horses on water, which the first life on this planet could have hypothetically been formed in.  If living things evolved without any divine guidance, then they could only survive using the materials available to them, and thus they would have by necessity adapted to or been constantly dependent on whatever physical environment was already there.  Water is present in large quantities on Earth.  Some creatures, like roaches or tardigrades or whales, might have a somewhat different relationship to water than humans, so that they can survive for longer without it or live directly inside it; life on Earth would be dependent on water from its beginnings until now all the same.  In this context, this would be true because living organisms evolved in contact with water.

If, on the contrary, living things need water because God created them this way, perhaps creating both simultaneously so that there is a biological dependence and fulfillment of that need from the start, then there is still a reliance on water by creatures like humans or deer or wolves.  The only difference about the relationship between water and life, if this is true, would be its causal origin and tangential things related to it.  However, the need of living things for water is present in either this kind of scenario or the aforementioned alternative.  Thus, the connection between water and life is neither evidence nor logical proof for either non-theistic evolution or direct biological creationism.  Leaving theistic evolution aside once again, none of this can on its own point towards any one of the two predominant general philosophies one might hear presented as the only two options.

At least one of these is true and the other is false, although theistic evolution is always a third possibility.  As if scientific paradigms and broad religious frameworks are not already unprovable given human limitations--the verifiable, basic existence of an uncaused cause is a logical necessity that does not require that any religion is actually true--something like the observed connection between biological life and the water in its environment is ultimately compatible with either of these two origins.  Yet, it is the kind of thing a non-theistic evolutionist might think is confirmation of how nature does not need a divine initiation of life, even as a direct creationist would likely think this is proof of a divine designer's intentionality.

Something compatible with two different philosophies does not point to either on its own, and it could not possibly allow for the absolute certainty some treat scientific matters as having one way or another.  No scientific matter can ever grant this except on the level that one can know one is experiencing particular natural phenomena, without even having the ability to shed one's sensory perspective to see if the world and extended universe really are the way they appear.  It is impossible to perceive them from outside of this subjective vantage point and thus impossible to know if they really are as they seem.  With something like the relationship between water and biology on Earth, the subjective observations also do not even provide evidence for anything except the relationship in question.  Grander metaphysics cannot be known from this because multiple causal starting points are possible.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-uncaused-cause.html

How The Bible Directly And Indirectly Addresses Moral Issues

Even if the Bible does not explicitly mention all of the major ramifications of its moral tenets--and sometimes it does--it logically would follow that certain things are in fact illuminated within the context of Biblical ethics whether the text specifically says so or not.  For instance, with the Bible using the particular example of an engaged woman being raped in Deuteronomy 22:25-27's capital punishment law, it would absolutely not follow that it is teaching that the rape of unengaged/unmarried women, men of any marital status, or children is not sinful or that the perpetrators in other situations, regardless of motivation or gender, do not also deserve death.  Not only does it not follow and is nothing said to teach this, but it would be inconsistent with what the Bible already says: the gender equality of Genesis 1:26-27 and the very verse in the Deuteronomy passage saying that rape is like murder, which always receives the death penalty (Exodus 21:12), would mean that all rape is like murder.  The comparison would not and could not only apply to an engaged woman raped by a man!

Another favorite example of mine is that what the Bible says about alcohol use would be the case wherever drug use parallels it.  Mosaic Law and much of the New Testament does not bring up substances like marijuana or other drugs.  Nevertheless, Deuteronomy 21:20 and Ephesians 5:18, for instance, address drunkenness, and hedonistic or self-destructive drug usage would be equivalent since alcohol and drugs are mind-altering substances.  One could not be permissible unless used for intentional intoxication (alcohol) if using the other is universally immoral except perhaps in strictly medical contexts.  Drugs are simply far more varied in forms, effects, and applications than alcohol, but wherever the exact overlap is present, the Biblical stance would obviously be that the two are morally equivalent when not misused.  If a drug could be used without getting high, then the ethics of its use would be the same as with alcohol.

By saying not to add to its commands in Deuteronomy 4:2, the Bible also provides all it needs to about a vast number of things.  One might hear of people agonizing over how the Bible does not mention specific activities that they are interested in and they misunderstand this silence for Biblical uncertainty.  One example is how conservative Christians might act like there is genuine conceptual ambiguity about whether Biblical ethics allows people to kiss outside of marriage!  It never mentions kissing being sinful or says anything from which it follows by necessity that kissing someone outside of dating or being married to them is sinful.  It is not condemned directly or indirectly, so it cannot be anything other than Biblically permissible!  For a more controversial example (and I love the discomfort many people have with this), the Bible does not need to talk about flirtation to indicate that according to its standards, flirtation is absolutely nonsinful in itself, no matter the marital status of anyone involved, since extramarital flirtation is not inherently adulterous and can be done with wildly varying intentions.  However, without mentioning the issue, the Bible has by what it says and does not say already clarified the matter in full as far as the Christian worldview goes.

For a category more important than most by far, the Bible clarifies a lot about issues like torture without using the word and providing a detailed singular list of all of the prohibited forms and contexts of torture.  In prescribing financial damages for theft of things other than people, which specifically receives execution (Exodus 21:16, Deuteronomy 24:7), anything from the amputation of hands (Surah 5:38 in the Quran), capital punishment (as with Roman crucifixion and English hanging), or anything more severe than paying at a fixed ratio is clarified as sinful according to Christianity.  The thief who cannot repay works their debt away, to be released after seven years no matter the outstanding amount (Exodus 21:2, Deuteronomy 15:12-15), and he or she goes free if they are abused (Exodus 21:26-27).  In saying that the corpse of an executed man or woman can be displayed for less than 24 hours (Deuteronomy 21:22-23), the Torah is excluding forms of cruel and Biblically unjust punishment like nailing a loving person to a cross to suffer as long as they can as with, again, Roman crucifixion.

The Bible says a great deal not just with direct words, but by its silence combined with what it does state, and logical necessity requires that some unmentioned ideas would have to be the case if Biblical premises are.  This is not fucking difficult to grasp unless someone is used to looking to ecclesiological tradition, conscience, or approval from random people and making assumptions or refusing to let reason reveal what does and does not follow from a specific thing.  Whether or not the Bible is true, nothing I have said here misrepresents it, and yet these and other matters would enrage or sadden plenty of Christians.  What thorough imbeciles claim to know what the Bible speaks of morality, when they have never read much of it, never discovered what does and does not logically follow, and are interpreting what they do read through the assumptions of hearsay, conscience, and general tradition.

Logic, people.  It is very fucking helpful.

Sex Is Not Worth More Than Safety From Abuse

The addition of explicitly romantic or sexual component to a relationship in the context of genuine commitment is what differentiates marriage from other human connections.  Biblically, the only thing separating a spouse from everyone else is that, for a married person, it is only their spouse (or spouses) that they are to have sex with.  Emotional intimacy, one-on-one time, deep conversations, physical admiration, and even flirtation or other things like feeling or enjoying sexual attraction to someone else are not what distinguishes marriage from other relationships.  Conceptually and when it comes to Biblical ethics, this is the one actual difference that is not only an illusion assumed by some people to be true.

Sex is really the one reason why most people would ever need to pursue marriage of a legal kind or the Biblical kind (a hopefully lifelong, committed relationship).  Someone could get other kinds of intimacy from friends, family, or even strangers without doing anything that violates Yahweh's nature.  With sex, though, and literal intercourse alone to be clear, commitment either must be present or must follow (Exodus 22:16-17) unless there is anything that would legitimize breaking apart a marriage before God, including neglect or abuse (Exodus 21:9-11) beyond mere adultery (Matthew 19:9) or abandonment (1 Corinthians 7:12-16).  Sex in the context of commitment is the one thing that truly distinguishes a valid marital relationship apart from all other kinds.

