Movie Review--Color Out Of Space

"It came down in the rock.  It lives in the well.  It grew down there.  Poisoning everything.  Changing everything into something like the world it came from.  Into what it knows."

--Ezra's recording, Color Out of Space

H.P. Lovecraft's story The Colour Out of Space is wonderfully adapted in a 2019 film starring Nicolas Cage of all people.  Setting up its human characters within the first 20 minutes before the titular color arrives, some of them to an unusually effective extent, Color Out of Space is a sometimes excellent cosmic horror movie with the visual flair this exact story calls for.  In a flash of purple, a strange object falls to Earth outside of a family residence, and yet Nathan Gardner has trouble recalling what color the impact projected.  A distinctively Lovecraftian tale ensues despite the absence of enormous beasts.  The city of Arkham--yes, this is actually what inspired the name of Arkham Asylum in the Batman mythos, as Lovecraftian horror can often involve a descent into insanity of a kind--is also mentioned repeatedly, a part of Lovecraft lore with an extreme impact on later storytelling far outside of cosmic horror, and it is fitting that this name would be acknowledged in recent cinema for its fictional roots.

Production Values

Opening with a unique approach to introductory credits, Color Out of Space displays its visual excellence very early on.  These credits appear and shift into the foreground or seem attached to trees as the camera rotates.  Not long after, there is a shot of the inside of a well that turns out to be showing the reflection in the water rather than showing the characters looking below from underneath them.  Before the 20 minute mark, the first of the color from outer space is seen in an explosion of purple.  The meteorite and its exotic color are later portrayed as a mixture or rapid changing of colors like purple and blue.  Cosmic horror is severely misunderstood by people who think it shows things that are logically impossible or that humans cannot understand, and there is of course no such thing as a color from an object outside of the planet that would not ultimately be a color we can find in our lives or a mixture of familiar colors.  In spite of this, the foreign nature of the color is triumphantly conveyed.  The wildness of the ending only highlights the color and its powers (though only objects can have colors, so the color seems to be emanating from an energy or even an alien consciousness) all the more.

The acting and characterization is, while secondary to atmosphere, also handled very well as a whole.  In the right role, Nicolas Cage can do far more than radiate unintentional humor or dramatically panic as he does in some of his most famous scenes.  His voice changes as the film progresses, starting with a more dramatic, lifelike vocal tone that lapses into one of his more unusual but still iconic ones as the Lovecraftian force exerts its influence on him.  He switches back and forth within the same scene on occasion.  Without being his best or most adventurous or bold role, Nathan Gardner is still one he is perfectly at home in, as the cosmic horror circumstances give Cage a new context for some of his signature style.  It would still have been better for the sake of tonal consistency to not have him lean as much into his almost self-parody levels of acting in some moments when the extraterrestrial substance alters his mind.  Besides Cage, Joely Richardson, Madeleine Arthur, Elliot Knight (from the DC show Titans), and other cast members do their part with the situational humor, gravitas, or confusion that each scene calls for.  Madeleine Arthur and Elliot Knight in particular have to carry certain scenes, including their meeting in the opening, that are of great significance to the plot, which they actually do.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

A young girl attempts a Wiccan ritual to grant several of her desires, such as the removal of her mother's cancer, which incidentally leads to her meeting a boy surveying the groundwater of the general area for a hydroelectric company.  That very night, a bizarre meteorite falls to the ground in a blaze of purple.  The youngest son of the family living on the property enters a catatonic state for a time, and soon, almost every family member begins experiencing unusual perceptions or situations.  The mother cuts off two of her fingers as she zones out.  The daughter hears garbled speech when she answers her phone.  The older of the two sons finds animals that he already fed wandering about as if they have not eaten.  A small creature also comes forth from with an insectoid body of purple, seen only by the child who went catatonic when the object first landed.  The groundwater surveyor finds evidence of contaminated water, encouraging people not to drink from it.

Intellectual Content

The events of the film do very much reflect the Lovecraftian idea that the physical world and the beings that inhabit it are ultimately quite hostile or indifferent to humans, except when it suits them to toy with people as a means to their alien ends.  In contrast with a popular misconception of Lovecraftian or general cosmic horror, the laws of logic are true by inherent necessity, but the scientific correlations of ordinary life are not.  Color Out of Space indirectly touches upon the former in that it only shows logically possible but bizarre things, with logical impossibilities being impossible even in fiction, and thus they cannot be portrayed even when people intend to because they cannot avoid logical axioms.  The movie addresses the latter much more directly, depicting a terrible spiral into what is implied to be a terraforming of sorts where the alien "color" or the potentially conscious being behind it alters both the laws of physics and the mental perceptions of the Gardner family.  The "final boy" of the story recognizes the in-narrative non-universal nature of Earth's scientific laws in the final scene, and not only does his survival mean he replaced a character that could have filled the final girl trope, but he is also a black person, someone Lovecraft himself would have despised or feared.  There is a great double irony in how this film inverts a classic horror role and honors the cosmic horror of Lovecraft while disregarding his renowned racism against black people.

Conclusion

Another cinematic accomplishment for Nicolas Cage, an actor with one of the most wild filmographies, Color Out of Space succeeds in adapting its source material yet again.  It could have sometimes actually benefitted from a less over the top performance by Cage, but even when he embraces a style reminiscent of some of his other films, he is never a bad fit for the story and for this particular adaptation of it.  As a slow burn cosmic horror narrative, the movie manages to emphasize both the otherworldly glow and invasive corruption of the meteorite that brings doom with it, all without showing the breakdown of a family quite as well as other horror films like The VVitch or Hereditary.  It also does not feature any of the more culturally recognizable Lovecraftian entities like Cthulhu, which is not a flaw, just something people craving a more conventional Lovecraft story might not prefer.  For a movie adapting a story that could be quite difficult to visually tackle, this is generally a solid offering that incorporates all of the standard subgenre trappings like distortion of perception, an extradimensional or extraterrestrial being, and a quiet start that gives way to pandemonium.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  A woman slices two of her fingers off.  The hand is shown with blood.  Mutated alpacas are shot onscreen, a scene that also shows eruptions of blood, as is a transformed human.

 2.  Profanity:  "Fuck," "damn," and "bitch" are used.

 3.  Sexuality:  A man and woman are briefly shown engaging in clothed, passionate sexual interaction.

Social Media Debates

You do not need any social prompting to realize miscellaneous logical truths such as how if the universe was to exist forever, everything inside it would not necessarily also exist forever, or how just because there is a God would not mean the deity is personally invested in humanity.  You do not need to debate anyone to initially realize that the existence of one's thoughts and emotions cannot be illusions even if one's sensory perceptions do not pertain to any external objects, for something cannot be perceived without at least the perception objectively existing and being knowable with absolute certainty.  More importantly, you do not need anyone's assistance to realize that logical necessities of any other type, such as that it is impossible for nothing to be true because then this would be true (this is not about any scientific, moral, or theological fact, but pure logic), are inherently true.

Many people still do not come to see the fact that logical truths, as intrinsically necessary truths, do not depend on anything else, and yet everything else depends on them.  As such, one can know them independent of all conversation, research, or sensory experience, for they are true regardless of such things and can be known in themselves.  Each person is already relying on them both metaphysically and epistemologically.  It is only a matter of whether someone has recognized this or not--and the vast majority do not.  For the masses who might think of debates as necessary prompting for any philosophical reflection, rather than for initially thinking of certain scientific or historical ideas that are neither self-evident axioms nor something that follows logically from what is inherently true, social media can be a popular set of platforms.

Any deluions of people in social media debates, to clarify, are not present because of the nature of social media, which has no special qualities that make people believe or act in a given way unless they decide to, but because the nature of irrationalistic people.  Superficial, irrelevant, non sequitur arguments are always easier for non-rationalists to think of or cling to because assumptions do not neessarily require effort to make, but avoiding them might be psychologically strenuous for a non-rationalist at first if they do become a rationalist after all.  Although no one has to use it this way, social media makes it easy for incomplete philosophical stances, hearsay misconceptions, and a host of assumptions to reach mainstream appeal.

Of course, it is reason and introspection and other such things one must look to instead of any form of debate or media in order to discover objective and demonstrable truth.  If one wants to know logical axioms or necessary truths about reason itself or anything else, look to reason.  If one wants to focus on their own mental states or discover something about them as an individual soul, one must look to introspection and reason, for the laws of logic govern all, without making assumptions about one's own direct beliefs, personality traits, desires, and perceptions.  To learn what a religious text says, read the text without assumptions and identify what does and does not logically follow from the claims, rather than looking to hearsay, consensus, or traditions mentioned on social media that allegedly represent the religion.  Social media debates are not often about true logical necessity, but about cultural "hot button" issues through emotionalistic frameworks, expressions of subjective preference without rationalistic analysis of them, or whatever scientific fad is currently a widely-accepted paradigm.

