What Leviticus Says About Disability

A particular excerpt from Leviticus 21 mentions an exception to the sons of Aaron who are permitted to participate in the giving of food offerings to Yahweh: a man who is physically disabled.  Not all disabilities are outwardly evident or have to do with the body, but the kinds described in this chapter are.  Does the Torah disregard or dehumanize the disabled here?  I myself would be unable to perform the food offering, though my physical disability is one that I can forget about because it is so relatively minor.  There is nonetheless nothing oppressive in this case.  The passage says enough to indicate what it does not directly or by logical extension require, and there is more to the Bible on the ethics of how to treat the disabled than this.  Here is the passage:

Leviticus 21:16-23--"The Lord said to Moses, 'Say to Aaron: "For the generations to come none of your descendants who has a defect may come near to offer the food of his God.  No man who has any defect may come near: no man who is blind or lame, disfigured or deformed; no man with a crippled foot or hand, or who is a hunchback or a dwarf, or who has any eye defect, or who has festering or running sores or damaged testicles.  No descendant of Aaron the priest who has any defect is to come near to present the food offerings to the Lord.  He has a defect; he must not come near to offer the food of his God.  He may eat the most holy food of his God, as well as the holy food; yet because of his defect, he must not go near the curtain or approach the altar, and so desecrate my sanctuary.  I am the Lord, who makes them holy."'"

From these verses alone, several vital points are clarified.  First, the scope is rather limited, pertaining to nothing more than the offering of devoted food to God and the related act of approaching a specific curtain and altar.  This is not matter from which it follows by logical necessity that the deformed Levite man must be tossed aside or keep himself away from all Levitical activity.  Moreover, the passage itself explicitly permits them to still eat from the offerings to Yahweh, which are allowed to the priests.  All that it actually forbids is the very precise action of giving food offerings to God or approaching the curtain or altar to do so.  The ideas behind this passage are quite far from dehumanizing the disabled or prescribing any sort of systematic segregation, barring from professional labor, or interaction with the full-bodied.

In the very same book of Leviticus, though, there is a verse which condemns mistreatment of the disabled, providing two non-exhaustive examples similar to what Exodus 21:26-27 does with the physical abuse of male and female slaves which entitles them to emancipation.  In fact, reading through the book in chronological sequence would take one to the verse prohibiting the oppression of the disabled before one arrives at Leviticus 21:16-23, which I again emphasize is strictly about the Levitical priesthood and has nothing to do with treatment of the disabled in a broader sense.  Also, among the declarations in Deuteronomy 27 about how people who commit miscellaneous sins are cursed, other examples being dishonoring one's father or mother (27:16), bestiality (27:21), and killing an innocent person for a bribe (27:25), there is a similar statement in favor of the rights of the disabled.

Leviticus 19:14--"'"Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block in front of the blind, but fear your God.  I am the Lord."'"

Deuteronomy 27:18--"'Cursed is anyone who leads the blind astray on the road.'  Then all the people shall say, 'Amen!'"

The Bible clearly does not in any way teach that disabled men and women are subhuman, unworthy of a spiritual relationship with God, or deserving of societal exclusion or neglect.  On the contrary, Mosaic Law affirms their humanity and calls anyone who would take advantage of them cursed.  The restrictions of Leviticus 21 are exclusively for the administration of specific priestly obligations that parallel how the animals to be sacrificed were also to, with some exceptions (Leviticus 22:23), be entirely unblemished (Leviticus 1:3, 10, 3:1, 6, 4:1, Deuteronomy 15:21, 17:1, and so on).  All people are still made in the image of God on Judeo-Christianity (Genesis 1:26-27, 5:1-2), whatever their bodily status, be they sons of Aaron from distant generations or the mute, blind, or quadriplegic men and women of today.

Not Choosing To Be Human

One of several reasons why discrimination like sexism is unjust and would be irrational even if there is no such thing as morality is that a person belongs to a gender or race without their wishes making it so.  Other reasons include the fact that it does not logically follow from having a certain kind of genitalia or skin color that one has intellectual or moral traits.  What one person, moreover, believes or does only pertains to them as individuals, not everyone else from their demographics.  If something if morally good or bad, it is the nature of the act/intention itself (as it relates to God's nature) that dictates whether it is evil, not the doer's gender, race, age, or nationality.  These are all separate but relevant reasons why the likes of sexism and racism is by logical necessity irrational and, if moral obligations exist, unjust in all of its forms.