Even so, it is not worth subjecting oneself to legalistic or deceptive spouses, unwanted physically dangerous treatment, sexual abuse, or even as much as constant pettiness.  There are ways to sexually act that are nonsinful (Deuteronomy 4:2) despite having nothing to do with marriage or a committed relationship of any kind, such as masturbation with or without imagery and flirtation while savoring sexual attraction.  Inside a marriage, an abused spouse is always free to leave no matter how long the relationship has lasted and no matter if there are children involved.  Physical and sexual safety are incredibly important, as is the psychological safety of not being mistreated and being allowed to be one's whole nonsinful self.

Sexual experience and expression are not confined to marriage in Biblical ethics.  They are morally and pragmatically within people's grasp outside of committed relationships.  As exciting or alluring as sex in particular is, it is not morally or otherwise worth more than safety from abuse.  Never having sex or having it for only part of one's life is better than having one's general life be ruined by a terrible marriage for the sake of something as shallow isolated by itself as just having sex, for its own sake.  The slightest physical or sexual abuse and unrepentant patterns of emotional abuse are absolutely Biblical grounds for divorce under the neglect and abuse categories (again, see Exodus 21:9-11).  Sexuality does not require a partner or any social interaction or stimulation at all.  Sex specifically is intimate and social and yet never worth not receiving proper treatment.

The Body And Emotions

The metaphysical and epistemological relationships between the body and the mind are commonly denied, overlooked, or misunderstood by non-rationalists.  Language can be used in imprecise or "normal" ways even if the literal wording of a sentence could not be true, and wording alone does not always mean that someone believes exactly what they are saying, but some statements about the body would be misleading at best on their own.  Someone might say that their body is experiencing sadness or fear or some other emotion.  While it can enable a person to experience physical sensations (more on this later), it has no capacity for emotion.

The body does not experience things like fear or joy or desire, despite how some people intentionally or casually speak about it.  More than this, it cannot.  It reacts to fear, which can only be experienced by a mind.  That a given person's skin begins to sweat due to anxiety or that their muscles lock up due to psychological stress, not that one person undergoing this requires that anyone else does or will, is a physiological phenomenon corresponding to whatever the mind is perceiving.  If a person has a certain mental state, in their case, their might be an accompanying bodily activity, but only a consciousness can experience anything at all.

Even physical pain, which is not an emotion because it pertains to the body rather than strictly to the mind, can only be experienced through a conscious mind, though physical pain also requires a body.  A mind without a body or a mind in a body with non-functional sensory (the senses are themselves phenomenological, but they correlate to the presence and condition of specific body parts) could still have emotions.  A body without a mind could not because it is not a body that perceives even if it has a mind.  Indeed, one only feels emotions because they are within one's consciousness; the body can behave in certain ways alongside or as a result of emotions, yes, but it is not what actually feels anger, sorrow, or a sense of urgency.

As one of multiple possible examples, sexual attraction is not the state of being physically aroused.  It is a mental state.  It is phenomenological, while genital arousal is physiological, and someone can realize this without being prompted to think of the difference by experiencing the latter without the former (or the other way around).  The concepts are distinct already.  Moreover, a person could experience sexual attraction or mental arousal without any bodily reaction or vice versa.  The former is an emotion and the latter is a bodily reaction that might or might not be triggered by the former.  It is entirely logically possible for one to be present without the other because neither contradicts logical axioms.

The Cancellation Of Debts

In one of the passages that would likely be most shocking to or dismissed by the contemporary conservative evangelical, Deuteronomy 15:1-3 says that there is to be a cancellation of debts every seventh year.  Verses 7-10 add that it is evil to refrain from lending to the poor among you because the cancellation of debts is near.  Conservatives who identify as Christians would probably insist that this would devastate the economy of countries like America.  The truth is that if Christianity is true, then those economies deserve to fall apart because they operate on the oppression of debtors.  Of ironic relevance is that many conservatives might associate business dealings, labor, and financial gain with men, but the male language in some translations of Deuteronomy 15:1-3 does not teach any such complementarian stereotypes or prescriptions.  This actually touches upon something far more foundational and broad than just the contents of this one passage.

Many translations of the Bible that still retain broad male wording in reference to all people, male and female, would in this very chapter also provide confirmation that it is not just possible for the Bible to use words like "brother" and "he" in this way (though this is a matter of logical possibility independent of Biblical statements), but that it also does this immediately after addressing debt.  To clarify, this does not mean that if it did not do this, the Bible would otherwise be teaching that women cannot have personal assets or debts or that their debts are not to be cancelled (see Genesis 1:26-27 and note that it never mentions a differing moral standard for men and women, which is consistent with the objective logical equivalence of the same actions done by each).  Even so, Deuteronomy 15:12-17 introduces Hebrew men and women using the word brother, mentions both men and women distinctly, and then defaults to male language in reference to people of both genders.

Clearly, like how Exodus 21:20-21 and 26-27 refer to men and women and then summarize them both (in some translations) with the words "him" and "he"--and thus would clarify regardless of other affirmations from reason and the Bible that the "man," "he" and "him" of passages like Exodus 12:12-14 or 18-19 encompasses perpetrators or victims of both genders--Deuteronomy 15:12-17 reminds readers that of course the "brother" of Deuteronomy 15:1-3 is a man or a woman of one's nationality.  Also, in saying that foreigners can be charged interest, Deuteronomy 15:1-3 does not contradict what other passages say about the treatment of foreigners needing to be the same as the at of the native-born (Leviticus 17:10-16, 24:22, and so on).  While Deuteronomy 15 says that foreigners can have their debts retained, which does mean they must not be annulled, the foreigner living among one's country as an ongoing, long-term resident rather than a mere visitor is to be treated just like native residents even in the handful of issues like the cancellation of debts where foreigners are not universally to be treated exactly the same (Leviticus 19:33-34).

Also, a foreigner from one country or another might or might not have the same skin color as a given person from one's own region.  These commands have nothing in themselves to do with race as opposed to nationality.  The emphasis is on someone's foreign nationality or residence, as the latter is what triumphs even over the otherwise rare matter the Bible says distant foreigners can be treated differently on.  An equivalent example would be how the Torah treats charging interest.  Charging interest to poor people is prohibited outright (Exodus 22:25), and charging interest to one's own countrypeople is prohibited, yet not imposing it on foreigners (Deuteronomy 23:19-20), but Leviticus 25:35-38 nonetheless says that a poor person of one's own countrypeople is to be treated like a foreigner or stranger: they are to be helped, charged no interest, and sold food without any inflated prices for the sake of profit.  The difference between a foreigner living among you and visiting briefly from abroad, though in almost all regards they are to be treated the same anyway, is key here.

Between the kinds of assistance Mosaic Law says is obligatory towards the poor (see Leviticus 19:9-10, 25:35-38, Deuteronomy 15:7-10), the opportunity for people of one's own country or foreign residents to work as protected servants for up six years rather than starve (Exodus 21:2, 26-27, Deuteronomy 15:12-17), and the cancellation of debts every seven years, it is no wonder that the Bible declares that there does not need to be anyone poor in the land (Deuteronomy 15:4).  The acknowledgement in Deuteronomy 15:11 that the poor will indefinitely be among us, shortly after verse 4 says poverty need not be present, is foreshadowing that the Israelites would not uphold their obligations, or else poverty could be rather easily eliminated.  The obligation to cancel debts in the aforementioned manner is still Biblically obligatory in all times and places (Deuteronomy 4:5-8, Matthew 15:17-19, and so on), so the avoidable failure of the Israelites (Deuteronomy 30:11-15) does not mean that moderners would be free to keep people of their own community indebted to them for life.

Prayer For Healing

In James 5:14-16, the apostle of the same name says that the prayer of a righteous person is "effective and powerful" and that God might deliver someone from sickness because of prayer.  Perhaps because of this, or perhaps because of its subjective appeal or because they have heard it from others, some Christians talk as if prayer is a cure for everything from insomnia to cancer.  God could heal someone with or without prayer preceding it--but it does not follow that he will or that it is epistemologically likely that he will.  Some of the ramifications of the opposing ideas might not even be what their proponents would like.