Non-rationalists, being slaves to assumptions and particularly self-serving or convenient ones, also might, for instance, believe that someone who does not immediately reply to them must be quaking in their boots and full of intellectual cowardice.  As if a truly rational person could not stop conversing with them out of frustration, or as if there are not planned or spontaneous things alike that occupy time in a person's life outside of social media debates!  They might altenatively or additionally think that posting links prove something rather than reason itself, or that citing scientific, historical, or other hearsay (which is all that sources can ever offer) is philosophically valid as justification for belief in some supposed condition of the distant past.  They also might try to use this to in someone over emotionally regarding morality.  Posting a link describing the horrors of a natural disaster does not prove a moral obligation to aid the survivors, though it might still be used in attempts to pressure people into fallacious basis for belief and action.  War is not evil just because it can be destructive, no matter what any news article or opinion piece says, as this is only true if morality objectively exists and the obligations are such that war is immoral.  Perhaps misrepresenting their opponents and seeking social approval or emotional manipulation instead of something more than linguistic fluency, mere passion, or subjective persuasion, such people are far from reason indeed.

A rationalist will of course probably not wind up convincing someone of the truth through logical proof on social media or elsewhere.  For non-rationalists, only invalid epistemological means tend to be sought out, though they either require mere faith to sustain belief (in the sense of assumptions, not commitment to fallible but probablistic evidence) or are obviously erroneous to begin with, such as using scientism or moral subjectivism as starting points for expanded philosophical beliefs.  Again, using social media does not make a person irrational.  It just makes it easy for irrational people to ignore the truth while interacting with others or make themselves feel intelligent for believing fallacies or contradictions.  One can still engage in social media debates if one wishes.  To do so does not require that one believe anything false or slander an opponent!  There will simply be no point other than celebrating the truth on one's own as one tries, likely in vain, to help the many irrationalists of the online world.

The Prophet Of 1 Kings 20:35-43

1 Kings 20:35-36--"By the word of the Lord one of the company of the prophets said to his companion, 'Strike me with your weapon,' but he refused.  So the prophet said, 'Because you have not obeyed the Lord, as soon as you leave me a lion will kill you.'  And after the man went away, a lion found him and killed him."

As strange as this scenario might be, the wording does attribute the prophet's instructions to God, who in the extended story had the prophet accept a wound so that he could lull King Ahab into a false sense of security (1 Kings 20:37-43).  This actually is from God, who cannot sin and whose moral nature does not change (Malachi 3:6, James 1:17), and the prophet himself invites the blow, communicating divine judgment to follow in the form of death when the first person he talks to disobeys Yahweh.  These things crucially differentiate the strike in question, which the next person the prophet asks does carry out, from many other kinds, like that of one person striking another because of subjective whim or out of malice.  There is no contradiction between God genuinely instructing the prophet to have someone hit him and physical assault being universally evil.  The act required by God here is merely not physical assault.

The Torah says not to murder (Exodus 20:13) and gives clear examples of many situations where killing is not murder, so not only is the line between murder and non-murderous killing very clear (Exodus 21:12-17, 22:2-3, 18-20, and so on), but murder is never to be committed even if someone wants to be treated in this way.  Murder is by nature illicit killing, as opposed to mere killing, so it could never be morally legitimate.  The same is not true of physical blows--it is physical assault, which always entails unjust or unwanted physical contact, that is condemned in the Torah, not everything involving physical blows.  For instance, a husband and wife can engage in rough sexual interactions as long as they are mutually consensual (Deuteronomy 4:2, 1 Corinthians 7:2-5; only nonconsensual sex is condemned in Deuteronomy 22:25-27 as opposed to rough sex or other sexual behaviors), and wrestling for physical development can be done without malice or either party being physically abused.

Here is an excerpt from Exodus 21 dealing with general assault and battery:

Exodus 21:18-19--"'If people quarrel and one hits the other with a stone or with their fist and the victim does not die but is confined to bed, the one who struck the blow will not be held liable if the other can get up and walk around outside with a staff; however, the guilty party must pay the injured person for any loss of time and see that the victim is completely healed.'"

 

It might be easy to overlook, but the fact that Exodus 21:18-19 does not say to never strike someone with one's fist is vital: it in actuality specifies a context of quarreling, which can only come about if at least one party is in error logically and/or morally, or else there is nothing to fight over whether with words or with physical harm.  Thus, the situation is already one where at least one person is irrational and in sin.  The blows in this case law are born from malice or emotionalism, as they are not just.  Corporal punishment with rods or whips is allowed with clear moral boundaries like never going above 40 lashes and never using it as a means of execution (Exodus 21:20-21, Deuteronomy 25:1-3); also, physical wounds of a permanent kind can be given strictly for a particular category of sexual assault (Deuteronomy 25:11-12) or in cases of assault with permanent injury--see Exodus 21:23-25 and Leviticus 24:19-21, but see Exodus 21:15 and 26-27 for exceptions even to this. Exodus 21:22 only affirms that nonpermanent injuries deserve a lesser punishment according to the Bible [1].  Attacking someone with one's fists or an object is nonetheless evil unless it is in self-defense (as with Exodus 22:2-3).  

However, like two athletes physically training in the form of wrestling or a wife and husband hitting each other in a mutually desired manner for sexual gratification, hitting someone upon their own insistence to help them lay a trap at God's behest is not physical assault, for it is not about quarrelling, malice, and so on.  It would not be the type of brawling or physical mistreatment addressed in Exodus 21:18-19 or Ephesians 4:31.  In fact, the entire category of nonlethal physical blows that are consented to, short of something like a person calling for himself or herself to receive more than 40 lashes in criminal punishment despite how this is declared inherently unjust, is not sinful.  Actual consent from the party taking a strike can otherwise make hitting someone entirely permissible.  With the example of the prophet of 1 Kings 20:35-43, striking the man was morally mandatory: since God's nature authorized it, and the prophet consequently consented to it, it would be sin not to strike a person under such circumstances.  This necessity is not in the act being justice, as if the prophet could deserve physical discipline for doing what is right, but from this case entailing an unusual exception to what would otherwise be a matter of strict justice or injustice.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2020/07/the-many-biblical-exceptions-to-lex.html

Objectively Subjective

Pain is pain, and all pain is mental.  These are examples of logical truths about pain.  Without a mind, their could be no pain, since it is an experience of anguish within the mind.  Even physical pain, and physical pleasure or any other bodily sensation for the same reason, requires mental experience as well as a body, without which there would be only an inanimate lump of material tissue with nothing engaging in perception and no suffering to be perceived.  Since mental experience is subjective, this makes pain and other experiences objectively subjective.

Pain of the exact same objective intensity could be experienced by various people as if it is to differing extents.  Does this mean there are no objective truths about pain?  No!  That pain is subjectively perceived by an individual is one truth.  Pain could not have existed in any form if its presence contradicted logical axioms (it does not), rendering it metaphysically impossible, for logical axioms are not arbitrary presuppositions or just potentially true on an unverifiable level, but they are true in themselves because their falsity still requires their veracity.  No truth is subjective, but there are truths about subjectivity, and thus about things like pain that can only exist within experience.

One such foundational truth about subjectivity is that all experience is subjective.  There is no such thing as people avoiding the inherently subjective nature of experience because they look to groups instead of a sole person's experience [1], as if their own mind is not the only one they can know unless they were to not be under human limitations.  Gazing at trees during a forest walk is a subjective act whether or not the trees are objectively there beyond one's mind--the sensory perceptions objectively exist within one's mind either way.  Emotions and dreaming, while typically more passive, involve subjective experience: that is, they occur strictly within minds.

A person can allow themselves by passivity or by the active embrace of assumptions to stray from only believing in that which is objectively true and demonstrable, for something could be true without being knowable.  To do the opposite would mean they start with the epistemologically self-evident intrinsic truths of reason, as well as the objective self-evidence of their own conscious existence, and discover other logically necessary truths.  Ideological deviation from the objectively self-necessary truths of logic entails turning towards subjective persuasion or preference as a basis of belief, but this does not mean that anyone, by virtue of being conscious, makes assumptions based upon their subjective experiences.  Nothing can be true that contradicts logic, though it is possible for people to believe in anything they would subjectively like to, no matter how impossible or unverifiable it is.

