Evening And Morning

The divine creation of light follows the creation of the general, unfinished cosmos, the "heavens and the earth," in Genesis 1.  Shortly afterward, the Bible begins acknowledging the passage of the first days by saying there was evening, and then there was morning.  This sort of phrasing is utilized for each of the first six days before the seventh, on which God rests and establishes the pattern of the weekly Sabbath (Genesis 2:2-3).  In fact, one might come across people who claim that the wording of evening and morning throughout Genesis 1 means that all days start at evening, and the correct adherence to the Sabbath involves resting once a week from evening to evening.  

A special annual Sabbath holiday specifically said to last from evening to evening in Leviticus 23 would not necessarily have the same timing as the weekly day of rest, so this necessitates nothing more than the one distinguished Sabbath is from one evening to the next.  Even so, any Sabbath beginning at a particular time of day does not mean that that time is therefore the first moment of each day.  This alone refutes the idea that there is any inherent connection between the precise beginning of the Sabbath and the real time at which each singular day begins.

Now, does Genesis 1 actually define evening as the starting point of the day?  Read what it says.

Genesis 1:1-5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31—"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light.  God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.  God called the light 'day,' and the darkness he called 'night.'  And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day . . .

God called the vault 'sky.'  And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day . . .

And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day . . .

And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day . . .

And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day . . .

God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.  And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day."

Genesis never quite gives an exact starting point, which certainly invalidates the alleged basis for the Sabbath and other days beginning in the evening already, but it is logically true that evening and morning do not even account for the whole of either the 24 hour day or the full respective periods of daylight and nighttime darkness.  The afternoon leading up to the following evening is not included in the exact scope of "evening and morning".  Unless morning somehow refers to every part of the day outside of the literal evening, or evening entails the entirety of sunset up until dawn and morning entails everything from the first light through sunset, there is absolutely no way that evening and morning encompass the entire day one way or another.

Morning comes before evening.  So, too, does evening come before the next morning.  One could never tell from the natural cycle whether one or the other came first, and pure logic does not require in itself that one or the other must be the inevitable starting point for the back and forth transition from day to night and night to day.  Darkness existing before the first light, as the Genesis 1 account proposes, would not mean that evening, which ushers in the darkness of nighttime, is where the reset of the day and night cycle occurs.  The darkness  No, it does not follow on any level from the exact details of Genesis 1 about light and darkness, evening and morning, that each day begins at sunset.

The weekly Sabbath does not start at sunset as Jewish tradition holds because the actual day (daylight) does not start at sunset.  Or at the very least, if the true day does start before daylight, Genesis does not make this clear (nor does Genesis or anything in the books of the Law specify that the weekly Sabbath is rigidly equivalent to what modern Americans would call Saturday as many Jews and some Christians also assume is the case).  The position that "evening and morning", either in isolation or because of the repetition of the phrase, establishes that each day starts with evening because of the literal wording deviates from the text, and thus logical truths about the text, on at least two counts regardless.  One, nowhere does Genesis say that the day does not begin with daylight, and two, evening and morning do not literally include the entire day-night cycle.

Certainly, it is untrue that the standard modern conception of a day as a 24 hour period that starts with daybreak and ends with the subsequent daybreak—or as a 24 hour period that ends and restarts at midnight, an especially arbitrary time for someone to think is the real end of a day—has to be correct because it is modern, because it is societally entrenched, or because it subjectively appeals to an individual.  But the issue of precisely when a day starts and ends is not as simple as it might seem to someone who just assumes that midnight is "obviously" when the next day arrives out of cultural custom or that evening is when the new day begins because of what amounts to the same foundational reason, as Rabbinic tradition is a type of cultural custom.

Genesis does not say anything as straightforward as exactly when a day starts and ends.  The recurring use of "there was evening, and there was morning" does not convey the particulars which would justify practices like initiating the rest of the Sabbath in the evening rather than when daylight actually begins.  Yet the cycle of day and night continues.  The morning precedes the evening, and that evening precedes the next morning.  And if the Bible is in some way inspired by God, and God wanted to make it clear that the weekly Sabbath starts specifically, exclusively as sunlight retreats away from our view of the sky, it would have been very easy for this to be clarified.

American Individualism

Some people mistake individualism for the philosophy that everyone should do as they desire no matter how they treat others.  This is an irrationalistic, egoistic form of individualism, one centered on any belief or action that a person subjectively desires or that benefits them.  It is not about truth, though rationalistic individualism itself is true by logical necessity: one person's psychological traits, moral character, and so on does not have anything to do with another's, and people are morally free to do literally anything that is not immoral, no matter if it offends other people very deeply.  Someone can only be this kind of individualist for the right reasons as a rationalist (which entails not making assumptions, such as ironically believing in this correct sort of individualism only because of personal appeal).  American society is individualistic in a contrary and thus inherently irrational manner, one that cannot possibly be valid.  In the name of freedom of speech and religion, which are really rooted in the philosophical concept of freedom of belief, plenty of Americans conflate national legality with rationality and moral permissibility.  They think they have a moral right to believe, say, or do almost or perhaps up to anything, with potential conflicting exceptions depending on the person.

Very asininely, many of these proponents might consider themselves thoroughly devoted Christians committed to Biblical ideas.  Just in case someone actually thinks the Bible's moral doctrines are in any way compatible with pluralistic philosophy itself or behavioral freedom of religion, see Exodus 22:20, Leviticus 18:21, 20:1-5, Deuteronomy 7:1-5, 24-26, 12:1-3, 29-31, 13:1-18, 16:21-22, and 17:2-5.  It is not just that Judeo-Christianity being true would already exclude any contrary religion being true simultaneously (and Judeo-Christianity does not have to be true for this fact to be the case), but also that the Torah alone repeatedly says to purge pagan expression in full by capital punishment.  The New Testament only affirms the prescriptions of the Old Testament (Matthew 5:17-19, 15:3-9, Romans 3:31, 1 Timothy 1:8-11, Hebrews 2:2, and many more), so it is untrue that the New Testament nullifies any of this.

All of this is aside from the objective logical fact that the very idea of freedom of speech or belief is contradictory; it is impossible for someone to have a moral right to believe, say, or do whatever they personally wish, even if it is false (metaphysically erroneous), assumed (epistemologically erroneous), or immoral.  More foundationally, it is also logically impossible for anyone to have any justification and thus a moral justification/right to believe in something false or assumed.  While morality might or might not ultimately exist, if there is such a thing, it cannot contradict the necessary truths of reason, and it is likewise impossible for people to have a right to not align with reason and morality.  Alternatively, if morality does not exist, then no one could have a right to anything, much less believing as they subjectively prefer, which would still be irrational; only logically necessary truths justify belief, and thus emotionalism, subjectivist individualism, and any other brand of irrationalism are false.  The law of the land is meaningless and irrelevant to these truths.

American individualism is in no way logically correct or Biblical, though its supporters might clamor to promote the delusional notion that it is both.  It is really about individuals enslaved to assumptions or emotionalism feeling comfortable with believing or doing as they subjectively please, with only arbitrary and invalid restrictions or none at all.  It is not about them doing as they please as long as it is within the confines of reason and morality.  Freedom for freedom's sake is erroneous.  No matter how intensely someone wants things to be otherwise, logical necessities are true whether or not they are recognized or celebrated, rendering any belief that contradicts them or that is based on epistemological assumptions invalid.  Many Americans instead assert that they have a right to any opinion they want, when opinion is by nature irrational, purely about preference and persuasion.