If true, this would necessitate that God is actively the primary reason why all other Christians, even the ones who are not irrationalistic fools, are afflicted with physical or mental health conditions and is the reason why everyone is sick or healthy at all times.  Rather than just universally permitting and in some cases causing these things, though he certainly would have the power to do so, Yahweh is the sole or constant cause of all calamity and healing according to this unbiblical philosophical idea, and prayer supposedly wins him over to courses of action he would not have brought about.

God could be fully active in all causal events in the physical world and mental plane in the sense that this does not contradict logical axioms, but the Biblical deity is in some ways far, far more deistic than many like to acknowledge.  It is not that it is logically impossible for the uncaused cause to personally intervene on a regular basis or that the Bible does not teach that there are many times where this has already happened.  It is that Yahweh is not constantly, directly, universally healing people or otherwise interacting with their lives.

Yahweh sometimes allows people to go about their lives without his direct interference one way or another, and in other Biblical narratives, he performs great punitive or revelatory miracles.  What is clear even within the context of Biblical stories is that God does not always act or not act in these respective ways.  Prayer is much more about cultivating or leaning into a relationship with God than it is about actually convincing him to suddenly heal someone who was otherwise not going to be divinely healed.

This is only egoism, the ignoring of the obligation to align with God and to relate to him properly whether one wishes to or not until one would derive terrestrial benefit from it.  Due to epistemological limitations, it is not as if I could know anyway whether it is random scientific correlations, divine interference, or a combination of both that leads to any sort of healing from sickness or other conditions that I experience, and this is because there is no logical necessity in any of them.  I pray not because I will or know I will have the circumstances of my life changed.  I do so because it is an obligation according to the only moralistic worldview with any probabilistic evidence pointing towards its veracity.

To Make An Assumption

To make an assumption is nothing other than to intentionally but avoidably believe something that has not been proven.  Perhaps, regardless of how abstract the idea is, it is provable through logical necessity and thus knowable despite human limitations, but someone just assumed it.  Their belief might have also been unverifiable but convenient or emotionally persuasive.  The reasons someone betrays the intrinsic truths of logic can be diverse, but irrationality is always present each time a person makes an assumption.  However casually the assumption is made, no matter how much or little direct recognition a person has that they are making an unverified leap in their beliefs, there is always an avoidable failure to look to logical necessity.

It is common for non-rationalists to still think they are rational, though what they erroneously consider rational is whatever strikes them as alluring at he moment or whatever seems to be true to someone who allows their worldview to be filtered by assumptions.  Conversely, some people who are indeed being rational might feel as if they are making assumptions when they are not.  As they go about their lives, full awareness of what they believe (for a person has direct access to their own stances and uncertainties) and of how those beliefs align with reason might not keep them from feeling like they are not being rational.

If no belief has been accepted, then no assumption has been made.  Beyond just feeling like one is being irrational when one knows one is not, simply thinking or not thinking of a particular idea at a particular time does not mean that one has accepted it as true without proof, in the case of the former, or that one has made an assumption passively, in the case of the latter.  To walk into a room in hopes of finding a box or a remote does not have to entail the belief that it is inside the room, even if one remembers perceiving that this was the case.  To turn on a light switch does not require that someone is assuming a causal instead of a merely correlative relationship beyond the subjectivity of sensory perceptions.

Indeed, a rationalist who is deeply familiar with truths such as the epistemological irrelevance of seeing an object to it actually existing might walk into a room and pick up a box without specifically thinking every single time about how the box might not exist, or how the memory of its location could be inaccurate, and so on.  Especially after years of allegiance to reason, the avoidance of assumptions and the recognition of logical truths can become practically effortless even when it might have at first seemed like there was no hope of them ever reaching this point.  What misleadingly seemed impossible can become normal for a formerly irrational individual.

To make assumptions is to betray necessary truths, and doing the opposite of this is to embrace reason--to flee from assumptions and to intentionally, thoroughly align with reason, first and foremost by recognizing the inherent truth of logical axioms.  With these and other logical truths, familiarity can spring up that is so holistic, so strong, and so persistent that a former non-rationalist really can avoid assumptions without even always focusing on specific examples of assumptions he or she is avoiding.  To avoid assumptions, and to quickly or eventually reach this place, is something within the reach of every being that can grasp reason by distinguishing it in various ways from the rest of reality that it governs.

Romans 1 And Death: The Deserved Fate Of Sinners

Not the most overt or renowned of the many passages that directly or indirectly teach annihilationism, Romans 1 still leads up to its last verse emphasizing that sin deserves death in spite of its subjective appeal to those who seek only to appease themselves.  Nowhere does Paul mention eternal torture, something that would contradict Mosaic Law (Deuteronomy 25:1-3) and thus the moral nature of Yahweh that the Law articulates.  Yes, although he doe does not list all possible sins, he does reference many specific ones or their general categories, and he clearly insists that all of them deserve the cessation of life.  In fact, he does not mention torture at all, despite how the process of dying in Gehenna could be quite painful (Luke 12:47-48, Revelation 20:15).

Paul touches upon some miscellaneous sins like idolatry (Romans 1:22-23), self-deception (1:21, 25), homosexual behaviors (1:26-27), greed (1:29), slander (1:30), and general irrationalism in that the wicked he speaks of are living for their own preferences or hedonistic fulfillment rather than truth for the sake of truth.  Even if Christianity is not true, the kind of people he refers to are absolutely irrationalistic and thus unworthy of existence.  He does not mention and does not necessarily need to mention even worse sins like rape (Deuteronomy 22:25-27) or extreme, unbiblical forms of torture that go far beyond the very limited punishments of Yahweh's laws to be correct in saying that, on the Christian worldview, all of these people deserve to die (1:32).

Those who practice such things deserve death, Paul says, echoing the more concise statement he makes later in the same book when he declares that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23), which itself is a New Testament restatement of Ezekiel 18:4's comment on how the soul that sins will die.  Consciousness is not the body.  The former is immaterial and the latter is physical; the former is epistemologically self-evident along with logical axioms, though its immateriality is not, while it is very difficult to prove to oneself that the latter exists.  Regardless, Ezekiel 18:4 says that the souls of sinners will die, which either encompasses the whole of a person if referring to the mind-body composite or more narrowly specifies that their immaterial mind will cease to exist for their unrepentant sin.

Just because the mind and the body are metaphysically different does not necessitate that the immaterial lives on outside of its material shell.  Some annihilationists are indeed irrationalistic fools, just of a lesser degree that the typical Christian when it comes to hell, and they might be less irrational than the rest to the extent that they see the Bible does not teach eternal torment for all the wicked while still being philosophically in error.  They might assume that the Bible is true or hold to something else on faith, rather than on the basis of logical necessity and its epistemological light, such as the idea that if the mind does not love separately from the body, it is the same as the body.

Paul's stance on sinners eventually being eradicated from existence--the same stance hinted at in Genesis and that the prophets, Jesus, and various New Testament authors besides Paul all posit--can be true whether or not the mind exists without the body for a time.  The Bible does clarify its doctrine on this matter: a sinner's mind will be reduced to nonexistence (Matthew 10:28) and their body to ashes (2 Peter 2:6), but this is after their bodily resurrection (Daniel 12:2), before which their spirits will be unconscious along with everyone else in the intermediate Sheol (Ecclesiastes 9:5-10).  Nonetheless, if the Bible had said nothing of what happens to people between death and their resurrection to face the second death, verses like Romans 1:32 still address how the deserved final fate for sin is death.

The Plentiful Misconceptions About Erotic Media

There is a multitude of misconceptions about erotic media, one being that anything subjectively perceived as sexy qualifies.  Erotic media is not pictures of mere nudity, swimwear, and so on, things that are not sexual even if they can be deeply sensual.  There must by necessity be a sexual component.  The human body is not sexual; it can be perceived sexually (though this is feelings/perceptions rather than the nature of the body itself), used sexually, or displayed with sexual intentions, but it is not sexual.  Even then, erotic media is not limited to videos or images of casual sex or the like.  A married couple could post images or videos online, for instance, or a non-married couple that is engaging in other sexual behaviors together (or separately).