It is still a major factor, though, that a person cannot will their gender or race or age to change, though the last of these three specific examples does change as time elapses.  Any of these multiple logical truths about gender (or race) and its irrelevance to worldview, human rights, talents, and personality already disproves the entirety of all possible sexism against men or women.  It is only being human and an individual that would be relevant to a person's philosophical standing or personality traits except where they yield to cultural idiocy.  Unless there is some sort of unprovable existence before one is conceived and this pre-conception consciousness that can choose to live as a human, however, there is nothing about being human that is voluntary either.

If it is irrational and unjust to treat, say, a man or a Hispanic person better or worse because of a factor they cannot will away, then how would it be any different to treat humans as better than other creatures simply because they are human?  None of these factors seem to be capable of being initially chosen, though an unverifiable, unfalsifiable pre-conception conscious existence would of course allow for such a choice.  Not even Christianity, which is far more "strange" in some ways than many Christians seem to understand (a tree that grants eternal life and a donkey that speaks are just two examples even aside from its very heavily nuanced metaphysics and epistemology), teaches or suggests this kind of existence.

Whether humanity or any type of being has moral value, of course, depends on whether there really are moral rights, which cannot exist without moral obligations, which cannot exist without a deity with a moral nature--the existence of the uncaused cause is not enough.  God exists as an uncaused cause regardless of the veracity of any specific religion, but if this being has no moral nature, then no human can have value (not that the uncaused cause having a moral nature means it must be a moral nature that is favorable to humanity).  If humans do not have value, they might not have chosen this status or their very existence as humans, but their gender or race would not change the amorality of reality.  Likewise, if humans do have value, then gender or race would not be a factor because they, for the reasons listed before, could not have anything to do with rationalistic ability or moral character.

The contrast between not choosing to be human and not choosing to be of a certain gender or race or nationality or physical appearance is a significant one when it comes to this issue.  It is a very precise irony that could take a lot of time and effort to realize, but it is connected with some of the most important philosophical facts about moral metaphysics (whether or not morality exists as opposed to moral feelings or preferences).  The seeming inability to choose to be human does not mean that it is logically impossible for humans to have moral value.  Gender, race, and more are objectively irrelevant to the only characteristics that would be morally good or vile in the first place, so this does not contradict the truth that not choosing one's gender or race is itself irrelevant to whether humans are valuable at all.  It is still human value or meaninglessness that would make all people have a baseline moral significance or no existential value whatsoever.

Quantum Physics And Consciousness

A scientific obsession of this era is the causal relationship between quantum physics, which deals with subatomic matter, and various aspects of macroscopic physics, including biology, which is the subset of physics dealing with living matter.  Phenomenology is a different matter, for it is about consciousness--something that, whether it gives metaphysical rise to matter or the other way around, is objectively nonphysical [1].  This does not logically necessitate any such thing as an afterlife of unembodied consciousness after biological death, but it is true that consciousness, one of the only things that is self-evident (to deny or even doubt that one is conscious can only be done if one is already conscious to do so), is demonstrably immaterial.  It thus cannot be identical to the physical brain and extended nervous system.

All the same, in accordance with the broader fixation of this age, some people try to discover or provide alleged support for all sorts of ideas about the relationship between the particles, energy, and interactions of quantum physics and the nature of consciousness.  Logical necessity allows a being making no assumptions to realize that they exist as a consciousness, that consciousness is immaterial, that it still metaphysically and epistemologically depends on logical axioms, and so on, but many who explore the issue are not rationalists.  Even if they knew all of these other things, for any assumptions prevent true knowledge and one cannot know anything at all without starting with self-necessity of logical axioms, they still might overlook that scientific investigation will never prove that other minds exist, that the external world gives rise to matter, and much more.  At most, they can speculate based on hearsay or unprovable inferences about quantum physics.

Perfect correlation of two events over many years does not prove there is a casual connection; perhaps some other unrecognized or unverifiable thing is truly the cause of the effect.  How, though, would someone observe the quantum realm through their experience of everyday macroscopic life?  They could not!  Not even the seeming dependence of human consciousness on the presence of neural matter proves anything more than that this appears to be so.  Although there is no way to prove this is true beyond the perception-based evidence one is restricted to--for instance, one can see other creatures that appear to have their own consciousness die and realize that it appears like certain alignments of matter produce nonphysical consciousness, which seemingly perishes and leaves an inanimate body behind--it really does nevertheless seem as if matter creates the immaterial mind of humans and other animals.