However, all logical truths about subjectivity are objective, true by logical necessity independent of recognition or belief or emotional appeal.  Objective reality is knowable wherever there are logically necessary truths that are not locked beyond human epistemological limitations (for instance, while it could only be true or false that my memory of an event is accurate, I have no way to prove that the memory is correct).  All thoughts are still experienced subjectively by minds, and there are by necessity objective necessary truths about subjectivity.  Experience in its totality is objectively subjective and nothing about logical necessities or the real nature of one's immediate thoughts, such as one's worldview or intentions, is beyond one's ability to know them.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2021/09/group-subjectivity.html

Taking The Bible Literally

A lot of people say that they take the Bible literally or try to strive for this.  Making no assumptions, however, which does often mean taking the Bible literally, does not usually lead to the same ideas that are culturally associated with Christianity by the historical/contemporary church or by the secular world.  In a linguistic context as pertaining to the Bible, making no assumptions involves recognizing what the words really do or do not say and what does or does not logically follow from the concepts mentioned.  Though avoiding assumptions as a whole is is far broader than this, a necessary part of having true knowledge about anything at all from logical axioms to religious doctrines, it is of course a foundational philosophical necessity in knowing what any text appears to say.

Even what a Biblical text appears to say still is very commonly not the same as what many people have heard.  So many have been told that the Bible teaches that Christians go to heaven right when they die, but a single passage out of many is all it takes to refute the idea: Ecclesiastes 9:5-10 says the dead are unconscious, lacking all emotion, activity, and perception.  Also, Daniel 12:2 says the dead sleep until their awakening at their resurrections.  No one could take this literally, even if they believe they are, and think that these verses teach an intermediate afterlife before the resurrection.  Moreover, a verse like John 3:16 says those without eternal life from Yahweh and Christ will perish, not live forever in torment after their resurrection to be placed in hell as many are told is the case.  This is incredibly clear in itself aside from personal or cultural stupidity.

Even something that appears to literally say one thing can still obviously say something to the contrary in a very literal manner.  Does Ephesians 5:22-33 actually teach gender roles of any kind?  No, it is not that the Bible is saying men and women have their own personality traits and moral obligations (if it did, it would be incorrect here), that only men need to unilaterally love their wives and only wives need to unilaterally submit to their husbands.  Ephesians 5:21 very literally says before the mention of wives submitting to husband's that all Christians should submit to each other, with the obvious prerequisite being as long as there is no sin involved in what one yields to or if one is doing so for rational reasons.  Other parts of the Bible repeatedly say that love, the respect for all humans because of their divine rights, is an obligation all people have towards everyone else.

The literal statements of Ephesians 5 thus cannot be complementarian, but even if verse 21 was missing, it still would not logically follow that Paul is doing anything more than tailoring his commands to a specific church audience where men and women let cultural conditioning poison their worldview in differing ways.  The antidote would be both men and women doing what is good, which does not depend on their genitalia but on righteousness itself, no matter what their community demands.  However, even just in the context of Ephesians 5, gender roles are not taught either way because of both the literal statement of Ephesians 5:21 and the fact that it does not logically follow that addressing husbands or wives means something is morally good only for one gender.

In spite of the literal teachings of the aforementioned verses not being their popular misconceptions, there is sometimes figurative language in the Bible, indeed.  The parables of Christ are full of them.  He clarifies details about the literal truth or concept many of his stories touch upon, however.  Other miscellaneous statements are also figurative.  Is Jesus literally bread (John 6:35)?  A divine being inhabiting a human body cannot possibly be the same as a piece of bread, yet Jesus calls himself the bread of life.  The context literally clarifies that Jesus is like bread that sustains people, but far beyond what human food allows for (6:32-40) due to granting eternal life.  The text always has some clarity about what it is not talking about even if its intended meaning is generally obscure or comparative trivial.  Take the Bible literally when the context requires this and make no assumptions at all, though, and these things become obvious in light of reason.

The Null And The Evangelical Hell

Standard evangelicals actually believe that everyone will receive eternal life--the righteous or saved in heaven and the wicked in hell.  To exist in inescapable torment endlessly is of course eternal life, just not what many people mean when they specifically use the phrase.  The ironic contradiction of Yahweh or Jesus having to extend eternal life to someone when they will already live forever is extreme, but this is the typical evangelical stance on hell: the damned will live forever in agony and separation from God, although it would be impossible to be away from an omnipresent bring unless one did not exist.

Hells of (hopefully) fiction, like the egregiously contra-Biblical hell of Dante's Inferno or the supposed non-theological hell of Stephen King's Revival, often differ from whatever arbitrary details evangelicals believe mark the Biblical fate of the wicked when it comes to just that, the specific details.  The Null of Revival is presented as a realm of eternal slavery and torture (though the Null is an illusion or not for everyone like the narrator assumes in light of other stories by King), which is similar to the evangelical misconception of hell except for the creatures there being like enormous Lovecraftian insects, everyone allegedly going there after death regardless of their identity, and the suffering not even having the pretense of a moral nature.

It is not ant-like beings or the possibility of being consumed by Mother or other eldritch entities that makes the Null worse than almost any other afterlife in any established philosophy or fictional story.  It is the "universalist" nature of this hell, the intent behind the torment only being the sadistic whims of the supernatural creatures, and the assumed eternity of conscious existence there.  Even so, the concept of the Null is still fairly close to the evangelical notion of hell simply by the latter being eternal in duration and almost unavoidable.

No, the Biblical hell would not involve insectoid "demons" tormenting or overseeing people.  It was still originally created for demons to be punished, not humans (Matthew 25:41).  They are not able to abusively prey on humans, much less in order to enact "justice," for emotionalistic cruelty could not be morally permissible and they were the intended inhabitants to be destroyed in the consuming lake of fire, which is for humans the second death (Revelation 20:15).  Satan himself is to be punished in hell as opposed to being given the status of its egoistic "ruler."

Although the evangelical hell is logically impossible because eternal torment cannot by default be just for temporary sins of a limited number--and the nature of hell is not that everyone continuously sins and thus deserves eternal torment since the Bible plainly says that death of the soul awaits people (Ezekiel 18:4, Matthew 10:28, 2 Peter 2:6)--the Null of Revival is in some ways not different at all from what is popularly believed, on the basis of errors and pathetic assumptions, to be the hell of the Christian worldview.  Both are terrible; both are unjust or amoral at best, and both could only be worse by the degrees or kinds of suffering involved.

Their Worm Does Not Die

More often than not, the details that people associate with the Biblical hell are not included in the Bible itself, and in many cases even contradict what it does teach.  The most blatant of the cultural myths about the Christian hell is that it involves eternal conscious torment for every unsaved being.  The actual details the Bible does provide, such as how everyone would be punished according to their deeds (degrees of punishment because sins are not equally vile), the physicality of hell (Jesus speaks of people having their bodies in hell, so he is not describing a metaphysical space void of matter), and how cosmic death in hell is the ultimate penalty for sin instead of eternal torture [1], are not even generally recognized as the Biblical teachings on the matter.  

For all of the aforementioned details about hell that are included in the Bible, there is indeed much that is not elaborated upon.  Jesus does say that the physical body is punished in hell and not just the mind, but he does not specify what hell is supposed to look like or whether its physical environment is nothing but an actual lake of fire.  When multiple verses say that the wicked will be punished according to their deeds, they do not say if the general unsaved will be tormented for different durations of time at equal severities before their annihilation, or if they will be tormented prior to annihilation for an equal duration at different levels of pain.  However, these details are not necessary to understand the ideas that the Bible does posit about hell.  The same is true of Mark 9:47-48's description of the physicality of hell, as it states that is better to lose parts of one's body than to have a full body and be cast into hell, but casually mentions that "their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched."

This reference to a worm is paralleled in Matthew 18, but this other part of the Bible does not reveal details about what exactly this worm is.  The mention of fire that goes unquenched refers to how the realm of hell itself is described as eternal (Matthew 18:8), made for Satan and his fellow fallen angels (Matthew 25:41), and this is entirely consistent with the many statements in the Bible about how unsaved humans, as opposed to the devil, are to be punished with an eternal death of consciousness (Ezekiel 18:4, Matthew 10:28, Romans 6:23, and so on).  That a realm will last forever does not mean everything inside of it must last forever.  Even so, Mark 9 specifically says that "their worm does not die" in hell without clarifying what precisely is being conveyed.  If literal, Jesus is saying that there is a worm/worms that devours the physical bodies of those in hell, living forever even after the unsaved perish.