Because these acts are neither condemned by the Bible nor does it logically follow from any doctrine that they would be sinful, all of these could be featured in morally legitimate types of erotic media according to true Christian philosophy.  No, the lust of Matthew 5:28 is coveting, which could not be done towards a single person anyway and is not the same as sexual attraction even if directed towards a married person.  Sexuality itself is not sinful.  No, sexuality could not be evil if God made it very good (Genesis 1:31).  It has to be misdirected or misused to be tainted by evil.

Erotic media, given that it does not encourage or glorify the actual sexual sins like rape (Deuteronomy 22:25-27), adultery (Leviticus 20:10), homosexual intercourse (Leviticus 18:22), and so on, is utterly nonsinful (Deuteronomy 4:2).  One can also create or consume this permissible kind of erotic media without treating or regarding anyone as only their sex appeal (sexual objectification), and since all personality traits have an individual basis or were shaped by social pressures, there is no such thing as men or women having a gender-specific affinity for erotic media on the creation or consumption side.

If dating, engaged, or married, using erotic material or nonsexual, sensual material as stimulation for masturbation certainly does not have to entail a lack of love for one's partner.  It does not logically follow that there is no sexual devotion to one's partner either.  In fact, since sexual attraction does not require that one want to have sex or perform any other sexual acts with someone, using erotic or sensual (which is, again, often objectively nonsexual) media to does not even necessitate that there is sexual attraction directed towards anyone being seen or imagined.  As if erotic media could not be used as a general stimulus for impersonal arousal anyway, even a

Now, every woman and man that wants to view or masturbate to sensual or genuinely sexual imagery can ensure that it does not replace or interfere with having sex with their spouse, or, in the case of unmarried couples, lesser sexual interaction with their partner.  They can always stop for a time if their mind or body gets rigidly used to having erotic media as a stimulus.  If this does not happen, there is always the logical possibility of not doing it to a frequency or intensity that deprives someone of sexual energy or basic stamina to give to their significant other.  However, couples can use erotic material together, encouraging their partner's nonsinful sexual expression and delighting in the chance to see or appreciate more of their full selves.

Since sexuality is so personal, so pleasurable (in many cases), and spans both the phenomenological (pertaining to consciousness) and physical aspects of human metaphysics, it is true that everything from sex with one's spouse to masturbation can be very existentially introspective.  For masturbation, perhaps this does or does not involve any of the Biblically permissible forms of erotic media or just sensual imagery, and in either case it can be shared with a committed partner.  A couple could masturbate together or use it, even if attraction to other people is celebrated, to initiate sexual enjoyment that will end with intimate sex.

A great deal of people I have interacted with do or would likely object to all of this, as if what they were told by legalistic Christians or insecure secular people nullifies logical necessities and the actual teachings of the Bible.  Just being offended or insecure about any of this and giving into it on an ideological or relational level is irrationalistic, though simply experiencing this and not becoming emotionalistic or otherwise irrational is not erroneous.  The truth is foreign or uncomfortable for people who are not used to it.  Not everyone who is not asexual has any interest in using erotic media of any kind, but it has absolutely nothing to do with gender and people with subjective dislikes need to be silent or admit reality.

The Pursuit Of Profit

A corporation whose primary or sole purpose is to generate profit--the excess revenue remaining after employees are paid, among other things--will always take every chance to side with a paying client over an employee, strive to penalize (at a minimum psychologically) workers for uncontrollable human experiences like sickness, or expect as much effort as a person can muster even if they are being severely underpaid or otherwise taken advantage of.  No corporation has to be like this.  For many American workers, though, whatever they do to sincerely benefit their employer will be forgotten or met with disregard as soon as a health or relationship issue, for example, limits their workplace productivity.

Unless it adopts a new purpose or a more multifaceted one, this kind of corporation will trample on and toss aside any worker.  Motivated by the need to pay for ordinary access to food, water, housing, clothing, and so on, the typical worker needs a job to survive because of the way their society is structured (since culture is on its own a pure construct, it could of course have been set up differently than the exact version of capitalism found in America).  Motivated by the stupidity and selfishness of greed, an all-too common type of employer does not know or acknowledge the real nature of business as a whole and American capitalistic business in particular.

America is structured so that the disabled, the sick, and the general poor have little to nothing they can actually do to directly make it likely they can obtain a better financial life.  Oh yes, there are things that can minimize making a workplace situation worse, such as not harshly confronting idiotic people in the workplace or exposing the selfishness of many companies.  These only keep the status quo unchallenged where it is set up on false or assumed philosophical premises.  They will not rectify underpayment, micromanaging, or double standards.  Inaction leaves them firmly rooted in place.  As long as it is only inaction on the level of confronting irrationality, company leadership might be completely fine with this.

If someone is "inactive" (less productive) in their work due to something like a health condition, some employers will do everything they can to get away with discarding them or pressuring them to overexert themselves.  Productivity is overglorified even when it is needless (literally doing nothing but wasting time or adding gratuitous steps) or when it can only be achieved by treating people as if they are not human--I do not even mean this in the moral sense of human rights, but in the biological sense of having needs like eating and sleeping.  Without actually saying it this way, a kind of employer wants to be regarded as a pseudo-divine figure whom all of one's life should revolve around.

Never miss a day of work, complete work tasks despite personal trials distracting or weighing down on oneself, or devote a great deal of weekly/monthly time or seniority to a corporation, and none of that loyalty or effort is probably going to be repaid anywhere near adequately in the current state of the American workplace, not with genuinely proportionate compensation or with anything else.  The man or woman who gives their time and energy in order to be recognized and rewarded accordingly will far more likely than not never receive this outcome, or they will as other workers go ignored.  Laboring for other humans is seldom ever truly "worth it."

Movie Review--Stephen King's It

"I am eternal, child.  I am the eater of worlds, and of children."

--Pennywise, Stephen King's It

Enormously limited in scope and full of acting that is very unnatural in its delivery, the 1990 miniseries adaptation of It, assembled into a single cut for physical media release, is a narrative of rushed plot developments and often poor special effects.  The greater restrictions on visual effects norms at the time is not the fault of the creators who happened to be making a project then, though it does hold this adaptation back.  The cosmic horror of Pennywise with his ability to manipulate sensory perceptions, his way of seeing into and preying on an individual's fears, and his origins away from Earth is all but minimized as much as it can be due to technological limitations in how the supernatural being is portrayed.  Writing and acting, though, cannot ever depend on the effects work an artistic era allows for.  This is where the miniseries forfeits much of what it could have had.

Production Values

As mentioned, the effects distinctly hinder the realization of Stephen King's lore details and the general premise itself.  The deadlights and spider-form of Pennywise look incredibly artificial, far more than a great deal of terrible CGI seen today.  The spider in particular looks transposed over a background that is not in the same location as the creature.  Pennywise's flips and almost anything that does not involve It standing still and just talking do not look integrated into the world well, which of course diminishes the depth of both the supernatural source of terror and, indirectly, the depiction of how the Loser's Club grapples with their fear, since the being that amplifies or feeds on their fears is so visually underdeveloped.

On the acting front, the miniseries-turned-"film" fares better, but reaches nothing more than mixed heights.  Mike Hanlan's adult actor Tim Reid gives the best performance for its lack of exaggeration and its quiet, personal lines.  Annette O'Toole, the adult actress for Beverly, and Richard Thomas, the adult actor for Bill, are also among the best of the cast here for sharing their more personal lines as if their characters really are psychologically invested in overcoming their demons and defeating a force that complicated their already difficult lives.  They contribute to the sometimes seemingly faux flirtation between her and the other men of the Loser's Club, whose moments of lighthearted flirting do add layers of sweetness with the lack of outward possessiveness or jealousy between them, even as she is treated as a full friend and equal to each of them.  Unfortunately, cast members like Harry Richardson deliver lines with very unnaturally inflated levels of energy or volume, making them seem like caricatures of a character more than serious characters in a grim horror setting.  While the child flashbacks are vital to the story, the child performers do not come close to the skill of the 2017 film's young cast.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

A young girl's sudden death in the town of Derry brings Mike Hanlon to call the other six members of his childhood "Loser's Club," a group of children that developed deep friendship in the midst of family trauma, frequent bullying, and appearances by a mysterious clown figure.  As kids, they faced the entity and forced it into retreat, promising to return to Derry if needed to make sure It never kills any more children, the deaths of which were ignored by the adults of the town as with the more human antagonists they dealt with.  Amnesia blocked off memories of what occurred all those years ago, and as the Loser's Club reunited, the clown toys with them and revisits some of their childhood fears.

