Traumatized By Reality

There are some things which are objectively worthy of fear.  For example, it is logically possible for there to be an afterlife of extreme agony for everyone that has nothing to do with morality.  Eternal torture of a person could only be unjust because of its inherent disproportionality, but amoral eternal torture could not be unjust (such as if there is nothing good or evil), and even if this is not waiting for people (it very likely is not), it could have been the case.  To be terrified of this logical truth is not irrational.  To be arbitrarily, subjectively terrified of anything, in actuality, is not irrational unless it is tied to false or assumed beliefs or erroneous actions.  Frightened to a penetrating level by miscellaneous truths or possibilities, a person could allow themself to let trauma over the nature of reality dictate their worldview and actions rather than reason.

If someone cannot handle the fact that neither men nor women are metaphysically superior to each other, then they are stupid, deserving to feel whatever genuine trauma they might experience while listening to someone more rational affirm this.  If someone hates that the uncaused cause might not be Yahweh and might not care about us at all, and they let this motivate the assumption that Christianity is true, they are traumatized by reality (for this is logically possible even if it turns out to be false) and have mishandled their situation.  If someone is offended by the fact that loving a person does not mean you cannot or should not hate them or vice versa, and they let this drive them to assume that all hatred is evil or incompatible with love, then whatever psychological suffering they face from this is deserved.

If someone hates the thought of there being evidence for Christianity's veracity because of its tenets like the justice of the Amalekite genocide, then it is unfortunate to be them, as reality would not depend on their wishes either way.  If someone hates that logical axioms are true no matter what they prefer and that other things follow from this by necessity, they are just spurning the only inherent truths which do not depend on anything else.  If someone hates that there is nothing adulterous about extramarital flirtation or attraction (and thus there is no basis for objection on these grounds if their partner does this), again, how this psychologically impacts them does not matter.  The truth is the truth and it does not hinge on their whims, convenience, or feelings.

Non-rationalists can go to great lengths to not run into these logical facts or dwell on them if someone else brings them up.  If your confrontational words to them are razors and briars, you have done nothing wrong unless there is slander or real and not perceived malice.  There is nothing false in truth and nothing immoral about discovering, savoring, and verbally acknowledging the truth, even if it is objectively harmful to non-rationalists' mental wellbeing.  You can say shocking, volatile things to such people specifically to make them suffer without having done anything wrong, for there can be nothing illicit about simply being honest with oneself and others about the knowable nature of reality.  Someone who cares more about gratification than the objective, intrinsic truths of reason disregards what cannot have been any other way.

If you are traumatized by reality and it is anything other than a happenstance subjective reaction to a truth that you rationalistically understand, it is literally impossible for you to deserve relief until your worldview is perfectly aligned with reason.  This glorious truth is something rationalists can revel in at the expense of everyone else around them if no other rationalists are present.  Of course it could be very hurtful to many people.  Certainly, they might loathe you, lash out, or retreat into silence.  It would still always be better for emotionalists and other non-rationalists to shut the fuck up, and to do so because of ferocious social pressures, than it is for them to spew their idiocy boldly or obliviously.

Logic, people.  It is very fucking helpful.

Why Rationality Is A Logically Necessary Component Of Righteousness

Maybe morality exists, and maybe it does not.  Both are possible although only one can be true at once.  Each is unverifiable.  There are still logical truths about what could and could not be the case.  For one thing, morality is by necessity about what should and should not be done independent of preference and convenience.  Whatever the moral system that might be true, this is true of it.  For another thing, eternal torture cannot be justice because it infinitely exceeds the worst individual acts of wrongdoing.  All of these and other philosophical facts are dictated by logic, which is true in itself, independent of all else.  Logic cannot be false without still being true, as then by logical necessity, logic would be false, and thus it would still be true either way!  This is the foundation of why someone cannot be righteous, whatever logically possible moral standard is correct if there is such a thing, without being rational.  All other truths must be consistent with logic because it is inherently true, and so morality could not be ungoverned by it--and no one can know anything about what is even possibly correct apart from reason.

Caring about subjective perceptions, subjective moral preferences, or cultural norms/consensus is not the same as caring about morality: the latter is caring about what should be done regardless of what it might ultimately entail.  There is no such thing as someone, for instance, humble, hard-working, and kind being righteous--and this is if these particular qualities really are obligatory--if the only reason they did so is due to personal conscience or social conditioning.  They did not do it for the sake of logical correctness because they assumed these things are good or never thought about the issue, ignoring logic and moral epistemology altogether; they did not do it for the sake of morality because they in truth were only operating not only on assumptions, but also on erroneous foundations like sheer preference.  They cared only that they liked or otherwise psychologically benefitted from doing or not doing something.  Even if they really felt like humility or kindness was good, they irrationally pursued their own moral feelings rather than obligation itself.  They could not even know they have done so aside from grasping logic free of assumptions.

If giving to the poor is obligatory (or even supererogatory), and someone gives to the poor without concern for whether they should by only caring that they feel like they should, then they are only aiding them on whim.  It is about the giver feeling good about themself on fallacious and therefore epistemologically erroneous grounds.  Just as doing something that genuinely is morally correct and mandatory is not enough to make someone righteous if they are doing it with selfish motives (such as manipulating public perception for the sake of egoistic power), doing something morally good or mandatory is not righteous if you do it by accident or without actually caring about logical necessity or moral obligation.  Since I cannot know if morality exists or which possible moral obligations are true (though there is evidence for the Bible's veracity and thus its moral system), yes, this means I cannot know if I am righteous or not, but at least I am rational.  I make no assumptions about morality and genuinely care about doing what I should if there is such a thing.

Also, since morality and truths about morality depend on logic and not the other way around, this makes logic morally important if there is good and evil.  There is literally no way that logic is not what morality metaphysically and epistemologically hinges on!  Humility, kindness, and so on cannot possibly be the foundation of morality.  Only logic can be, and so a person cannot be righteous without at least being rational--rationalistically aligned with the objective truths of logic.  Just because logic is inherently true does not mean morality is.  Morality's very possibility depends on consistency with the self-necessary axioms of logic, and good and evil are not self-evident whatsoever.  This is aside from the fact that, again, you cannot be morally correct for simply doing whatever your subjective emotions and arbitrary culture would compel you to.  To avoid making any assumptions, though, one must be rationalistic.

Conscience is not proof that some things are good or evil.  It is a subjective matter of emotion and/or intuition, which can vary from person to person (if they even have a conscience!) and be quite malleable within the same individual over time.  Anything that really is objectively good or obligatory is such entirely independent of perception, meaning no one's perception makes anything good or reveals what is good, or if there is such a thing.  Few people realize these things, much less all of them at once and their other ramifications that I have pointed out elsewhere.  Very few who would agree do so on the basis of pure logicality, making no assumptions and starting with the inherent truth of logical axioms.  Shedding assumptions would reveal that all of the things mentioned in this post are true by logical necessity.  They cannot be illusory or otherwise false.  It really is impossible to be righteous without at a minimum being rational, which can only be achieved by being rationalistic.

Logic, people.  It is very fucking helpful.

Marriages Are Not Monolithic

Marriage is not exhausting or stressful in itself, much less because at least one party is irrational or abusive in some way; a specific marriage being a genuine nightmare does not have any ramifications for what other marriages are like.  Whenever someone claims otherwise, they are by necessity believing something illogical.  There could be a sexist component as well, where the bitter spouse or divorcee thinks it is really because men/women, whichever gender is the opposite one, are so stupid, oblivious, or not suited to long-term relational success that their relationship is in disarray.  Thinking that marriage must be distressing or difficult is analogous to thinking marriage must be patriarchal or lead to loss of sexual attraction or any other such thing.  Just because marriage can be practiced in a patriarchal manner does not mean it is patriarchal on its own.  There are multiple ways to approach or live out a marriage, none of which are for better or for worse intrinsic to marriage itself.

Someone who believes anything to the contrary is irrational because they could only assume; an error has to be assumed true if a person actually believes it, as something false cannot be known to be true no matter how subjectively persuasive it appears.  However, in addition to holding to logically erroneous beliefs, this sort of person also increases the likelihood of their delusion sabotaging any following romantic relationships, which they ostensibly approach as if only disaster awaits.  Since they have assumed that subsequent marriages are bound for failure because marriage itself is the problem, though they might feel compelled to seek new relationships anyway because of loneliness or interpersonal sexual impulses, they have already set themselves up for failure on a pragmatic level.  Another tragic possibility is that they are desperate to find objective stability and personal fulfillment in romantic relationships precisely because they have many negative experiences pertaining to them, but their irrationality makes achieving this less likely.

Their own philosophical and behavioral errors might then easily reinforce the illusory perception that their conclusion is correct.  Being irrational, they might in turn think more flawed relationships only confirms the "fact" that marriage or by extension romantic relationships as a whole are a terrible waste of time or energy that could not possibly go well.  This is in spite of how the quality of one romantic relationship, marital or otherwise, is not determined by that of another for the logically necessary reasons aforementioned.  This cannot be false because logic is intrinsically true.  Sheer possibility is determined by consistency with logical axioms alone, which someone who makes assumptions about the nature of romantic relationships based upon personal experience or the potential for them to go wrong has already neglected one way or another.  Of course a perfect or stable marriage is possible!