Even then, for instance, an American who alleges themself to be a Christian might simultaneously think that there are limits to freedom of religion.  Would they believe, inside or outside of the Christian worldview, that sacrificing children to a deity or pseudo-deity by fire (Deuteronomy 12:31) should be legally permitted under freedom of religion?  Probably not, I imagine, though they would then not only hold to an arbitrary and assumed moral boundary, but they would also betray the idea of freedom of religion—limited freedom of religion is not true freedom in this sense.  They might also hypocritically hold to freedom of religion and also think this freedom of religion, if it was valid, would somehow only apply to them.  In addition to all of this, the worldview of the Bible they superficially pretend to adhere to says to kill anyone who worships another god or merely entices someone to do so (Exodus 22:20, Deuteronomy 13:6-10, 17:2-5).  Logically and Biblically, such a person is wrong on practically every level.

Clinical Death

Given long enough, clinical death leads to  death, but it alone is not the same as the total, true cessation of life.  All it takes is the end of the heart's function of circulating blood throughout the body and of breathing.  In other words, it is cardiac and respiratory death, but not the neurological death of the brain.  The longer the amount of time that passes after clinical death strikes, the more improbable resuscitation becomes, culminating eventually in biological/brain death.  Around 6-10 minutes of heart failure is supposed to be enough to result in brain death.

Some might think that it is a pronouncement of death by a medical professional that means someone is truly without life.  A doctor's declaration does not make someone dead (metaphysically) or prove that they are (epistemologically); the doctor would only be right if the person they are speaking of is already dead.  What, then, is biological death?  It is the cessation of life for the body.  Whether biological and true death are the same depends on whether there is any sort of afterlife.  The death of the brain would not by necessity have to be the same as the death of consciousness (though consciousness is Biblically asleep until the resurrection [1]), with some saying they had out-of-body experiences or exposure to an afterlife after clinical or full death before resuscitation.

As for near-death experiences, they are claimed by some to occur strictly within the scope of clinical death instead of total biological death, the point past which resuscitation is supposed to be scientifically impossible, though there are reports with multiple alleged witnesses testifying that various people were dead or at least clinically dead for much longer than the usual duration before being revived.  Furthermore, some cases are reported by witnesses and the revived person themself to involved the latter coming back from a near-death experience having perceived things they could not have perceived through the bodily senses.

One could never know from hearsay or even memories of one's own near-death experience(s) before being revived (from biological death or from something else, one could not truly know) whether these perceptions are false memories, hallucinations when a person is really awake with active senses, purely inward mental experiences during physically traumatic events, or actual glimpses of an afterlife.  Are near-death experiences during clinical death just dreams or maybe, in some scenarios, even waking hallucinations of atypical imagery?

This would be consistent with the diversity of supposed afterlife accounts.  However, it is also logically possible that if there is an afterlife, not everyone receives one or that it is different from person to person, as none of this would contradict the self-necessary truths of logical axioms.  When one's basic, everyday sensory perceptions are already epistemologically up in the air, of course the diverse range of near-death or potentially real afterlife experiences claimed to have been faced by different people (not that other minds can even be proven to exist [2]) are even more far removed from our capacity to prove.

Whether or not Christianity's soul sleep and resurrection to eventual annihilation or eternal bliss is true, it is also logically possible that near-death experiences are mental constructs during clinical rather than biological death.  The only way to know is to be omniscient, or at least have certain epistemological limitations lifted, or to die and then have epistemological barriers taken away.  After all, if one still cannot prove if what the majority of the senses perceive is within one's mind or in alignment with an external world of matter or an afterlife, not even dying and entering a genuine afterlife would allow a person to know this is what they are experiencing.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/10/david-did-not-ascend-to-heaven.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2022/04/the-gulf-between-minds.html

Pharaoh's Treachery

Moses comes to Pharaoh with a simple demand: to let his people go so that they can worship and serve God (Exodus 8:1, 20, 29, 9:13, 10:3).  Over and over, Pharaoh becomes overwhelmed by plagues of escalating intensity, and then when he sees that there is relief, he changes his mind and refuses to allow the Hebrews to depart.  His hypocrisy and irrationalism, for he chooses his own whims over acting in accordance with the severity of the situation, interfere with the fulfillment of the simple command given by God and Moses.  At first, Pharaoh does not outwardly question whether it is all of the Israelites or only some of them that would venture out to worship God, but after the plagues of blood, frogs, and gnats, he says during the plague of flies that the people must not go very far to engage in their worship (8:28).  He eventually misrepresents the claims of Moses to his face and tells him that he has only been asking for the men to go when he has been stating that God wants the people to go out.

Pharaoh asks who would be going to worship God (10:8), and Moses answers that it would be the young and old, the sons and daughters, and even the animals of the Hebrews (10:9).  In other words, everyone would go out, not just the men, just the women, just the old, or just the young.  It is at this point that Pharaoh charges Moses with stirring up trouble or evil and then sends him and Aaron away (Exodus 10:10-11).  It takes the plagues of locusts and darkness (10:12-23) before Pharaoh relents and tells Moses that the women and children can go as well (10:24), only to again oppose Moses and God when Moses insists that the Hebrew animals leave as well so they can be used in sacrifices (10:25-29).  Obligations regarding the worship of God and the vast majority of Biblical ethics, issues like male circumcision and menstrual purification aside specifically since they have to do with literal anatomy/physiology, are the same for both genders, and neither is more or less aligned with God.  It is not that the Old Testament teaches such sexism and the New Testament corrects it, but that the former never teaches it and the latter repeatedly affirms the former (as with the likes of Matthew 5:17-19 and Hebrews 2:2).

Even aside from facts like the logical equivalence of the same act if done by a man or woman (what is good for one is good for the other and vice versa, with only anatomy-based obligations like circumcision differing), the lack of any comments in the Bible about the morality of an act that can be done by either gender (it never says anything like "It is a sin for a man to strike a woman, but not a woman to strike a man"), and the ramifications of Genesis 1:26-27, Mosaic Law repeatedly calls attention to how the same acts are sinful for women and men.  Deuteronomy 13:6-10 and 17:2-7 respectively address how a man or woman who worships other gods is to die, just as other offenses are sinful whether men or women are the perpetrators (Leviticus 20:27, Numbers 5:5-7, and so on) or the victims (Exodus 21:20-21, 26-32), though both of these passages in Deuteronomy eventually use male words like "him" after having clearly referenced both men and women distinctly.  Of course worshipping Yahweh is not something mandatory for only men or more suited to some mythical psychological component their gender (or vice versa), for gender is a purely physical thing!

Pharaoh's initial reluctance to let all of the Hebrews of both genders and every age go does not reflect Yahweh's nature.  Both genders bear God's image, as do the young and old alike (Genesis 1:26-27, 5:1-2), and it would by nature be sexist, and thus irrational on multiple levels, as well as directly disrespectful towards God to only let people worship him based on their genitalia (see also relevant verses like Deuteronomy 12:11-12, 17-18, 16:13-14, and 29:11-18).  The Pharaoh of Exodus, however, is fixated on maintaining as much of his power as he can amidst dire circumstances as Yahweh, with Moses acting as his spokesperson, brings about plague after plague.  He does not care about the necessary truths of reason, the nature of gender and moral obligation, and the superiority of Yahweh (until it benefits him to admit his vulnerability before God).  He hardens his own heart before God ever becomes involved in that process (Exodus 9:12) according to Exodus 8:15 and 32, as well as after God hardens his heart (compare 9:12 with 9:34-35); also, Exodus 7:14 says Pharaoh initially refuses to submit to God, and refusal logically necessitates that one could choose to do otherwise.