Intellectual Content

Again, the seemingly ancient special effects boundaries of 1990 severely impact the degree to which the ultimately eldritch aspects of Pennywise can be explored aesthetically.  What makes it into the miniseries is mostly dialogue that lightly, sporadically touches upon the supernatural nature of Derry's scourge, a being that the young Bill says has to give itself a physical form to feed, meaning it would otherwise be immaterial--something related to what one of the children initially thinks (assumes) is impossible, confusing empirical probability or reality with the even more fundamental logical possibility.  The deadlights from within It, inducing a catatonic or "insane" state of mind, do not visually radiate the Lovecraftian elements that they conceptually entail.

Likewise, the spider form of It in the final confrontation, which is supposed to be the closest thing that humans can perceive to Pennywise's core physical "form," pales in comparison to the book's ending that, together with the ending of the novel Revival, suggests there are multiple Pennywise-type beings that have spider-like manifestations in Stephen King's multiverse, with Mother being far more objectively worthy of terror than It.  In a smaller manner, the miniseries does still include bouts of bizarre sensory experiences that brush up against how much of what the senses perceive in everyday life is already absolutely involuntary, arbitrary, and unverifiable beyond the veil of subjectivity (as opposed to logical necessities about the senses or what would or would not follow from certain ideas about the material world).  It just utilized them less effectively than the more recent adaptation.

Conclusion

Falling far short of the wild nature of its literary source material and the greatly heightened quality of the 2017/2019 cinematic reboot, the 1990's miniseries of It is very abbreviated, leaving out core parts of lore from the books.  This would not be particularly bad, or negative at all, if the story threads that were incorporated did not tend to be minimally explored.  The very hit or miss acting only makes the plot execution stumble all the more, whether with the child cast or their adult counterparts.  The deadlights and the Lovecraftian nature of Pennywise call for more than what this now decades-old series could offer.  In its best moments, the calm warmth or desperation of the Loser's Club is what stands out as sincere and competent.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  Most violence is implied or takes place offscreen, such as with Georgie losing his arm to Pennywise, but some blows are shown in non-graphic manner.

 2.  Profanity:  "Damn" and "bastard" are infrequently used.

Evangelical Conservative Hypocrisy In Backing Trump

When I was much younger, evangelical conservatives around me would elaborate on how evil Bill Clinton, a Democrat, is for the likes of adulterous behaviors.  Now, logically and Biblically (adultery requires actual sex according to Biblical passages like Leviticus 20:10), what is supposed to have really occurred is not adultery, though of course I cannot know from historical records and other hearsay what actually took place; it was extramarital oral sex, with Bill being separately married.  Regardless, I was told that he and those like him are so immoral that they should never hold office.  Some of the same people, starting in 2016, told me exactly the opposite: they said that their Republican candidate Donald Trump should be voted into the presidency either because his televised and alleged declarations and behaviors (such as extramarital affairs)  were irrelevant to being worthy of office or because he was the way to stop Hillary Clinton, Bill's wife, from becoming president.

What incredible hypocrisy!  On one hand, some of the same types of sins are being excused on Trump's part by evangelical "Christians" because we allegedly "need" a strong leader, not a correctly moralistic leader, despite the outrage at Bill Clinton's scandals.  On the other hand, Trump was irrationalistically elevated in the 2016 election period by many people in my life because voting him into office would prevent Hillary--the wife of the man the same conservatives objected to on moral grounds--could not take power.  Even more stupid was the insistence by some that morality does not have the same significance as pragmatic strengths in leadership, when, by nature, if moral obligations (rather than feelings) exist, what is obligatory should be pursued and enacted and what is evil should be shunned.

There is no monopoly on conservative or liberal politicians having affairs or engaging in any other sin, of course.  It is not as if either party is ideologically aligned with Christianity beyond very specific points either.  Donald Trump is far from Christian, and the same is true of the Republican party and its conservatism that he has spearheaded.  If he did commit adultery, he would deserve death (Deuteronomy 22:22), yet many conservatives I know identifying as Christians are eager to overlook his real or likely offenses to scream out about sometimes lesser or non-existent offenses of Democrat politicians.  Hypocritical philosophical stances will be indulged in whenever convenient if they benefit an irrationalist who bases their worldview on unwavering allegiance to an immediate political movement, instead of accepting particular tenets of a given political philosophy if they are true by logical necessity or rejecting them if they are false or unverifiable.  

The same act which is by nature righteous, permissible, or evil would by necessity be righteous, permissible, or evil for everyone, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump included.  There would not be exceptions when the opposition is worse and it is logically impossible for anything morally obligatory to be optional for those in power.  Indeed, betraying morality for the sake of upholding morality is hypocritical and thus irrational, and both Republican conservatism and Democrat liberalism are irrational wholly aside from moral matters.  Now, since the necessary truths of reason cannot be false, they are the heart of reality and its only inherent part; only philosophically delusional insects base their worldview off of appeals to subjective appeal or cultural trends or political authorities or news sources or any other thing that is either untrue/irrelevant or unverifiable [1], unlike reason, as Trump supporters have to do to believe in his illusory greatness and that of his conservative worldview.

It is only all the more irrational for them to think that he in any consistent, intentional, or deep way lives out Christianity, only to then dismiss any matters where he has and does deviate from vital Christian tenets.  As for the issue of rationalistic truth and verifiability I have just mentioned, remember, I am a probabilistic Christian; I am committed to living for the worldview, to what it really entails, because it has evidence supporting it, but I do not actually believe all of its components are true because not all aspects of its philosophy are true by logical necessity.  Thus, I cannot know.  None of what I am saying here conflicts with Biblical doctrines themselves or, more importantly, with the necessary truths of reason.  Conservatism does, since logical truth is not grounded or revealed in the societal norms or stability that conservatism requires the preservation or at most slow alteration of.  Evangelical conservatism has the added layers of utterly contradicting Biblical obligations regarding social justice (Leviticus 19:33-34, Deuteronomy 15:1-3, and so on) and criminal justice (Exodus 21:16, 28-30, and so on) as well as reason, which is true either way.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2022/07/the-only-way-to-thwart-deception.html

Abusive Employers

It is only individual preferences or societal pressures that bring people to "climb the corporate ladder."  In no way is it rational or irrational to subjectively enjoy business, but for many people, involvement in the business world is something they do largely or solely to continue eating, to still have access to water and shelter, and to afford some luxuries to help soften the dullness or bitterness of much of workplace life.  Perhaps they would even look forward to the chance to work more often if there was not widespread, normalized workplace exploitation perpetuated significantly by abusive, incompetent managers, with these qualities springing ultimately from irrationality: the irrationality of thinking their perceptions, preferences, and assumptions dictate anything about logical truths, moral obligations, and scientific practicalities.

Managers and employers can of course be rational, just, or kind (though kindness is neither rational nor just in itself).  It is up to them if they want to live for assumptions, contradictions, emotionalism, and egoism or if they want to do all that they can to align with reason, God, and justice.  No number of terrible employers means that the next one will be the same or that the others were by logical necessity irrational, hypocritical, cruel, and selfish; in all cases, the individuals could decide what person they will be, as is true for the workers themselves.

