The Mental Plane: A Summary Of The Nature Of Consciousness

You could never perceive your body without a mind, but a mind could perceive itself without a body in that this does not contradict any logically necessary truth.  An inanimate cluster of mere matter could not possibly perceive anything.  The ways that the distinction between mind and body manifest (the difference between fear and fear-related sweating, sexual attraction and physiological arousal, and so on) are numerous.  Even people who never directly think about the issue of mind-body dualism and certainly not rationalistically, as well as people who might deny the difference between mind (consciousness) and body outright, rely on consciousness and every logical truth about its nature in order to experience anything at all.

Every active thought and passive experience necessitates that one's consciousness exists, for without a mind to think or experience, there could be not a single act of cognition or sensory perception.  Thus, experiencing anything, for a mind making no assumptions, is immediate, utter logical proof that one's consciousness exists.  This still hinges on logic being true; there is no such thing as either mind or matter, and this includes the divine mind, having the utmost centrality since reason cannot be false, and all other things depend upon it for their truth or falsity.  Nonetheless, it is self-evident to a rational person that they themself mentally exist, for, just as denying logical axioms relies on their inherent veracity, to reject or ignore or doubt one's own existence can only be done if one already exists.

Though the mind alone is what perceives stimuli like wind and trees and stones, it is separate from the external world.  I cannot know, in fact, if the stars or the grass or the household items I see around me are really there outside of my consciousness as opposed to only the perceptions of their presence existing within my mind, the latter of which exists regardless.  One's own body, though, can only be proven by a far more elaborate series of logical necessities than with one's consciousness [1], though the truth of the conclusion depends on the fact that consciousness is immaterial--not only is a mind without a body logically possible (this means it does not contradict logical axioms, not that human minds actually exist in this manner), and not only is a brain or individual neuron not the same as a thought, but there could also be no conceptual difference between a corpse and a conscious, living person otherwise.

Moreover, among other things, there could be no conceptual distinction between hallucinations and external, physical stimuli if mind was not immaterial, for if a hallucinated image only exists in one's mind and has no physical substance in the material world, then it cannot be physical.  Hallucinations are logically possible, and much of our sensory experience might ultimately be just that despite the utter unverifiability one way or another; thus, for yet another reason, consciousness has to be nonphysical.  In no way does it logically follow, although it is possible, that the mind continues to exist after the death of the body despite the intrinsic distinction between the two, whatever the initial causal relationship.  In fact, even the Biblical afterlife is reserved for the eschatological time of bodily resurrection, for in the meantime, other than when something like sorcery is involved (1 Samuel 28), the dead are unconscious (Ecclesiastes 9:5, 10, Job 3:11-19, Psalm 6:5, Daniel 12:2, etc.).

If the minds of the dead no longer exist, this is distinct from lack of perception while alive, such as through extreme dissociation or dreamless sleep.  Lack of active thought or broader perception, as with a dreamless slumber, does not mean that a mind does not exist, but any experience whatsoever requires that at least one mind exists: one's own.  It is other minds, if they exist at all, that are either invisible to our perceptions or at least only hinted at by indirect evidences like another person's facial expressions.  Under human limitations, there is no other mind one can truly know the existence or contents of.  Does this fact induce loneliness, terror, or comfort?  That wholly depends on an individual's subjective reaction rather than the logical truths on their own.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/07/dreams-and-consciousness.html

Caution With Coworkers

Coworkers are individuals; what one of them believes, says, and otherwise does will not have to be the same as the beliefs, words, or actions of others.  I cannot know their intentions, perceptions, or worldview just from outward observation.  If one has a legitimate complaint against a high figure in a workplace or against anything in how it is run that is irrational, coworkers would hopefully also recognize these things independently or be open to having them pointed out.  The same issues might affect them, not that something has to affect someone personally to be irrational, unjust, and worthy of opposition.  How fellow workers react depends on them, and they will not by necessity be sympathetic or by necessity respond with secret backstabbing or open hostility.

It is possible for the listener to be/become either an ally or an enemy.  Yes, a coworker who seems unlikely to tell a manager or employer about anything from a sarcastic comment to firm pushback against inherent stupidity in management might still do it.  It could be on accident, or with the purpose of gaining the approval of a corporate leader, or to merely pass on a statement with a neutral attitude.  There is no single motivation for this.  In the case of accidental divulgence, there is no motivation at all since it was not intended.  However, coworkers, despite making themselves seem like ideological allies or personal friends, might be willing to do anything that will give them an advantage in appearing helpful to corporate heads that are not rational.

It does not follow from the possibility of coworkers betraying you that they will, and for certain things, either when it comes to incompetence or intentional exploitation, coworkers communicating is the easiest way to alert others that something damaging has occurred.  There is not always a basis for expecting nothing at all but betrayal.  Openness does indeed benefit rational or oppressed people, and if everyone results corporate stupidity (even if not everyone does so rationalistically), it will be harder for it to endure.  Still, purposefully or not, coworkers could do anything from incidentally exposing one's objections to unwanted listeners all the way to maliciously sharing such things, perhaps even misrepresentations of them, with company leadership to land one in trouble.

Caution is a pragmatic trait in many workplace environments for these reasons, for someone could be penalized for doing nothing wrong and even for objecting to irrationalism of many kinds that marks the expectations for so many jobs.  Silence does not necessarily mean someone does not understand or disapprove of an asinine policy, a micromanaging or abusive boss, or the standardized negligence or selfishness that many businesses are consumed by.  As utterly unlikely as it is that most egoists and other irrationalists will change for the better left to themselves, verbal communication might prompt them, and when coworkers make it difficult for others to openly acknowledge problems, the problems could persist indefinitely.  Care is needed when interacting with plenty of fellow employees, all the same.

Facts About Exegesis

Exegesis never involves only a text, as a person must align with the objective and intrinsic truths of logic to know anything at all in any matter.  It is also the case that some who profess to practice exegesis, and not just concerning a book like the Bible or the Quran, rely on hearsay from commentaries (often riddled with fallacies as it is) or on then-contemporary texts to illuminate the meaning of words.  Unfortunately, the gulf between minds will prevent us from knowing the meaning of any words other than our own.  Only what other people, in writing or in verbal speech, seem to mean and thus probably mean can be known (and no one has to make any assumptions in the process of analyzing any of this).  This hinders the goal of exegesis in an ultimate sense with any text: I can know what someone else's words say, but I cannot know with absolute certainty what was intended by them.

Written communication does not escape this and indeed heightens the ambiguity since a test is not the author who can explain himself or herself.  Some texts were even allegedly written by someone who might have died centuries or millennia ago.  Even then, if they were asked, they could only provide more words to explain their words, which does not escape the epistemological problem.  However, in the quest to perform exegesis, which is discovering to the extent that one can what a text actually states/means, some people overlook far more than just these logical necessities.  While thinking that they are somehow knowing what the words of a particular work mean, they might, for instance, go to some other text from the same era in an effort to ascertain what a specific term entails.

The moment a person consults an outside text from the same time period or a later one in order to see how a word from the text in question is used, they have ceased to engage in strict exegesis, because they are not looking for how the one text uses a term, but how other writings do.  This is something seemingly almost never recognized by many people who supposedly champion exegesis, for they would otherwise just be assuming that a linguistic unit of the same spelling has an identical intended meaning when used by different authors.  Of course, many of them will regardless outright ignore or deny the objective fact that a non-telepathic being can only know with absolute certainty what they themselves mean by their own words, not what the words of someone else, and especially someone else from millennia ago, intended when they used particular words in their writings.

Also, reason itself transcends the text; its necessary truths which start with axioms are inherent and do not depend on anything else, though this cannot possibly be true the other way around.  To rationally--that is, rationalistically, as anything else is not rational to begin with--interpret the probabilistic meaning of a text from someone other than oneself, one must rely on reason to grasp what does and does not follow from a concept, as well as what the identity of a particular concept is on its own or if the author's other proposed concepts contradict something else they claim.  To rely on reason, though, is to go outside the text, yet this is the only way to know anything about a text in the first place!  None of this tends to be brought up, emphasized, or embraced by, say, scholars of works like the Bible.  The invalidity of tradition, intuition, and eisegesis are enough to satisfy them!

A Gentle Answer

Proverbs is not full of exclusively universal truths.  Unlike the intrinsically necessary (and thus universal) truths of reason or the moral obligations of Yahweh in Mosaic Law, its descriptions of how people behave are individualistic, bound to specific situational contexts.  The claims of Proverbs 15:1 could not be true otherwise: "A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger."  People could have various personalities or, though there is no excuse for anything short of metaphysical/epistemological rationalism, conflicting worldviews that will lead them to react from person to person in differing ways to the same scenarios.

With Proverbs 15:1, one can realize that there is more than one logically possible outcome when using gentle or harsh words simply because it does not follow that, say, a kind statement will necessarily lead to a pleasant exchange.  What some people perceive as harsh might not be harsh in vocabulary or intended meaning at all, but this aside, harsh words do not inherently trigger a hostile conversation.  The aggressive speaker could alter their attitude at any time and the other party decides how they respond no matter what it is they are reacting to.  A naturally calm or detached person could remain stoic or even actively kind even in the face of distinctively harsh words and tone.  Gentleness can be illusory anyway.