Anybody who clings to logical errors like the stance that marriage is inherently awful is only strengthening the probability of their own relational demise in addition to forsaking rationalistic truth.  Certainly, entering a relationship with expectations of failure or dysfunction does not mean that the relationship will inevitably reach such a state.  A string of gratuitously broken and terminated marriages thankfully does not necessitate that another marriage is inevitably damned to the same fate!  Within the spectrum of logical possibility, any romantic partnership (including a first, second, or third marriage, and so on) is what its participants make of it.  Having believed in logical fallacies in the past or actively contributed (by being irrational!) to repeated vicious marital breakdowns does not mean that any mistakes have to be continued.  While mistakes can be avoided from the start if rationalistic people are careful enough, they can also be overcome within the relationship.  A given marriage truly is to an extent what a couple makes of it!

The Bullshit Of Customer Service And Public Relations

Tradition or preference will always be at the heart of the imposed, contrived requirements for professionalism beyond just doing a job itself well.  Both tradition and preference, in the context of customer service and public relations (PR), are frequently rooted in a desire to amass as much money from customers as possible or preserve a perhaps inaccurate, undeserved reputation so that future customers are not deterred.  They are not only irrelevant to the true nature of business because preference is subjective and tradition is a meaningless construct, but they are also largely about superficial perceptions for the sake of keeping customers in line by inflating their egos.  People who devise these things are idiots and people who enforce them while believing anything contrary to what has been said here are the same.

For instance, workers are probably expected to be "professional" by ignoring hostile comments from customers to leave a "positive impression."  The latter deserve no special recognition for paying a company for something; the executives or managers are, in many cases, only interested in continuing their revenue stream for monetary gain or for the prestige of a favorable reputation (as if reputation on its own proves anything more than that there is a given reputation!).  This is not problematic on its own.  As a low-level employee or an executive, there is absolutely no reason to go above and beyond for a customer other than sheer happenstance preference in the moment or for the pragmatic benefit one can get out of it (as long as one is not irrational or immoral in the process).  As long as someone is not mistreating another person, including in an employee-customer setting, it does not matter if the customer feels attended to beyond the bare minimum necessary to not mistreat them and to get the business transaction finished.

The customer is not always right; the customer does not have surplus human rights just because someone probably well above the public-facing employees will be enriched by them.  Customer service on the level of practice is, in my experience and according to what I hear from others, mostly about appeasing even emotionalistic, abusive, petty consumers to keep up the facade of "professionalism," with the threat of losing one's job or forfeiting raises if the arbitrary social constructs of professionalism are not met in a way that subjectively gratifies someone above the worker in question.  Really, in these cases, it is the higher people on the hierarchy who support this illusory approach to "service" that dehumanize both the employee and customer by regarding them as only a means to an end due to greed.

This is also what PR is mostly about, after all, with the way it is conducted in plenty of companies.  It is about presenting the company image in a particular way, often selectively silent on company controversies or wording things as if executives did not know about illicit practices before they were exposed even if this was not the case.  PR is easily used as a way to manipulate superficial perceptions that will sway people on an impulse to associate positive feelings or other experiences with a given product, public-facing figure, or the general company.  One form would be carefully cultivated social media posts that are designed to make the company look helpful, ethically oriented, and inviting, when the employees and consumers might be lied to or trampled upon on an ongoing basis in order to extract maximum profit for the almighty quarterly reports.

The "professionalism" of customer service or PR might very well not really be about anything other than persuading people to submit to corporate manipulation.  Keep spending money on their products or services, and the selfish manager or employer who wants to keep up this status quo will do what they can to produce useful illusions.  They will say practically anything if they expect for it to generate their profit.  Appeasing the customer, as stupid as many manifestations of this can be already, can be part of this, ultimately about manipulating the customer so that revenue and, more precisely, profit continues to flow in to a company.  Anyone who believes otherwise can only assume.  Business does not have to be about superficialities, but most manifestations of it in America will be drenched in such things.

The Allure Of Mystery

Curiosity itself is not dangerous, only how people act on it, but when many people say curiosity is dangerous, they seem to mean that it can make impulsive decisions or threatening situations seem appealing.  So subjectively appealing is curiosity supposed to make something that people could be led to death, dismemberment, or some other major negative outcome.  As secondary and limited of a philosophical issue as scientific practicality is, oftentimes, the situational benefits or dangers of curiosity are mentioned with regard to technological evolutions or discoveries in nature that could end lives if mishandled.

The most foundational and thus the most important matters of curiosity, though, have to do with things that cannot be known with human limitations.  The basic truth of logical axioms and that one exists as a consciousness are the only self-evident truths, with the latter depending on the former both metaphysically and epistemologically; they are not mysterious in the sense that they cannot be known by humans.  Many, many other things are neither self-evident nor are they knowable otherwise because they do not follow by logical necessity from these few self-evident truths.  Curiosity will never override epistemological limitations and allow someone to view future events, to know if an object they are perceiving through the senses actually exists, or if their memories of only two moments ago are accurate.

What curiosity can do is subjectively reinforce the desire to discover what can be known (even if this is only logical possibilities, which are determined by consistency with axioms, and evidential probabilities) about things like morality or an afterlife or just care about weighty but unverifiable possibilities.  Now, even something like God's existence is neither an unknowable issue nor one particularly difficult to discover, since an uncaused cause has to exist by necessity if any contingent thing exists (even if I am the uncaused cause, all things that are not eternal need had to have a cause, and this causal chain could not be infinite going backwards or else the present would never arrive).  Curiosity spurs some people to think about God's existence or hypothetical nature even if they never realized all of this, but one of the deepest powers of curiosity has more to do with what people would knowingly sacrifice for its sake.

For example, whether or not there is an afterlife, while by default not as important as the inherent, independent truth of axioms, is a very significant matter.  Approaching the topic from emotionalism and assumptions does not mean someone will not experience great curiosity over this mystery.  Whether an afterlife exists and what it consists of are indeed of extreme philosophical depth and weight.  Still, if there was a universalist (so no one can avoid it), eternally experienced (so no one dies in hell, contrary to what the Bible teaches in verses like Matthew 10:28), perhaps even non-theological hell for us after death (so the uncaused cause is not orchestrating it), would you really want to know about it in advance?  Nothing about this is logically impossible, though it is not likely.  It just could have been true even if it is not because it does not contradict the only necessary truths of logic.

It would ultimately depend on the individual as to whether someone would want to know such a presently unknowable thing--either about the afterlife or any other incredibly significant subject.  Many people do not know that possibility is dictated by consistency with necessary truths and not by whatever assumptions they have as irrationalists, by their standard experiences, or by what other people tell them is true.  For this reason, their emotional reaction to mystery might blind them to otherwise easily apparent truths or possibilities, or to dismiss certain truths because it makes them uncomfortable that their deep feelings of curiosity could give way to existential terror.  Another more constant danger is that curiosity persuades people to overlook, deny, or neglect things more important than whatever they personally appreciate.

Mystery makes some subjects seem exciting to specific individuals even apart from the objective nature of the topic--hence why curiosity motivates some people to squander their attention on relatively unimportant or lesser things like, say, the process of bioluminescence as they neglect the intrinsic nature of logical axioms or whether the uncaused cause does or does not have a moral nature.  A person feeling intrigued, no matter what a given issue would deserve, is subjective, and many leap after mysteries that strike them as engrossing to the detriment of their worldviews and lives.  It is also true that many non-rationalists are more susceptible to being destroyed or disappointed by curiosity because they do not recognize genuine possibilities with or without promoting because in either case, they do not look to reason.  The allure of mystery only influences beliefs, despite this, to the extent a person allows it to, to no extent at all or to any other degree.

Widows, Female Virginity, And Biblical Egalitarianism

Introduced in the Torah and then acknowledged in the New Testament, there is the distinct obligation for spouses to not sexually neglect or deprive each other (Exodus 21:10-11, 1 Corinthians 7:2-5).  As a consequence, any marriage where husbands and wives act in alignment with their Biblical obligations, short of physical or mental health complications, would not be utterly devoid of sex as long as sex is desired.  If both spouses are indeed content without sex due to well-communicated asexuality, living accordingly could not be neglect in the fullest sense.  A widow or widower could not otherwise have been married for a lengthy duration before mistreating their partner through deprivation.  Most widows as well as widowers would nonetheless probably not be virgins, a likely thing independent of adherence to Biblical ethics or lack thereof!

For women as well as men, circumstances where it is not sinful for to lose virginity ahead of a marriage--or to marry someone other than the person one lost one's virginity with--include certain cases of premarital sex (Exodus 22:16-17), any instance of rape (Deuteronomy 22:25-27), remarriage following the death of a partner, and remarriage after a morally legitimate divorce (Deuteronomy 24:1-4; see also Exodus 21:10-11, 26-27, and Deuteronomy 21:10-14 for other relevant verses from Mosaic Law).  Obviously, women, like men, do not have to be virgins before marriage, though casual sex is sinful for men and women alike.  Some people do not realize that each of these facts is incompatible with their asinine notion that on Christianity, female virgins are more worthy or worthwhile as spouses than other women, or that virginity is required of women prior to marriage (or of women and men).

Throughout the supposedly misogynistic Torah laws (though the misinterpreting party often has no problem with what would if consistent with their fallacious interpretations be misandrist passages), care for widows is prescribed.  Sometimes the command is universal in its obligatory nature (Exodus 22:22-24), and other times it pertains to the distribution of tithes in the Promised Land, a context-dependent but still objective obligation.  I will mention the individual verses in the following paragraph.  Obviously, however, though this logically necessary ramification is not articulated in the text, if widows should be cared for and protected from all the same forms of mistreatment as anyone else, then this is another proof that women who are not virgins are not Biblically regarded as subhuman or secondary in importance.