Beware the irrationalistic, self-absorbed, power or greed-driven employer, though.  This kind of person will "reward" employees with the smallest amount of compensation or benefits they can legally or pragmatically get away with, take as much of their workers' free time as they can steal away unopposed, and use vague or dishonest promises to convince their exploited workforce to stay in a hellscape of a company/job.  Through both subtle and overt, enormous means, they reap their earnings at the expense of honoring reason, God, and the people made in his image.

These people are deformities on the otherwise amoral or good construct of business, which does permit individuals and societies to flourish all the more when it is conducted without any such blunders.  They will use people like subhuman objects for every bit of labor, profit, and fleeting feelings of power that they can, tossing them aside when they need a new "machine" to continue work as their established employees lose their usefulness.  Whether their workers live or die, whether they thrive or are burdened with mental and physical health problems from their careers, is not their concern.

Their concern, in one sense, is to hoard wealth and influence or recognition for no reason other than to have them, even as they might be trying desperately to quell existential terror or confusion through materialism (in the sense of belongings, not the metaphysical ideology) and whatever fallacies make them feel successful or subjectively important.  Workers would do well to avoid these types of employers, as common as they are, carefully handling what resources they have to acquire more and more financial independence until they have the stability to push back against them--without irrationality, emotionalism, or hypocrisy of their own--and not feel pressured to stay in their jobs just to survive.

Satan's Fall According To The Quran

The serpent appears in Genesis 3 with no provided backstory, tempts Adam and Eve, and is cursed by God along with other parts of creation.  The opposite end of the Bible identifies Satan with this serpent (Revelation 12:9), and the closest the Bible ever comes to detailing his origins and corruption is Ezekiel 28:11-19, where a fallen cherub that walked in Eden is called the king of Tyre and is eventually to be punished by being burned into nonexistence.  Notions one might hear of like Satan convincing a third of the angels to fall into sin are not ever mentioned.  In reality, it is not even clear if the cherub of Ezekiel 28 is Satan, though this is probably the case.  The Quran is actually the text that, within the framework of its separate religion, talks of Satan's fall.

Surah 7:11 says God tells all of the angels to bow down before Adam, and the only angel listed as refusing is Iblis, or Satan.  Now, the act of bowing before a human would in this case be nonsinful because God commanded it, as anything that God demands would be obligatory or at least permissible--any contradictory moral ideas would not be grounded in the same righteous entity.  Morality is whatever the divine moral nature is.  This is ironically why Allah's "justice" in the afterlife as put forth in the Quran means Allah could not be the uncaused cause that exists: eternal conscious torment for a limited number of finite human sins is disproportionate [1].  Thus, if there is such a thing as morality, some other deity is the one in existence, for Allah is unjust by logical necessity.

God does not speak of the nature of suffering in hell here in Surah 7, though.  After the sin of Iblis, the offender says, in reference to Adam, "'I am better than him: You created me from fire and him from clay.'" (7:12).  Allah tells the angel to depart because there is no place before him for arrogance, without specifying where he is to depart to, yet when Iblis asks for respite until the Day of Resurrection, he is granted this (7:14).  However, the rebellious angel promises to be a force opposing God and righteous humanity in the meantime, prompting God to say, "'I swear I shall fill Hell with you and all who follow you!'" (7:18).  Right after God banishes him at this point, the name of Iblis is switched in the text to Satan, and he then focuses on Adam and Eve (7:20).

The Biblical account of the serpent appearing in Eden does not directly contradict these basic, allegedly preceding events, yet the Quran's story of Satan's first sin typifies how it retells narratives from the Bible, especially the Torah, and adds dialogue references.  In this case, the story being retold is not the fall of Satan, which is at most ambiguously touched upon in Ezekiel 28 of the Bible, but the fall of humanity, which Surah 7's fall of Satan leads into.  It might surprise some people that the Quran frequently alludes to or outright cites the Bible, albeit with additions that sometimes amount to very unbiblical doctrines.  Many Christians I have interacted with do not know what the Quran actually does and does not teach, insisting that whatever news media says about various Middle-Eastern countries reflects true Islam.

That Satan is featured in the Quran along with figures like Jesus and Mary might be unheard of for them.  Even if whatever they have been told about Islam was the case, they could not know apart from reading the Quran!  With the Bible itself, they also often do not know what is actually said or left unaddressed about things like Satan's backstory.  The Bible is largely silent on things like the origins of Satan and other demons.  If they were exposed to the Quran's version of Satan's initial rebellion against God, they might scoff, but they have likely never realized what the Bible does not say about Satan.  It is not necessary to read the Quran or any other text to become deeply familiar with the Bible, but some might be shocked at how reading another religious text might lead a less familiar Christian to focus on relatively little-discussed aspects of Christianity.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/09/yahwehs-and-allahs-eschatological.html

The Man Born Blind

Asked if a man blind from birth lacks his sight because of his own sin or that of his parents, Jesus says it is not because of the sins of the man, his mother, or his father.  The fact that someone cannot have sinned before their birth outside of very unverifiable or unbiblical scenarios (an example of the latter would be reincarnation) already means the question has a flawed foundation, even if only epistemologically, but this is not what Jesus focuses on.  In the words of John 9:3, "'Neither this man nor his parents sinned,' said Jesus, 'but this happened do that the work of God might be displayed in his life.'"  The disability is present so there would be an opportunity to display the power and splendor of God.  Jesus spits on the ground, makes mud with the moisture, applies the mud on the man's eyes, and tells him to wash at the Pool of Siloam (9:6-7).  Once the man did as instructed, for the first time in his life, he had the sense of sight.

Like many people Jesus encounters in the gospels talking of other matters, the disciples appear to be making very erroneous philosophical assumptions that, even aside from what the Bible teaches or whether it is true, can be proven epistemologically invalid due to the logical and thus metaphysical possibility of other reasons for blindness.  Someone could be born blind or otherwise impaired because of genetic circumstance (one living in the time of Christ would not need to know of genetics terminology nor the specifics of how certain traits can become active to know this could have been a natural occurrence).  The underlying belief of the disciples is like that of Job's friends who assume that such great trouble would only befall him if he had done something immoral (Job 16:1-4) despite how this is not true by necessity of suffering.

After the miracle, some Pharisees likewise assume that the man must have been steeped in sin at birth (John 9:34), lashing out at him because he points out the inability of people to perform such feats with no divine assistance (or demonic/sorcerous assistance, like in Matthew 24:23-25) when the Pharisees question him (John 9:24-33).  The group of religious figures also thinks that since Jesus healed on the Sabbath (9:13-16), his act of healing would be a condemned type of work on the day of rest (this is not the case whatsoever [1]).  They become furious at the man who was blind because he does not misrepresent Jesus to them.  The presumption of guilt that supposedly led to the birth of a disabled person is combined with a broader self-serving, tradition-oriented irrationalism, which makes the fallacies of these Pharisees greater than those of the disciples.

Yes, both the disciples of Christ and the Pharisees are guilty of general philosophical assumptions or misunderstandings of Old Testament doctrines during the events of John 9.  The followers of Jesus simply seem to have no malice towards the blind man while in the grip of their petty presuppositions, but the Pharisees irately speak as if aligning with Christ alienates someone from the revelation God gave to Moses (9:28) when this is both untrue (Matthew 5:17-19) and only accepted on the basis of their legalistic egoism.  Many Christians actually agree with the Pharisaic misconception while thinking they are the real followers of Christ.  As for the error-prompted question of the disciples about the man born blind, it does not follow from the presence of disability and illness that someone must have sinned to receive them.  This delusion shared at points by the disciples, the Pharisees, and Job's companions is false and highly damaging.

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

The Supposed Clothing Of A Prostitute

The Bible does not say about clothing what conservatives might expect.  You cannot wear clothing of the opposite gender (Deuteronomy 22:5), though no clothing design could be masculine or feminine, with different styles being arbitrarily associated with men or women by cultural happenstance.  Opulent clothing and accessories like gold and pearls are condemned in the context of worshipping God (1 Timothy 2:9-10).  No, the modesty Paul prescribes here for women--and by logical extension for men--is not about avoiding the body's sensuality or covering a random amount of the skin.  It is about displays of wealth.  Proverbs 7:10 briefly brings up how an adulterous woman is dressed like a prostitute, which an evangelical might imagine is the condemnation of a certain style of clothing that accentuates the body, in this case a female body, or that is perceived as sexy (which is a purely subjective thing), but this is not what they might think.