All of this is inevitably about logical truths, not what a book says or what someone's social experiences or hearsay from others have been like.  That is not to say that Proverbs is false.  It does not follow that Proverbs, which is addressing things that are consistent with logical axioms (and other strictly necessary truths) without misrepresenting them, is in error.  For example, Proverbs 26:4-5 says back to back to not respond to a fool in a like manner, lest you be like them, and to respond to a fool according to their folly, lest they think they are in the right.  Philosophical errors (assumptions or belief in contradictory things) and immoral/foolish behaviors cannot be valid, of course, so Proverbs is not prescribing either since the Bible is heavily moralistic.

In such passages as Proverbs 26:4-5, especially with the statements being directly next to each other, the verses are about more sarcastic or contextual truths.  Saying that a gentle answer turns away wrath is an amoral acknowledgement of what might (or might not) actually come about from using gentle words.  Maybe you will receive a calmer engagement from the other party, maybe not.  There is no guarantee that someone who initially sheds their aggression will not go right back to it even if they are the one who deserves hostility.  It is not as if gentleness is an automatic moral requirement according to the same book that contains Proverbs.  Anger and aggressiveness can also be perfectly valid when directed against stupidity and sin without stooping to them.

Besides the Torah's prescription of righteous deeds like limited flogging of some offenders (Deuteronomy 25:1-3, and see also Proverbs 26:3, which is consistent with the former while lacking a great deal of context on its own) or the killing of others (such as with Exodus 22:18-20), the New Testament itself is not about gentleness.  Among other things, Jesus says in Matthew 10:34 that he did not come to simply bring peace to the world.  Revelation 19 sees the returning Christ kill many people as well.  Yes, peace will be the final eschatological condition of the cosmos and the humans that still exist into eternity according to the Bible (Revelation 21:3-4), but that is after all of God's enemies have been permanently killed in hell (Matthew 10:28, Revelation 20:25).  Gentleness is not the same as rationality and moral goodness.

Mark, Luke, And Acts: The Ascension

Matthew 28 ends with the Great Commission; it does not even hint at the Ascension of Jesus to heaven on its own.  Similarly, John 21 does not address the Ascension.  Vitally, it does nonetheless anticipate the Ascension (John 20:17).  Both of these books end with Jesus having resurrected but still on Earth, interacting with his followers.  Mark, Luke, and Acts are where one finds actual accounts of the Ascension as opposed to various events leading up to it--but Luke's version might initially seem to contradict that of Acts.  Of relevance is the fact that the oldest manuscripts of Mark are supposed to not contain verses 16:9-20, which include the Ascension, much like the original gospel of John is supposed to not contain 8:1-11.  All the same, regardless of whether these verses are truly part of the Bible as originally intended, they are very plainly consistent with Acts.

Mark 16:9-20 does not present anything more than a sequence of events, saying nothing about how chronologically close together in timing Jesus appeared to two of his followers walking in the country after his resurrection (Mark 16:12-13, Luke 24:13-32), appeared to the Eleven altogether (Mark 16:14, Luke 24:33-49), and ascended to heaven (Mark 16:19-20, Luke 24:50-53).  It uses terms like "Afterward" or "Later" in the NIV without conveying the passage of any precise amount of time between these things.  The literal statements of the text are compatible with the Ascension happening within a small number of days after the crucifixion or more than a month later, or any amount of time in between.  Thus, Mark 16 in no way limits the series of appearances of the resurrected Christ to Mary Magdalene, whom is visited first (Mark 16:9-11), the two travelers on the road, and all of the Eleven to the same day.

What about the book of Acts, addressed to the very same Theophilus as the gospel of Luke (Luke 1:1-4, Acts 1:1-2)?  Acts 1:1-3 is rather clear in insisting that Jesus appeared to different people across a 40 day period prior to his ascension to heaven.  Only at the end of this time does he leave his disciples for God's dwelling place (1:4-11), with angelic beings telling the disciples that he will return physically and visibly just as he departed.  These details do not contradict anything in Mark.  Likewise, they do not contradict those of Matthew, but this would be by default, since Matthew contains little direct information about the Ascension whatsoever.  At most, John 20:24-27 only establishes that its author says Jesus appeared to Thomas at least a week after the resurrection, consistent with Acts 1.  Why, then, does Luke 24, seemingly written by the same author as Acts, tell its story as if the Ascension happened on the same day as the resurrection?

Now, consistency with reason and itself (which is still a subset of consistency with logical axioms and other necessary truths, which render contradictions false) does not make something true, but it makes it possible.  Contradiction renders at least one of the conflicting concepts false.  In the case of logical axioms and by extension all other necessary truths rooted in them, the falsity of axioms is impossible, since it still requires their veracity.  There is no exception where their non-truth even could be correct (i.e., it would still follow logically from the nature of reality that nothing follows by logical necessity from anything if the latter was true, and thus it cannot be).  In all other cases, it just intrinsically requires that two contradictory ideas cannot both be true simultaneously; an individual idea is only false if reason necessitates otherwise and so the idea contradicts this, which reduces down to the inherent truth of logical axioms.

Luke truly contradicting Acts would mean the author contradicts himself, if he indeed wrote both as the texts themselves suggest.  There is nothing logically impossible about either account being true on its own even if they did exclude each other.  Nevertheless, it would still have nothing to do with whether Matthew or Mark or John are false, just as Matthew or Mark or John contradicting the Torah would not mean that the Torah is false in its narratives or moral prescriptions.  Luke conflicting with Acts would merely necessitate that at least Luke cannot be true if Acts is.  It does not even require that Acts is false as opposed to Luke or vice versa.  They just both could not be correct at once.  Jesus could not have singularly ascended 40 days after his resurrection and also have singularly ascended the same day all.  

Is the latter genuinely what Luke teaches, though?  Luke 24:1-16 does directly teach that Jesus appeared to two disciples on their walk after Mary Magdalene and two other women found the empty tomb.  Verses 17-34 detail how the two travelers go to the Eleven that same day and tell them about the resurrection.  Verse 36 says that Jesus appears to all of them while they are still speaking and introduces a scene that lasts until verse 49.  Verse 50 of Luke 24 could be intended to simply communicate that Jesus led the Eleven out to the vicinity of Bethany at some time after revealing his resurrected body to them, though the text does indeed imply as much.  At the same time, nothing about Jesus ascending multiple times contradicts any of the gospel accounts.  He is already said to vanish and appear after his resurrection (Luke 24:30-31, 36-37, John 20:19-20), and there is nothing impossible about ascending more than once as long as the departure in Acts 1 really is the final ascension until the Second Coming.

God Over Family

Some people care, so they say, about family above all, even reason and morality.  This is irrational: if something should not be done, it should not be done for the sake of family, yet I have encountered many who seemingly pride themselves on being willing to do anything for family.  Moreover, if a family member directly denies reason itself, they cannot be in the right, for reason is true in itself as the most foundational part of reality, and only fools attempt to deny or ignore it; they could therefore not deserve to be treated as rational.  This sort of prioritization of family over righteousness is also contrary to the Biblical doctrines some of its adherents also claim to hold to--see Deuteronomy 25:11-12, for instance, in which a woman does something sinful to help her husband is prescribed punishment--especially since morality is tied to God.

All family members should be in some ways disregarded if they sin, at least by committing capital sins, sometimes against their own family (see the likes of Exodus 21:15, Leviticus 20:1-5, and Deuteronomy 21:18-21, for instance).  Similarly, familial relationships should be actively prioritized less than God in all circumstances, as indicated in a handful of New Testament verses I will focus on soon.  As for how the Bible says to treat family that commits capital sins, Deuteronomy 13 commands people not to shield them from what justice requires:

Deuteronomy 13:6-10--"If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, 'Let us go and worship other gods' (gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, gods of the peoples around you, whether near or far, from one end of the land to the other), do not yield to them or listen to them.  Show them no pity.  Do not spare them or shield them.  You must certainly put them to death.  Your hand must be the first in putting them to death, and then the hands of all the people.  Stone them to death . . ."

Far from "correcting" the alleged injustice of the moral ideas espoused in Deuteronomy 13, including the moral nature of the prescribed punishment for enticement to worship other gods, Jesus makes some controversial statements about the real value of family compared to matters of grand truth, such as one's devotion to God.  There is also an emphasis on gender equality in the above passage and those below, so it is not that relationships with female or male family members are to be sacrificed in tiers of gender-based priority (and this would not follow from an absence of references to family members of each gender).  There are also to be no exceptions based upon whether a family member is one's parent, sibling, spouse, or child:

Matthew 10:34-37--"'Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth.  I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.  For I have come to turn "a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law--a man's enemies will be the members of his own household."  Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.'"

Luke 12:51-53--"'Do you think I came to bring peace on earth?  No, I tell you, but division.  From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three.  They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.'"

Luke 14:25-26--"Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: 'If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters--yes, even their own life--such a person cannot be my disciple.'"