If certain arrangements of matter that form a nervous system produce consciousness, the seat of perception, then immaterial consciousness would be derived from matter in accordance with popular emergent naturalist philosophy regarding this particular existent [2].  This would be how science could hypothetically lead to a means of resurrecting people's minds and not just their bodies [3].  If quantum particles exist, and they contribute to the formation of atoms, which together comprise molecules, which if massed together into a brain  somehow are correlated with the sustained existence of consciousness, then this is the general connection between quantum physics and the mind.  Whatever the exact particle-to-particle chain of composition, this would be the units of matter that constitute the larger neural substance from which consciousness is causally derived.

It is still not true that all organisms that are likely conscious have nervous systems as extensive as that of humans, or any nervous system at all.  For many oceanic life forms, the nervous system is quite different from that of humans so that creatures like jellyfish, starfishes, urchins, and corals lack brains.  Sea sponges appear to be conscious and yet reportedly have no neurons at all [4].  If this is the case, then consciousnesses living in this universe do not always stem from nervous systems, despite how they could still hinge on some sort of body.  However, for humans or any other creature down to the sea slug, if matter in a given configuration, like that of  a primate brain, sparks immaterial consciousness, then consciousness has a material cause despite being inherently immaterial itself.  In turn, if matter reduces down to subatomic units like quarks, then yes, this is how quantum physics is involved in consciousness.

[1].  For just some of my many posts detailing this, see the following:

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

B.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2024/02/conflating-mind-and-body.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/03/what-is-emergent-naturalism.html

[3].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2020/09/a-hypothetical-method-of-scientific.html

[4].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/12/the-sea-sponge.html

The King Of The Angels: Satan In Lords Of Shadow

It is very common for entertainment inspired by Christian philosophy, like the video games Darksiders or Agony, to egregiously distort Biblical concepts--unless they truly were intended only to be inspired very loosely by the source material.  The Lords of Shadow games in the rebooted Castlevania series feature lore very heavily borrowed from Christianity--but it is more the common cultural misrepresentations, like eternal conscious torment, that are emphasized.  Some abnormally accurate Biblical ideas or things logically consistent with the Bible, though they are not often recognized as such, still get included at times.  Some have to do with Satan.

In the first game, the presence of this cosmic demon is a revelation that comes at the end, when Lucifer shows himself to Gabriel Belmont as the schemer behind the necromancer Zobek's own manipulation and the plan to assemble the God Mask (this being something Gabriel wants to resurrect his wife Marie).  The second game very abruptly states that Satan is returning for revenge on Gabriel and Zobek for the finale of the original game.  The in-between events of Mirror of Fate do not involve the appearance or coming of Satan, instead focusing on the reign of Dracula and the attempts of his lineage to kill him.  From Satan's initial manifestation to his seemingly literal death at the end of Lords of Shadow 2, some of his moments are much closer to the real Biblical teachings than many might think.

There are at first few or no hints that Satan is behind the events of the first Lords of Shadow.  Baba Yaga of the first game vaguely calls her master the King of the Angels, and yet she does not specify who exactly this being is.  It is probable that this is an allusion to Satan, as not only is he a fallen angel, but it is also the case that some of the only other candidates for this title are God or Christ themselves, who are not exactly presented as being aligned with the witches of the Lords of Shadow franchise even though the Brotherhood of Light ironically uses magic in violation of Exodus 22:18.  Satan does eventually appear, seemingly the entity Baba Yaga hinted at, and declares himself God's equal or superior.  Asserting that he is a victim of divine injustice, he fights Gabriel.

The Belmont warrior insists that God loves even Lucifer to the point that he is willing to offer total forgiveness if Satan will go back to him.  Unsurprisingly, he refuses, but he is pummeled by Gabriel to the point of retreating away from Earth.  Later cutscenes portray the devil of the Lords of Shadow games as if he is the malevolent ruler of hell, incorporating the incredible cultural and artistic misconception (if it is meant to match the real Biblical doctrine, that is).  Satan is who hell was created to punish (Matthew 25:41).  It is not a realm where he is free to do as he wishes or eternally mistreat the resurrected human wicked sentenced to hell (an experience that ends in their annihilation according to many verses, including Matthew 10:28 and 2 Peter 2:6).  The just penalty for sin is not to do whatever you want or to be mistreated by demons!