What is the clothing of a prostitute?  The text does not say because no clothing is inherently associated with prostitution, no matter how revealing or sensual it is!  Such associations are cultural constructs that could differ enormously across time and geography.  Whatever someone who is a prostitute wears is by necessity the clothing of a prostitute.  Wearing clothing, including revealing clothing for men or women, or exhibiting the partial or total lack of it is Biblically nonsinful (Deuteronomy 4:2) and often irrelevant to being a prostitute altogether.  Men and women alike are free to display their naked or largely exposed bodies for practical or sensual, even sexual, purposes, as long as they are not participating in any immoral deeds while naked and do not hope to inspire someone else to sin--although someone could want to inspire the desire to have casual sex with them in another person, however, they cannot actually make them sin in mind or body.  An example of specifically baring one's body for nonsinful sexual reasons outside of a marital context would be as part of sexual flirtation where there is no desire for nor action of promiscuity, adultery, and so on.

A body is just a body and does not have to be used or even perceived (perception not grounding its nature) in a sexual way, however.  Full nudity before people of either gender or people other than one's spouse is not sinful and it is in no way sexual or automatically intended to be sexually enjoyed, not that the latter would make it evil by default.  Its moral permissibility is obvious from its lack of condemnation by direct prohibition or by logical necessity through an indirect command as already mentioned.  Beyond this, it is clear that it is not only permissible under Yahweh's moral nature, but that it was not even atypical in ancient Israel.  Exodus 22:26-27 says that someone who offers their cloak as security for debt is to have it returned each day before sunset because they have nothing else to sleep in.  1 Samuel 19 says Saul prophesied while naked and that he was thus regarded as a prophet, indicating that God's prophets might have quite commonly spoke in the condition that God created humans in: one of total nudity (Genesis 2:25) exalted by Yahweh (Genesis 1:31).

Furthermore, God told Isaiah to remove his clothing and remain naked for three years to show what would happen to the Egyptian and Cushite captives of Assyria (Isaiah 20:1-5).  Some might assume that this somehow really means partial nudity that does not expose the genitalia or the buttocks, but since the captives are predicted to be led about with their buttocks bared, and Isaiah is foreshadowing what will happen to them, he must have been truly naked.  God cannot tell anyone to sin if it is his nature that makes something good, evil, or permissible (James 1:13) to start with.  Deuteronomy 25:11-12 is also indirectly relevant.  It would be much easier for a woman to grab a man's genitals to defend her husband, a universally condemned action, if his body is actually exposed, including the protruding parts of his anatomy she seized.  Indeed, it would be almost impossible for a woman to do this depending on what a man is wearing.

Some might think that it is actually clothing instead of nudity that is thus sexual, in light of the logical necessity of nudity's nonsexual nature (meaning it is true/knowable in itself and independent of things like subjective experience or whether the Bible is true) and of what the Bible really teaches on the matter.  The same thing is still true of clothing logically and Biblically.  No type of clothing is sexual itself, no matter how sensually flattering it is or how much of the body it does or does not cover or how tightly, and no aesthetic category of clothing is condemned by the Bible.  Yes, someone might simply forgo clothing out of preference or because they appreciate their bodies or want to be sexually admired, not that the body itself is sexual.  However, just as nudity is not sexual, nor is any clothing, from suits and dresses to swimwear and more regardless of if someone subjectively finds them sexy.  Not even lingerie, worn often specifically with sexual intentions, is actually sexual; it is just sensual clothing commonly worn to sexually excite someone or perceived to be sexually enjoyable [1].  It is not sinful for men or women to wear lingerie, sensual swimwear, or other such things or to merely be seen or want to be seen in them.

Prostitution, on the other hand, is not Biblically permissible for either gender, as are all sins (Leviticus 21:7, 9, Deuteronomy 23:17-18), and yet whatever attire is culturally affiliated in one's community with prostitution is purely arbitrary.  A prostitute of either gender could go naked, and there is still nothing sexual or sinful about nudity--and it would not be sinful even if it was sexual itself, though it is logically impossible for simple nudity to be sexual.  A prostitute could wear something that covers their body or that showcases much or various parts of it.  There is no swimwear-like attire or dress or any such thing for female or male clothing that makes someone a prostitute or that is by logical necessity tied to the profession.  If someone does not literally have sex with people for money, regardless of their gender, they are not a prostitute whatsoever.  It does not follow from being a prostitute that someone wears anything in particular or anything at all, and if they wear even something culturally affiliated with prostitution, it still does not follow that they are a prostitute.

Sensuality is not sinful.  Sexual attraction is not sinful.  Sensuality is also broader than sexuality, so the former does not always incorporate the latter.  Men can feel and look incredibly sensual or sexy due to their bodies, which are no less beautiful than women's [2], their clothing, or a combination of these, and there is nothing sinful about this, not even in the presence of women they are not married.  The same is true of women in the inverse.  Women can feel and look incredibly sensual or sexy due to their bodies, their clothing, or a combination of these.  They are not prostitutes if their legs are visible, if they wear clothing that minimally covers their bodies, or if they want to be sexually or nonsexually admired as a physical being.  As with men, they are prostitutes only if they perform sexual acts with people for money.  Neither Proverbs 7 nor the entirety of the Torah condemns sensual clothes for women or men or disparages the human body God created.

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

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-beauty-of-both-genders.html

An Assumption About Certain Professions

Every business has a financial incentive to sell something, be it a product (a gaming console, coffee mug, or car) or a service (academic consulting, insect extermination, or a pedicure).  It could not remain in operation otherwise except at a loss.  Although this does not necessarily exclude honoring moral obligations, this is an inherent goal of business.  A selfish, irrationalistic business leader will probably be willing resort to deception, assumptions, hypocrisy, or unjust threats, and other forms of exploitation or corruption.  Coupled with the fact that one cannot know other minds, this means that someone can never truly know the intentions of a businessperson when making a purchase.

Perhaps the new computer is designed to break just outside the shrinking warranty period; perhaps the medicine prescribed only masks symptoms without eradicating the source of the malady, and purposefully so.  Planned obsolescence, intentional shortcomings in a function, or outright irrelevant products are all possible.  None of this means a given businessperson or product is problematic.  Possibility does not entail necessity of anything but the possibility itself (and that anything contrary to this possibility is false, of course).

Still, certain professions tend to be regarded with arbitrary or additional suspicion.  Why would a doctor actually heal someone when they could keep a patient coming back for more evaluations or prescriptions, some wonder?  Why would a mechanic actually just fix a car instead of at least tampering with something else to make another fix necessary?  It is not as if frustrated patients could not just stop seeing a maliciously useless doctor or just take their car to a different mechanic.  Yes, these service providers could financially benefit for a time, but even on a pragmatic level, deception or intended professional negligence could drive them out of business if enough people lose patience with them.

There is not any legitimate (left to itself) industry that is inherently more prone to such disregard for consumers/clients than others.  Due to cultural pressures, which can always be recognized and resisted, or individual personality and opportunity, they have become stereotyped over time by those who make assumptions.  No, a doctor is not necessarily trying to keep someone reliant on masking medications.  It is useful to be as familiar as one could be with something like medicine or car workings in order to avoid the more likely scams, not that sensory limitations, hearsay, and more do not stop someone from having knowledge of anything about these subjects (professionals included) beyond logical possibilities and subjective perceptions.

It does not follow that a customer is at fault for being taken advantage of.  To the contrary, like a victim of physical abuse or theft, it is never their fault for being mistreated, only that of the doer.  Perhaps to avoid feeling responsible for this but regardless of their exact motivation, some customers stereotype industries based on the actions of some, which could have gone differently as it is, and might suspect some professionals on irrelevant grounds for the mere possibility that they could be lying or worse.  As in all other cases, stereotypes are epistemologically invalid and metaphysically false.  Whether it is selective or made about all industries and businesses, assumptions are fallacious and often demonstrably false from reason alone.