To start with, Jesus is not saying in Matthew 10 and Luke 12 that he came to bring about division only for the sake of division.  While opposing relational conflict could not possibly be rational or righteous when one does so for any philosophical truth (or probable truth, like Christian doctrines), it is better for all people to be in alignment with truth and morality and for there to thus be no basis for conflict.  In Matthew 10:35-37 and Luke 12:52-53, Jesus is only describing in a pragmatic sense what might sometimes happen when one person in a household follows him but not the rest.  Whether true or false, philosophical ideas are controversial, and it is all but inevitable that some amount of conflict will arise when people do not share the same worldview.  There is certainly no articulated hostility towards the general idea of conflict, as he actually says he did not come to bring peace (Matthew 10:34, Luke 12:51).  

Luke 14 is far more aggressive in the wording.  All the same, Jesus elsewhere particularly acknowledges the obligation to honor one's father and mother (Matthew 15:3-6, 19:16-18, Mark 7:9-13, 10:17-19), so he is not talking in Luke 14 about a person having a baseless, default hatred of their parents as if it is a prerequisite to following him.  As with divorce in Matthew 19:1-9, he is speaking in hyperbole that is exposed as such by the broader context of his own statements (Matthew 5:17-19; in this case, contrast Matthew 19:9 with Exodus 21:10-11, 21:26-27, Deuteronomy 21:10-14, and 24:1-4).  True hatred does not even logically exclude loving someone or honoring them in one's actions, but you cannot honor your parents and hate them by default for simply being your family member, something that a person cannot change at will anyway.  In light of the other more direct things Jesus says, Luke 14:26 is all but very obviously a highly dramatic exaggeration to shock the audience.  The verse indeed accomplishes this today.

If your spouse, your children, your siblings, and even your mother and father whom are singled out for deserving respect simply by virtue of being your parents should be tossed aside by comparison to God and Christ (who are absolutely not the same entities [1]), then there is no room for allowing love of family to deter one from adhering to truth and justice.  Familial ties are not inherently more important than friendships, and either way, Yahweh and morality, both of which could only in turn be dependent on the necessary truths of reason, would be more important than any affectionate bonds of human sociality.  Whoever is unwilling to shun their human relationships to serve God if needed, as in the case of Deuteronomy 13:6-10 since morality calls for showing family and friends no pity in administering justice, is not worthy of God and Christ.

[1].  For instance, see here for more elaboration:

https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2024/04/god-resurrected-jesus-another.html

The Receiving End Of Communication

Communication by necessity involves a communicator and a recipient.  The meaning of what is communicated hinges on what the former intends to convey, although they might do such a poor job of sharing what they have in mind, such as by using language in an especially vague and arbitrary way, that the latter is not at fault for being confused.  However, sometimes people treat the way something is communicated or its emotional or broader psychological impact as if this is what reveals the content of the communication to them.  Similarly, they might think that this is what reveals the emotions or personal motivations the speaker harbors.  As with so many other things, perception does not require anything except that the perception exists and so cannot prove anything more than this.

The feelings experienced by the recipient of the communication in no way dictate the intention of the communication.  Likewise, this must by necessity be true of how the exchange is perceived even aside from emotional impact.  Thus, the feelings and other perceptions of the audience do not determine or reveal the validity of anything communicated or the motivates connected with it.  The speaker could have been utterly passionless inside, and if the recipient feels targeted by extreme anger, for instance, it does not even matter if it appears like the message had anger behind it.  It did not because that was not the intention.  There is and could be no exception; how a message is passively perceived or actively interpreted has no inherent overlap with what was intended, and so it is never relevant to knowing the speaker's actual mental states.

Now, it is likely that many people will act as if the way that something is communicated, especially with explicitly philosophical ideas (though of course everything is philosophical), and even the way they feel separate from the way it was communicated is a valid reason to dismiss, deny, or ignore a concept.  Kindness tailored to their arbitrary emotions and mere preferences is what they will latch onto and treat as if it is of utmost metaphysical and epistemological importance.  Though it might be absolutely obvious to any rational person what is being conveyed and whether or not the exact idea is true or false, logically possible or impossible, verifiable or unverifiable, the typical person of my experience will not look past the way something is conveyed and how it made them feel.

There is absolutely no reason to particularly care about objections based upon how communication is received, even so, unless the means of sharing it was misleading so as to be irrational in itself.  That is, there is none other than sheer pragmatism.  What is pragmatic or not or personally appealing has nothing to do with whether one is right or righteous in whatever one is conveying.  For example, a rationalistic person who corrects a non-rationalist (of which there are many to stumble into in life) kindly might opt to make the things being said more "appealing", as if appeal is anything more than a subjective and consequently irrelevant factor.  Pragmatically, such communication is better for reaching people--in one sense.  It is just that the person being reached, if a fool, cannot deserve to have their sensitivity considered by nature of rejecting reason for the inherent errors of emotionalism or assumptions, giving them only baseless or false footholds to stand on.

Besides how speaking as if one means something different than what was said or the way it was said (communicational incompetence), which is already problematic itself, it is up to each person how they will communicate in light of these truths.  Beyond not saying anything invalid, not inflating the emotion/attitude paired with the words to misalign with the intended meaning, and wording statements so that they do not intentionally seem as if one has  suggested a very different meaning, there is nothing irrational about writing or speaking without painstaking intentionality regarding how a specific audience or individual might receive the communication--that is, how they will interpret it, however erroneously.  How will the audience receive the statements otherwise?  That is entirely on them.  If they believe in some non sequitur or red herring, or if they think their feelings actually have anything to do with what was said to them and what was meant by it, they are delusional.  

Logic, people.  It is very fucking helpful.

The Language Of Unhoused And Homeless

Is a homeless person who finds an abandoned, unattended warehouse building and quietly lives there homeless?  It all depends on what one means by home.  They have a residence to themselves, but it is not a formal home in the standard or legal sense.  If someone has a small tent in the wilderness, they do not have a house, but they have a place to live.  Some people might advocate for using words like unhoused to refer to such a person, and someone could use it without bowing down to the arbitrary, shifting linguistic norms of the stereotypical liberal, who is obsessed with words that might or might not be used in the dehumanizing way they could be assuming.  

Home and house can certainly be interchangeable words.  Yes, home can sometimes have the connotation of a place where one is welcomed or at peace, having in this case perhaps more of a personal or social dimension than one pertaining to a strictly physical building of personal residence or a conventional, literal house.  Colloquially and otherwise, though, unhoused literally has the same basic etymological meaning as homeless: both indicate that someone is without a home/house of their own, though there could be varying degrees of additional deprivation, such as being without any place where one is welcomed to temporarily stay with family or friends.  It can be fine if someone simply wants to use the word unhoused to refer to a specific subcategory of homeless people or as a wholly interchangeable term with homeless.

It is still true that the word itself does not have to refer to the broader condition of homelessness in all of its manifestations or to specifically the condition of having no set address.  Concerns about the term homelessness--my god, how stupid people are when they do not look past words to concepts!--being disrespectful are likewise invalid.  Any word referring to a person could be used with degrading, malicious, or trivializing intention.  There is nothing about using the word homeless in a general or more precise sense which logically necessitates that there is an actual disregard for the humanity of the homeless behind it.

One could call someone homeless if they do indeed lack a home, and still respect them as a human.  One could call someone unhoused and still mean it in a belittling way.  Intentions behind words matter far more than the words themselves.  It is the former that really dictates what a word really means, though someone could gratuitously use words in an especially arbitrary manner (all language is arbitrary and has no inherent or universal meaning whatsoever).  This person might be a terrible communicator, but they have not necessarily believed anything erroneous or done anything wrong.

As non-telepathic beings (or at least I am one), we need language to communicate almost anything of true precision.  There is no single possible reason for homelessness and a homeless person could for a time have a location in which they live.  The term unhoused can fit them just as well as homeless.  Likewise, it could also refer to a homeless person who lives in a shelter but has no personal house to retreat to.  In any case, the it is not an inherently more philosophically accurate or morally superior word in itself.  This is a delusion of some progressives.  The more important thing by far are logical truths about the matter in question, what one means by one's words, and how one treats other people.

Living With Legalistic Desires

The desire to force or convince someone to abandon an amoral or permissible practice, attitude, or longing is the core of legalistic motivation.  Even if that person being pressured is actually oneself, this is the real inherent heart of legalism, not just tradition or soteriological arrogance.  Living with legalistic urges could be exhausting and is of course pointless and irrational the moment those urges are treated as anything more than just that.  Rationality and self-control are required for such a person.  The things they dislike or wish no one engaged in are of no consequence as long as they are not problematic themselves.

It does not matter if it is maintaining lifelong opposite gender friendships even if married, consuming alcohol regularly, enjoying very sexually graphic or violent art, using profanity to the point of relying on it more than other words plenty of times, masturbating to many people of the opposite gender while in a romantic relationship, or savoring righteous hatred.  If something is not irrational or sinful (Deuteronomy 4:2), no one needs to give it up no matter what pain or discomfort it causes others, most of whom will be non-rationalists anyway.  People do need to get past whatever emotional objections they have to the best of their ability.