Even though this does not bring much more to light, it is true that Mark 9 is paraphrasing Isaiah 66:22-24, where God is speaking of a new heavens and a new earth to which humanity will come, looking out at the corpses of God's enemies as their "worm," it is implied, consumes the dead flesh.  The onlookers likely experience hatred towards the wicked based upon the comment that the dead who rebelled against God are loathsome to "all mankind."  The seeming eschatological context of this is clear from its use of wording much like that of Revelation when it talks of a renewed physical creation.  The bodies are dead, which is consistent with the common Biblical teaching of annihilationism, and though 2 Peter 2:6 says that the unsaved will be burned to ashes instead of ceasing to exist as minds while leaving full bodies to exist forever, it is possible that even if Isaiah 66:22-24 is a literal description of the saved witnessing the aftermath of the wicked permanently dying on the level of consciousness, the bodies will persist for a while in the presence of a worm until they are reduced to ashes.

Regardless, the worm of Isaiah 66 (and Mark 9 by extension) is like terrestrial worms that feast on corpses, and it is clear from passages all throughout the Bible that general humanity is destined for death of the soul, without which the body is also dead.  Though Jesus does not give much clarity, it would seem that the Biblical hell is associated with some sort of worm.  This has not deterred some Christians from somehow thinking that the "worm" of Mark 9 is actually conscience as it torments the wicked, as if that in any way is present in the text of Mark 9 or the part of Isaiah 66 it paraphrases!  Of course, the kind of evangelical who would come to this non sequitur is likely the kind of Christian who genuinely thinks that the Bible is very literal in its teachings, yet he or she remains unaware of the fact that the literal words of the Bible do not teach that conscience is involved in the agony of hell or that all humans in hell exist forever, alive and in pain.  Whatever the worm of hell is, death of the spirit (the conscious mind) and the eventual deterioration of the body to ashes is what the Bible literally teaches is the ultimate, deserved fate of unrepentant humans.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-truth-of-annihilationism.html

Endangering The Life Of One's Neighbor

By saying things such as that we are to love each other, the Bible is not in those precise statements detailing what makes something loving.  This is where some people mistakenly think that an irrelevant deed is really mandatory.  Not holding the door open for a random person is not unloving, so even according to this idea that is objectively vague on its own, there is no Biblical obligation to show kindness in this exact way.  One would need to know the contents of Mosaic Law to know what love is.  A moral concept put forth in Leviticus is somewhat similar, pertaining to the narrower range of behaviors that can gratuitously put others in harm's way, which it does not elaborate upon afterward.  In this case, instead of corresponding Biblical passages along with reason, reason alone illuminates the matter.

Leviticus 19:16 does say not to endanger your neighbor's life, but it does not prescribe or even hint at many specific precautions many take against danger to humans--because for the most part, those measures are only situationally or individualistically obligatory.  Traffic laws, for instance, are in part motivated by the intention of protecting life and health, as well as that of extracting money from the citizenry, of course.  However, on the Biblical worldview, it is absolutely not driving at 65 or 75 or 100 miles per hour that is sinful, nor is it disobeying social constructs like mere human laws; it is a reckless, selfish approach to driving, such as driving even 45 miles per hour into a tight crowd of innocent and unwitting pedestrians, that endangers other people rather than any arbitrary daily speed of driving.

Deuteronomy 4:2 and the fact that it does not logically follow from driving at a speed like 50 miles per hour that there is automatic, unnecessary endangerment of life make it clear that such laws are still asinine.  At most, an individual person can be situationally in the wrong by knowingly or negligently putting someone else in danger, but it is not the simple act of driving "fast" to any arbitrary extent that is the sin.  Had this person never driven this way around a pedestrian or a stalled vehicle, there would be no sin because the error is not in the act or anything but the disregard for other lives.  This entire category is an example of endangerment-related laws in modern America that actually violate Deuteronomy 4:2, treating a permissible thing as if it should be criminalized itself.

To provide another example, it is not as if holding a knife within a three or two foot radius of another person, outside the context of something like a legitimate wartime kill for clarification, is actually immoral according to the Bible, or holding a gun in the presence of a companion.  It would be trying to harm someone with these items under the guise of a joke or active negligence in making sure the other person is safe the whole time that would be sinful.  In this way, someone could endanger their neighbor's life, though the deed or even the situation is otherwise entirely non-problematic.  Again, the obligation is respecting and caring for human life.  The mere possibility of danger to any person, in the sense of a slippery slope fallacy or otherwise, is not what makes something violate Leviticus 19:16.

Job-Based Classism

Classist arrogance and stereotypes, no matter the direction they are aimed at, are invalid and thus have to be assumed out of blind stupidity or, also out of stupidity, believed in denial of truths that someone has brushed up against and tried to set aside anyway.  Because of systematic underpayment in many industries or roles, only certain jobs pay enough or more than enough to thrive on without sacrificing necessities for survival or very important problems that make life incredibly difficult or less appealing.  Because of the economic and social power that they wield, executives can often escape social uproar because of their wealth even if they do egregious things.  In both cases, there are people who look down on or up to them arbitrarily because of their occupation on irrelevant grounds.

Unlike what a multitude of conservatives seem to gleefully think, people who bring mobile orders to vehicles, process items in warehouses, or serve as the front lines between a company and its consumers are indispensable in their roles.  No, unlike what some liberals might think, a person is great as an individual, beyond whatever human rights they might have by being human (not because someone feels like rights exist or because a government says they do), exclusively because they are a rationalist and hopefully a moralistic Christian because of their rationalism, not because they are a part of the "working class" or whatever meaningless criteria certain liberals practically deify.  No one is a rational or righteous person by virtue of having a job that is useful to society, though indeed some of the jobs that pay the least are the ones that are truly the most vital.

At the same time, short of jobs that are immoral (for instance, on Biblical ethics, prostitution or torture of any kind except for the very limited kinds prescribed by Mosaic Law), there is no such thing as a job that lowers a person's value.  There are morally permissible jobs that might be underappreciated or underpaid, but there are not jobs that render one person superior or inferior to another.  Aside from the irrelevance of such jobs to someone's rationalistic awareness and moral standing, not everyone even has the same access to different options.  Geography, family circumstances, mental health, school, and the business needs of a company all are significant variables that impact the ease someone can find or maintain a given job.

Those who look down on someone just because of their job--from that of a waiter or waitress to that of a C-Suite executive (no, it is logically possible to be an executive who is not predatory or selfish, as uncommon as examples of this seem to be in American society)--and not because of their philosophical competence or their moral character are fools.  It can be pragmatically better for people to seek some jobs more than others because certain occupations are not properly compensated or treated well, but there is nothing besides this unfortunate reality that is relevant besides a person's individual needs and preferences.  They have not sinned by not wanting or pursuing some incredibly prestigious career.

The conservative tendency to look down on the lower class or those with less prestigious jobs and the liberal tendency to assume malice and greed on the part of anyone in the upper class are asinine failures to be rational.  Manual labor, casual labor, computerized labor, educational labor, executive labor, and many other kinds are no more or less dignified in their own way as long as the role is not misunderstood irrationalistically, for all of them can both lead to personal fulfillment without irrationalism and to the enrichment of broader society.  There is no specific class of work other than the immoral types that deserves to be regarded with suspicion, contempt, or neglect by the communities that benefit from them.

"I Am Who I Am"

The story of how God communicated to Moses through a burning bush is known to even plenty of young children, a portion of the book of Exodus about how Moses encounters the miracle of a bush that burns without being consumed.  Telling Moses of how he will free the Israelites from oppression, God says he will use Moses as an instrument to bring about this liberation.  Wondering what he will say if he was to be asked for the name of the deity who would rescue the Israelites from Egyptian captivity, Moses asks for a name.  "I AM WHO I AM," God replies in Exodus 3:14.  God offers a phrase alluding to his higher metaphysical status in place of a standard name.  This brief part of the story is rather relevant to core truths about language and its relationship with the things words refer to.

Though there are many specific names for God across the Bible, the word God itself is just that, a word, a title meant to describe a certain kind of metaphysical being.  The diverse names and descriptions given to or by God in the various books of the Bible are only linguistic constructs that, like all words, refer to something more fundamental and transcendent than words all at once, for a logical truth or some other metaphysical existent must either already exist or already be understood as a concept in order for words to be created and matched with ideas (and I do not mean mere thoughts as they occur within minds, but the ideas and truths themselves that do not depend on human perception).  God, as the uncaused cause that created the physical world whether or not it is the deity spoken of in the Bible [1], would neither need nor inherently have a name, only characteristics that human words can later be used to communicate.