He clearly uses his gender-specific "allowance" of the proposed Hebrew worship as yet another excuse to not do as God wants.  He only brings it up after rejecting the command outright and then placing limitations on the distance that could be traversed.  This ruler goes from one manifestation of his arrogance and stupidity to another, as if that would change the obligation rooted in Yahweh's nature or change the instructions brought by Moses.  It never does.  While his sexism here is an expression of a much deeper, more pervasive error, one of core, egoistic irrationalism, it is indeed one of his faults, and a significant one at that.  Pharaoh's treachery is multifaceted despite the simplicity of it.  He merely wants to believe and do as he pleases when it is convenient for him rather than conform himself to reality.  Even once he gives in enough for the Israelites to actually leave (Exodus 12:31-33, 13:17), he relents and takes his army to reclaim them (14:5-9).  This part of the narrative does not end well for the Egyptian soldiers.  At last, the tyrant's back and forth with Yahweh's people, male and female, young and old, is finished.

Personal Finance: The Means And The Ends

Since economies and investments and so on are social constructs, and are not true in themselves and thus are not self-evident like logical axioms, they are not knowable a priori; as such, no one can possibly be stupid just for being unfamiliar with them.  No one has to make assumptions or believe contradictions, still.  There does nevertheless appear to be a great deal of people who are quite irrational when it comes to everything from their goals for personal finance to the way they might go into avoidable debt for things like an overly expensive vehicle.  Personal finance merely encompasses how individuals and their households utilize money, and of course the issues and truths having to do with the use of money at this scale.

Much of what some people might think or be told on the subject is demonstrably false.  No, credit cards are not an automatic slippery slope to asininely accrued, needless consumer debt.  No, you do not always have to be working jobs that make $100,000 or more a year just to survive or live comfortably.  Because they are distracted by errors like these or because they are not sure where to start discovering their options with money, since social constructs cannot be known from purely looking to reason and introspection alone (one would need sensory/social prompting for some things), some people might learn far later than they would have liked about certificates of deposit, high-yield savings, investing for retirement through workplace benefits or personal investment, and so forth.

Even if they are familiar with these things and the truths about them, remaining committed to safe, careful, or productive money management at some baseline level could be enormously difficult.  Some people like to emphasize how psychologically useful having a major goal, like retiring with a certain amount or being able to use monetary resources to freely assist others, can instill in them a desire to stay on course.  No one needs to actually have or focus on such a thing in order to not use money in stupid or counterproductive ways, such as by intentionally spending more money than one makes in order to feel an emotional high or impress someone else.  Now, this does not mean it is not emotionally or otherwise very helpful to firmly or frequently dwell on one's significant goals for using money, even if the goal is just to have peace about survival and comfort.

The highest objective in saving or utilizing money is nonetheless to ensure that oneself or someone else, though leisure and wealth are not prerequisites for constant rationalistic thought and their absence is not an excuse for the opposite, does not have to worry about comparatively trivial matters like money and housing when dwelling on ultimate matters—logical necessities, absolute certainty, ethics, self-actualization as a rationalistic being, etc.  The most rational, pure motivation for accumulating and managing wealth is precisely this: overcoming the personal and practical obstacles that poverty poses to focusing more strictly on abstract issues of logical, philosophical truth that already underpin and transcend things like wealth, financial satisfaction, and navigating the practical aspects of life.

Money certainly does not and cannot matter in itself.  It is at best a pragmatic tool aimed at goals of the mind, and as a pragmatic tool and a social construct, and especially as both at once, it could not possibly be the core of reality or worthy of the utmost devotion.  The genuinely highest end for which money can be wielded as a means to achieve is celebrating and living for rationalistic truths—whether how wealth minimizes the need to concentrate on practical matters alongside what is explicitly abstract, how one can use wealth to express individuality within the boundaries of morality, or how one can use money to benefit the lives of other people.  Money, despite how formal or informal currency is not a requirement for a society to come about or endure, is often instrumental for survival and material prosperity, and while this is not unimportant, it is not the ultimate heart of reality.

The Vampire's Moral Dilemma

First condemned in the Bible as evil after the flood of Genesis 6-8, eating blood is more than the first sin having to do with food to be specified in the text (9:4): it is the greatest sin having to do with food.  It does not matter what creature the blood belongs or belonged to; because life has a great value as the category of Yahweh's greatest creation (yes, Yahweh is a mind with conscious life, so I mean life other than God's), even the life of non-human animals, the blood of biological creatures must never be eaten.  Over and over is the reason provided: an animal's blood is directly tied to its life, so it follows that not eating blood is at least partially about respecting life.  That certain animals may be eaten does not nullify this crucial obligation.

There are other verses after Genesis 9 which condemn this behavior, whatever the intention or circumstance.  A handful will be displayed later in this post to highlight a very particular point.  As an aside, a second reason is later given as for why it would be wicked to eat blood amidst animal sacrifices to Yahweh in Leviticus 17—since their blood is used to make atonement for human sins, to eat blood is to take what is owed to God.  The lack of present animal sacrifices to Yahweh in the Levitical sense does not erase the first reason, which would require even in the absence of Genesis 9 addressing the act as sinful before the formation of Israel that all people, Jew or Gentile, male or female, should not eat blood.  I will not focus on the numerous reasons why the moral relativism of Rabbinic Judaism concerning Jews and Gentiles is logically false no matter what and also contrary to Biblical philosophy itself, but even according to the contrived "seven laws of Noah", eating blood is a sin for everybody.  After the first condemnation in Genesis 9, this prescription is repeated in places like Deuteronomy 15.

Genesis 9:4—"'But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it.'"

Deuteronomy 15:23—"But you must not eat the blood; pour it out on the ground like water."

Despite the language of "eating" blood, any consumption of blood is sin.  Whether someone literally eats meat with blood still in it, as the direct phrasing speaks of throughout the Old Testament, eats another sort of food mixed with blood, physically drinks it from a creature's body (living or dead), or drinks it from a vessel wholly apart from meat or the creature it came from, blood is being ingested.  Clearly, because the Bible (Genesis 9, Leviticus 19, Deuteronomy 12, and more) either only says to not eat meat with blood or openly invites humans to eat meat, while prohibiting the consumption of blood, it logically follows that ingesting blood by drinking it or "eating" it by itself would have to be immoral as well.  Ingesting blood is the sin.

Few people I have known might openly practice or discuss the consumption of blood, but for those who do not directly slaughter animals for the sake of their own food, blood must be avoided in food prepared by others.  This is not necessarily as difficult as it might seem.  For instance, the red liquid that comes out of some steaks or packaged meats is supposed to be a mixture of water and the protein myoglobin, not blood.  But there are reported examples of people eating blood, even that of other humans, as with the cannibalistic murderer Marc Sappington, who claimed voices told him that he would die unless he ate flesh and blood ahead of his 2001 killings.  He did allegedly engage in some form of cannibalism, and if he acted as these voices directed, he would have truly ingested blood, that of a human, no less.  Sappington's deeds would somewhat parallel those of literal vampires in fiction.

Biblically, it would not matter in a moral sense if the voices he heard were schizophrenic constructs of his own mind (that is, the voices would still exist, but only as his own thoughts) or if they originated from genuine beings.  Nor would it matter if the blood was from humans or another animal.  The act of consuming blood, other than incidentally swallowing one's own blood from a oral wound or one by the mouth, is an intrinsic evil.  Even an animal that is permitted as food should never have its blood eaten by people or, as would have to be the case, equivalent beings.  At the very least, it is obvious that a vampire, was such a thing to exist, would in plenty of mainstream iterations have to practice something terribly depraved according to the Bible in order to feed in the manner it needs.