Unfortunately, subjective annoyance or dread not only has nothing to do with anything but personal feelings/attitudes, but it also might not disappear even with time and effort.  This is not the fault of whoever is practicing the nonsinful deed in question and they should thus not be treated as a problem regardless of how much the person with legalistic desires prefers.  Someone can abstain from a permissible thing out of preference, for there is nothing obligatory or evil about that thing, but this is only because of their personal whims and not because of social pressures.

This is not what some who gravitate towards legalistic demands or requests want to be the case.  Like a non-rationalist who does not wish to hear think about how they are inferior to rationalists, those who know legalism is irrational and still want it to be true, to pressure others to submit to their mere whims, might not exactly see the objective freedom in the truth.  They might focus on their own preferences so much that they fail to intellectually or emotionally bask in the freedom that they have.  Desiring to control the behaviors of others except for pressuring them to do what is obligatory and avoid what is sinful is something to be kept under strict control, never to be yielded to even once.

Movie Review--Cube Zero

 "They come for you at night."
--Eric Wynn, Cube Zero


Cube Zero serves as a prequel to the first Cube, showing even more of the world beyond the familiar interior of the massive cubic structure than ever before--and it shows this early on as well.  This makes Cube Zero more of an explicitly dystopian film than the others.  Near the beginning, the movie establishes that the titular cube is used as a sort of punitive trial for criminals and ideological opponents of a powerful group that is scarcely explained.  Even though it introduces new aspects of Cube lore, it remains immersed in ambiguity that never fully clarifies the nature of the universe the series is set in.


Production Values

Gorier than Cube 2, Cube Zero nonetheless relies on practical effects more than CGI, which means that the very weak flame effects from the latter category certainly do not represent the whole of the aesthetic presentation.  The physical sets showing inside and outside of the cube are fittingly vague in that they suggest little about the figures directing the trial.  The cast largely adds to the atmosphere with mostly solid performances, not that their names would be recognizable to broad audiences: Zachary Bennett, Stephanie Moore, and Martin Roach are not renowned in my experience, yet they handle their roles with all the curiosity or desperation required of them.  So as to avoid spoilers, I will not reveal the name of a villainous character who appears later in the film, but the performance behind the character is exaggerated in a way that might strike some viewers as almost cartoonish by comparison to the other acting.  Thankfully, the character in question does not dominate the screentime after their appearance.


Story

Some spoilers are below.

While it is somewhat unclear if they work for the company Izon introduced at the end of Cube 2 or if they are employees of an actual government (if not both), two men overseeing the progress of subjects in the cube debate about telling their superiors that a woman inside the infamous structure seems to have never signed a "consent form."  The form is an option for those facing capital punishment, offering a hypothetical chance for escape and freedom.  One of the two workers specifically pushes back against moral apathy and blind obedience, and this snares the attention of his overseers, who later visit the workspace to manage a particular set of trials.  Meanwhile, a woman in the cube struggles to find a way out with the aid of a small number of companions.


Intellectual Content

It is established that the cube is used as a punishment for criminals and political opponents as long as they sign consent forms that change their legal fate from execution to placement in the cubic maze--of course, even if those put inside were guilty of an objective crime (a true moral offense that actually deserves the status of a crime), it does not follow that the cube is ever a just punishment even if someone consents to being placed inside of it.  Consent to an unjust penalty does not make it just, nor does deterrence.  The vital issue of inhumane, unjust punishments aside, the figures responsible for putting people inside the cube also seem to have no concern for the actual guilt or innocence of those they sentence to wander the shifting rooms.  This makes a particular aspect of the system especially ironic.

In spite of the fact that the only form of religious theism (as opposed to the strict notion of a mere uncaused cause) that has any evidence in its favor, Christianity, condemns such punishments in Mosaic Law by prescribing far less severe penalties, the operators of the cube actually ask the question "Do you believe in God?" to those who reach certain potential exits.  Upon pressing a button saying "No," the captive of the cube is incinerated; what happens if someone presses a button saying "Yes" because no one who gets that far has ever given that answer.  The exact intention behind this question is unclear, but perhaps the individual(s) with the highest authority over the cube think they are carrying out a deity's will or perhaps they are merely toying with their victims as if they think themselves divine.


Conclusion

Cube Zero's missed opportunities and technical limitations are accompanied by expanded lore and a clever twist that leads directly into the story of the original film.  Similarly, its best performances meet with a villain's performance that is over the top in its casually sinister portrayal.  There are obvious highs and lows in Cube Zero, and the highs will be best understood in light of the other two films, which the prequel simultaneously casts light on--even if not much light.  This is one of Cube Zero's greatest triumphs.  Despite its CGI problems, it does set up the next chronological part of the Cube cinematic mythos in a way that will likely strike many as unexpected.  At the very least, the series becomes deeper as one installment clarifies the next chronological chapter.


Content:
 1.  Violence:  A character scratches their skin off when sprayed by an acidic substance that seems to make them itch; their face is torn off onscreen.  Other cases of violence include an immolation that is directly shown, albeit with very unrealistic effects.
 2.  Profanity:  Words like "bastards" are used periodically.

A Hypothetical Offer Of Redemption To Satan

By saying that Satan will be thrown into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:10), where the Bible teaches that he, like humans (Ezekiel 18:4, 2 Peter 2:6), will be removed from existence if Ezekiel 28:11-19 is indeed speaking of him and not some other unnamed demon, Revelation does not say that there will not be a genuine offer of mercy to Satan.  It would be strange for a deity who wants every human to become saved (2 Peter 3:9) to intentionally refuse even the willingness to allow Satan to repent if only he, too, was willing.  If Yahweh does extend such an opportunity for reconciliation, there is no logical necessity in the devil accepting it, and Revelation 20 indeed does say that Satan will wind up in Gehenna along with the rest of the wicked.

No, the "tormented day and night forever and ever" part appears to be extreme poetic exaggeration or intentional mistranslation in light of how Ezekiel 28:11-19 appears to refer to Satan and says that he will be burned to death by fire, like wicked and unrepentant humans after their resurrection (Matthew 10:28, Revelation 20:15).  Justice for demons is ultimately the same as justice for humans because morality can only be rooted in God's nature, which in the case of Christianity is Yahweh's nature, and he does not change (Malachi 3:6).  Again, however, the Bible describing the fate of Satan is not the same as detailing everything that might lead up to it.  So much is left ambiguous or unmentioned that it is not even apparent if Satan was the guardian cherub of Ezekiel 28 before his rebellion.

As a creation of God, and yes, one that in some way bears his image just as humans do, Satan's annihilation from existence is a tragic but necessary consequence without repentance.  Yahweh is so bent towards mercy that he permits his own Son to suffer things unjust no matter who the victim is [1] in order to reconcile repentant people back to himself, and there is no inherent logical or Biblical reason (not that everything, including Biblical doctrines, is not governed by the laws of logic) why he would not be open to Satan's redemption any less than he would be towards human redemption.  Being the supposed first sinner--precious little is actually stated in the Bible about Satan's history--would not automatically exempt a repentant demon from divine forgiveness any more than being the first human sinner would lock someone into a destiny of destruction.

There is still the plain prediction that the devil will be placed inside the lake of fire that is the second death, God's way of purging sin from existence while meting out justice (Romans 6:23).  Any additional chance for repentance by Satan is by default to go unheeded by the devil because of this alone.  This does not require that there is no longing for his redemption by God or no utter willingness to accept him back.  It would only by necessity entail that any opportunity, with or without Yahweh's explicit verbal invitation, is squandered until the time of Satan's judgment has arrived.  The demon's irrationality as manifested by his arrogance and unrepentance would then mean that, as with other fallen beings, the deserved outcome is annihilation.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-real-punishment-we-biblically.html

Biblical Freedom

People in general, by yielding to cultural conditioning or their own irrationalistic assumptions (all assumptions are baseless because they all involve belief apart from logical proof), actually think the Bible teaches that eternal torture is just [1] and that things such as profanity, nudity, mere drug use, sexual attraction, and more are wicked.  Deuteronomy 4:2 says not to add or subtract from divine commands because there could be no other moral authority but God: anything that is not contrary to his nature is permissible, and conscience is absolutely irrelevant and meaningless.  So much of what is implied or directly taught to people about Christianity is utterly different from its real doctrines, moral and otherwise.  Much of what it prescribes is opposed by Christians and much of what it does not condemn is shunned by them.

To give just some examples, the Biblical God absolutely does not care if you scream "God fucking damnit" [2] from the rooftops, actively avoid the superficial pleasantries confused for legitimate love of humankind, violate legal speed limit laws [3], eagerly go right up to the line separating just and unjust aggression, masturbate to many people of the opposite gender (even while married [4]), own firearms, have multiple spouses, recreationally listen to exclusively secular music, abstain from church attendance, drink alcohol, and more.  Yahweh does not care about having deeply intimate opposite gender friendships, playing violent video games, being interested in dark subjects, or being involved with public nudity.  None of these things are Biblically sinful.