When he finally comes back to Earth at the end of the second game, riding the Leviathan to destroy the planet and the human lives within it, Satan enters another fight with Gabriel Belmont, this time as Dracula.  The power of Dracula is what deterred Lucifer from returning sooner.  Only Alucard putting his vampiric father to sleep for centuries made it seem as if Gabriel really had died.  This confrontation does not end with Satan being sent back to hell, which is itself an unbiblical idea as it is because he is not in hell until well after the return of Christ (see Revelation 20).  It ends with the death of Satan, just not at God's hands as, if Satan is the demon in reference, Ezekiel 28:11-19 culminates with.  However, Lucifer by all appearances really is killed as is said to happen to the unsaved in hell (Ezekiel 18:4, Revelation 20:15).

Despite all of the occasional talk of eternal torment in hell in the Lords of Shadow games, the demise of Satan here is in an indirect way much closer to the actual stances of Biblical philosophy than plenty inside and outside the church imagine.  I have scheduled a separate post for this very year to address the nuance of the Biblical stance on Satan's defeat as opposed to how entertainment has presented it--this will touch on annihilationism as opposed to eternal torture and the possibility, or even the very high likelihood, of Yahweh at some point offering salvation to even the devil and simply being rejected yet again (2 Peter 3:9).  Lords of Shadow parallels or is consistent with what the Bible really says and does not say about Satan.

A Ramification Of Full Preterism

Full preterism entails that all Biblical prophecies, those about the Second Coming of Christ and beyond included, have already happened before or with the destruction of the Second Jewish Temple (the ruins of which are pictured below) by the Romans in 70 AD.  Was there a last trumpet call, a gathering of living and dead righteous individuals (the first resurrection of the dead), and a return of Christ in the First Roman-Jewish War?  While there is nothing in the historical record to suggest that any such things happened in an invisible, mystical sense (for that is what preterism would require), and while the Second Coming of the Bible, followed by resurrection and judgment, has plainly not occurred, let us focus on a particular ramification of full preterism.  Revelation 21-22's words about New Jerusalem being the final abode of the righteous/saved could not be figurative without John 14:2-3 also being figurative, as Jesus speaks of his Father's house that he will prepare for his disciples.

This would mean Jesus would have to have been highly misleading outside the context of a parable.  Both Revelation and the gospel of John describe a physical dwelling for followers of Yahweh after Christ's return.  Jesus says in John 14:2-3 that he will leave the world, prepare a place for Christians, return, and only then will his "sheep" (John 10) be with him.  This is consistent with the teaching of soul sleep throughout the Bible: humans are not by default in some conscious state between death (James 2:26) and their bodily resurrection (Daniel 12:2), the latter being an eschatological event.  They are totally unperceiving, knowing not even self-evident things like logical axioms and their own existence since they know nothing (Ecclesiastes 9:5-10).  Revelation 21-22 does not touch on soul sleep, as the resurrection and judgment of the dead has already occurred (20:11-15), but it does describe a magnificent city where nations come and go and where the righteous thrive.

If Revelation 21-22's details about New Jerusalem, which in context is unveiled after the wicked are cast into hell to be killed (Matthew 10:28, 2 Peter 2:6, Revelation 20:15), are figurative and do not have to do with a literal future state, then John 14:2-3 is also not literal.  The two passages speak of the same kind of thing.  Clearly, Revelation goes into far more detail than Jesus does in a mere handful of verses, who said only that this other dimension has many rooms, is the domain of the Father, and will be the residence of his followers after his return.  There is no mention here of the walls, (in a terrestrial sense) precious materials, light, or gates that John references.  The tree of life is said to be here only in Revelation as well.  Of all the events addressed in Revelation, everything from the fate of Satan in verse 10 of chapter 20 onward is far more direct.  New Jerusalem is described as a city with very specific features, not as something blatantly figurative or more bizarre like a woman clothed with the sun, moon, and stars (as in Revelation 12).