In fiction, such as in the show Supernatural and the Twilight films, some vampires refuse to consume human blood for moral reasons, but to survive, they still drink the blood of non-human animals, like cattle.  In Supernatural, one of them insists to Sam that she and the other vampires sharing her commitment have a right to live just like humans do; in Twilight, the Cullen family has collectively determined to not only not drink human blood, but also to protect humans from vampires who would still prey on them.  Some storytellers sidestep the worst of the moral dilemma inherent in the coexistence of humans and typical vampires on the Judeo-Christian worldview.  Should they allow themselves to live or be allowed to by others?  Should they engage in romantic relationships with humans?  They need blood, and they might still sometimes crave human blood, but they are resolved to not consume blood from humans.

But the Torah does not restrict the sin of eating blood to only human blood (nor, as will be focused on shortly, would a human-like but non-human being be exempt from moral requirements).  Moreover, it does fasten a penalty to this act, a strict one that is fairly easy to overlook even for a rationalistic reader of the Bible because of the alternate wording for the punishment that only receives mention in Leviticus:

Leviticus 7:26-27—"'"And wherever you live, you must not eat the blood of any bird or animal.  Anyone who eats blood must be cut off from their people."'"

Leviticus 17:10-14—"'"I will set my face against any Israelite or any foreigner residing among them who eats blood, and I will cut them off from the people.  For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one's life.  Therefore I say to the Israelites, 'None of you may eat blood, nor may any foreigner residing among you eat blood.'  Any Israelite or any foreigner residing among you who hunts any animal or bird that may be eaten must drain out the blood and cover it with earth, because the life of every creature is its blood.  That is why I have said to the Israelites, 'You must not eat the blood of any creature, because the life of every creature is its blood; anyone who eats it must be cut off.'"'"

The very ongoing earthly existence of a true vampire as presented in many fictional portrayals requires that it would repeatedly violate this obligation, one that Leviticus 7 and 17 say deserves being cut off.  While I will discuss more thoroughly in a separate post why being "cut off" in this manner is a reference to prescribed capital punishment, Exodus 31:14 says that whoever desecrates the Sabbath through illicit work must be cut off from their people.  The following verse says whoever does such a thing must be put to death, a reference to capital punishment carried out by fellow people.  Before the book of Leviticus, the Bible has confirmed that at least in some cases, being cut off as mentioned in Yahweh's laws equates to being executed for specific sins.  As for other parts of Leviticus?

Leviticus 18 condemns a number of miscellaneous sins that it says make the evildoer deserve to be cut off, with Leviticus 20 addressing some of the very same sins in a way that starkly demands the death penalty.  For example, sacrificing one's child to Molech is brought up in Leviticus 18:21.  In Leviticus 20:1-5, it is affirmed that, as with all other human sacrifice or broader murder, the person who does this must be executed.  God himself also says he will cut off those who seek mediums and spiritists in Leviticus 20:6 before he calls for the human-conducted execution of any man or woman who practices mediumship or spiritism in verse 27.  Being cut off in the context of Yahweh's laws clearly entails being put to death for particularly egregious sins (as obscure and secondary as some of the passages relevant to this topic are, this is still a very important truth).

But would it make a moral difference that vampires are not human?  They are still human-like in form and mind and capable of doing the same righteous actions and abstaining from the same sins as people.  The usual vampire is human-like, that is, though it is logically possible for a vampire to be some other creature independent of examples.  Even so, the video game House of Ashes shoes features non-human vampires.  A vampire with a consciousness equivalent to a human's would be bound to the same obligations and, except wherever it would infringe on human rights or those of other animals, the same rights.  And what if they had to murder a person in order for the blood to nourish or sustain them?  Then, it would clearly be evil for them to do what it necessary for survival one way or another since murder is always evil and always a capital sin at that (Genesis 9:6, Exodus 20:13, 21:12-14, 20-21, etc.).  The same is the case with the intentional consumption of blood.

No one can permissibly murder, kidnap (Exodus 21:16, Deuteronomy 24:7), and so on just because their survival depends on it, unless someone is forcing them to do it by the likes of physical violence or hypothetical mind control, in which case the latter is the one logically and Biblically guilty of the evil (Deuteronomy 22:25-27).  With a vampire who needs to intake some sort of literal blood to survive, there is no external being forcing them to consume blood, whatever the source and regardless of whether the creature whose blood is consumed is kidnapped or murdered in the process.  They would at best simply have to continue eating/drinking some kind of blood from a living creature to remain alive, which is still a universal sin that merits being cut off from the living.

Thankfully, it would appear that vampires only exist in fictional stories, yet the nature of the standard vampire is very relevant to a key Judeo-Christian obligation overlooked by the masses in spite of its emphatic, relatively frequent repetition in the Torah and elsewhere.  That eating blood would be sinful even for human-like vampires, such as those who were formerly human, exemplifies the rigidness of Biblical ethics.  Indeed, if there is morality at all, its requirements would not in almost any instance change with a situation for practicality or convenience, not even for survival.  Something mandatory or wicked would remain so by nature as circumstances shift.  Utilitarianism is not only unbiblical, as necessitated by the outright inflexiblity of many individual moral instructions, but it is logically false.

Other than lesser animals that are not morally responsible in the same way humans are, all beings would be obligated to not eat blood as Genesis, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy prescribe.  Wicked without exception and deserving of banishment from conscious existence, consuming blood is the ultimate Biblical sin pertaining to food, for the type of animal the blood is from is irrelevant, and no other food-related sin is revealed to deserve such a penalty.  A conventional vampire that must consume blood to live does not sin only by engaging in other wrongs like the abduction and murder of people to achieve this goal of survival.  In fact, it would sin by ingesting any blood at all.

The Nonphysicality Of Language

You might go out into the world and find an apple tree, but you will not find the word apple, except for in spoken words or in writing.  You can see forests, sand, mountains, and various creatures living in such environments, but the words are not out there for anyone to discover through observation.  They are not part of the natural world.  Nor is there anything about an apple or a forest that logically requires the thing in question be connected with an exact term in a given language.  Indeed, the fact that there are different languages and that they can have such dissimilar words for the same concept or object is only possible because words are not logical necessities or part of the physical world.  

Human linguistic systems and their words are quite literally made up.  Yes, as with all other concepts, ideas of certain letters, combinations of them, and assigned meanings are still logically possible, so there are necessary truths about them rooted in logical axioms that cannot be invented.  But in the same way that there is no business unless one is formed, there is no English, Spanish, and so on unless someone makes it so.  This does not mean that words do not exist, though they only do in a concrete sense as a mental/social construct.  And though a naturalist might struggle to pretend otherwise, words have no physical substance.  They are not tangible items or part of nature at all.  At most, the page they are written on is physical, the electronic device they are displayed on is physical, etc.  The same is not true of letters, words, and sentences themselves—or of their linguistic meaning.

As nonphysical existents that do not exist apart from a mind to think of or use them, which itself is immaterial, the very existence of words alone means naturalism is not true.  Someone who speaks aloud to protest this is only relying on immaterial sounds and words to verbally state their position.  The use of physical vocal chords to produce sounds used in speech does not mean that words, whether in spoken form, in thought, or as linguistic concepts that are a function of mind-independent logical truths, are not objectively nonphysical.  They are.  While there are so many more foundational or important reasons why metaphysical naturalism is false which I have devoted much attention to here over the years, something as basic as the nature of language contradicts the idea that nothing physical exists.

With all the focus on God, angels, demons, and other things more akin to these entities when people dwell on general supernaturalism, it could be easy for the immateriality of words on all levels to not be noticed.  This very incomplete conception of what really constitutes the immaterial can deter people from realizing what does and does not fall into the scope of what the material, anything which is physical in nature.  It is far from the most significant aspect of reality that language is nonphysical.  Even this is still metaphysically significant, for though language does not have to exist, it is impossible for words themselves to be material.