Exodus 22:22-24 says to not take advantage of widows, such as by violating the commands of Exodus 21:20-32, each verse of which explicitly pertains to unjust violence against women--but in a manner that emphasizes that men do not deserve any less consideration as victims of the same acts.  There is no male or female privilege prescribed or tolerated here.  All of the same human rights all people possess are those of widows; it is that overlooking or exploiting them because of their vulnerable status is expressly condemned.  Deuteronomy 14:28-29, 24:17-22, 26:12-13 all prescribe varying degrees of generosity towards widows alongside other groups like foreigners.  As if they would in any way be excluded otherwise, Deuteronomy 16:9-15 reinforces that widows are to be included along with male and female slaves/servants, sons and daughters, foreigners, and Levites in annual celebrations before God like the Festival of Weeks.

The explicit, repeated emphasis on protecting and assisting widows would contradict any worldview that conflates female virginity with a woman's value as a person.  After all, if a non-virgin woman is lesser than a female virgin (men are virgins too until they have sex!), then the righteous thing to do could only be to disregard women who are not virgins!  This is logically erroneous for its hypocritical sexism, if it only applied to women, and it is simply not what the Bible teaches anywhere.  So much of the Bible outright excludes this notion as it is.  A woman's value as a person is the same as a man's on Judeo-Christianity, derived from being made in the divine image (Genesis 1:26-27, 5:1-2).

A Poor Marriage

One marriage could be loveless or full of hostility, and another could be teeming with contentment, peace, and a sense of fulfillment, even if not rooted in the only things that could legitimize that fulfillment (reason, morality, and so on).  People who believe marriage is a "trap" are assuming that marriage can only take this one form.  Of course a given marriage could be a draining, confining, hurtful trap.  A marriage could also be life-giving, objectively deep, and subjectively enjoyable at the same time.  When someone thinks or says that marriage is a negative thing, they are always committing one of two errors.  Relying on assumptions and perceptions instead of reason either way, they are by necessity believing that a new relationship would inevitably be just as bad as one they have already experienced/observed (the fallacy of composition) or, without ever being in a marriage at all (which is not necessary to know any of these things through logic), believing that it will be bad by default.

Yes, marriage to an unrepentantly irrational person--which could mean they are assumption-driven, selfish, superficial, hypocritical, abusive, or marked by any other manifestation of irrationality--is on one level far worse than being single for any duration could ever be.  Their very presence is a disgrace to the nature of reality that they are too pathetic to acknowledge, so being married to them is at best baseless and futile and at worst absolutely hellacious.  Rushing to be dating or married for the sake of being in a romantic partnership is just as stupid as rushing to dissolve a workable or thriving marriage.  An intelligent person wants nothing short of a rationalist, even an imperfect one, and will not settle for an inferior kind of spouse or would absolutely not be opposed to separation or divorce under the right circumstances (Biblically, there is far more than just one condition that allows for this [1], but anti-theonomy eisegesis has stopped many from realizing such a thing).

A marriage where one or both spouses make it their goal to make their spouse miserable for being sexually attracted to other people or acting on it in certain ways (as if this is betrayal!), for being an individual person,

for being rationalistically superior to them (if applicable), or for any other illegitimate or petty reason is certainly a terrible thing.  It is better in one sense to separate or divorce or to, as the rational/superior spouse, be as harsh as reason calls for in one's words and attitude than to waste away in an objectively suffocating relationship.  Marriage could not be worth more than such things if anything is morally valuable to begin with.  The necessary truths of reason, bowing to them, and celebrating one's individuality as expressed in any morally permissible way are not what many marriages seem to be based on, but they and things connected with them are only foundations of a worthwhile, healthy, strong marriage.  They are more important by far.

Marriage is not inherently a trap.  A wonderful marriage could sink into decay if either partner allows it to, though, just as a horrendously pathetic marriage could be salvaged into something rooted in reason, communication, love, and justice if both people are willing.  Either a truly awful marriage could have been avoided from the outset, in favor of no marriage or a relationship with a better person, or it could have been mended at a prior time or perhaps even rectified in the present and future.  Even if every marriage in human history was like this, it would not be because marriage can only be this way.  A marriage is just a marriage.  Each partner has a role in making their relationship whatever they want it to be.  Now, they might want something stupid or immoral out of their marriage, or they might want something rational.  People are individuals.  No marriage will necessarily be the same between two different sets of people for this reason alone.  It will not necessarily begin as something catastrophic or wind up that way later on.  It all depends on the people.  Which kind of logically possible marriage do they want and will they work as needed to achieve their goal, whether it is rational or irrational?

[1].  See posts like these for more elaboration:

A.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2024/06/tearing-apart-one-flesh.html

B.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2024/06/matthew-199-does-not-restrict-divorce.html

On The Epistemology Of Memory

The accuracy of a person's memory might seem obvious to them to the point they believe in it, unless they forsake assumptions.  Oh, the capacity for memory and individual recollections can be known to exist within your mind due to rationalistic introspection.  This much is absolutely certain for whoever makes no assumptions and looks to reason.  Having a memory--even a highly vivid one--just does not mean the event recalled really happened or happened in the exact way remembered.  Likewise, not remembering something does not mean it did not happen.  And someone with a murky memory can still know with absolute certainty that they do or do not recall a particular thing.

Ironic it is that one must still rely on memory to remember that one's memory is faulty, which then would left to itself logically undermine the basis of believing that a given memory of the past is accurate.  It is really the direct experience in the moments of haziness that logically necessitates that one's memory is flawed as far as easy recollection is concerned; while the objects of memories or sensory perceptions might not be what our perceptions suggest, at least the mental experience could only exist whenever it is experienced, even the perception of a poorly working memory.  Turning to other minds is of no epistemological deliverance by itself beyond the fallible, uncertain kind, for how can one know by asking and hearing from other people if their own memory is accurate or if they are intentionally trying to deceive?  As always, logical proof grounds knowledge one way or another and not passive experience, including that of memories that are ultimately beyond our control as to whether we can retain them or not.

One can thankfully know something beyond whether one has a given memory or not (and the logical facts about how it is possible for memory to be accurate or inaccurate despite which is the case being unprovable).  If one's memory was so distorted or inactive that one could not recall anything outside of one's immediate focus in the present moment, then one would be confused or surprised by almost everything in one's thoughts and sensory experiences.  Remember (I use this word sarcastically), memory is crucial to moment-to-moment functioning.  The qualifying truth here is that the sensory perceptions one's memories align with in order to result in a lack of immediate disorientation might themselves be illusory, which would mean that your memory might nonetheless only correspond to the interior of your mind rather than to external events and environments in a physical world.

In an age physically dominated by technology and ideologically dominated by the errors of sensory empiricism, it might not be difficult to find someone who would claim when pressed that you can know what happened in the past through the likes of audio or video recordings.  Though the metaphysics and epistemology of memory are inevitably a matter of strict logical necessity one way or another rather than something dependent upon external, potentially misleading evidences, this is the route some might go if pushed.  The folly of this is plain to anyone who recognizes the non sequiturs a person must hold to if they believe that, say, recorder playback must be accurate.  Technology only adds more epistemological layers rather than eliminating the basis for legitimate doubt!  Someone can assume otherwise, but they cannot know.

Technology still provides strong evidences that an event one might not remember or remember in a certain way really did occur.  But recordings are mere evidences that fall spectacularly short of logical proof.  What exactly has and has not happened in the past is all the same not a verifiable matter, not with human limitations.  Neither personal memory nor the testimony of others nor written documentation nor recording technology can truly establish what particular events have happened.  Memory and memories exist, a memory can only be either accurate or inaccurate, and which of these possibilities is true cannot be demonstrated.

Why Nothing In Mathematics Is Self-Evident, Unlike Pure Logical Axioms

There is nothing self-evident about 3 + 2 = 5 or 9 x 3 = 27.  Certainly, even to non-rationalists, who know nothing because they only assume instead of demonstrate what is true, it might seem very obvious that these and other mathematical relationships are true, to the point where some of them might think of them as self-evident.  Logical axioms are self-evident because they cannot be rejected or doubted without relying on them, because they cannot be false without still being true.  Since the logical necessity of one thing following or not following from another could not be false unless it followed by logical necessity from the nature of reality that logic is false, it is still true.  For another example, it is impossible for something to be anything other than what it is (the logical law of identity), for then whatever else it would be is still what it is.

Because the law of identity's relevance to basic numeric truths is relevant to what some might think of as more obvious, I will focus on this first.  What is self-evident is not that 9 = 9, because this is but a particular case of something dictated by the law of identity and not the law of identity itself, which is true prior to and independent of examples.  The law of identity's status as a logical axiom is what makes 9 = 9 rather than the other way around.  Because a thing can only be what it is, whether a concept, a thought (which can grasp concepts), a physical object, or anything else, 9 cannot be 5 or 673 or any other number, but it is not the fact that 9 is 9 that specifically determines this.  Instead, it is true that 9 is 9 because logic requires this, and thus it is knowable, for someone who makes no assumptions, with absolute certainty.

Likewise, nothing can logically follow from anything else in a particular case beyond pure logical axioms unless logical axioms are already true independent of concrete examples.  Nothing would or could make anything else true if so.  If a prime number is a number that can only be factored by itself and 1, then it follows logically that 24 and 38 are not prime numbers (the factors of 24 are 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, and 24; the factors of 38 are 1, 2, 19, and 38) and that 27 is prime.  This is not true because numbers ground themselves, though the facts about them are indeed necessary truths.  It is because logic, which is true in itself, makes all of this so.  It cannot be true that nothing follows logically from anything else by necessity, because then it would follow from something (whatever the basis) that logic is necessarily false.  This being false requires that it is still true!