There are motivations or contexts that could make individual expressions of these acts irrational or sinful, but as for the acts themselves, they are all very blatantly nonsinful or even good on their own.  To launch into just some aspects of the aforementioned issues, speed limits are meaningless social constructs.  Aggression itself is not irrational or unloving.  Firearm ownership can be used to celebrate defense of human life (Exodus 22:2-3) or to facilitate hunting animals for survival.  Church is neither necessary as prompting to dwell on philosophical truths and Biblical doctrines in particular or to initially discover them, and it is absolutely not prescribed in the Bible.  Nudity is the natural state of the human body (Genesis 2:25), God's chief physical creation which he called very good (Genesis 1:31).

Could any of these things be approached with irrational beliefs or intentions?  Could they all be handled in a way that is sinful?  Yes, but the fact that one could mishandle something is very different from how one could otherwise engage in or not participate in a given nonsinful thing.  Something cannot be mishandled if it is itself evil.  Alcohol is not problematic whatsoever; drunkenness and alcoholism are.  Opposite gender friendships are not evil or morally dangerous and might have no romantic or sexual components at all; casual sex with the opposite gender and stereotyping one's friends on the basis of gender are sinful.

Numerous Christians, out of a fear of a hell that is itself an extreme distortion of the Biblical hell, or perhaps out of another kind of personal stupidity or willingness to submit to social constructs, perpetuate these legalistic ideas.  Other than superficial similarities like murder (Exodus 21:12-14) and adultery (Deuteronomy 22:22) being sinful, literally almost nothing about what the typical Christian or non-Christian thinks is Biblical morality actually is, and even then, they are almost always just assuming based upon misreadings or hearsay.  True Biblical morality would shock many with its much larger boundaries of freedom than most would dare to entertain left to themselves.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-real-punishment-we-biblically.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2022/06/the-offense-of-blasphemy.html

[3].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2022/03/an-especially-arbitrary-class-of-laws.html

[4].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2022/10/a-way-to-nonsinfully-act-on.html

The Quran On Nudity In Eden

Right after detailing the Quranic version of Satan's betrayal of God, Surah 7 says that Iblis, called Satan after being banished for his arrogance, turns his attention to trying to drive humans away from Allah's path.  As with the Biblical story of human creation, the first people are in a state of divinely approved nudity and are told not to eat from a tree (7:19).  Satan wants to expose the humans' nakedness (7:20) as a sort of retaliation against God for what he perceives as "unjust" treatment, nudity being something that Adam and Eve are not fully aware of until after their sin in both the Quran and Bible.  Once they eat from the tree, they assemble leaves to cover themselves (7:22).

Allah soon says that he has given the descendants of Adam garments as clothing is compared with the superior "covering" of righteousness.  It is symbolic of something greater than itself here and is contrasted with uprightness or "God-consciousness" (7:26).  Now, nudity would not be evil if clothing is just a situational, non-literal representation of moral uprightness.  Surah 7:28 afterward condemns "disgraceful deeds" yet does not list nudity as a sinful thing.  In fact, it does not give immediate examples at all.  Also, verse 31 says to dress well whenever you are at worship, but, again, does not call a mere lack of clothing in other contexts sexual or sinful or equate either sexuality or sensuality with sin by default.

As for what the Quran says about Satan's actions in trying to bring the "nakedness" of the first humans to their attention, the fallen angel never strips them of their garments despite the wording of Surah 7:27, and could not have, since the first humans were already created naked and remained in this state according to the Quran itself; Satan convinces them to give up their moral innocence in the Quran's story by disobeying Allah, which has nothing inherently to do with being clothed or naked.  They were naked beforehand as Allah created them and what is good is not altered into something evil just by humanity entering a morally fallen condition.

This Quranic story somewhat mirrors the more famous (in the West) version in Genesis, a book of the Bible that is supposedly affirmed by the Quran itself along with the other books of the Torah (Surah 2:53 and 5:46, for instance), which adds additional layers to why Surah 7 would not mean nudity is or became intrinsically evil unless the Quran contradicts the Torah.  The Genesis creation and fall account does not teach that nudity (2:25) is sexual or that sexuality or nonsexual nudity are evil.  These things are very good (1:31), as the rest of God's physical (including the human body) and nonphysical creations (the capacity for sexual feelings) are.  Mosaic Law does not condemn nudity either (Deuteronomy 4:2 applies here as well), and this is the single most concentrated, plain moral revelation of Yahweh in the Torah and the entire rest of the Bible.

As Yahweh is equated with the Islamic Allah by the Quran over and over, though the two different versions of the uncaused cause have contradictory qualities, this adds additional context to how Surah 7's telling of the original human sin does not mean that the naked body is immoral.  The stories of humans making clothes for themselves and being clothed or allowed clothes by God does not mean that God in either case prescribed clothing as morally mandatory.  No, he created people without clothing!  The Quran is in this way not anti-body in a passage that many might imagine would reek of prudery.  This is something it shares with the Bible when it comes to the more elaborate description of Eden and the introduction of human sin in Genesis.  Any condemnation of nudity in the Quran would have to come from other verses.

Neither Universalist Nor Evangelical Concepts Of Salvation

There is no universalist salvation in Biblical philosophy.  Yes, every knee will bow to God and to Christ (Philippians 2:10-11), but for some, this could be right before they receive their punishment of torment and eventual annihilation in the lake of fire, which brings about the second death that kills the body and the soul (Revelation 20:11-15, Matthew 10:28, 2 Peter 2:6).  Yes, God wishes for every sinner to repent (2 Peter 3:9), but it does not follow that everyone will be saved.  This is God's hope and not something that he forces upon people.  As Jesus says, the vast majority of humans travel down the road that leads to destruction (Matthew 7:13-14)--many reach this destination of annihilation, of cessation of existence as a spirit and exclusion from eternal life (Ezekiel 18:4, John 3:16).

Aside from the very obvious prediction of Christ that the masses choose not to turn back on the road to this annihilation, those who sin will die unless they turn from death to life, as Ezekiel (18:4) and Paul (Romans 6:23) teach.  This is what sinners deserve.  There is eternal life for those who commit to Yahweh in repentance and permanent death, not eternal conscious torment, for those who choose errors, apathy, and egoism all the way to the end.  The Bible is very clear that there is no universal salvation, though there might be "second" chances for the wicked between their resurrection and their annihilation to choose reason, God, and eternal life over preferences, the self, and endless nonexistence.  A deity who wants everyone to be saved would indeed be likely to extend offer this out of either justice or mercy.

Not everyone has the same exposure to Christianity, and although aspects of Christianity like the existence of an uncaused cause (Genesis 1:1) and mind-body dualism (James 2:26, Matthew 10:28) are true by logical necessity and thus knowable regardless of whether other aspects are, things like Yahweh's moral nature, the sacrificial death and resurrection of Christ, and more are not self-evident necessary truths.  One cannot just know from immediate self-verification that they are true as is the case with logical axioms, accessible to all people because they are omnipresent and true by necessity, underpinning, governing, and transcending all other things.  One cannot know anything here from pure reason (without experiential prompting) beyond the logical possibility of the uncaused cause having a moral nature or a willingness to save sinners, as well as what would follow from these ideas if true, by living sheltered from Christianity in a remote region or certain eras of time.

John 14:6 does say that no one comes to the Father, or Yahweh, except through Christ, and Acts 4:12 emphasizes that there is no other name for a being under heaven (though Jesus had at this point ascended to heaven, for his life, he was away from it) by which people are saved.  It is not logically impossible, nevertheless, even if these verses are true for people to still be saved without knowing the probable historicity of Christ or specifically committing to him, though his death would still be what enables these willing seekers of truth, morality, and God to be reconciled to Yahweh.  They would long to be on the right side of morality if only they knew what it was, or they would be genuinely submissive to the uncaused cause even if they had greatly sinned; they simply do not have access to the evidence for Christianity or to the Bible itself.

Of course, a rational person would never commit to Christianity apart from evidence and would never believe in it while under their human epistemological limitations.  They would still be capable of knowing there is an uncaused cause, knowing that moral obligations are logically possible, and wishing to do what is right despite not knowing what those obligations would be.  In Revelation 7:9-10, John mentions a massive group of people from every tribe, nation, and language worshipping God, and in a literal sense, this is only possible if someone from every individual society, no matter their geographical location or presence in history, was saved regardless of if they died before Christ or never heard of Yahweh or Jesus.  This, especially in conjunction with every other point listed here, makes it very probable that a second chance after death is waiting for many if Christianity is true.  Biblical salvation is indeed certainly not universalist, as it is not eventually received by everyone or forced upon them all, and it does not have to be in order for salvation to come from commitment to the uncaused cause rather than specifically hearing of and pledging oneself to Jesus.

Biblical salvation is also certainly not received as evangelicals think, for they believe that absolutely nothing we can do is what triggers salvation even though they also think that one must turn to God and commit to him, which is a mental act we must perform (the more irrationalistic believe that one must believe the unprovable in order to be saved, which is both irrational and unbiblical).  Moreover, it is likely that there will be at least a final, clearer offer of redemption from Yahweh and/or Jesus after the resurrection for those who never heard of them, never directly received their revelation, and, most importantly, would commit to any truths but withheld commitment because they had no access to the evidence for Christianity (this last group would almost certainly be very small).  At least some epistemological limitations could be removed and there could thus be be little to none of the epistemological ambiguity about the existence of morality and the exact God's will  lives on Earth.  How else could there actually be representatives of every cultural group in heaven unless John is exaggerating immensely?