A Sense Of Meaning

Rarely do I hear anyone who speaks about the topic of meaning bring up anything about the difference between perceptions of meaning and meaning itself and how nothing can be known apart from logical proof even if one's entire sense of wellbeing is held up by an unproven but possible concept.  Seldom have I seen it acknowledged that what is morally meaningful might be very contrary to someone's expectations or preferences.  No, the focus of the typical person, a non-rationalist, is on what they can do to feel empowered or like their life has meaning.

They are not primarily concerned if concerned at all with whether something is truly meaningful, especially if it means they would have to change their worldview and practices to align with this reality.  No, they want to feel fulfilled.  All the better, a non-rationalist might even directly think, if they can achieve this without any substantial change to themselves or without any at all!  In fact, they want to feel fulfilled without regard for objective logical facts, such as that if something is evil, it should not be done no matter how much pleasure, excitement, or psychological stability it brings anyone.  Lost in emotionalistic delusion and stupor, their priorities are invalid.  This sort of person is in actuality likely to never really explore the sharp distinction between the concept of objective meaning and subjective fulfillment.

If there happens to be any exploration of whether something is objectively meaningful, be it a philosophy or a lifestyle (which is always a direct or indirect expression of a philosophy and someone's philosophical stances and priorities), it for the non-rationalist inevitably approached only through the irrelevant lenses of personal preference/perception or cultural approval/"normalcy".  If not one of these, it will really be about the other, if not a combination of both.  Unless a key factor changed, it would not matter anyway even if they did contemplate this issue: as a non-rationalist, they are incapable of having knowledge until they resolve to make no assumptions and recognize the self-necessary, self-evident truths of logical axioms.

That it is far easier for an irrational person to remain irrational and simply pursue whatever makes them happy to the point of feeling fulfilled changes nothing about how if something is not objectively meaningful, it is objectively meaningless.  And believing otherwise is asinine, whether on the basis of passive or active assumptions.  Yet no one has to be rationalistic to experience the depths or allure of an intimately personal, emotionally charged desire for meaning.  Founded on logical truth or not, on objective moral value or not (I do not mean that it can be proven that something is morally good, as opposed to probably good), a life someone maintains an interest in preserving will almost certainly need at least subjective satisfaction to underpin it.

One truth that can be very challenging is that while it is possible for there to be objective meaning, and all truth is dictated in one way or another by logic, the fact that logic is intrinsically true does not require that anything really is good or meaningful.  Truth exists by inherent necessity, truth of the strictly logical sort, not the laws of nature or physical substance for them to act upon.  Whether anything is good instead of seemingly good according to someone's mere intuition or preferences is not demonstrable—because it is not necessarily true that there is good or that a given thing must be good if so.  Life still goes on.

In either case, having or craving feelings of meaning does not make someone irrational or evil.  Given that someone does not deny or ignore logical truths or transgress whatever moral responsibilities might exist in order to do so, pursuing a sense of fulfillment could not possibly be erroneous (exclusively within these confines).  A person would in such a case not believe or engage in anything false or problematic in the only important ways—though it can be a likely outcome, socially offending others in this process is not problematic except in the sense of impairing reputation, a meaningless thing anyway.  Still, never would he or she confuse a feeling of empowerment or a sense of meaning for true meaning, which would not depend on subjective experience or circumstance.

What Is Idolatry?

It is logically true that it would be both irrational and evil to be more devoted to something like a human relationship, to money, or to an addiction than to a God whose nature grounds good (making this deity worthy and deserving of worship).  But is this idolatrous?  Basic idolatry is worshipping an idol, a physical item, or using it as an aid to worship.  This is inherently sinful (Exodus 20:4-5, Deuteronomy 4:15-18, Romans 1:21-23, and more).  It would also be immoral to regard something lesser than God as equal to him or higher, as well as to submit to distorted priorities, but this does not have to in any way be associated with physical idols.

In his letter to the church in Ephesus, Paul does distinctively single out someone guilty of being greedy, a mental sin that might or might not be acted upon outwardly, as guilty of being idolatrous.  He declares that something other than strict worship using idols, or by extension the making of an idol, amounts to idolatry.

Ephesians 5:5—"For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure, or greedy person—such a person is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God."

Setting aside Paul's non-subtle admission in this verse that Jesus is not God to focus on the issue of idolatry at hand, it is apparent that the verse equates something that does not involve the literal creation or use of physical idols with genuine idolatry.  The Old Testament never does this, nor does it follow logically from any idea it does present that idolatry is any broader than the design/use of actual idols and secondarily the explicit worship of something other than Yahweh, such as a demon (Leviticus 17:7), a ruler, a nonexistent deity or pseudo-deity (Exodus 22:20, Deuteronomy 13:6-18, 17:2-5), or the cosmos (Deuteronomy 4:19, 17:2-5).

Certain other behaviors and intentions might be wicked or directly disrespectful towards God, but being evil does not make them idolatrous in particular.  Again, neither Old Testament statements (including the precise moral revelation in the Torah) nor the purely logical ramifications of the ideas expressed therein affirm that idolatry is linked to anything outside of idols.  There is no way to know ahead of Ephesians 5:5 that Christianity entails idolatry is more than strictly the act of fashioning or using an idol for religious worship, even of Yahweh, which would egregiously misrepresent his nonphysical nature and direct focus to what is likely an altogether inanimate mass of wood, stone, or metal.

This broader scope of nonliteral idolatry mentioned by Paul does not contradict what the Old Testament proclaims.  While it does not intrinsically follow that the likes of greed are idolatry of the heart as opposed to otherwise wicked, the New Testament does clarify that this is the case.  There are other ways one could regard God trivially or something lesser as greater than or equal to God, so why would Paul focus on greed when he calls someone an idolater for a sin besides idol use?

It is very difficult for someone psychologically attached to their wealth or the subjective allure of obtaining more wealth for its "own" sake (it is really still in part about some sort of egoistic satisfaction or perhaps fitting into an asinine cultural mold) to have any part in the kingdom of God and of Christ.  Because no one can serve God as he deserves while serving money as if it is equal to the deity or greater (Matthew 6:24), the greedy person has done something that is less directly, literally idolatrous but still ethically devastating.  He or she has trivialized the nature of God or lived for secondary or invalid things like money or something it facilitates access to as if their nature is remotely comparable to God [1].

In this sense, any sort of sin or even amoral thing that personally derails or thwarts someone's commitment to Yahweh is indeed pursued in an idolatrous manner.  It need not involve bowing down to a physical object like a sculpture to be treasonous towards the supreme being.  One is unlikely to find the most direct manifestation of idolatry in my country, save for the practices of those who purposefully live out some sort of pagan philosophy.  The looser kind addressed by Paul in Ephesians 5:5 is far more abundant and can be far more subtle.  But it is not minor.

[1].  Because logic is inherently true, it is more foundational than God, making it erroneous to regard the truths of reason as lesser than or secondary to him.  However, money is far from this status.  To regard wealth, people, personal fulfillment, and so on more highly than God is idolatrous in the extended sense.  It is not idolatrous to think anything is greater than God, or else one would be obligated to have illogical beliefs or priorities that ignore the real nature of logic.  Logic is fundamentally different than all else.