Logical axioms like this objective facts are metaphysically self-necessary because they cannot be false or have been any other way, and so they are epistemologically self-evident, since a person cannot cease to rely on their truth even when denying or desperately hoping to flee from them.  They are therefore inescapable on every level.  Now, mathematical truths as well as broader/more foundational logical necessities do govern all other things, such as scientific phenomena.  Just as pure logic is independent of and prior to logical truths about mathematics, mathematics is independent of and prior to scientific matters.

Mathematical concepts are strictly logical truths, but not all logical truths are strictly, specifically about numbers.  As described, some logical truths are true in themselves, and this is what makes anything true about numbers and other non-axiomatic things.  It is therefore not that there are mathematics and science, as if all aspects of reality pertinent to such things reduce to just these two categories.  Pure logic, starting with the self-necessary axioms that cannot be or have been untrue, governs mathematics, which in turn (along with other logical necessities) governs science.  Numeric truths are in no way self-evident because they depend on prior logical facts--and scientific ideas are much further removed from self-evidence than this, in part because it is impossible for humans to logically prove them rather than amass fallible sensory evidence for them!

Love And Pain

There is no single thing that can be loved.  With different objects of love, the state of having personal affection for something or longing for its wellbeing, come different ways that this affection or attachment can lead to pain on the part of the one who loves.  In fact, while affection can be enticing and intoxicating to the point of some people ignoring the devastation that can result, all love only exists alongside the possibility of great pain that can rival or exceed the former.  Whether the love in question is ideological, social but platonic, romantic, or of some other kind, there is unfortunately no way to escape the capacity for hurt in the form of revelation, regret, or loss.

One can love reason very deeply, for it is the only intrinsic part of reality and the only foundation of all other things, but this can bring pain when one encounters others, who very often disregard or even outright deny the truths of reason entirely; I have met many people who go so far into their stupidity that they claim logic axioms are not epistemologically self-evident or metaphysically true in themselves, yet they tend to hold to total assumptions, such as that scientific laws will remain constant in the future with what they appear to be now.  Here, love of truth, which is ultimately grounded in reason alone, can bring great frustration and anger, though not towards reason.  If one was the only person in existence, love of reason could still bring pain due to recognizing that oneself does not exist by logical necessity along with reason to eternally grasp it.

As for beings, one can love fellow people, and still there are many ways that this can be bittersweet far more than pleasant.  Friends or romantic partners can neglect or betray reason or you yourself, complicating your life immensely in a vast number of possible ways.  They can find themselves in difficult situations which are in turn difficult for you by extension as someone who cares about them in a very personal way.  If one did not love them, one could not be hurt in these exact ways, or certainly not to the same extent.  It is the affection and its very personal nature which allows the pain to be, when applicable, so direct, so searing, and, so enduring.

Beings and belongings can be taken away from us without warning, perhaps irrevocably.  A cherished possession could crumble to dust or fall into disrepair.  So, too, can people.  Whether by relational drifting or health impairment or death itself, people might have their presence or social capacity diminished or be removed from one's life altogether.  Some people might subjectively prefer, if they were to think about the matter, to never love at all if it will end in any sort of heartbreak.  While perhaps a certain number of them might think it is only a given case of love that could lead to/involve suffering, this is an absolute falsity.

The logical possibility of heartbreak, loss, or regret does not mean that these things will come about, to be sure.  It is still true that there is no such thing as love that does not have the possibility to become complicated by pain in some way.  When one conscious being loves another being, as opposed to a mere physical belonging, this potential is all the greater, for an inanimate or static possession cannot do things to disregard or emotionally hurt you.  All the same, reluctance to love does not necessitate that there is nothing that deserves love--reason and God would be chief among these if anything deserves this kind of affection or loyalty at all, for reason is inherently true and God's moral nature, which must be consistent with reason as a prerequisite to existence, would be what would make anything objectively good to begin with.

The Biblical Resurrection Of The Dead

Again and again, the Old Testament predicts a resurrection of the dead, something that all people are said to eventually partake in.  Daniel 12:2 says that both the righteous and wicked will rise again, but only the righteous to eternal life.  Verse 13 then says that Daniel himself will be among those who sleep in the dust, joining the multitude in Sheol whom are unconscious and asleep according to the Teacher of Ecclesiastes and Job (Ecclesiastes 9:5-10, Job 3:11-19), before he himself is resurrected in the eschatological future to be given his "allotted inheritance."  Moreover, Job says he will once again live on the same earth (19:25-27), though he longs for the peace of unconsciousness in Sheol in the meantime, for God will call for the creature his hands made (Job 14:10-15).  Isaiah 26:19 additionally promises a bodily resurrection for people who will shout with joy.  This is the true afterlife taught in the Bible, one that comes after both death and resurrection.  Besides use of methods like sorcery (see 1 Samuel 28), there is no intermediate consciousness taught anywhere.

Paul later affirms the future resurrection of the dead in Acts 24:15 before Felix, which he also touches upon, regarding the restoration to life of the righteous or redeemed specifically, in 1 Corinthians 15 and 1 Thessalonians 4.  In turn, this resurrection of the upright or saved is mentioned in Revelation 20:4-6.  Jesus occasionally includes the resurrection in his teachings, such as in John 5:24-29, where he says that the righteous will rise to receive life and the wicked to receive condemnation.  This parallels what Daniel 12:2 says.  The righteous will be resurrected to obtain eternal life, and the wicked or unrepentant, in contrast, are denied this life.  Theirs is shame and contempt from God or the morally superior.  Repeatedly, a resurrection is referenced in the Old Testament and then again in the New Testament.

If everyone is resurrected as Daniel 12:2 and John 5:24-29 teach, along with many other verses, then those who are worthy of living in the age to come, according to Jesus, (Luke 20:35) would be the righteous, for the wicked are resurrected despite their unworthiness of life, much less eternal life.  Also, Jesus says that the resurrected dead he is speaking of are God's children (20:36).  They cannot die, he teaches, for theirs is the eternal life he mentions over and over in John and which Daniel speaks of in the aforementioned second verse of chapter 12.  Life is not meant to be experienced without end for the unrighteous, or else God would not have barred the fallen first humans from the tree of life in Genesis 3.  The Biblical position is that the righteous will live forever, the few who walk the narrow path (Matthew 7:13-14).

It is not so with the wicked.  Lacking eternal life (Romans 2:6-7, 6:23), they will perish (John 3:16), reserved for the second death of hell (Revelation 20:6, 15) where God kills the wicked once and for all; he will bring an end to their conscious existence in a death by fire (Matthew 10:28, 2 Peter 2:6), and the wicked will be like a dream after someone awakens: they will no longer be a part of reality after the second death overtakes them (Psalm 73:1-20).  Their resurrection bodies do not transcend death like the ones Jesus addresses in Luke 20.  Indeed, death is precisely what their bodies are prepared for!  Once they die this time, the Bible teaches, there is no resurrection to follow, no opportunity for repentance or pleasure of any sort.  Forever, they are excluded from eternal life, and in this sense, their punishment is absolutely eternal (Matthew 25:46) although the utmost injustice of eternal torture has nothing to do with it (Deuteronomy 25:1-3).  Death is what they deserve (Ezekiel 18:4).

Consciousness of all non-divine beings, according to the Bible, initially originated from God (Genesis 2:7, 7:17-23) and is sustained by God (Acts 17:25, 28), and no conscious being has eternal life except what God permits to it since only he is immortal by default (1 Timothy 6:16), and even then, only after the resurrection.  The resurrection of Jesus is a foreshadowing, the "firstfruits" of the coming awakening of the Christian dead (1 Corinthians 15:20-23) to eternal life.  Resurrection to everlasting bliss and freedom in God and resurrection to damnation and the subsequent second death, a literal death in hell without any hope for another resurrection, are major doctrines of the Bible, tied to everything from moral uprightness to soteriology to eschatology to cosmic justice.  Their real Biblical relationship to the likes of Sheol, hell, and New Jerusalem are also very misunderstood by many, who think the Bible says all will receive eternal life for either heaven or hell or that there is a conscious afterlife before the resurrection.

Constant Professional Accessibility

Everyone who carries a cell phone can hypothetically be reached, and, in one of the more intrusive uses of modern technology, employers might either contact workers outside of the scheduled working hours or expect them to reply promptly to all communication attempts even on days off, whether in the form of conventional texts, Teams messages, emails, or phone calls/voicemails.  For some employees, this might come with some sort of addition or increase to their compensation.  For others, they might be penalized if they do not engage clients or company staff outside of official/core working hours even if they have no inherent need for doing otherwise.  There are cases where workers might even penalize someone for utilizing personal or company devices to communicate within an expected timeframe!

For instance, if a company mandates a 48 hour reply window to all communication from clients or office personnel, sending one minimal but sufficiently thorough and relevant response 47 hours later would still be within these parameters.  Doing this repeatedly and purposefully, even enjoying this approach to company policy, would neither conflict with the organization's actual rule nor, far more importantly, conflict with honoring any verifiable philosophical truth.  None of this means that employers or managers do not want people to treat such a thing like it has a much more significant status.  Indeed, they might complain or go as far as to threaten the docking of pay or termination, depending on the employer, manager, and company.

In truth, company policy is a meaningless social construct in itself that can be trampled on at whom or for personal gain in many cases [1] (as long as one is not doing anything irrational or immoral in the process), and having a job does not entitle one's supervisors, short of the job being something of genuine moral significance like that of a first responder, to be able to micromanage or constantly communicate with a worker against their wishes outside of usual shifts or workdays.  If one leverages one's power in the workplace correctly, although factors beyond one's control can prevent ever getting of this point, one can be so helpful or so vital that one can flagrantly mock or disobey certain company policies/expectations without any adverse outcome [2], but not everyone is fortunate enough to be in this position.