Misperceived Intensity In Conversation

Raising your voice even slightly, showing ferocity or passion even if it is not rooted in emotionalism, or adding profanity (regardless of tone!) makes some people uncomfortable, and they might go so far as to assume that a rationalist is the one being emotionalistic and they are the rational one!  For whatever reason, some of these people are more prone to make this assumption if they are reading text, such as an email or a website comment, that has no accompanying body language or facial expressions.  Yes, this absence does mean a sometimes significant amount of communication context is missing, but it absolutely is always irrational to assume.  It is not as if it is not possible to be sarcastic, dry, or even emotionally neutral when using intense words anyway.

In fact, it would be logically possible for a rationalist to use a harsh tone or to intersperse profanity into confrontational dialogue just because they know what does not follow from it, even as they realize that their conversational partners might be stupid enough to immediately, thoughtlessly assume that they are hostile when they are not or are emotionalistic when they are hostile.  It would not even have to be the case that they are trying to deceive anyone.  They would be just being themselves without being irrational, and the error of making assumptions always is the fault of the one making them.  Short of literal mind control, no being could make another being believe, say, or otherwise do anything at all.  I simply cannot know what lurks behind other people's tone, and if they are the same kind of being I am, neither can they with me.

I do not know what other people are feeling no matter how they move their limbs, what words they choose, or how they use eye contact or any other such thing.  If what they are saying is true and knowable, whether that communic is in-person or digital, they might still be emotionalistic in some way, though I cannot see if this is the case from mere outward observations.  What I can know with absolute certainty from direct rationalistic introspection is if I feel or do not feel a certain way, or if I am not allowing it to affect my epistemological and metaphysical stances.  One can be extremely aggressive, in truth, without being emotionalistic at all, either in that they hold their beliefs on the basis of feelings or in the sense that they are hoping for someone to be wrong so they can have a legitimate target for ideological anger.

Wanting people to be in error so one could be harsh with them--harsh, but not hypocritical, cruel, and so on--is irrational.  Still, being genuinely harsh to the point of shocking the more timid, peace-oriented, or idiotic people of the world is not irrational, nor is it even Biblically sinful.  No, the person who is unprepared to confront (Matthew 10:34), mock (Psalm 2:4-6), divorce (Exodus 21:9-11, Deuteronomy 24:1-4, for example), or kill (Exodus 21:16, for instance) for the sake of reason and morality is ultimately, even if they do so out of non-emotionalistic mercy, unprepared for life amidst irrationalists.  Non-obligatory harshness is not required, though its absence complicates life in its own ways.  Life with staunch non-rationalists can be brutally difficult either way.

Libertarianism And Business

Basic libertarianism, even if some non-theonomist libertarians fixate on this, is not about protecting corporations from government regulations.  It is about having a government that is no larger or more involved than it should be, as in having no unjust or unnecessary laws (and an unnecessary law is either unjust since it is not obligatory or would just parrot another law).  The mere existence of everything from small businesses to megacorporations is compatible with these tenets, but that neither means there are no laws relevant to business or that all forms of libertarianism are about preserving and enhancing corporate interests.

On the contrary, consistent libertarianism is only about not allowing a government to do the irrational deed of creating laws that deviate from reason and morality and thus exercising tyranny over a population.  Many laws would disappear that are now in place if America or many other nations became libertarian, especially Biblical theonomists, endorsing a worldview that partially entails libertarianism.  Some of these laws would have to do with business and some would not.

What would not change is that all of Mosaic Law (or other moral obligations if Christianity is false but moralistic theism is still true) would still be binding over all corporate figures, from the highest owners and executives to the front-facing workers.  There would be no workplace exploitation when it comes to compensation, deception, vengeance, or abuse of a verbal, physical, or sexual kind.  There would be no discrimination on the basis of gender, race, family descent, nationality, or age in accordance with how all people bear God's image.  All of this, while not primarily or strictly about business, is applicable there in a company of any size and any industry.

Christian libertarianism aside, which is a thoroughly Biblical doctrine, there is no link between actual, base libertarianism and allowing corporate corruption to flourish in the absence of government regulation.  Not only would some parts of Mosaic Law be very directly relevant to how businesses operate, but that is also simply not what the concept of libertarianism is about.  The nonexistence of many legal commands that people are used to, from arbitrary traffic laws to some impacting the business world, is not about letting anyone get away with evil.  It is about honoring freedom wherever there is no obligation and ensuring true, undiluted justice is imposed in alignment with reason and morality.

Pain Caused Without Irrationality And Sin

Non-rationalists bring or could bring a great deal of pain on themselves from believing in false or unproven things, some of it deserved, such as existential depression or anxiety from clinging to assumptions and errors.  As deep and personal as this can be, they cannot deserve to have happiness and peace in denying or misunderstanding the only thing that cannot be false: the truths of reason.  Rationalism aligns one with reality but does not necessarily avoid pain.  It can, though it might not.  Someone who knows the fundamental necessity of logical axioms, perfectly avoids assumptions, does what is or (according to evidences for Christianity) seems to be morally correct, and wants to know and delight in truth can still suffer immensely.

They might even suffer because of other people like them in these regards.  For instance, one person's natural but permissible intensity of personality might intimidate someone else who has not sinned.  People can hurt each other despite doing nothing irrational or evil at all, and these things can create deep, lasting pains.  Neither party has believed, done, or said anything out of assumptions, malice, selfishness, moral apathy, hypocrisy, intentional negligence, or cruelty.  Suffering is possible even when it comes only from people being their authentic selves in rationalistic, morally permissible ways.  Yes, communication and transparency can help avoid or soften such trials, but this kind of pain could be experienced by anyone in the presence of other people.

Wherever this pain has sprung up, it can be addressed: the fact that both people are rational and morally upright is all that they need to never once believe or do anything erroneous.  They can distinguish between their own subjective perceptions and preferences and logical necessities or probabilistic evidences.  None of them are trying to err, nor are they actually doing so, and their worldviews and resolve can carry them through any personal difficulties that arise from subjectivity.  It is only on the level of personality and desire that people can hurt each other in this amoral manner.  In this case, neither person is a slave to irrationality or immorality, and neither hopes to escape through retreating away from dwelling on reality.

Each party would have to communicate and earnestly strive to heal the troubles that have surfaced between them.  In an amoral sense, they might ask for forgiveness of a sort.  There might be tears and apologies and regret although no one involved has done anything wrong or betrayed reason to the slightest extent.  They would desire a positive, unburdened relationship so much that they might even be willing to voluntarily give up some of their own nonsinful tendencies which are on their own free to be enjoyed or pursued at will.  Stupidity and evil are not the only causes of pain, yet it is possible to overcome psychological pain of all kinds through intentionality and openness.

A Grand Concern For Having Children

Out of all the possible legitimate reasons, as long as someone is free of assumptions and emotionalism, for someone to want to not have children, some get more attention than others: economic difficulty, career development, an unsafe living area, a spouse who does not want a child, mental or physical health conditions, and so on.  Factors like the financial freedom to have a child and be able to give it a comfortable upbringing have become even more overtly recognized even by non-rationalists (not that they can know even this without discovering the intrinsic truths of logical axioms and then making no assumptions).  Increasingly inaccessible economic footing prompts this.

An even more serious, grand factor is beyond the scope of money, earthly comfort, spousal or personal preference, and so on.  While there is a great amount of evidence that Christianity is true, and thus that the Christian afterlife of annihilation in hell or eternal life in New Jerusalem after one's resurrection is true, there is no way for a being with my human limitations to know if there is an afterlife or, if one exists, which of the many logically possible afterlives it is.  There are many afterlives that do not contradict logical axioms which would be dull or horrible, and there is no way to know with absolute certainty beforehand--or even while in the afterlife as long as one's epistemological limitations remain--what the afterlife is like, or if there is one.

For a parent who loves their child, given that they had thought of such logical possibilities, the idea of their offspring suffering in eternal, amoral misery (for eternal torment is unjust, at least for humans) or being crushed by existential terror just at the unknowability of the afterlife while in this life would be of great concern.  The Christian afterlife is not morally terrible either way or of the utmost severity at its worst, no matter how much someone might not subjectively feel otherwise; either a person exists without pain or sadness in a blissful state of eternal life (Revelation 21:1-4), right with or restored to God and free to do all nonsinful things, or he or she will suffer justly and be eradicated from existence on both a mental and bodily level, the body burned to ashes (2 Peter 2:6) as the soul no longer exists to experience torment (Ezekiel 18:4, John 3:16, Matthew 10:28).