Names are contrived by conscious beings, whether by God or by humans.  The things names are assigned to can exist independent of or prior to the words that are paired with them.  Words are secondary, a means to the end of communicating truths and concepts that do not depend on words for their nature.  These are much more abstract, foundational truths about language than might be conventionally associated with the story of the burning bush, but they are true by necessity, and it is clear in the text of Exodus 3 that God is focusing on realities behind and beyond mere words.  Even when he elaborates after identifying as "I AM," he only calls himself the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob (3:15), abstaining from providing a singular name like Yahweh or Jehovah (not that there is anything blasphemous or otherwise erroneous about these names, contrary to what some idiots suggest).

There is no being besides a true deity that could exist uncaused and without metaphysical dependence of any kind on some other being, though even the uncaused cause only exists because of logical possibility and necessity, making it the ultimate being, the being without which there could be no material world, consciousness, or moral obligations, yet not the ultimate metaphysical existent.  Even so, the Bible presents the supreme being as not even needing to bother with names because its nature is not a construct like words.  As such, without describing it in this exact manner, Exodus addresses how reality is more significant than the words that so many people rely on for epistemological prompting--or fail to look past to ideas.  Whether one calls the Christian deity by the title God or by names such as Yahweh is nowhere near as important as the fact that there is an uncaused cause and that human existence is to God's existence as words are to truths: secondary at best.

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

If Rationalists Fight

If two people often fight, and yet both are supposedly rationalists, then one or both of them must be in error, even if only in a subtle way.  Logical necessity entails that contrary ideas cannot be simultaneously true.  Since contradictory things cannot be true at once, when two people verbally quarrel over something, either they have a disagreement of some kind or one of them has lapsed into irrationality, or else they would not be fighting.  If they have a disagreement, one or the other must be proclaiming an (at least epistemologically) invalid notion or mishandling their personality.  Ongoing fights between two individuals can thus only mean that one or both are in the wrong on some matter.

There would be nothing else to fight over.  Certainly, nothing else could merit any sort of confrontation.  One reluctant conflict over a misperceived communication is one thing, as this can happen with two perfectly rationalistic people who know and cling to reason and thus make no assumptions.  This could even happen more than once; misperceived communication is not necessarily avoidable in all cases just because two people believe the right things, starting with the inherent truths of logical axioms, for the right reasons.  However, if two people genuinely fight each other in their words and it is not an (hopefully) easily resolved issue of communication, they have different worldviews or are acting out of something like emotionalism.

Of course, if they have different worldviews, at least one of them is inevitably wrong and cannot deserve to not be confronted.  They also cannot deserve to not be treated with some degree of harshness.  Fighting repeatedly and about multiple subjects, an even greater form of conflict, can only be done when someone is being flagrantly, persistently irrational.  Knowing something is true on the level of rationalistic proof does not mean someone will always honor a necessary truth in how they approach conversations.   Perhaps they still needlessly or fallaciously fight with their friends, siblings, spouse, or parents.

Some people might be in a troubled relationship of this kind due to frequent verbal sparring (or the looming threat of it).  Still, they might desperately want it to not be true that one party must be at fault if such a thing is happening.  This can only be the case!  For those in such relationships, there is the option to show mercy or endure the needless conflict, and there is the option to walk away from the other person.  There can be rational and irrational motivations behind each course of action.  If two rationalists in particular fight as opposed to some other arrangement, one of them at a minimum has faltered, and if they continue to fight, at least one of them has not aligned in their words and behaviors with the necessary truths they might still know.

Horror In Gaming: The Most Immersive Art Form

Gaming is objectively the greatest art form.  Encompassing literally everything that makes the other mediums artistically great while uniting or transcending these elements, it is the interactivity that separates gaming from the text, audio (including music and voice acting), or aesthetics of everything from literature to sculpture.  Someone might personally prefer something like the passivity of watching a film, with movies having their own potential for greatness, but artistically, gaming has more to it than cinema ever could and it could contain everything films themselves possess.  One can control to some extent the pace at which one reads, regarding another medium, but the act of reading does not affect either the broad plot or the details of moment by moment events.  Video games require player input to progress and that progression is not necessarily uniform for every player.

What separates gaming from all other art formats is its inherent component of controllability as affected by the player's choice, that of being able to make the character do or not do whatever is permitted within the full range of actions.  Horror has the potential to become all the more visceral thanks to this.  No longer is someone merely imagining imposing events, conjuring up mental imagery to match the words, while reading them or watching things occur in a strictly cinematic fashion with or without their input.  Ominous environments are not just observed; they are navigated with real-time human direction.  Hostile entities are not just seen as a fixed, exact course of events unfolds; they must be fought or fled from by the player.

With gaming, the character only advances through whatever grim or intimidating circumstances are present if the player makes them.  When you have to make your character conserve bullets or other limited weapons, like in The Callisto Protocol or certain Resident Evil games (though only certain franchise entries actually embody serious horror well), this vulnerability is heightened.  When your character cannot defend themself at all, as with the entirety of Outlast and the human portions of Agony, the vulnerability that comes with player control is at its highest.  Someone who gets anxious towards a horror movie they do not need to manually progress through could be downright terrified by a horror game--some enjoying this and some avoiding it.

You have to hide, you have to aim the firearm, and you have to find your way through the digital world, perhaps while being hunted and with no means of protection.  Gaming is already interactive by nature, or else it would be an entirely passive experience like other artistic mediums.  This is what gives it a more potent capacity for making it likely that even people otherwise not philosophically oriented would reflect on their actual beliefs and decisions and perceptions, when this is facilitated correctly (BioShock does this very well).  Horror gaming has all of the philosophical potential of literary or cinematic horror to address fear, survival, and general metaphysics, as with cosmic or religious horror, which can be easily combined.  It also has the even grander immersive nature of player control.

What delights or intoxicates someone in artistic form might still be unwanted in real life, so it is not as if everyone looks to horror to find experiences they wish they themselves had.  The very nature of a video game nonetheless lends itself well to deeper levels of dread, unease, or excitement than the same genre in any other medium.  Of all that gaming can offer, virtual reality would be the most immersive possible subset of this already more interactive art form.  Other than being attacked or stalked or forced to walk through macabre settings, there is no experience closer to the real thing.  Far from being a medium to dismiss for its immersion and storytelling, gaming has no superior or equal in all of artistic expression: while some mediums might be more suited to particular goals or creative urges than others, there is not one with greater potential or transcendence of the others than gaming, and this inevitably spills over into interactive horror.

"It's Only A Clump Of Cells"

Only logical axioms and, though it depends on logical axioms both metaphysically and epistemologically, one's own conscious existence are self-evident since one must rely on them to doubt or deny them.  Moral and scientific facts, as opposed to logically necessary facts about ideas concerning morality or science, are not self-evident or deductively demonstrable, although one can discover evidence for certain notions about them, recognize the contradictions and thus impossibility of others, and realize in any case what would or would not follow.  This is all by necessity the case with the concepts relevant to abortion.

If killing people for convenience or on a whim is murder, then it would not matter if they are inside the womb or outside of it.  What of whether a pregnancy entails the carrying and development of an actual human at any or all stages?  If the zygote, the ovum successfully fertilized by a sperm, is what will become a human outside the womb left to itself, it is a human at that stage of development no matter the biological particulars beyond this.  In fact, even the empirically supported concept of the gametes unifying in fertilization is unnecessary to realize that whatever is being developed during pregnancy would have to be a human in its current stage.  Without fertilization, though, a sperm and egg are not a person on their own, just the basic components to potentially create a new person.

Some people adhering to liberal philosophies might insist that what is inside the womb, especially a zygote, a blastocyst, or perhaps an embryo, is "only a clump of cells."  While abortion is hardly the most significant issue of morality and general metaphysics, amidst the often purely emotionalistic and non sequitur-riddled stances held by many conservatives and liberals on this subject, this is something that might be articulated sincerely as a justification for, should the mother wish, terminating a pregnancy.  Depending on the variant of pro-choice ideology, this might be regarded as morally permissible, up to the sole discretion of the mother, at any point in the pregnancy or up until some often sheerly arbitrary line is assumed.

Consciousness is immaterial [1] regardless of whether it metaphysically creates or sustains the body as with idealism or the body causes it to come into existence, as well as whether or not it outlives the body in any sort of unembodied afterlife.  However, at least according to the paradigm of today, the human body outside of the womb consists of up to trillions of cells depending on its age and size.  On a physical level, a zygote, blastocyst, embryo, fetus, newborn, and adult alike are still just "a clump of cells" if contemporary cell theory is true, just with differing numbers of cells.  Thus, if this is basis for there to be nothing immoral about killing the clump of cells that will eventually become a newborn even when the mother's life is not threatened, then there cannot be anything immoral about the mere killing of someone outside the womb, not if it too is convenient.