To intentionally disregard communication or to not respond immediately even when one has the freedom to is not some inherently irrational behavior or some Biblical sin.  Ultimately, not even more virtual-oriented careers need to have this kind of looming, persistent expectation to be checking for work-related messages on a practically endless basis--not that every job or employer would be this way.  The commonality of smartphone and computer technology has just blurred what would otherwise be more set boundaries between professional work and the more fundamental aspects of life outside of it.  Constant professional accessibility is facilitated by such technology but provides supervisors, whose lives could be purposefully are thrown into what is often the trivialities of professional labor, avenues to invade the personal time of their subordinates.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/10/company-policy.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2025/03/making-yourself-irreplaceable-but-not.html

Accidentally Killing A Fellow Muslim

Does the Quran teach the same moral prescriptions/obligations as the Bible, either for what behaviors are base sins or what actions are just and unjust in response to them?  As Semitic/Abrahamic religions, some expect them to overlap to a great extent on matters of morality, general metaphysics, eschatology, and so on.  Sometimes they do, and sometimes not, but you could never know from hearsay.  You would have to not make any assumptions and read both the Bible and the Quran to find out.  Ultimately, the two are in frequent philosophical conflict with each other.  One of many examples that could be selected (I have written about others more than once) is how the Quran handles manslaughter by one Muslim against another.

The Torah does distinguish between murder and manslaughter (Exodus 21:12-14), with murder being a sin deserving execution and manslaughter not being a sin, though still something severe enough that the avenger of blood can kill someone for it without being guilty of murder themself (Numbers 35:26-27, Deuteronomy 19:4-7).  If the Quran and by extension the Islamic philosophy it puts forth is true, the Torah is true as a prerequisite (Surah 2:53, 3:3, 5:46).  While the specific cities of refuge mentioned in Mosaic Law for the Israelites were to be in the Promised Land, and thus those cities could not be used by everyone in the world who performs manslaughter or for all people in future times, the way the Torah treats manslaughter is very different from how the Quran does.

Surah 4:92 says that the accidental killing of a Muslim by another Muslim, making the act manslaughter rather than murder, is to be followed by restitution to surviving family members on the part of the perpetrator.  Alongside this compensation, the person who accidentally killed another is to set free one Muslim slave.  The manslaughterer is to merely free a Muslim slave if the dead person's relatives are not Muslims themselves.  In place of the compensation, someone without the servants or money to follow these requirements is to fast for two months--itself a deviation from what the Torah says of offenders who cannot afford whatever restitution is just for them to pay.  They are to become temporary servants to work away their debt (Exodus 22:3).

The Quran does say killing people for murder is permitted in Surah 5:32, but this is an obligation according to the Torah that money cannot buy someone deliverance from (Numbers 35:31), unlike certain cases of neglect that leads to death (Exodus 21:28-32).  It is not formally prescribed here in the Quran.  Now, if it was not for the many contradictions between the narratives of the Torah and their retellings in the Quran, as well as between Mosaic Law and the Quran's sparse comments on justice, Islam would be logically possible; that is, it could have been true even if it is not.  There is not just one place where the Islamic text says the Torah and even the gospel are from God, as if once is not enough, and the Quran repeatedly contradicts the Pentateuch.

It is not the Quran taking manslaughter less seriously than Numbers and Deuteronomy that means its doctrines on this issue are false.  A given moral idea simply being harsher or less harsh than another one, unless there is some inherent contradiction in one of the ideas, has nothing to do with whether it is true or erroneous.  Since the Quran says the Torah is true, and the Torah does not concur with it on a great many things, the proper handling of manslaughter among them, the Quran cannot be true wherever it does not align with its own prerequisite.  The Torah says a manslaughterer can be killed without murder, whether the dead person is a Jew or not, despite being entitled to flee to cities of refuge.  The Quran, as it says the Torah is true, states that a Muslim who accidentally kills a fellow Muslim is to free a slave and give compensation or fast for two months.

The Moral Relativism Of Rabbinic "Judaism" And Evangelical "Christianity"

Consistency with logic and itself is a requirement for something to be true, or even to be possible.  As will be addressed thoroughly, the idea of seven "Noahide Laws" is inconsistent with logic, as it entails that only these seven things are morally mandatory for all people, while a great deal more is required of Jews.  In other words, Gentiles supposedly have fewer moral rights, and Jews have more obligations, so this is racist against both major groups.  This idea of the Noahide Laws also contradicts the Bible it is supposedly derived from and consistent with.  On this delusional rabbinic system, idolatry, blasphemy, murder, sexual immorality, theft, and eating blood are immoral, and establishing courts of justice is obligatory.  According to some, this is all Yahweh and the Bible require of Gentiles or on their behalf--as in there are little to no objective parameters on how the courts should function or what is just or unjust, and anything outside the scope of these exact issues is not really a matter of human rights or obligation.  How ironic that nowhere does Genesis 9, where God instructs Noah, address any of these seven issues except for prohibiting murder and eating blood in meat and prescribing capital punishment for murder.  However, the account of Noah's flood clearly describes the world as full of violence (Genesis 6:5-12), a category far broader than mere murder, a specific act which does not have to be especially violent at all in the sense of being graphic.  The first book of the Bible already condemns a range of illicit albeit unspecified violence beyond that strictly entailed by the so-called Noahide Laws before the commands given to Noah about murder!

Throughout the Torah, a host of statements contradict this rabbinic tradition.  Deuteronomy 25:13-16 says God hates all who deal dishonestly seemingly in the context of condemning deceptive commerce, for instance.  How could lying for gain, if this is true, only be sinful for Israelites or the foreigners living among them (Leviticus 24:22)?  The same act is according to Deuteronomy 25 hated by God along with the one who practices it without respect to nationality or race.  Also, the act is the same no matter who performs it or is on the receiving end.  Lying is not at all idolatry, murder, theft, and so on.  Sure, lying in this way would be for the purpose of theft, but a lie on its own would not be theft whatsoever.  For another example, wearing the clothing of the opposite gender cannot be sinful for reasons of sexual morality because wearing and not wearing clothing are not sexual things in themselves.  But Deuteronomy 22:5 says God hates all men and women who do this.  This is not automatically about sexual immorality due to the aforementioned logical truth.  So is it not really sinful itself, only for the Israelites?  That is not how Deuteronomy puts it and, more importantly, that would be logically invalid.  The deed's nature is the same no matter someone's ancestry!

Do those who subscribe to the nonsense of conventional ideas about the Noahide Laws really think executing children for the sins of their parents is just as long as the law of the land permits it (Deuteronomy 24:16)?  Would punishing an irrelevant person, though doing otherwise is a logically necessary component of justice if morality really exists at all, be legitimized as long as it is a non-Israelite carrying the execution out?  Genesis 9:6 does not say to never kill a relative along with the murderer or to kill or not kill for any other crime, or anything about what methods are permissible or just.  There are many other matters.  Is not paying one's workers as promptly as Yahweh demands not a sin of oppression, as the Torah simply calls it in itself, if a Gentile living outside of Israel is the one withholding payment (Deuteronomy 24:14-15)?  Why would a religious Jew think that there are only seven Noahide moral laws or categories of laws that Gentiles are bound by when Genesis says no such thing and Mosaic Law outright states that things beyond what they stupidly consider the only seven universal moral obligations are sinful for Israelites and Gentiles, as Deuteronomy 18:9-13 does with necromancy, divination, and sorcery?  Necromancy and the rest are not the same as idolatry, murder, sexual immorality, and so on.  Yet the text says that these are the "detestable" ways of the nations the Israelites were to drive out along with sacrificing sons and daughters in the fire, that "Anyone who does these things is detestable," and that sins like these are why God would "drive out those nations before you."

Is torturing criminals while keeping them alive for as long as possible justice as long as it is not a Jew engaging in this practice, though Deuteronomy 25:3 teaches anything above 40 lashes is unjust and Genesis says all men and women, not just the Israelites who were not around at the time, are made in the divine image?  Any deviation from justice is necessarily injustice; either there is no such thing as morality or the same sins deserve punishment and the same punishments deserve to be enacted on all offending Israelites and Gentiles.  But according to the moral relativism of certain distortions of Judaism, as long as Gentile communities create courts of justice, justice is whatever they practice or believe it is, given that they are consistent with their own laws.  What about the command to not oppress a foreigner (Exodus 22:21)?  In this case and that of Exodus 23:9, the text refers to a foreigner, so no one can hide behind the phrasing of a foreigner living among you in other passages.  What else would oppression Biblically be other than deviation from the prescriptions of the Torah and that which would have to be immoral by logical extension?  A foreigner can only have the right to not be oppressed if they have the same human rights as everyone else.

A consistent religious Jew of the kind repudiated here, like the evangelical Christian who thinks the New Testament's direct commands alone reflect what is obligatory for all people now, would likewise have to think that it is Biblically permissible for a Gentile to take advantage of the disabled (Leviticus 19:14), to force their workers to labor seven days a week (Deuteronomy 5:12-15), and to physically strike their male or female workers or spouses on a whim outside of self-defense without letting them go free (Exodus 21:26-27).  For yet another example, since battery is not murder, a Gentile can assault and inflict non-permanent injury on another Gentile and not be obligated to compensate them (Exodus 21:18-19), as long as the local/national court says that a formal apology is the only required punishment.  Alternatively, "justice" could be enslaving the offender for 12 years (six years longer than the maximum term of Exodus 21:2 and Deuteronomy 15:12) and taking all of their property for life.  It would also be righteous for a Gentile nation to punish people for leaving crops for the poor (Leviticus 19:9-10) rather than demand that all farmers who live around impoverished people not harvest all of their crops as the Biblical God commands.  After all, there is nothing in the seven Noahide laws/categories that would necessitate doing this!