"Mercy Triumphs Over Judgment"

Judgment without mercy will be shown to those who are not merciful, James 2:12-13 says, and mercy triumphs over judgment.  What do these statements mean and not mean?  Often, this passage could go unnoticed/forgotten or would be misunderstood to mean that mercy is morally superior to judgment, even rationalistic, morally valid judgment.  Also relevant but both unbiblical and independently logically false is the idea that judgment itself is evil.  Not only is this logically impossible—truth is what mercy would hinge on, so mercy could not be more important than core philosophical truths, including the obligations of justice, and that which is evil should be judged—but the Bible itself teaches otherwise.  Judgment is not ever problematic in itself (John 7:24).  It is impossible to not judge people unless one has no worldview, which is itself impossible.  Only hypocritical or otherwise irrationalistic judgment could be erroneous (Matthew 7:1-5).

Divine mercy that is accepted through repentance and commitment does triumph over divine judgment in that to receive mercy, one must have slipped into an avoidable error that is not being punished as it deserves.  To be "saved" at all, one must be granted what one does not deserve.  In this sense, yes, mercy triumphs over judgment when it is given, and this is a core part of Christian philosophy.  Nevertheless, mercy cannot be obligatory, and the Bible does not actually teach that it is, for humans or for God (if it did, all parts of the Bible saying such a thing would by logical necessity be false because justice is mandatory and mercy is the suspension of justice).  God could have thus never shown mercy to anyone and still been inherently perfect.  Justice, if it exists, is obligatory, and legitimate mercy is the optional suspension of justice not out of emotionalism, but out of love or the hope that someone will repent.

It is also true that mercy is not God's default standing towards someone because his very nature grounds justice.  Most people will still voluntarily walk in irrationalism, self-imposed blindness, and philosophical apathy down the path that leads to destruction (Matthew 7:13-14), and to forcibly show them mercy—not just giving them another chance for repentance in this life or the next, but choosing to exempt them from just punishment of the second death no matter their desires—is unjust.  Yahweh's justice very clearly is what awaits most people according to the Bible, so mercy cannot triumph over judgment in a universalist or anti-moralistic way.

Again, it is not in the sense of all willing recipients of God's mercy being spared from the torment and annihilation that they deserve.  Mercy should not be the sole default for people in that they should always be ready to enact justice even if they do not want to, down to the execution of anyone who commits the capital sins Yahweh specifies in the Torah.  It is just that mercy, by nature, can only be shown when punitive justice is withheld, and this is what happens when people seek reason, God, and morality in repentance for whatever errors they have chosen.  By repentance and commitment to Yahweh/Christ, commitment (which is not epistemological faith as many irrationally believe) requiring the former to at least some degree in order to be genuine at all, people pass from death to life (John 5:24).

Theirs is not the second death, the fate of being purged from existence as beings unwilling to abandon their philosophical/moral flaws deserve (Romans 6:23).  Theirs is eternal life that can only be found, according to the actual statements of the Bible, by receiving it from the only being that in itself lives forever, that being Yahweh (1 Timothy 6:15-16).  The true Biblical doctrine about mercy is like the rationalistic truths about mercy that are there independent of whether Christianity is true: this doctrine is nuanced and important but in some ways so very simple.  It is logically impossible for mercy to be obligatory.  Mercy can still be morally good.  God is merciful, and he is just; the latter aspect of his character is obviously the more significant and foundational one.  There is still mercy that triumphs over judgment for all who are willing.

A Terribly Illogical And Unbiblical Stance On Divorce (Part Three)

Here, I continue pointing out flaws of William Luck's theological position on divorce in the article linked at the bottom of the post [1].

Beyond failing to realize the logical and Biblical mutuality of any obligations spouses have towards each other, Luck stupidly concludes that only very specific things are obligatory towards a person's marriage partner anyway.  He ignores that all sorts of moral duties pertain to marriage although they are not primarily related to it!  Because the page linked at the bottom of this post is supposed to focus on Exodus 20 and 21 as they overtly or more subtly relate to marriage, I will use an example from Exodus 20.  The Bible never specifically says that a husband and wife should not steal from each other, but this is already encompassed within what it does say.

Exodus 20:15—"'You shall not steal.'"

As a sinful act, theft should not be committed against one's husband or wife.  But this is not because theft is strictly relevant to marriage, as with the sin condemned in the very verse before Exodus 20:15.  All stealing is wicked.  Thus, stealing from one's marital partner is one possible expression of a universally immoral behavior.  There are ramifications of verses like Exodus 20:15 and the obligations described therein for marriage, though they are not limited to marriage.  Indeed, this is exactly the case with Exodus 21:26-27 and Deuteronomy 23:15-16 as already addressed.

These verses about the evil of abusing slaves/servants and a slave's human right to flee if not released are not about marriage, but it logically follows from the doctrine of a slave's freedom for mistreatment that wives and husbands are also permitted to go free for abuse regardless of any other factors (children, personal promises to always stay with each other, and so on).  There are far more obligations that both husbands and wives have towards each other than the ones Luck brings up as if they were exhaustive; even then, he treats some of the obligations he lists as gender-specific when they have nothing to do with anatomy.  

The Bible does not say they are gender-specific, with other verses sometimes outright teaching the opposite.  This sexism would make his philosophy of marriage ethics inconsistent with reason itself, which in turn makes it automatically false.  Then, the issue is whether the Bible contradicts objective logical truths (not scientific contingencies, probabilities, or hearsay) about morality and gender egalitarianism.  The Bible, in fact, does directly highlight that an obligation brought up using the particular example of a man or woman still goes both ways, unless a person's anatomy and physiology exclude this.  For instance, a man could not be obligated to ceremonially cleanse himself from childbirth (Leviticus 12) because he does not give birth.  Love for one's spouse is an important example of an obligation mentioned in one place as directed towards spouses of a particular gender and elsewhere articulated as being a mutual obligation, having no connection to anatomy.  Paul does say husbands should love their wives in Ephesians 5 (and in Colossians 3:19), but he also holds that wives should love their husbands as expressed in Titus 2:

Ephesians 5:25, 28—"Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her . . . In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies.  He who loves his wife loves himself."

Titus 2:3-5—"Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good.  Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God."

Obviously, Paul does not actually think only husbands should love only wives.  The fact that he separately instructs both to love each other already reflects egalitarian mutuality.  He alludes to Genesis 2:24 in Ephesians 5:28, moreover, before outright citing it in verse 31 to point out that a husband and wife are to become one flesh.  This is the egalitarian basis of husbands loving their wives as themselves—it does not only go in one direction!  Genesis 2:24 is very direct with its anti-complementarian philosophy, something paralleled in Song of Songs 6:3.  To revisit an idea of Luck's I refuted logically and Biblically from certain angles in part one of this series, a husband is not unilaterally like a master to his wife, and his wife is not unilaterally like a slave to him.  Husbands and wives mutually belong to each other as equal partners:

Genesis 2:24—"That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh."

Song of Songs 6:3—"I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine . . ."

Both of the verses above are from the Old Testament!  They alone clarify that Exodus 20:17 does not regard men as the literal, uni-directional owners of their wives, aside from the other errors of such a concept being supposedly Biblical.  In true egalitarian fashion, Paul accordingly does also claim that husbands should submit to wives as contained within the scope of Ephesians 5:21 and expressly addressed in 1 Corinthians 7:2-5 (which deals with a submission that is clearly said to go in both directions), in addition to wives submitting to their husbands, which is singled out elsewhere (Ephesians 5:22-24, Colossians 3:18).  