There is no way to prove that any human rights exist because there is no way to prove that morality exists, but the standard liberal positions on abortion are contradictory and thus logically impossible.  Some of the tenets or others could be true on their own, but not at once.  It might be true that there is nothing morally wrong with killing the group of cells that form a human, but it is not because the unborn would not be human or because only those outside the womb could have a right to live (contingent on them not committing any act that would render them deserving of execution), or else it would not be a matter of human rights.  If all living bodies are made of cells, then differences in appearance, size, and location would not make a human at an early developmental stage, including the zygote phase, less human than that of a more mature stage.

[1].  A.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2024/02/conflating-mind-and-body.html

B.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2021/11/the-consequences-of-denying-substance.html

The Impossibility Of All Things Being Possible

If everything was possible, whether in the sense of being metaphysically capable of being true or of being epistemologically unverifiable and unfalsifiable so that one cannot know if it is true or false, then nothing would be impossible.  If, however, no individual idea is impossible, that is, incapable of being true, then it is impossible for all things to be possible, since anything contrary to this "truth" would still be impossible.  Even without directly acknowledging logical axioms, a person will always hold to this contradiction if they genuinely believe that anything is possible.  It is in actuality true necessarily that only things which are consistent with logical axioms and other necessary truths are possible, though almost no one chooses to be intelligent enough left to themselves to have as much as started exploring issues of logical necessity and possibility without making assumptions.

If nothing was true, it would be true that nothing is true, so truth still exists; this much is the case regardless of what else is.  If nothing followed logically by necessity from anything else, or if what followed by was not inherently true, it would follow logically from the nature of reality that nothing follows from anything else (or that what would have followed is not true) and that it is not necessarily true.  Thus, one thing logically follows from another with inherent truth either way.  If contradictions were possible, it would only be because contradictions being impossible is false, and so contradiction is still excluded from truth in this regard.  In other words, contradiction would still be incapable of being true!  These and a handful of other such things are intrinsically true and thus absolutely certain.

In turn, if something is inherently true, nothing else can be true which conflicts with it, for that would require its falsity.  A necessary truth cannot be false, so it would be whatever contradicts them that cannot possibly be true instead of the opposite.  As abstract necessary truths that depend on nothing other than themselves--axioms and other logical facts stemming from them--the laws of logic are what metaphysically dictate possibility and impossibility.  Yes, if all things were possible, the idea would still entail that it is impossible for anything to be impossible, though this itself would have to be impossible--much like how pure relativism entails that all things are relative, in denial of logical necessities, while also holding that this truth is absolute, rendering it false one way or another.

The real error of the concept that everything is possible, though, is that logical axioms cannot be false because they are inherently true, not hinging on God or the cosmos or any other being's preferences or perceptions.  Indeed, each of these things and all others besides logic itself depend on reason, not the other way around, and necessary truths could not have been any other way, unlike the world's exact laws of physics or historical events or someone's subjective experiences.  It is utterly impossible for all things to be possible since logic can only be true and whatever conflicts with it can only be false.  The metaphysical and epistemological arbiter of all things is reason, superior to all else for its intrinsic veracity and thus supreme centrality, immutability, and absolute certainty.  Nothing could be more simple and yet more abstract.

The Affordability Of The Sabbath

For some families, not being able to work on even a single day a week would significantly hinder their ability to save money, as a day spent not generating some sort of income would greatly slow their accumulation of vital wealth.  Some people might alternatively not have to even think about what abstaining from professional work one day a week would do to their income.  There is nothing wrong with having this kind of privilege, for no one who possesses it is necessarily irrational or unjust, and anyone who hates another person for being able to have at least one guaranteed day away from work can only do so on the basis of stereotypes or envy (assumptions and emotionalism).  But what about those who might suffer from not working every day of the week?  The Biblical Sabbath, if Christianity is true, would be an obligation for them just as it is for everyone else, though the Sabbath does not mean that absolutely no one can perform physical labor or that there would not be exceptions even with labor for pay (such as hospital work) [1].

The Sabbath is something ignored or trivialized by a great number of Christians.  Keeping a day of rest might be far from the most vital of moral obligations detailed in the Bible, but to violate the Sabbath is a capital offense (Exodus 35:2).  If more Christians were to take it as seriously as the Bible itself does, setting aside their emotionalistic love affair with conscience and church tradition, they might quickly begin to think about the ways to implement a personal Sabbath in a culture very different than that of the ancient Jews.  In an economy like that of America where some people can scarcely afford to wait two weeks to receive their next round of pay, how the poor should keep a Sabbath is a significant issue (though the Bible never prescribes Saturday or Sunday as the Sabbath, only saying to abstain from general work for one day of each week, which makes it easier to uphold).

The Sabbath is not about penalizing the poor for being poor or giving the illusion of a respite from work while taxing people with worries about how they will survive.  It is a day of rest, not a day intended to provoke deep financial anxiety.  Ultimately, any difficulties in keeping the Sabbath and staying afloat economically in modern, Western society would be due to the oppressive manner in which capitalism is practiced in America, which drives many people to let work dominate their lives.  The problem would not originate from having a day to acknowledge and rest in the fact that professional work and unnecessary labor in general are not the defining things of life.  With or without Christianity being true, in fact, work is at most secondary to other matters (the core of reality is reason rather than social constructs like economic practices).  The Sabbath is about knowing and celebrating this truth, which transcends even a theistic context, and the poor are just as able to understand these logical facts as the rich.

Professional work and physical labor in general are not the most important parts of life for either the rich or the poor.  The "affordability" of the Sabbath would have nothing to do with whether it is obligatory anyway, as pragmatic consequences do not make something good or evil, but the Sabbath is needed no less by the poor, who would benefit from as much physical relaxation and spiritual rest as they can find.  The Sabbath, as Jesus says, is for the sake of human wellbeing (Mark 2:27).  Having a day of rest is never the problem to begin with when a society is structured so that people are pressured to let work occupy the majority of their lives, and just to simply survive at that.  Evangelicals unfortunately tend to be too infatuated with American social norms to see how far many of them deviate from Biblical commands.  Holding a personal Sabbath each week would could actually be liberating in ways that could prompt someone to see just how arbitrary, hypocritical, and baseless so much of the American economic system truly is.

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

Cain And Abel In The Quran: The Reference To The Fire

The names of Adam's sons who offer sacrifices to God are not mentioned in the Quran itself, but Genesis 4, which would be included in the authoritative texts of Islam since the Torah is affirmed (Surah 5:46) as a whole in addition to some of its commands and stories, provides context that is by extension true on the Islamic worldview.  Both siblings, named Cain and Abel, offer sacrifices, but only the sacrifice of one is accepted, the Bible specifying this as Abel's offering of animal fat (Genesis 4:4).  Cain's sacrifice of fruit from the soil is rejected (Genesis 4:3), perhaps because it did not involve the shedding of blood.  Surah 5:27-31 summarizes parts of this narrative and adds something blatantly absent from the Biblical account.

In both books, one brother murders the other out of anger and likely jealousy.  Genesis says that Cain brought Abel to a field and killed him there.  None of Abel's words leading up to this are mentioned in the text.  In the Quran, Abel warns Cain of the Fire, a name for hell used throughout the Quran.  He tells his murderous brother that he will not kill him in self-defense and that his aggressor will become an inhabitant of the Fire as is the "'evildoers' reward" (5:29).  The corresponding Biblical passage, in contrast, does not mention hellfire at all.  In fact, the entire Old Testament says very little about any kind of afterlife other than that there will be a future resurrection of all people, only the righteous of which will receive eternal life (Daniel 12:2).  The contrast here of eternal life with anything else means the wicked cannot permanently exist in conscious agony.

While there are occasionally other relevant verses in the Old Testament such as Malachi 4:1-3, the New Testament is where the Bible most directly addresses hell, and what it says about the matter is very much unlike the traditionalist stance.  The Fire of the Quran is drastically different from the actual hell of the Bible and is closer to what many Christians assume, based upon popular culture and common statements, the Christian hell is like.  The Fire is not a flame that will reduce sinners to ashes, as 2 Peter 2:6 says will happen to the unrighteous just as it befell Sodom and Gomorrah in this life.  It is not a fire that brings about the second death Revelation 20:15 speaks of.  It is not a means of God killing the soul (Matthew 10:28, John 3:16).

No, the Fire of the Quran is a place where sinners will remain without any chance for escape by annihilation or repentance (Surah 2:81-82).  Islam presents the hope of avoiding hell simply by never committing particularly egregious sins: "But if you avoid the great sins you have been forbidden, We shall wipe out your minor misdeeds and let you in through the entrance of honour" (Surah 4:31).  Still, for those who do not avoid this, there is torment in the Fire (see 4:30 immediately before this).  The Islamic hell is quite different from the Christian hell.  Again, the former is much like what many Christians imagine when they describe eternal suffering in hellfire.  Abel does not touch upon the duration of the pain of the Fire in Surah 5, but other verses do!