Did Jesus lie or give a very misleading summary of New Jerusalem?  If full preterism is true, he absolutely did if the Bible accurately represents him, though full preterism also very blatantly contradicts the idea that Jesus has a single return and not multiple returns (a flaw shared with the concept of the pre-tribulation rapture), as well as the idea of Jesus returning very visibly (Acts 1:9-11, Matthew 24:30-31) to resurrect the Christian dead and bring the living to himself at a trumpet blast (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, 1 Corinthians 15:50-54, and again, Matthew 24:31).  According to the Bible, if there is not yet a resurrection of the righteous dead, then there has not yet been a Second Coming.  If there has not yet been a Second Coming, then Jesus could not have "returned" in 70 AD.  The Second Coming, the real rapture (which occurs at Christ's direct, one-time return), and the eventual reveal of New Jerusalem are presented as literal.  Since they are addressed in passages outside of Revelation, it cannot even be the case that Revelation is too strange to ascertain these doctrines!

The Small Business Excuse

Small businesses can be great sources of innovation, community engagement, and workplace experience, and by no means are their founders or leaders ever oppressive because of the nature of small businesses themselves rather than their own nature as individuals.  They could still impose workplace exploitation on workers as those with the highest position(s) assume that the small scope of the business calls for rationalistic, moral, and financial lenience in reacting to them.  This small business excuse is logically invalid because it does not follow from a business being small that it can do whatever its owner/managers wish while still having philosophical legitimacy, and because as easy as it is for much larger companies to get away with workplace oppression, small businesses can be intentionally or unintentionally guilty of the same hypocrisies, arrogance, incompetence, and sheer stupidity as the more sizeable corporations that more often get negative attention.

As likely as it is that current leaders of major corporations like Amazon would be unwilling to pay workers better or universally give them better working conditions or benefits without immense outside pressure--and it is avoidable philosophical assumptions or errors, egoistic personality, or cultural conditioning that leads to selfish corporate leaders exploiting others, not simply the fact that someone holds executive positions--larger companies, including megacorporations, are the only ones that by default have the resources necessary to actually do these things easily.  Some small businesses might be able to pay their workers much better than is the norm and still make significant profits for the owners or managers, yet there could be small businesses that legitimately struggle to pay a genuinely livable wage that allows for meeting all basic needs, saving money, and some spending on "non-necessities" like entertainment and events with friends that ironically make life actually enjoyable.  If a small business cannot afford to pay people a salary or wage that is livable, though, then that business should not stay open.

Even a small business cannot deserve to remain in operation if its survival can only be ensured by underpaying or otherwise exploiting workers.  Greed, incompetence, and philosophical stupidity can characterize small businesses just like companies with more resources to spare, though of course neither is fated to lapse into these things.  Malicious or egoistic small businesses leaders might just directly pretend like their companies being small somehow legitimizes their workplace exploitation.  Benevolent but naive or outright idiotic small business leaders who are unable to pay well, in contrast, might not realize what they are doing if they hire multiple employees with low wages instead of perhaps hiring one or a handful of workers to do the tasks, but with superior pay.  There is a difference in worldview and personality here, yes, but some of the consequences are the same for workers.

Either kind of small business owner, if exploitation is indeed immoral, does not deserve to have their company last.  The "small business excuse," as I call it, is invalid by necessity in either case because the company still engages in some of the same unjust or otherwise irrational practices, still has idiotic philosophical motivations behind it, and tries to escape condemnation just by pointing out its size.  A struggling small business is not itself something to loathe.  A well-meaning small business owner/leader would not merit the same kind of hostility of a more explicitly egoistic small business owner even if both of them have some of the same idiotic ideologies, goals, or habits.  Because of this, at the same time, any small business that is not able or prepared to give its workers livable compensation is indulging in the same lunacy as the massive corporations with leaders who think their whims dictate the truth about morality, business, and people.

The bigger the company, the easier it would be to offer truly "competitive" wages, yet the easier it is for someone with power to trample on others and have their deeds and worldview concealed or avoid opposition quite stern enough to deter them.  The smaller the company, the less likely it is that a job can support multiple employees with livable pay and strong benefits, yet the easier it is to invest in a small, focused pool of workers.  Whether a small business actually sacrifices quantity of workers for quality of workers and compensation alike is decided by each individual owner/leader.  Some of them will erroneously believe in the small business excuse, using it as an illusionary shield to protect their feelings or reputation from criticism.  Others can choose, if they are rational and committed enough to do so, to take advantage of the smaller structure and size of their businesses to better invest monetarily and otherwise in a potentially lower number of workers.