Moral nihilism could be true, but moral relativism is logically impossible.  The Bible never actually teaches this asinine philosophy as (many) religious Jews and evangelical Christians absolutely endorse.  The Law itself says its tenets are universal (Leviticus 18:24-28, 20:22-24, Deuteronomy 4:5-8, 12:29-31, 18:19-13, and so on), in addition to elswhere presenting many things as mandatory or evil with no reference to nationality (like Exodus 21:12-32 or Deuteronomy 24:1-6) and consistently emphasizing the same moral standard for Israelites and foreigners (Leviticus 19:33-34, 24:22, Numbers 15:15-16, etc.).  God revealing laws specifically to Israel and not to all people is irrelevant to whether the moral obligations the laws reflect are universal as must be the case if they are actually true--remember that as a rationalist, I do not pretend to know if Judeo-Christianity is true as opposed possibly and probably true.  It does not follow that the same things are not morally required or sinful for everyone else, and if something is truly obligatory or evil by nature, it is by logical necessity obligatory or evil independent of race or nationality as it is.  Thus, while it would otherwise contradict logic and therefore have to be false on such ethical points, the Torah does not teach moral relativism or that there are only seven obligations for Gentiles.

One ramification of this is connected to how intertwined what some people consider separate moral and ceremonial subcategories within Mosaic Law actually are, as if a ceremonial law could be obligatory without being a moral matter!  If a woman and man have sex during the ceremonial uncleanness of her period, they have sinned according to Leviticus 18:19 and 20:18, with each corresponding chapter of Leviticus also reinforcing that this act along with others are evil for all people (again, see Leviticus 18:24-28 and 20:22-24).  This alone means the obligations regarding ceremonial uncleanness as related to sex and periods, found in Leviticus 15, are also universal simply by being connected to something else the Torah clearly says is an issue of cleanness and uncleanness and applicable to all people.  There are indeed multiple ways to show that various parts of Mosaic Law really are universally obligatory across history and geography according to the literal statements of the Bible and what follows logically the ideas they articulate!  It is not just actions like murder, kidnapping, adultery, and so on that all people must avoid.

It is not as if the prophetic writings do not convey the same moral absolutism across time and societies.  Zechariah 14:16-19, after the chapter speaks of God being king over the whole world (14:9), and Isaiah 66:22-24 both mention other or all nations keeping the holidays prescribed in the Torah, such as the Festival of Tabernacles.  Zechariah makes it plain that God will directly punish other nations that refuse to participate by withholding rain from them.  Such holidays are among the things many people would say are only for the Old Testament Jews to uphold!  Isaiah 2:1-5 and Micah 4:1-3 separately predict that in the last days, the "law will go out from Zion" as God judges people and nations in their disputes.  People can dispute about far more than cases of murder, sexual immorality, and theft!  The law in question is obviously the same one God revealed to the Israelites.  Outside of the Torah, the religious Jew who believes in the Noahide laws as described in this post also would find verses that contradict their illogical and Biblically heretical relativism.

There is no escape in the New Testament.  They probably do not adhere to the rabbinic distortion of Noahide Law, but the evangelical who hypocritically decries moral relativism taking hold in contemporary Western society and says that the Torah laws are not for all people holds to that which the New Testament sharply rejects.  Their hypocrisy is only amplified because the Old and New Testament teach universal theonomy.  Indeed, over and over, Jesus says that he did not come to abolish the Law and that it has an enduring obligatory nature (Matthew 5:17-19, 23:1-3, Luke 16:16-17), in contrast with the non sequitur, legalistic customs of many Pharisees in his day (Matthew 15:1-20, Mark 7:1-13).  His last words in the book of Matthew tell his apostles to teach his philosophy to disciples of all nations (28:18-20), which obviously would on a moral level center on the Torah's laws as expressions of God's righteous nature.  Paul says that sin, defined by divine revelation largely in Mosaic Law (Romans 7:7), is universal to Jews and Gentiles (3:9-18, 22-24) and that Mosaic Law is righteous and what all people should keep (3:29-31, 7:12-25).

Outside of Romans, he states that the Law is righteous in itself and for all sinners to conform to (1 Timothy 1:8-11), citing it directly and elaborating upon its unstated yet logical ramifications as objectively binding (as in 1 Corinthians 9:7-12).  The author of Acts records him as clearly not teaching that Mosaic Law is set aside because God changed (Acts 23:1-3, 24:14).  Furthermore, John teaches that no one can fully, genuinely love God and Christ without doing doing what they command (John 14:15, 1 John 5:2-3), which is only ever holistically summarized in the laws of the Torah.  However, logically, the philosophy of the Old Testament can be true independent of the New Testament, but the New Testament depends upon the Old, so any legitimate contradiction would render at least that part of the New Testament false by necessity.  They just do not disagree on the sheer universality of Mosaic Law.

Of course, what the Bible says is not even possibly true if it contradicts the necessary truths of logic.  Logic is true in itself, and the possibility, necessity, and knowability of all things is foundationally dictated by logic alone.  Moral relativism is impossible because something that really is obligatory by nature is obligatory for everyone and vice versa.  Punitive torture, for instance, cannot be both just and unjust depending on whether a Jew or Gentile is carrying it out.  It does not matter how anyone personally feels, for morality does not exist or have the tenets their conscience would suggest just because they have an intuition, preference, or emotional reaction.  The law of the land is not any more philosophically authoritative: it is just an erroneous human construct people look to for illusory validation in their stupidity, too irrationalistic to see that their subjective conscience and conflicting or arbitrary social norms, including all laws of merely human origin, have no veracity.  How you feel about an action/intention does not mean it, much less anything else, is good or evil; tradition or approval from lawmakers does not make anything good or evil either.  If there is good and evil, nothing should or should not be done based upon one's racial ancestry.

Logic, people.  It is very fucking helpful.

The Nazarite Vow

The Nazarite vow is one of special dedication to God.  A non-obligatory oath, meaning it is neither mandatory nor immoral but voluntary, this sets a person apart for God for the duration of the vow.  Numbers 6:4-6 repeatedly speaks of a limited amount of time that the vow can be active for, so it in no way has to bring a permanent status.  Despite being a very secondary issue on one level, the Nazarite vow truly touches upon many vital matters of morality and Biblical doctrines.  For starters, this optional level of dedication to God is of course open to men and women alike (6:2).

Like the examples described here [1], the passage detailing the Nazarite vow starts out with a reference to men and women (in some cases, other passages use male language but would obviously apply to women or vice versa) but then uses pronouns like "he" to refer to a person of either gender.  Once again, the Bible does not make the prescriptions for only women or only men that many assume are taught though they have nothing to do with literal genitalia.  What it does say is that men and women are fully equal (Genesis 1:26-27, 5:1-2).  Anyone who makes a vow to God is to keep it unless their parents or spouse nullifies it under certain conditions (Numbers 30:1-16), no matter their gender (Deuteronomy 23:21-23), so men and women are free to choose this status at will.

The Nazarite is to forgo all alcohol and other fermented drinks, such as kombucha (6:3).  They are to not even drink ordinary grape juice, eat grapes, or consume the seeds or skins or anything else from a grapevine (6:4).  Alcohol would not need to specifically be forbidden for Nazarites if alcohol is sinful on its own, for everyone in all contexts.  This aspect of the Nazarite status pertains to being voluntarily set apart for God at one's own whim.  No one has to give up the moral freedom to use alcohol (Deuteronomy 4:2, John 2:1-11), but if one makes a vow to God, one is obligated to keep it unless one promised to do something evil (again, Deuteronomy 23:21-23).

Another requirement for the time of the vow is that no one is to shave their head or use any razor on it (Numbers 6:5).  They are said to be holy during this time.  In this context, holy does not strictly mean righteous, for there is nothing broadly immoral by Biblical standards about having short or long hair--neither is ever prescribed or condemned, so to treat them otherwise is itself sin (Deuteronomy 4:2 yet again!), since it does not logically follow from any other command that a particular length of hair is morally obligatory.  Holy only means set apart from something else.

In fact, this part of Numbers 6 shows that Paul's comment about it being unnatural for men to have long hair (1 Corinthians 11:14-15) is, like so many other things he says, not saying what it might initially appear to (2 Peter 3:15-16).  The male and female Nazarite is supposed to have long hair, the text says.  Sin is clarified in the Torah (Romans 7:7), so Paul either is not really condemning long hair on men, just as he does not really prescribe submission for only wives to only husbands (see Ephesians 5:21), or he is a heretic who contradicts Mosaic Law.  There is no other possibility if this is what the Bible says in each respective place.

Also, the Nazarite should never be near a dead body, not even that of a family member (Numbers 6:6-7).  If someone abruptly, unexpectedly dies in a Nazarite's presence, they have still sinned, so that when Israel had an operating priesthood, the Nazarite man or woman would have to make a sin offering (6:9-11).  He or she would then be obligated to start the period of their consecration over again since their previous days were not completed under all the conditions of the vow (6:12).  When the duration pledged is over, the Nazarite should then cut their hair that has outwardly represented their special dedication (6:13, 18).