There is still a cosmic horror to the annihilationist hell, the real hell of Biblical philosophy, as well as to the everlasting forfeiture of knowledge, joy, peace, and pleasure, and yet this fate is morally good.  The numerous human inhabitants will not exist forever and receive banishment from existence for their unrepentant betrayals of or ideological apathy towards reality.  The real terror comes from it being possible that despite all the evidence for this dual set of afterlives, that evidence is only an illusion, and there is an afterlife objectively worse than oblivion or the Biblical ones.  A rationalistic parent would at least understand the weight of this if they were to think of it, even if they had never previously discovered these truths, and the relevance to bringing a child into the world would be obvious.

Yes, it might be one of the least considered factors, but the logical possibility of different kinds of afterlives is a grand concern for introducing new children to human life.  If the afterlife is something negative that they consciously choose, if it is something they head towards totally thoughtlessly but still because of their own beliefs or actions, or if it is an unavoidable, eternal (and thus non-moral) experience of misery, then it is a far more significant, relevant thing when it comes to having kids than economics or health.  Evangelicals who irrationalistically misunderstand the Biblical hell as one of eternal conscious torment and still rush to have as many kids as they can produce, recalling that the Bible says most humans will walk towards the destruction (annihilation, not perpetual torture) of hell (Matthew 7:13-14), are examples of people who totally disregard the real stakes of their own unbiblical philosophy of justice and the afterlife.

The Morality Of Sacrificing Oneself For Others

No one is morally required to sacrifice their convenience to hold the door open for an able-bodied person behind them, to sacrifice their life for someone else's in a natural disaster or wartime conflict, or to sacrifice their moral freedom for the sake of another person's preferences.  These could all be loving acts that reflect a concern for the fellow people made in God's image, yes.  They are nonetheless not moral necessities (Deuteronomy 4:2) like executing kidnappers (Exodus 21:16), avoiding unnecessary labor on the Sabbath (Exodus 35:2), loving God wholeheartedly (Deuteronomy 6:5), or abstaining from lies (Leviticus 19:11).  The ramifications are massive.

Spanning everything from a civilian rescuing others in dangerous situations to a mother giving up her life (in lethal circumstances) to better ensure a safe birth for her baby, there are many scenarios where sacrifice is good on the Christian worldview, since to selflessly prioritize others over oneself in this way is to do something that honors the value of each person (Genesis 1:26-27).  At the same time, there is no selfishness in refraining from doing any of this.  One cannot be selfish without disregarding a logical truth or caring more about one's own personal preferences than moral obligations.

What about Jesus, some people might think?  The sacrifice of Christ's life, a voluntary and good thing (John 10:11-15), is an act of mercy rather than justice, so there is no error of any kind in never choosing the former over the latter.  No, the crucifixion of anyone is never justice, but an abomination (Deuteronomy 25:1-3), yet dying for others is also not a right anyone can legitimately demand.  While someone can freely offer his or her life for someone else's, it cannot be obligatory because this being the default would be unjust even in the case of Christological sacrificial atonement (Deuteronomy 24:16).  Without the voluntary aspect, the death of Jesus would have been evil for God to approve of even aside from the unjust forms of torture that led to it, an impossible thing since only God's nature grounds morality at all to start with.

Jesus absolutely did not have to die on behalf of fallen beings.  Perhaps there would have been no salvation for them, but mercy is never obligatory.  By nature, it can only be shown when true justice is both deserved and withheld either out of love, out of pity, or out of hope for repentance on the wrongdoer's part.  It is logically impossible for mercy to be anything more than this.  Thus, since the death of Christ was something that occurred because of divine mercy and sacrificial willingness to redeem beings that deserve annihilation (Ezekiel 18:4), of course no one should be like Christ in this regard.  It is a mere permissible option should they desire it.

We are not required to imitate Christ in this regard, as noble as it is to voluntarily perform such good but non-obligatory feats (Deuteronomy 4:2).  Avoiding the unnecessary endangerment of human life is mandatory (Leviticus 19:16); giving up one's own life or wellbeing to ensure the survival of other people is by no means something one should do, only something one is free to do if there is genuine sincerity in it.  What all people would be obligated to do is to treat others, including themselves, justly and to be utterly prepared at every moment to sacrifice their convenience to fulfill the actual duties to reason, God, other people, animals, and the environment.  There is no obligation to give up one's life, hence why it cannot be sinful to abstain from this.

Unemployment In America

The absolute strictest sense of the word unemployed simply refers to a person who is not professionally employed, lacking a job.  At the same time, an elderly retiree is not the conventional type of "unemployed" person, though they do not have a job of any kind as someone who has retired.  The American government's definition of unemployment--although words are arbitrary constructs and objective concepts and necessary truths about them, which words are assigned to, are what really matters--goes further than this sort of clarification, in the context of an equation where unemployment is calculated by dividing the number of "unemployed" people by the total number of employed and unemployed people (the labor force) and multiplying the results by 100.

This definition treats people as unemployed only if they are taking active steps to find or secure a job or have done so within the previous four weeks.  Since this definition excludes people who had last searched for work outside of this timeline, who need jobs but have given up their pursuit out of despair, or who are employed but do not receive enough hours to get by (making them insufficiently employed), it is woefully erroneous in some ways and also does not account for economic issues for the employed.  It is not only that it is not as complete or precise as it could be, like Plato's description of a human as a featherless biped.  The definition is outright logically incorrect because of what it treats as irrelevant.

The selectively narrow scope is incredibly misleading.  Even if all of the reported statistics are otherwise true, which as any rationalistic person can easily know is unverifiable at best (due to hearsay, extrapolation of one sample size to the whole, and so on) [1], the calculated unemployment rate still does not necessarily reflect the actual number of people who are unemployed in the sense of hoping for or agonizing over a hypothetical job.  The ones who have not actively sought out work within what is ultimately an arbitrary timeline of four weeks prior might still want work on some level or truly need it.  All the same, they are kept out of the calculation.

Someone discouraged by a lack of success and consequently has not directly submitted applications for the last 40 days or done any other such thing, yet still is available for and open to future employment, is excluded from consideration.  The worse the job market, the more severely this exclusion can misrepresent the situation.  A higher number of people who have current jobs and a lower number of people "seeking" work according to the way characterized in the calculation in no way entail together that the job market is flourishing.  The unemployment rate according to U.S. federal statistics, aside from all the epistemological issues that statistics such as this have at a minimum, could decrease and the nation's workers or aspiring workers could still be in awful shape.

Again, the manner in which this equation is extraordinarily incomplete makes it erroneous in one sense.  The unemployment rate, though even a genuine unemployment rate of 0% would still not mean that workers are not financially struggling, nonetheless could be used by politicians of any party to make their ideas sound more appealing.  Someone in office can reference the calculated rate as if it reflects well on them, when in reality, even if every variable is exactly what they claim it is, there are so many factors left out of the unemployment rate that it is useless on its own for evidencing the real economic health of the nation.  I will emphasize once more that all of this is on top of the inherent epistemological problems with statistics such as these.  Accurate or not in a given case, the unemployment rate as presented by the American government at a minimum neglects vital aspects of financial stability within the country.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-unreliability-of-statistics.html

The Potential Irrelevance Of Morality To An Afterlife

So many seem to think that if there is an afterlife, it could only be about the moral reward or punishment for how people have lived before biological death.  Also, what they envision as the contents of the afterlife are very narrow spectrums of what what is logically possible, aka what does not contradict logical axioms, the only things that are inherently true.  Dying, entering nonexistence or unconsciousness until a time of resurrection (like the Biblical Sheol of Ecclesiastes 9), and then experiencing conscious existence again would entail an afterlife, but this is not the typical example of the concept in my country, and the eschatological context of what follows is heavily moralistic.  Reincarnation, whether guided by God or unguided, is another such thing, though this is contrary to Biblical doctrines, unlike soul sleep/annihilation before resurrection.  Then there are the many blissful or harsh afterlives that do not contradict logical axioms and yet have nothing to do with morality.

The truth is that if there is an afterlife, it might have nothing to do with morality; likewise, if morality exists, it would be possible for it to have nothing to do with the hypothetical existence a person could have after the death of their body.  Morality could exist and human souls still die with the body, their consciousness fading into permanent nonexistence at the moment of death, something that is not contradicted by the fact that there is an uncaused cause despise the idiotic faith of many religious people or the denial of atheists.  Morality could exist and whatever afterlife might await me might also just not be determined by my rationality or righteousness in life.  This is a far more serious reason to be terrified than mental nonexistence, which is something that involves no consciousness and thus no capacity for pain: we have no way of knowing if there is an afterlife, how much it would vary from person to person, or what beings would actually make it so.

Some of the most objectively dreadful but still logically possible afterlives in fiction rely on this fact, that it is not every sort of existence after death that would be about how morally upright someone is.  It is only in the context of very specific things being true that this would be the case.  God's existence does not mean God has a moral nature, and even if he does, some other being could still redirect souls to itself or some hellish realm, and I do not mean the Gehenna of the Bible where sinners die (Matthew 10:28, Ezekiel 18:4, 2 Peter 2:6, Revelation 20:15).  I mean a hellish dimension that could involve eternal suffering or the worst kinds of evil acts.  God exists [1], but, moreover, the uncaused cause might be unaware of or apathetic towards what happens to people after death, and everyone or most people experience an afterlife of amoral bliss whether they become disembodied consciousnesses or are given new bodies to inhabit.