Genesis never mentions hell in the story of Cain and Abel or otherwise, only Sheol, the state of all the dead that later passages clarify involves no consciousness at all (Ecclesiastes 9:5-10, Job 3:11-19, and so on).  This is what befalls all people until their resurrection.  As for the final judgment and reward or punishment of the dead, the Bible, from start to finish, clearly teaches that no one lives forever, in torment or not, apart from harmony or reconciliation with God (John 10:29, 1 Timothy 6:16).  Eternal life is granted only to those who align with God by having never sinned or by genuine repentance (Romans 2:7).  This is not how the Quran presents things.  If Islam was true, though eternal conscious torment for any finite sin is unjust by default, everyone lives forever and many would wish they did not.

Mathematics And Science

Three mountains could only be three mountains and not seven.  The number 22 cannot be a prime number.  16 added to 16 equals 32: the concepts are true no matter numeric symbols assigned to them or the language used to convey them.  Applied mathematics, though one does not need any sort of educational prompting, has to do with what is mathematically true about a given domain of something such as science, as with physics or business, which in turn have their own subcategories.  Mathematics reduces down to logical necessities, which are true independent of other things and thus it is other things that must be consistent with them in order to even be possible.  It cannot be possible, among other axioms being inherently true, for one thing which follows from another logically to be false or to have been different, such as that nothing follows from anything, since reason being false/different would still require that it logically follows from reality being a given way that reason is untrue or different.

It would be idiotic, therefore, and thus can only be assumed that one must go out into the natural world and observe its contingent properties in order to know that truths about numbers are true.  Sensory observations can provoke recognition of facts like how negative numbers exist as logically necessary concepts despite how there could never be a hole in the ground with negative amounts of square feet.  No collection with a negative number of cars, to give just one example, can be found because this is already logically impossible.  The metaphysical and epistemological dependence of scientific matters on mathematics is not because numbers and logical facts about them are just a part of science.  They transcend science altogether and can of course to some extent can be discovered and grasped without any sensory experience at all [1].

For this reason, there is also no such thing as a correct "mathematics applicability argument" for God's existence, since it is numeric truths that exist as logically necessary facts in the absence of God and not the other way around [2].  If there was no God, there would be zero deities, but there would.  There is an uncaused cause and this is demonstrable from reason [3], and if there was no God there could be no cosmos, yet God does not make mathematics apply to the physical world.  Any physical world that exists could only exist if it was governed by what cannot be false.  It would still be true and could only be true that 127 is not 3,016 and that three added to three equals six.

It is neither because the natural world grounds mathematical truths, as if there would be none if not for the existence of matter and they are only true of physical things, nor because the mind of God makes them true.  Mathematical truths are numeric subsets of logical truths, which are necessarily the case in themselves, instead binding God and the cosmos alike.  Nothing can be true that violates logical necessity, so God and nature are not above or outside of them.  On the contrary, they dictate the nature of all other things, including the divine mind (for instance, one God is one God, no matter what Trinitarians pretend; it either has multiple personalities within one single divine consciousness or there are multiple gods if there is a "Trinity"), physical phenomena, and mental conceptions of them.

Mathematics is but a subcategory of reason that specifically pertains to matters of quantity, which has ramifications for things like geometry (which is about shapes and not just numbers).  Yes, logical axioms, while there are mathematical truths about them, such as that there are multiple logical axioms--the existence of truth, the inherence of things following or not following from others, and so on--must be true in order for anything to be true about numbers or their binding relationship on all else.  For instance, that a thing is what it is is self-evident, for otherwise whatever else it is would be what it is, and thus it is true in itself like other axioms.  However, it is not that 1 is 1 that is self-evident.  This hinges on what can be called the law of identity already being true.  A number could not be itself without the law of identity, but the law of identity is true prior to and apart from any example of a category or thing it could be true of beyond logical axioms themselves.  Science cannot possibly be what dictates or reveals mathematical truths instead of numeric truths and broader and more foundational logical truths dictating and revealing scientific ideas and experiences.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2020/03/knowledge-without-senses.html

[2].  See here for more elaboration:

A.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/12/mathematical-platonism.html

B.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-ultimate-being.html

C.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/07/god-and-empty-space.html

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

The Breath Of Life In Animals

I am conscious, and this is something absolutely certain: I cannot doubt or reject my existence without necessarily existing in order to do so.  Although I cannot in any way be sure if most of my memories or sensory experiences correspond to anything but mere mental perceptions, or in other words, do not pertain to external events and objects, other people also seem to have minds of their own.  The unverifiability means this seeming consciousness of theirs could be an illusion.  Mine cannot be, for one cannot misperceive the existence of their own mind; they could only at most go about life merely assuming that they exist or never thinking about it, which, as a rationalist, I gave up numerous years ago.

According to the Bible, human consciousness is/is caused by the divine breath of life, which transformed Adam from an inanimate mass of dirt into a living being, a soul (Genesis 2:7).  It is not just other humans that seem to be conscious as I observe them move, react, and express noise and supposed emotions and intentionality.  Non-human animals also appear outwardly to have this immaterial mind within them, from ants to whales.  This seems to be the case from ordinary perception of them, not that I can know from unverifiable perceptions if these stimuli actually exist outside of my own consciousness.

The Bible plainly teaches that animals, too, are conscious despite lacking God's image (Genesis 1:26-27).  When the first book of the Torah says that the flood of Noah's day killed all of the living things on the world except for what was carried on the ark.  Genesis 7:20-23 says that everything on dry land in which there was the breath of life died (7:22), the animals being among those that perished and had life in their nostrils (7:21).  Also noteworthy here is that these living things perished, or died, as the text says.  John 3:16 would not mean the wicked are tortured forever in hell! 

Now, Genesis does not specifically say that God gave the breathe of life to non-human creatures in its very initial chapters, but it would still necessarily follow that if the breath of life is required for consciousness, and animals appear conscious, then on the Biblical worldview they appear to have received this breath of life from God.  It is only Genesis 7 that outright says they possess this as humans do.  As living things created by a being whose nature is goodness, being lesser than human does not make them worthless.  No, they, too, are very good (Genesis 1:20-25, 31).  Biblically, they have some sort of basic consciousness even if it is potentially more passive and limited, secondary to that of humans but still morally valuable.

Alien: Covenant's Relationship With Cosmic Horror

The atmosphere and themes of Prometheus, prequel to Alien, are very distinctly Lovecraftian.  The film blends religious, cosmic, sexual, and general body horror very well, using the humanoid Engineers (who created humanity) as a stand-in for both a deity creator that Elizabeth Shaw looks to and the Olympians, whom the Titan Prometheus steals fire from to give to humanity.  In the film, the ability to create life is analogous to the fire of the Olympians.  More than just mounting bleakness of wondering what created humans and the savagery of biological life make Prometheus Lovecraftian, though.  It is the dark theological themes and the tone, explored in part through the Engineers and the pseudo-Christian references, that ground this union of horror genres and elevates them to a cosmic level.  On their own, brute creatures that kill out of instinct, to reproduce, or potentially for food such as the xenomorph of the first Alien are not cosmic horror.

Alien: Covenant, the follow-up to Prometheus, only shows the Engineers for one scene in a flashback, as the story shifts to a group of humans attempting to colonize a new planet that turns out to be inhabited by an arrogant, delusional android and the Engineer's leftover pathogen that alters living things.  It is grim.  It is violent.  It is somber.  The second half of the movie addresses grave concerns about human life compared to the artificial consciousness of an android, as well as how a rogue android and one still loyal to humans mirror Christian demons and angels.  Viewers see a xenomorph variant emerge triumphantly as an android that thinks itself like a deity, using the pathogen in experiments to produce the "perfect organism," smiles.  The manipulation of scientific laws, however, does not in itself make a work cosmic horror, just as the same is true of including ghosts or malevolent spirits or some other such thing.

There is no eldritch creature, no supernatural being from another dimension, no epistemological revelations about things more foundational than the sensory world in Alien: Covenant.  There is the precursor to the titular extraterrestrial of the original film and a malicious android held up as an archetype like the Biblical Satan.  The xenomorph is just absolutely not Lovecraftian on its own.  It is a mere beast that happens to have features very advantageous for predatory behaviors and for relying on overt sexual force to reproduce using other life forms, but it is in no way particularly similar to an entity like Cthulhu.  An animal with acid blood, sharp protrusions, and a body that, in its various stages of life, resembles human genitalia is a great presence for sexual horror, but nothing about this inherently relates to the genuine cosmic horror of Hellraiser's Labyrinth, Mother of the Stephen King novel Revival, or the extra-dimensional beings of Lovecraft's own stories.