Little is said of Nazarites in the Bible outside of Numbers 6.  Samson is called a Nazarite from birth since his mother was told by the angel of the Lord to abstain from alcohol and that he would be supposed to never cut his hair (Judges 13:2-5).  This, once again, contradicts the popular conservative interpretation of 1 Corinthians 11:14.  It might surprise some people what Numbers 6 nonetheless clarifies or touches upon that goes far beyond the mere morality of keeping vows.  The optional nature of vows and multiple things pertaining to gender equality (the vow is open to all people and men, like woman, can have long hair) are addressed in this single passage that has none of these things as its focus.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/10/deuteronomy-2213-21-part-two.html

Perceiving Light

Light is said to travel at 186,000 miles in one moment, with sound only traveling approximately a fifth of a mile in the same duration.  Although it requires far less time to travel vaster distances than sound, light takes time to travel according to contemporary paradigms, and this is why witnessing any distant cosmological phenomena is really supposed to only show what a certain part of the universe looked like long ago.  One can see how light is visible before sound can be heard from a distance by noticing the illumination of a lightning strike and the delay that ensues before the corresponding sound (thunder) can be heard.

As relatively extreme as the speed of 186,000 miles per second is, the speed of light would still entail a finite traveling distance in a finite amount of time.  If there is even a slight delay between a nearby event and one's visual perception of that event because the light necessary to see had to travel to one's eyes, then what one sees is not actually happening in the present moment despite how it nonetheless could only be experienced in the present.  There could not be any experience outside of whatever moment is "now" for any being that is not atemporal.  If light needs even a very miniscule amount of time to elapse to get from one point to another, though, one is not seeing things right as they occur, however utterly minor the difference at such a small scale as typical everyday experiences.

Only one's thoughts would be happening in a truer real-time despite how visual (and audial) experiences can sometimes seem like they correspond to events taking place right when they are perceived: there is no speed of light necessary to see one's own thoughts because they are within one's nonphysical consciousness, not something received or perceived through the senses from a seeming external source.  More importantly, while a non-rationalist could make assumptions about their own self, one's own consciousness and its contents are some of the only things that can be known directly and with absolute certainty (they too still depend on logical axioms) when one does not make assumptions.

A conscious mind, which is self-evident along with logical axioms (to deny or doubt one's own mind, one must already exist as a consciousness to have the capacity for this) as opposed to scientific matters, is a necessary prerequisite to the experience of light or any other sensory stimuli, whether they really exist outside of the mind or as illusory constructs of perception.  Which of these two possibilities a given visual stimuli really is cannot be proven because they would be experienced identically.  It does not logically follow from having the mental experience of seeing a light or a house or an animal that it is actually there, much less that it is there right when one sees it, but the truths of logic and introspection--true logic, not intuition or persuasion or hearsay or sensory experiences that are far from self-evident--are absolutely certain.

In a culture like that of America that broadly speaking all but worships science to varying extents and erroneously exalts it above pure reason, the epistemological limitations of science and general sensory experience are denied or never stumbled upon by many, and the fact that logical truths are intrinsically necessary and that scientific laws and events depend fully on them, rather than the other way around, is neglected.  Through what does and does not logically follow from having visual sensory perceptions, one can already know with absolute certainty (as well as since it does not contradict axioms) that of course seeing things does not mean the external world is as it appears.  Dominant scientific ideas like the speed of light being extraordinarily fast but still finite, if correct, would entail that this is indeed true.

Redemption For Those With The Mark Of The Beast

Among the many plagues and catastrophes of Revelation are the bowl judgments, seven judgments "poured" onto the world by angels (16:1).  Revelation 16 says that the fourth and fifth judgments of scorching fire from the sun (8-9) and darkness on the kingdom of the beast (10-11) are met with cursing by those who suffer.  The text says they cursed God and refused to repent.  Firstly, this does affirm free will.  If one has no choice in a matter, one cannot truly refuse a belief or action.  Secondly, something the wording teaches which I have never heard is that if those living chose not to repent, they have the ability to.  Why is this something so controversial or overlooked in this particular case of those who cooperate with the beast?

By this point, since the beast reigns over his kingdom, the mark of the beast has been enforced.  No one buys or sells legally without having it on their forehead or their right hand (13:16-17).  However, Revelation 16:9 and 11 saying that those in alignment with the beast refused to repent, to be accurate, would require that they could repent if they were willing.  In other words, they would not be excluded from the capacity for repentance and thus the capacity for redemption just because they received the mark of the beast, whether it was because they want sheer survival or because they genuinely are devoted to the antichrist.

Revelation 14:9-11 describes those with the mark of the beast as being tormented in the presence of angels and not having rest day or night.  A common stance one might hear derived from these verses is that they will be tortured eternally in the lake of fire and that they forfeit all possibility of salvation for the rest of their lives.  I have written about more important aspects and ramifications of this trio of verses, those being the issue of whether people who take the mark of the beast are eternally tortured in hell unlike how other sinners are reduced to a literal second death in the flames (2 Peter 2:6, Matthew 10:28, Revelation 20:15).  Aside from how verse 11 only says the smoke of their torment rises forever, even if this was literally true, it would not be all humans who suffer eternally, only these.  If it is figurative, then the Bible has already stated that cessation of life/conscious existence is what sin deserves (Ezekiel 18:4, John 3:16, Romans 1:32, 6:23).

Also, 2 Thessalonians 1:7-10 says that the wicked are punished by everlasting destruction and are shut out from the presence of God.  If God is omnipresent, this could only mean they are not in existence.  This would contradict the concept of any wicked humans being kept alive to be tortured without end, which is already inherently disproportionate to any amount of sins in a finite lifetime.  All of this addresses one part of the popular teachings on those who take the mark of the beast.  The relevance of Revelation 16:9 and 11 to this is that Revelation 14:9-11 would not be presenting those with the mark as inescapably damned once they bear it on their forehead or right hand.

This addresses another component of the popular doctrinal misconception about the mark of the best.  It is not just that those who take the mark were capable of receiving salvation beforehand, but it is also that they could repent afterward if only they were willing (22:17).  Revelation also says they, at least at large, will not repent after they receive the mark, but that does not mean that they could not have.  That verses 9-11 of chapter 14 say they will be tormented, whether on Earth or in hell being beside this point, would likewise not mean that they were locked out of salvation by God as opposed to their own constant refusal to repent.

The Atomism Of Democritus

Ontological materialism is not even possibly true.  Since the laws of logic cannot not be true, and they are by necessity nonphysical, and conformity with them (logical consistency) is what allows the existence of matter to be possible to begin with, there is at least one thing that has to be part of reality that is not made of matter: the abstract necessary truths of reason [1].  Matter cannot be past-eternal, and thus it came into existence, and even if something else is causally responsible for creating whatever brought matter into being, at some point, the impossibility of infinite regress logically necessitates that there is an uncaused cause.  Either way, whatever created the cosmos is not part of it, and thus is not comprised of matter--one universe can hypothetically create another, but the material cosmos in its entirety cannot have come into existence from itself, since matter would have to already exist in order to create matter, a contradiction [2].  Moreover, even if there was no God and no universe, along with logical necessities there would still be empty space [3].

There is no real or hypothetical way for materialism to be true, though emergent naturalism with respect to certain immaterial existents like consciousness is possible [4].  Naturalism is demonstrably false and logically impossible in itself.  In fact, even the ancient Greek "materialism" of Democritus, termed atomism, supposedly holds that there is only matter and the void, that is, the otherwise empty space that contains physical substance, so even on this necessarily false metaphysical worldview, something other than mere matter exists, that being the void.  The atoms he proposed were extremely miniscule pieces of matter, but they might have wildly varying geometric natures so that some have hooks, some have grooves, and some have such a shape as to fit in the grooves of others.  Invisible to the human sense of sight, which pertains to the macroscopic (things that can be seen unaided, or things that are not microscopic), these atoms are the smallest articles of matter that build up everything seen in the natural world.

This is quite different than modern atomic theory, with its electrons and nucleons (the protons and neutrons of the atomic nucleus), the strong force holding the nucleus together, the quarks that make up the nucleons, and so on.  Atoms are supposed to together form molecules that group together to form larger environments and objects.  While the phrase quantum physics might seem intimidating to some, it really just pertains to the physical nature and properties of all matter smaller than an atom.  Atoms, despite the word initially referring to an indivisible unit, are supposed to break down to particles that themselves in some cases break down into further subatomic particles.  Modern atomic theory is very much unlike that of Democritus.  His atomism also reportedly regards much, if not literally all things besides atoms and the void, as some sort of illusion, whether an erroneous personal assumption or a social construct.  As aforementioned, there are other things which cannot be an illusion, like logical necessities that are independent of other things.

However, even if all macroscopic physical structures, from the human body to mountains to fruits like the apple, were formed at a visually inaccessible level by small, randomly shaped units of matter bound to each other with hooks or grooves, it would not be true that macroscopic structures are an illusion.  If the atoms as Democritus conceived of them exist (just not as all that exists besides the void), then so too would the environments and objects that they contribute to.  As with the contemporary atomic theory, which like that of Democritus has no inherent connection to metaphysical naturalism even though such a necessary connection would only render it false, one would not be able to tell from gazing at a river or stone or pot that it consists of multitudes of physical units so small that one simply cannot directly see any evidence for them.  What is macroscopic would still in no way be illusory simply because of the presence of atoms.  If anything, what would be "illusory" is just that macroscopic objects give no hint of atomic particles and yet are comprised of them anyway.