Short of an actual statement on submission not being mutual, mentioning submission of wives to husbands in one place does not exclude egalitarian submission, which Paul obviously assents to.  And as pertains to divorce, since failing to love or submit to one's spouse in the ways genuinely required by morality is mistreatment of one's spouse, this wrong would surely release someone from the obligation to remain married if they no longer wish to be.  Love and submission are marital duties (including submission of husbands to wives as taught in Deuteronomy 24:5), so falling short of rightly holding to and practicing them is a violation of the marriage covenant.  Various examples of neglect (Exodus 21:10-11) and general displeasure over wrongdoing (Deuteronomy 24:1-4) are already specified as allowed reasons for divorce anyway!  Luck would completely deny the total equivalence of the obligations to love and submit within marriage, with, of course, no one being obligated to submit to an abusive partner (Exodus 21:10-11, 26-27, and Deuteronomy 23:15-16 independently proclaim or necessitate this).  The latter, he agrees with, but he does not think the same things always constitute abuse for husbands and wives.

Also, both 1) the mutuality of marital rights and obligations between husbands and wives—aka, gender equality—and 2) the right to divorce for forms of abuse besides abandonment are addressed by Paul in 1 Corinthians 7:15.  In the context of a chapter where he frequently emphasizes mutual obligation within marriage, he expressly acknowledges that abandoning one's partner is only one of multiple "such circumstances" that entitle the offended husband or wife to pursue divorce.  Whether or not it is a non-Christian guilty of the abandonment as in the direct example makes no logical difference as to the core nature of the sin.  Certain translations besides the NIV (featured below) say that the abandoned or otherwise abused spouse is no longer enslaved or under bondage, perhaps an intentional allusion to tangentially but crucially relevant verses like Exodus 21:26-27 and Deuteronomy 23:15-16.  

Moreover, it is vital that Paul, who champions the strict universality and rigidness of the Law (Romans 3:10-31, 7:7, 12, 1 Timothy 1:8-11) does not insist that men (or women) must remain trapped in abusive marriages even in the circumstances of Deuteronomy 22:17-19 and 28-29.  His stance on divorce is perfectly consistent with Yahweh's Torah laws while still being so simple he can summarize it in one single verse: abandonment and other forms of mistreatment always validate divorce, and this is true of both husbands and wives, who are mutually obligated to each other in all the same ways.  Remarriage is permitted for both parties, who are not bound to each other if one of them pursues divorce for legitimate reasons:

1 Corinthians 7:15—"But if the unbeliever leaves, let it be so.  The brother or the sister is not bound in such circumstances; God has called us to live in peace."

First, sheer gender equality is affirmed yet again.  Second, while a particular example of mistreatment is held up as warranting divorce, Paul's literal wording allows for divorce for additional reasons, as indicated by the phrase "such cases".  This is consistent with what Exodus and Deuteronomy respectively teach by permitting divorce for specific offenses and by adding that, except for in very particular scenarios, a spouse can divorce their partner over any wrong they commit, even if it is directed outside the marriage.  Note that even if Deuteronomy 24:1-4 was absent from the Bible, the baseline criteria for divorce would then be if someone simply wishes to no longer be married to their partner (Deuteronomy 21:10-14).  As long as there was no malicious reason for the divorce, such as financially harming one's former partner without cause, subjective willingness to abolish the marriage would justify it as permissible.  And if Deuteronomy 21:10-14 was also absent, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy would still never condemn divorce in any case of a spouse's actual moral failure, with Exodus still providing key examples of sins warranting divorce and with remarriage afterward never being declared evil.

There is neither an all-encompassing set of reasons or a very limited number of morally valid reasons for divorce.  The entire category of ideological/moral error by one's spouse is the baseline standard for permissible divorce.  Non-moral actions, those with no actual error (such as reading a certain book series or wearing green clothing), never legitimize divorce.  Ordinarily, any moral failure of your husband or wife entitles you to end the marriage if their actions displease you so much that you lose interest in remaining married to them; in the situations addressed in Deuteronomy 22, only direct abuse within the marriage entitles a spouse to leave, for although Deuteronomy 22 does say an offender may never divorce a spouse in these two situations, Exodus 21:26-27 and Deuteronomy 23:15-16 are incredibly clear on how no social status, relational standing, or vow of commitment obligates a man or woman to stay in an abusive situation, not even if they are a slave.

The relevance of Exodus to many particular points focused on in this post and the truth of those points goes unrecognized by William Luck.  His philosophy of marriage and divorce is thoroughly inconsistent with both logic's objective truths and genuine Biblical doctrines.  He ignores some instrumental passages connected to marriage, distorts the conveyed meaning of many verses he does acknowledge, and, most grievously of all, disregards logical necessities left and right, such as the sheer equivalence of an act when done by or to a man or woman.  Ostensibly, the series of posts which the linked page is but one out of is meant to exegetically illuminate what the Bible really teaches about marriage, obligations within marriage, and the criteria for divorce.  Luck fails miserably in fulfilling such a goal at almost every turn.  As right as it is to point out that wives can abuse husbands, including physically, and that this is sinful by Biblical standards (and not in a lesser sense than the other way around), even the reasons he thinks this is correct are woefully erroneous.

Men and women are equals, something that cuts both ways.  And there is no egalitarian uplifting or protection of women without that of men and vice versa.  Additionally, the number of obligations husbands and wives Biblically have towards each other far exceeds the measly number that Luck proposes, with none of them being gender-specific.  His is a terribly illogical and unbiblical stance on divorce!  

[1].  https://bible.org/seriespage/2-covenant-companionship-exodus-20-and-21

Cost Of Living Raises

The march of inflation, the rising of prices, entails that the same numeric amount of money would over time have a diminishing ability to purchase the same goods or services.  Thus, an employer who never alters compensation in response to inflation is in effect paying employees less and less for the same work.  This could be due to anything from negligence on their part to utter premeditated malice, as they might hope this practice goes unchallenged so that they can continue paying less in a sense each year.  The numbers paid might stay the same, but the worker sufferers or is exploited even if they do not feel the impact of lacking cost of living adjustments (sometimes called COLA), and the company will likely increase its own prices to safeguard a stable profit one way or another.  It just might not allow employee wages/salaries to increase in proportion to this.

On one hand, this kind of employer would not have to part with a higher amount of their revenue in paying employees livable wages, or at least compensation that does not decrease in purchasing power as the cost of living increases along with inflation.  On the other hand, desperation on the part of workers, including that of seeing their buying power crumble, can absolutely work out in a cruel or selfish employer's favor.  The workers might be driven to the point of exhaustion by frantically trying to hold onto whatever miserable job they have, in the process losing the energy and resolve to search for new employment.  Workers with the flexibility to search for new jobs or who have multiple jobs are in a stronger position when it comes to resisting the dictates of an asinine employer: they do not rely or need to rely on the one job so heavily.

The more an employer denies or neglects cost of living raises, the more the purchasing power of their workers erodes, and the more in need of money they become, save for particularly well-off individuals.  Even then, they are being taken advantage of by those above them, those who have the power to ensure an employee's labor is rewarded at a consistent level of purchasing power and fail to do so.  Companies that withhold cost of living raises on purpose to inspire dread or passion around performance-based appraisal for raises are exploitative and founded on stupidity.  Of course, there is no such thing as infinite room for improvement, not as far as a person's individual capacity is concerned, yet this is often held up as the supreme metric for raises.

It is logically impossible for someone to always improve their output with the same amount of time and the same technological means of accomplishing this.  Then there is the fact that any raises actually awarded might still inadequately reflect the real level of effort on the worker's part or their level of seniority or centrality in the company.  Labor is seldom rewarded in accordance with the real relevant factors: whatever is livable in that place and time (at a full-time level at minimum), personal skills and seniority, and the fact that someone is giving up part of their life for a mere job.  Avoiding cost of living raises is utterly incompatible with the nature of the first factor and is very disrespectful towards the other two as well.