This is unlikely, since it is very evidentially probable that Christianity is true and the Bible does not teach these unconventional afterlives, but that does not mean they contradict axioms and thus are false by inherent necessity. They do not; there is nothing about them that is contrary to necessary truths.  As such, they either are true or could have been true.  Again, there is far more to be frightened of with this than the eternal nonexistence some expect, as if they know what does or does not await after death.  Many afterlives are possible.  Some people merely get so caught up in the most renowned religious or most culturally prominent entertainment-related afterlives to ever discover these things.  If everyone has an afterlife of some kind, how involved God is, if there is an afterlife for animals, if it is very different for different people, and if it is connected to one's deeds in life are all unknowable with my limitations.  I know if many logical possibilities.  I do not know what will be the case.

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

Game Review--Aragami 2 (Switch)

"You will not get your humanity back.  You will never die and reincarnate again.  Slaves of infinite time, you will now live to see how everything you love withers away.  New nations will emerge and subdue you.  New peoples will burn forests down, will dry rivers out and will poison the land.  And you will be the witnesses of that suffering forever."

--Tsubuyaku, Aragami 2

Aragami 2 tells a story of a fictional Japanese land consumed by political instability and death, one in which resides a group of resurrected people called Aragami struggles to regain their deteriorating memories and protect themselves from invasion.  As a stealth game, it is severely hindered.  Unfortunately, this is no Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones with its stealth mechanics and is far from the best heights of Assassin's Creed.  Objectively horrible controls (at least in contrast with the smoothness of standard button-action assignment), extremely subpar graphics, common frame rate drops, a high amount of repetition, and a very disjointed and underdeveloped narrative/mission system hold it back severely.  What could have been a deeply emotional and sobering exploration of how memory relates to personal identity, how suffering can harden sensitive people, and how living "forever" on this Earth could be terrifying, complete with diverse acrobatics and fighting maneuvers, takes quite a while to build up to anything less than abysmal to barely mediocre.

Production Values

What a shitshow Aragami 2's graphics and performance are on the Switch!  Choppy walking animations from approaching enemies, very pixelated outlines, and flames or textures that do not appear until you are rather close serve as consistent reminders.  On some occasions, the game froze and triggered an error screen.  On others, I could still play, but the game ran so slowly that only a few frames at a time would elapse, so that I was unable to to efficiently do almost anything in combat or climbing until I moved to a different arbitrary area.  Less severely than such awful extremes, the game does slow down sometimes when there appear to be no reason at all, in light of the very few enemies onscreen and lack of active combat.  Running slowly is just an ordinary part of the game.  There is also the way that the game skipped a major cutscene in one mission, which consequently had very abrupt in-level transitions.  The inhabitants of the hub village suddenly started talking as if an important character was gone, but this was never depicted.  Less important but still very bizarre is how the game tracks time in your player file even when you suspend the software by heading to the Switch menu and turn off the screen.  Thus, it recorded me as having more than 300 hours when I had in actuality only played for closer to 25.

Gameplay

As an Aragami, you can choose open confrontation or slower, stealthy elimination of enemies.  In fact, you do not have to kill anyone at all, either opting to avoid them as much as possible (you can complete levels without being seen) or to knock them out.  Unconscious and dead bodies left out in the open will trigger heightened alertness if a patrolling enemy notices them.  Hiding the bodies by placing them in tall grass is one way to resolve this; you can also lure guards to the edge of the grass and then more discretely kill them or render them unconscious, pulling them inside the vegetation.  Being spotted can actually be dangerous for reasons other than enemy AI competency: the camera can automatically lock onto an enemy so that you have to press on the right analog stick to freely view the environment again and flee if overwhelmed.  Also, a highly bizarre control scheme means that you cannot start sprinting without holding the dash button and not letting it go.  You cannot simply break into a sprint.

Looking past the technical issues and atrocious control design, Aragami 2 still fails to do almost anything with its promising mechanics for a while.  The very few killing moves are extremely repetitive hours in, and changing the protagonist's base wardrobe does absolutely fucking nothing to alter the combat style or even any player attributes.  The limited variety in missions is another negative factor; you go back and forth between a hub location and miscellaneous regions where you have to kill certain figures, inspect/collect objects, eavesdrop, or retrieve a character.  However, to the game's mild credit, some of the shadow powers that can gradually be unlocked as you level up make it much less stagnant and slow-paced.  By assassinating an enemy, for instance, you can eventually trigger a simultaneous assassination of another nearby enemy using a shadow construct, and this works even when two enemies have spotted you and are charging at you if you stun one, such as with an amnesia dart, and then kill it.  The other still sees you, yet they are subjected to this double assassination anyway.  Another power allows you to turn invisible for a time until you attack or are attacked.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

A warrior finds himself returned to life as an Aragami, suffering a curse that will eventually transform him and others like him into a different kind of being, one without their individual memories of their past self and life.  The dissociation from their default personality and memory worsens until they would eventually become stone.  Using the village of Kakurega as a launching point, the revived warrior helps protect peasants from two rival factions attempting to seize more power.

Intellectual Content

The story is unfortunately only there to provide opportunities to go outside the hub village to kill, eavesdrop, rescue, or kidnap.  However, at the very end, despite characters starting to say certain complete falsities for the first time because of this, such as that not even eternity lasts forever (when eternity would by nature last forever), the game finally delves into deeper territory with its reveal that a character has been living in pain for far longer than a normal lifespan.  He curses the Aragami to never die, saying that their souls will be returned to them without their full humanity and that they will live to experience all the pain of enduring on as other things they love fade.  It is at this point that talk surfaces of how all things allegedly end and that every end is a new beginning, which would then mean that this cycle never ends, rendering the initial idea false.  Now, the inherently true laws of logic could not cease or change, and empty space cannot, so there are at least two things that cannot not exist and that cannot change [1].  On many levels, these concepts regarding finality and time and cessation of existence are objectively false.  In spite of the many philosophical flaws put forth, at least the game does at last begin to acknowledge the crushing weight of "eternal" life in a world of decay and loss.  It is just to the game's detriment that it takes so long for them to be more sincerely explored.

As for other subjects the characters mishandle, one character says their enemies should not be treated justly, when justice is exactly what people should be treated with, since it is literally what people deserve.  More related to the base story is how a member of an enemy group talks about a slave as if she deserves whatever harsh treatment her master feels like directing towards her.  Of all the issues the story directly touches on, only that of slavery continually comes up again and again, save for a very superficial acknowledgement of how memory is a core part of a person.  This slave girl is a resurrected former human in the process of becoming a different type of being, an aragami, yes; however, her master treats her like she by default has no moral rights (not legal, but moral) and like she exists for his own whims, a subjectivist error that is false whether or not morality exists, since his preference does not make something good or evil or amoral either way.  He works her until she cannot stand, and as the barebones plot unfolds, slave labor becomes increasingly pivotal to the plot.  You encounter slaves in some levels that are in some way mind controlled by fire so that they ignore the player character completely and work no matter what happens around them.  Since it is both very important and regularly misunderstood by fools, I will highlight the enormous contrasts between this form of slavery and the Biblical kind.

Biblical slavery requires that all male and female slaves/servants be given at least one day free from labor for every six days of work, and their own rejuvenation is emphasized as a major reason for this (Exodus 20:8-10, 23:12, Deuteronomy 5:12-15), and they are exempt from all agricultural labor in the Sabbath year, where they eat along with everyone else from what the land provides (Leviticus 25:1-6).  Other human rights specifically emphasized as being possessed by male and female slaves on Judeo-Christianity include the right to not be killed by their owners (Exodus 21:20-21; contrast with Deuteronomy 25:1-3, as corporal punishment itself is not the issue if there was applicable wrongdoing) or allowed to die through neglect (Exodus 21:28-32), to go free for physical abuse that does not result in death (Exodus 21:26-27), to go free every seven years by default with generous material supplies unless they want to stay with their masters/mistresses (Exodus 21:1-6, Deuteronomy 15:12-17; Leviticus 19:33-34), and to be included in general meals and religious worship (Deuteronomy 12:11-12, 17-18, 16:9-11, 13-15).  Also, slaves are not to be returned to their masters if they flee (Deuteronomy 23:15-16).

Conclusion

Aragami 2, on the Switch at the least, is mostly a display of wasted potential to the point that it can be almost unplayable due to performance problems.  A shallow story, stymied controls, and, in spite of the slowdown and freezing as if this was not the case, sometimes awful graphics render the title abysmal even aside from the extreme repetition early on.  The game is almost nothing but a concoction of minimally developed elements.  Later on, expanded powers do alleviate one of its most immediate problems, but not enough of Aragami 2 is polished or strong on its own to come anywhere near artistic greatness, except for some of the themes at the very end of the game--which are butchered by the presentation of obviously logically impossible ideas as if they are deep or in any way valid.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  Killing enemies does draw blood that can stain the landscape, especially when you stealthily kill an enemy on a tower.  Corpses do not disappear like in many games, but rather stay wherever they are left.

 2.  Profanity:  The word "damn" occasionally comes up in subtitles.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/07/god-and-empty-space.html