Yes, there is always an inherent epistemological barrier to ever "knowing" from everyday, typical sensory experience that there is such a thing as atoms at all, as much as indirect evidence could be amassed.  Atoms do not exist in themselves by strict necessity like logical axioms, and the ordinary experience through the senses suggests nothing of them--and knowledge does require the absolute certainty of logical necessity, for anything short of this is only fallible, probabilistic evidence at best.  This is aside from the fact that visually perceiving something does not mean it exists or has the appearance it would seem to.  This is the real logically possible illusion of the material world one perceives.  Though it is much more difficult to logically prove than so many people pretend, as opposed to the ease of merely assuming, matter of some kind truly does exist [5]!  The existence of the individual objects within the material world does not have the same verifiability.  It also does not follow from this that atomic theory or any other such thing is also true, and there are multiple epistemological barriers to knowing this due to the limitations of the human condition.  The problem is not in the necessary truths of reason without which there would be neither truth nor knowledge; the issue is our own limitations.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-impossibility-of-absolutely-nothing.html

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

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

[4].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/05/refuting-consciousness-argument-for-god.html

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

Game Review--Scars Above (Xbox One)

"Our genes - and the genes of every encountered life-form in the universe - hold specific data strings, hidden at the molecular level.  We call this data simply: the Code.  The Code of Life.  It may explain our purpose.  Or it could contain a unified theory of all life.  Maybe it could even be a message from some divine creator."

--The Apparition, Scars Above

Thanks to a veneer of scientific emphasis such as with its chemical reaction system and fiber being its item crafting material, Scars Above amounts to more than a wholly bland game.  Mildly reminiscent of other science fiction games like Dead Space and The Callisto Protocol and with some parallels to Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, it does stand apart with its element-based aspects of combat and its more overtly empirical approach to standard gaming conventions.  A key example is how an upgrade to Kate's health is described as fortifying her immune system rather than simply reducing the duration of harmful status effects.  Regarding the story, hints of catastrophic genetic experimentation at the hands of an enormous being called the Custodian appear early on, with Scars Above telling a mostly conventional narrative that, like many other parts of the game, needed more depth to reach greatness in spite of flickers of uniqueness.  Overall, Kate Ward's journey through an extraterrestrial world is a middling blend of (sometimes) truly frenetic and inventive combat with minimalistic or underdeveloped philosophical exploration, characterization, and storytelling.  Oh, what could have been.

Production Values

This is absolutely not the prettiest Xbox One game still or in motion.  From the opening cinematic onward, bland textures and a degree of pixellation are predominant visual characteristics.  Extremely blurry vegetation in the second phase of the game looks like it is on a poorly running computer or Switch game of low graphical quality.  It does not help that sluggish performance is still a problem in certain moments.  As ordinary as it is for a given game to not be the best representative of a platform's graphical capabilities, I have rarely seen an Xbox One game with such minimal polish (this sort of thing is more commonplace on the Switch).  The audio unfortunately fares worse at times: the early cutscenes have mismatched voice acting and lip animations, and this does not go away later in the game, a practically inexcusable flaw.  Also unusual is the initial loading time for the main menu and another loading issue.  When I attempted to bypass the logo screens when launching the game from the Xbox menu, the screen went black and stayed that way.  I had to close the game and restart the software, allowing the logo screens to unfold without interruption, to actually get to the main menu on multiple occasions.

Gameplay

Kate travels through a series of interconnected environments with their own ecosystems and hazards, frequently encountering enemies.  While there are optional items to discover and minor mandatory puzzles, locating the items tends to be a simple matter of walking into an fairly obvious alcove or pathway leading away from the objective marker, and the puzzles seldom require more than a few moments of examination to solve.  Upon Kate activating a mysterious type of pillar to save progress as she travels, much like resting at a bonfire in Dark Souls, slain enemies are reset.  Like Darksiders III, itself a Souls-like title, Scars Above features no minimap, so objectives must be navigated to through the world from pillar to pillar until teleportation is available near the end of the game.  Upgrades to Kate and her weapons, like ammunition extensions or lower charge time, help alleviate the difficulty of combat, yet the player's reaction time is incredibly vital from the start.  Dodging and quickly using health items is crucial.  Boss fights can be even more brutal, partly due to the stamina bar's early limitations.

Instead of relating to experience points from killing ordinary enemies, the progression of upgrades and abilities not earned by just completing the game is tied to Kate's knowledge level.  Filling the bar increases her level, which occurs when she scans the corpses of enemy types after first defeating them or picks up scattered knowledge cubes in the environment that transmit information to her mind--though she seems to stupidly confuse memorizing scientific information with logically knowing the external world beyond the perceptions of her mind, as well as neural states with their correlated mental states when a mind and not a brain is what grasps knowledge.  Defeating bosses also grants a knowledge boost.  The bosses can be scanned with a radar device to pinpoint their less apparent weak areas, with element-specific weak spots visible along their exterior bodies.  Some spots incur more damage when shot with electric or flame projectiles, for instance.  One boss in particular, called The Construct, can only be defeated with an especially elaborate and creative process that involves all firearm element types acquired up to that point.

The elements are foundational to the chemical reactions system: for example, freezing enemies that live in water and then shooting them with electrical weaponry deals additional damage.  Various enemy types are vulnerable to specific elements, and chaining them can kill creatures far more quickly.  Environmental scans and trial and error can uncover evidence for which element will inflict the most severe damage.  When applicable, colored weak spots corresponding to the colors of certain projectile types.  Even identifying the weak spots does not mean they are easily accessible, nevertheless.  Very quick, accurate aiming and special abilities like deploying a field that slows enemy movement can be critical.  Also vital is utilizing fast reflexes and Kate's gadgets--one of which shields her body through an energy protection, another of which allows her to move quickly to position herself for ideal shots--when suddenly confronting certain smaller, non-boss enemies without overt weaknesses like Bipedal Stalkers, with their rapid movements and cloaking (at one point, a Bipedal Stalker even mimicks the voice of a friend of Kate!).  The device that slows enemies is described erroneously, though: it is impossible to slow time as the text insists is happening because a moment cannot elapse any slower than a moment's time, but the rate at which events occur could hypothetically be slowed by supernatural or technological means.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

After a strange structure called the Metahedron appears near Earth, a group of scientists approaching in a vessel for observational analysis are caught in bizarre events when a voice speaks to them.  Protagonist Kate wakes up on what appears to be another planet with hostile life forms.  She quickly encounters a purple hologram-like image of a humanoid being that provides gradual hints about devastation that has befallen this world.  Something called the Custodian has killed or, it is revealed, experimented on the "Apparition's" species after moving on from non-humanoid animals.

Intellectual Content

The science-oriented trappings of the game provide more of a thematic basis for tasks like examining creatures.  Other games might have the player look at corpses or environmental features to gather information, but few reference components of an animal's nervous system or the apparent means by which it generates bioelectricity as this one does.  In a handful of cases, the player must search for enough clues about an alien's anatomy or the workings of unfamiliar technology to make a "deduction".  It is just that inferring or extrapolating from fallible sensory perceptions is not the same as discovering objective logical necessities!  If a concept is not true in itself like logical axioms or does not follow necessarily from something that is demonstrably true, it is not actually knowable.  However, Kate never makes this distinction aloud and seems to conflate scientific perceptions with absolute logical certainty at times.

To its credit, Scars Above still neither promotes an atheistic philosophy of science (the extraterrestrial Apparition even acknowledges that the "Code of Life" could have been intentionally created by a divine being) nor promotes epistemological scientism.  Even so, more fundamental than the uncaused cause and the existence of the cosmos in its entirety are the necessary truths of logic, which cannot be false and thus are only things that are inherently true and on which all else metaphysically and epistemologically depends.  When it comes to affirming rationalistic truths, Kate is woefully pathetic.  She says early in the game that the idea of a weapon is a human concept, but while humans can make or use weapons, the idea is a logically objective concept that humans can discover or reflect on.  Humans do not make the concept of a weapon logically possible.  Kate also seems to assume she was just on the Hermes after waking up when there are many ways sensory and memory perceptions can be illusory other than the fact that one has the immediate mental experience.

When the Apparition says that the Custodian (shown above) is an artificial intelligence created by her race to help decipher the Code of Life, the "data" of which is left unspecified, Kate points out that it was not designed to have empathy, which she apparently thinks is a vital although lacking empathy absolutely does not mean someone is or will become cruel.  The Custodian resorts to harmful measures as it uses nanomachines to scour genes for the Code, yes.  Logically, empathy is nonetheless not a necessity for being a rational or righteous person; neither does an AI have to become malevolent.  No one makes assumptions, neglects reason, has no concern for whatever moral obligations exist, is disinterested in kindness, or is sadistic just because they lack empathy.  It is only a feeling irrelevant to objective truth, one that could compel a foolish person to overlook or fail to live out logical truths or moral obligations out of emotionalistic concern for others.

The Custodian, its goals, and its experiments are the reasons why, incidentally or not, the game somewhat parallels the very philosophically charged Prometheus and Alien: Covenant.  The protagonist explores the former habitation of a taller humanoid species that had accomplished genetic breakthroughs (like the Engineers) and faces a rogue AI hell-bent on experimentation to discover more about biological organisms.  Now, the Custodian might not be as personally complex as the android David, but the parallels remain in the midst of the game's focus on how the bizarrities of cellular biology correlate to macroscopic morphology.  If only the game had delved more into its highly promising lore and the genuinely deep issues it probes!  All the same, genetic experimentation and artificial intelligence are very significant and timely issues to hold up to the light in entertainment media, though they merit the context of a better overall game.

Conclusion

Scars Above does improve with time due to an expanding arsenal and an unraveling plot enigma about the Custodian's nature.  As it introduces pivotal philosophical ideas as they relate to scientific research and development, though, the game fails to explore any of them with great depth on a purely logical level or the level of scientific details that are in turn inevitably dictated metaphysically by logical necessity.  For a 10+ hour science fiction game with occasional horror elements, it is not a bad title in spite of some major flaws in execution and some abysmal production values.  But it does illustrate why only having strong combat with a leaning towards caution and strategy (until you get more powerful) cannot elevate a game to the greatest heights possible.  Lacking AAA polish does not have to cripple a game by any means--a deficient story and execution will do that in part or as a whole all on its own.