The Religion Of Unitology

On an epistemological level, all scientific paradigms and laws are absolutely unverifiable beyond the probabilistic evidence of subjective perceptions, and all religious metaphysics that are not true by logical necessity (such as the existence of a basic uncaused cause, as simple theism is true independent of any religion) are likewise unverifiable beyond probabilistic evidence for ideas like the resurrection of Christ [1].  Jesus was probably resurrected, just like the world probably has the laws of gravitation or entropy that it appears to possess, but none of these things are logically provable.  As long as two things are logically consistent with each other, though, they can both be true even if one or both are unverifiable for humans.

The religion of Unitology in the Dead Space franchise does not contradict scientific paradigms/laws.  It is in some ways a religion with very scientifically explicit philosophical doctrines.  This is not particularly emphasized by words this directly in the first game, but it is true by necessity given the details that are provided about this philosophy that spans religion and biology.  Unitology is an example of a hypothetical religion that is very thoroughly about science, particularly biological life and death as a means of becoming united with God.  As long as the events shown in the game are not some sort of sensory illusion altogether, Unitology would be partially accurate in that its tenets match the basic pseudo-eternal life that zombified creatures called Necromorphs receive as long as their Marker, either an alien artifact shaped like a double helix or an artificial recreation of one, is active.  These objects could perhaps last as long as the universe does.

Yes, Unitology has a very atypical set of tenets regarding God, resurrection, and the afterlife.  Yes, many variations of religious or even non-religious theistic philosophies one might hear of touch upon death and some kind of afterlife.  The Bible teaches a state of soul sleep until bodily resurrection [2] (Daniel 12:2), but at the resurrection, there is an afterlife--for some, temporary, and for some, eternal (John 3:16, Romans 6:23, Matthew 10:28).  The Quran teaches that there is the Garden for Muslims and the Fire for the wicked after death (Surah 2:24-25), with both sets of inhabitants having eternal life unlike what Christianity holds to (compare Surah 2:81-82 with 2 Peter 2:6).  Unlike the Bible, the Quran is less repeatedly plain about its stance on the issue of soul sleep or an intermediate afterlife before the Day of Resurrection (Surah 7:13-15).

However, in the religion of Unitology, promoted by a church of people who help unleash the Necromorphs upon the USG Ishimura, death and subsequent bodily transformation of an alternate kind are the supposed pathways to God.  The resurrection of Unitology is not of the eschatological future after collective humanity is brought back to bodily life and conscious experience, whether in stages or in a single event, as orchestrated by an uncaused cause.  Tied to a pathogen and a Marker, the Necromorphs are reanimated, hostile creatures related to the religion.  These zombified organisms are assumed by Unitologists to be integral to the afterlife of sorts, created first by a signal from a Marker to dead tissue and then spread to additional corpses from the pathogen carried by Necromorphs themselves.  United by a hive mind, the Necromorphs embody the alleged wholeness that awaits humanity after death.

As long as a religion is consistent with logical axioms and all other necessary truths, it is possible, meaning that even if it is not true, it could have been since it has no inherent contradiction with axioms, another strictly logical truth, or itself.  There are many types of potential religions even if only some are logically possible (which would not necessitate that they are true, only that they could be or could have been).  A religion might feature a deity that both exists and does not exist at the same time, making it a false religion due to its contradiction but still a religious ideology that could be irrationalistically but sincerely embraced by someone.  A religion could feature dozens and dozens of uncaused causes rather than one, as with Islam.

Unitology falls into this category of somewhat unconventional religions.  Now, any truly divine involvement in the phenomena of the Markers and Necromorphs is logically possible but unverifiable, not following by logical necessity from the observed events, and it would be unclear if the Necromorphs even have their own genuine consciousness at all or just appear to have it--something epistemologically true of all other people and animals [3], not just zombies in a fictional story.  Still, Unitology is a religion, having very loose similarities with the established religions of Earth players might be familiar with.  Religion, in the sense of what a religious philosophy could be no matter if a given example is logically impossible in itself, is far broader than what some people might think of when they reflect on the word.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2020/10/is-jesus-most-historically-supported.html

[2].

A.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/06/sheol-and-hades-part-one.html

B.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/06/sheol-and-hades-part-two.html

[3].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-nervous-systems-of-animals.html

The Doom Reboot's Female Villain

The 2016 reboot of Doom does many things right as far as level design, combat, and secrets go.  Its female villain Olivia Pierce is, for a character that is functionally a mere figurehead for the "demons", a very progressive character in the real sense, on top of everything else.  These demons are dimensional extraterrestrials, and Olivia has helped them infiltrate a human Mars base.  She is ruthless and happens to be a woman.  Although it is thankfully starting to shift towards true egalitarian representation, women are still generally treated in storytelling media as if they are naturally collaborative, kindhearted, and passive, and men as if they are supposedly not.  Olivia Pierce is a more modern example in gaming of a female villain that is presented very much on defiance of sexist stereotypes that ultimately are against men as well as women.

In an entertainment industry that can overlook older women, Olivia's older age is also significant because it defies the trend of emphasizing younger and thus potentially more conventionally attractive women.  Of course, there is nothing irrational or Biblically immoral about such an emphasis in one game or another, as long as it is not a default trend used to intentionally or by passive neglect exclude aged characters and/or voice actors--and as long as male beauty is not neglected either.  Olivia's gender, age, and scoliosis (hence her exo-suit) are not what her character is reduced to, but they also do not in any way thematically or narratively interfere with her competence in unleashing an invasion of Mars by the demons.  She makes no extended monologues or any serious mistakes other than that of doing as she pleases in true egoist fashion; she seeks power from her alliance with the race that attempts to destroy the rest of hers.

Now, if there is a given level of harshness against men that is justified or even morally required in a specific situation, the same could only be true of harshness against women.  Both are human; gender is a category of the body, having no connection to mental traits like aggression, kindness, concern for one's appearance, and so on.  Having one kind of genitalia or another does not logically necessitate having any of these or other personality characteristics, and vice versa.  What one man or women is like does not reveal what another man or woman is like.  These things already refute the very possibility of any gender differences being related to moral rights and obligations that are unrelated to actually having genitalia (an easy example of such a thing would be the Biblical obligation to be circumcised if one is a man).  So, too, does the fact that even on the level of social experience and not strict logical necessity prior to the former, no man or woman would ever display different behavioral traits than another if there was such a thing as valid psychological gender stereotypes [1].

While Doom does not feature elaboration by characters on these issues, the way it presents its characters and narrative is certainly consistent with these logical truths.  Olivia is egoistic.  She is the main antagonist.  She is a woman, but the game does not focus on this one way or another, just as it does not do the same concerning how the Doom Slayer is a man.  As for the Doom Slayer's rampage to reach and stop Pierce, there is no special level of brutality meted out on Olivia because she is a woman, as if her offense is being born female as well as colluding with Hell's demonic inhabitants.  Nothing about the protagonist's actions are misogynistic.  Pierce is treated just like any other living obstacle to the Slayer's quest to prevent Hell from taking control of Mars, and by extension eventually the rest of humanity.

The Slayer does not directly confront her until the end of the game when she becomes the Spider Mastermind as seen below.  Again, he handles her as he has the rest of her demonic allies, and she remains in pursuit of superhuman power at the expense of other people to the end.  From her introduction to her demise, Olivia Pierce is a rather genuinely progressive character, not just because she is a woman, but because she is a determined, successful (for most of the game), and unflinchingly selfish and callous villain and a woman.  For all of its focus on quality gameplay moreso than on other things, some of the other elements of Doom that are subtle by comparison elevate the game by proximity to some grand philosophical truths.  Not drawing special attention to Olivia because of her gender is itself in fact also an expression of actual gender egalitarianism here.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2020/06/refuting-gender-stereotypes-unnecessary.html