These other stories actually involve cosmic horror because something very foundational to the nature of reality is revealed or explored in a horror context.  In Hellraiser--the first movie--a realm of endless suffering where beings called Cenobites experience pain and pleasure simultaneously is the focal point of this context, as well as how people can destroy themselves seeking pain and pleasure alike.  The 2022 reboot still is very blatantly cosmic horror with its serious narrative of interdimensional entities, revelation, and emphasis on pain, although the Cenobites conduct sacrificial, torturous killings rather than eternal tortures of human victims.  In Stephen King's Revival, a being that is to some extent not what it is presented as [1] oversees the supposed eternal enslavement and torment of all people in the afterlife of the Null.  Truly Lovecraftian monstrosities like Mother and seemingly living colors are far beyond the scope of the xenomorph.

In spite of the existential horror of its premise, Alien: Covenant is not a cosmic horror film of the Lovecraftian kind.  It is indeed a very explicitly existential movie, as it does explore the metaphysical issues of creation and human identity.  It is simply a film that exchanges the Lovecraftian horror of Prometheus for a science fiction horror that, while still theological and dealing with core philosophical issues, is not cosmic, and certainly not cosmic in the sense of Lovecraftian horror.  A malevolent AI in a human-sized body and a beast that uses interspecies rape to produce a new organism are far from Cthulhu even though they are very philosophically charged beings in different ways.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/07/a-kind-of-non-theological-hell-mother.html

The Prodigal Son (Or Daughter)

God and the angelic beings of heaven rejoice at the repentance of one sinner who repents more than over those who do not need to repent, Jesus says (Luke 15:7, 10).  In a series of parables, Jesus emphasizes this over and over, starting with the story of the lost sheep.  In the parable, a person who loses one sheep out of their hundred animals leaves the remaining creatures to find the missing one.  Upon locating it, he takes the sheep back to the others and joyfully celebrates (15:4-6).  Right after telling this story, Jesus compares the rejoicing in heaven over repentance to that of a woman who summons her friends out of happiness when she finds a lost coin, though she had nine other coins that were not lost (15:8-9).

By far the most renowned parable in this chapter, as far as my experiences suggest, is the story of the prodigal son (15:11-32).  In his third successive parable, Jesus tells of a man who has two sons.  The younger one asks for his inheritance ahead of his father's death, departs for another country, and squanders whatever wealth he had received.  Once he finds himself longing to eat the food of pigs he is watching over, he realizes that even his father's servants have no shortage of food, and he becomes determined to return to his family, say he has sinned, and hope that he will be treated like a hired worker instead of a son.  Upon the prodigal's return, the father does not reject him or insist on regarding him like a familial outsider.  He sacrifices a fattened calf and arranges for a feast.

In this parable, the brother of the prodigal is frustrated over how he has never been the object of such a celebration.  Though the father, analogous for Yahweh in this story as the arbiter of forgiveness and Christ's own Father, does not deny that the brother who was always present has not done wrong (15:31), he is eager to rejoice over how his other son has been restored.  Many Christians have heard of this general parable.  Indeed, it seems to be one of the most famous and cherished.  What it does and does not teach about repentance and forgiveness, though, is not quite as commonly grasped.  For instance, the prodigal was not forgiven before he returned, although his father was willing to show mercy.  His reaction to seeing his son walking back in the distance was compassion (15:20).

The prodigal "son" or "daughter" of God still has to decide to come back in order to receive forgiveness.  Like the father in the parable, God does not actually pardon people in a soteriological sense without their cooperation.  Yahweh would absolutely prefer for every single sinner to repent and choose truth and righteousness (Ezekiel 33:11), yes, yet there is no grand forgiveness without the sinner's willingness.  If we are to be like God, then we will not demand that others or we ourselves forgive sinners apart from the condition of their repentance.  This goes further than what God himself is like to the point of excluding the pursuit of justice.  Forgiveness is good on Christianity; it is also something that no one deserves and that God extends to those who repent.

Movie Review--Hell Fest

"Welcome, children of the night.  Are you ready to leave the land of the living and enter into the darkness?"

--Announcer, Hell Fest

A simple premise can be utilized well enough to keep an approximately 90 minutes movie afloat.  Simplicity can even be handled masterfully in some stories, and in horror stories in particular.  The first Saw has elements that are very simple, such as keeping the two main characters in a room for most of the runtime.  The original Alien is in no way a narratively complicated story despite the positive kind of layers added by later lore.  Hell Fest is nowhere near as philosophically charged as Saw or as well-constructed as Alien.  With almost the entire plot occurring within a horror theme park as a real murderer is on the hunt, its story is nonetheless somewhat simple, but it has the benefit of its antagonist blending in with the standard proceedings of the park to add drama.  For what it is, Hell Fest is overall made rather well, even though it could have reached for much better characterization and done more with some of its themes before the last scene.

Production Values

By far the most successful component of Hell Fest is the imagery, especially as it epistemologically hinders park visitors from initially distinguishing between staged "killings" and the actual murders that occur across the film.  As many different horror-themed buildings, costumes, and events are shown, the lighting and camerawork are among the very best aspects.  The artificial corpses and paid actors of the park contribute to an atmosphere ripe for a serial killer story.  Not a character-driven film in any sense, Hell Fest still features acting that is enough to not lapse into abysmal or hinderingly mediocre delivery.  Amy Forsyth specifically is strong as the main character.  Becoming more desperate and observant as the story unfolds, her character shows the uncertainty, terror, and resolve that Forsyth needed to muster.  On some occasions, she even gets to express acting primarily through facial expressions in the absence of other characters.  All of the other characters are secondary or not given as much attention.

Tony Todd, who played the original Candyman slasher villain in the film of the same name, does have a small role as the announcer for a staged fake execution to "open up the gates of hell," adding an iconic presence to a brief scene.  The cast largely doing its best or at minimum a middling performance still leaves Hell Fest with several deficiencies in the plot.  Why the final girls do not kill the murderer when they have multiple chances to do so near the end is never addressed (they even could have used his own weapons when they have him on the ground), nor is how the villain does not wear gloves.  He is instead leaving fingerprints all over various park items and weapons.  Perhaps he had some way of mitigating this major risk, but it is never shown or mentioned.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

A group of college students attends a traveling horror theme park on Halloween, with one of them becoming an inadvertent witness to an actual murder that is dismissed as once of the park performances by several of the visitors before the deed is actually done.  From this point on, the masked killer targets the witness and her friends, who become increasingly troubled by the difficulty in distinguishing the stalker's actions from the behaviors of costumed park employees who are supposed to frighten attendees or add to the atmosphere.  He becomes more and more aggressive as the victims multiply.

Intellectual Content

There are two things that give layers to Hell Fest beyond the setting and basic plot/characters: the way that it could be very difficult to identify an actual murder spree in a theme park like the titular Hell Fest, and the last few moments of the film, where the murderer is shown to have an affectionate relationship with his young daughter.  Up until the very last moments, it seems as if the killer might be about to end the life of a girl in her own home, only for her to get up and address the figure as her father.  He hands her a stuffed toy from the theme park.  A collection of masks, implied to be from other kills, were seen right before this, but he is presented as being a kind, warm father.  That this comes so late in the movie and that there is no foreshadowing for this makes it very sudden and subtle indeed.  Even as a better film could have integrated this and the epistemology of other minds into the overall story more directly and thoroughly, it makes for an ending that changes the information the audience has about the villain very effectively.  Just because someone seems "normal" or morally stable does not mean that he or she is not a monster plotting for the right circumtances to act like a beast.

Conclusion

Hell Fest does not have to be the most unique or brutal slasher film in order to be competent in its execution.  Beyond the kills themselves, the highlight is certainly how the killer is able to make the most of the setting of a Halloween theme park with all of its macabre props and imaginative exhibits.  The theme of how an otherwise "normal" (there is no such thing as normal, but here I mean normal as compared to the arbitrary behaviors of American society) person could willingly, annually engage in murder makes the final minutes the deepest of the entire movie, but before then, the strong execution and aesthetic style give Hell Fest something to hold it up throughout the general runtime.  It is not the most violent, narratively complex, philosophically explicit, or most artistically innovative horror movie, and it does not have to be.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  The camera does not have to linger on the more graphic deaths to briefly show things like a person's skull being caved in or a person being decapitated.  Stabbings and blood are shown onscreen for longer.

 2.  Profanity:  Words like "fuck," "shit," "damn," and "bitches" are used.