This is one of the many potential ramifications of pretending like workers are only a burdensome expense on a business, a necessary "evil" in that they deprive owners of even greater profits.  An employer who misunderstands employees to be parasites that contribute little to nothing while always demanding more does not understand logical necessity as applicable to business--workers are utterly vital to expanding and sustaining the scope of a company!  To adjust compensation to match a shifting cost of living is to protect the livability of a job and make it appealing to current and prospective workers.  It is also to treat people as what they are, which is more than a means to the end of enriching an employer, to be appeased with whatever scraps will barely mollify them.

XCOM 2's Psionics: Science Fiction And The Supernatural

The video game XCOM 2 portrays an Earth occupied by alien forces for two decades, many of them harnessing what is termed Psionic energy (depicted as a purple energy in the game).  On behalf of a mysterious, distant group of extraterrestrials called the Elders with their own extreme Psionic capabilities, the more frontline troops of the invaders, representing a variety of species, utilize a number of powers triggered by mental effort that can dramatically shift the direction of a skirmish.  The game simultaneously leans heavily into scientific concepts and epistemology by emphasizing research and autopsies of enemy bodies (which yield enhancements for the protagonists), with Dr. Tygan of the game's titular resistance group describing miscellaneous information about alien technology and biology at length.  No one in the game seriously questions if Psionic energy logically conflicts with the laws of nature.

And some of these uses of the energy are very blatantly beyond the scope of the laws of nature.  Using thoughts, codexes can summon Psionic vortexes that force every player unit inside the circular area to have to reload their weapons before firing again and that detonate in the following turn, inflicting damage to every soldier who does not move away.  Sectoids can reanimate corpses, called Psi Zombies, which once again "die" (i.e., the bodies are no longer manipulated by an external mind) if the Sectoid controlling them is killed.  Gatekeepers, tentacled beings inside a mechanized, spherical shell, also have the ability to animate the dead.  The Warlock, one of the Chosen proficient in the use of Psionics, can summon spectral soldiers as distractions.  Until you break them, Psionically charged sarcophagi restore each of the Chosen in their strongholds and keep them from permanent death upon defeat.

Thankfully, XCOM 2 does allow the player to eventually harness Psionic power against the aliens, such as by conjuring up a barrier for cover, granting an extra move to another soldier's turn, and mind controlling an enemy.  In the War of the Chosen expansion, the Templar faction leans heavily into such powers and celebrates the Psionic potential of humans, which it eagerly wields against the extraterrestrial invaders.  But in both War of the Chosen and the base game, Psi Operatives can be trained through the Psi Lab after a point in the main story.  Given enough time in the lab's training, a rookie soldier attain each ability from every pair of options for Psi Operatives.

These powers are necessarily supernatural as mental abilities (and mind is immaterial, so it is not part of the physical world anyway despite having a very close relationship with one's body), which can have incredible impact on the natural world—as with the vortex—or on other minds—as with the mind control.  Presented in such a starkly science fiction context, the Psionic powers might strike some as being some in-franchise expression of laws of physics that humans have not yet discovered or utilized for combat purposes.  But though they can have an impact on the physical plane, they are mental in nature.

The brain and mind are not the same.  Respectively, neurological structures and processes are specific arrangements of matter and the function of those structures.  A human brain might contain billions of neurons that transmit signals across an even larger number of synapses, but a mind is the inherently nonphysical consciousness that contains active thoughts and passive perceptions in all their forms, the totality of a being's experiences.  A brain without a mind is not animated.  A brain cannot think, as only a mind can.  Among other things which require the distinction of the brain and mind, you cannot see or touch a mind or its thoughts, not through the sense of sight and touch, at least.  Other than simply seeing one's own thoughts through direct introspective experience, this would require some form of telepathic (hence nonphysical) connection/engagement between minds.

The seeming correlation between neurological events and mental states does not mean they are both physical.  In fact, two things cannot correlate unless they are different!  I say seeming because I, like any individual person, cannot actually see my own brain with its neurons and synapses, so I cannot even have access to direct sensory evidence for their existence or correlation with my mental activities; I can only access the reports by others that humans have a nervous system, which then seems very likely about myself (or I could view another person's brain).  In contrast, I rationalistically know the existence of my mind through the logical impossibility of perception without a mind and my direct experience of consciousness.  Also, I could only believe I do not exist or contemplate if I do not exist if I already exist as a mind.

Without mentioning any such logical facts about the subject of mind-body dualism, Dr. Tygan does admit to a difference between a mind and a body when discussing how he can create an Elder body for a high-stakes mission but cannot create an Elder mind, with their consciousness being necessary for the mission objectives.  Along with Tygan's brief admission, the strikingly powerful Psionic offensive and defensive measures available to certain characters are why XCOM exemplifies how science fiction is not incompatible with overt supernaturalism.

All minds, unembodied or not, and therefore all mental phenomena are immaterial.  As I have said before, this logically makes the mind a supernatural existent of a different sort than a true god or an angel.  A true god or an angel would have a mind, but not a mind is not automatically divine or angelic.  But as I have also said before, it does not follow logically that human consciousness will exist in any sort of afterlife after the death of the body, either with a resurrected body or without a corporeal shell.  There is no evidential indication of an afterlife in XCOM 2, though there might be one.  This sort of nature is not a prerequisite for the mind to be supernatural, which it is.

An afterlife or its absence, though, is beside the immediate point: Psionic powers are explicitly supernatural and are consistent on all levels, including that of the game's tone and primary themes, with the scientific grounding of the game.  Our minds certain appear to not have the same capacity to remotely impose mental states like panic on others with a thought (with no intimidating words or physical actions involved), but they are immaterial, and the more outwardly obvious supernatural powers of mind in XCOM 2 showcase this without conflicting with its emphasis on scientific phenomena.

Alleged Bible Contradictions: 2 Kings 23:15-16, 23, And Amos 2:1-3

Something evil would logically have to be wicked for all people at all times, unless God's nature was to change, which is fully rejected by the Bible's theology (Malachi 3:6, James 1:17).  Consistency is a requirement for a concept to be true, consistency with reason first and foremost due to its inherent truth and by extension consistency with itself, a somewhat less direct form of consistency with the laws of logic.  Why, then, does the Bible praise King Josiah in 2 Kings 23 for burning human bones on an altar, at least with the very strong implication being that this is among the distinctly positive things that mark his rule, and condemn the king of Edom in Amos 2 for burning the bones of another nation's ruler?  The context of each chapter makes it clear that there is a universal sin related to burning human bones, one present depending upon the motivations of the person conducting or ordering the burning, and that King Josiah fulfills a different objective.

2 Kings 23:15-16, 25—"Even the altar at Bethel, the high place made by Jeroboam son of Nebt, who had caused Israel to sin—even that altar and high place he demolished.  He burned the high place and ground it to powder, and burned the Asherah pole also.  Then Josiah looked around, and when he saw the tombs that were there on the hillside, he had the bones removed from them and burned on the altar to defile it, in accordance with the word of the Lord proclaimed by the man of God who foretold these things . . . Neither before nor after Josiah was there a king like him who turned to the Lord as he did—with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength, in accordance with all the Law of Moses."

Amos 2:1-3—"This is what the Lord says: 'For three sins of Moab, even for four, I will not relent.  Because he burned to ashes the bones of Edom's king, I will send fire on Moab that will consume the fortresses of Kerioth.  Moab will go down in great tumult amid war cries and the blast of the trumpet.  I will destroy her ruler and kill all her officials with him,' says the Lord."

Clearly, Amos 2 condemns a Gentile king for burning the bones of another Gentile ruler in an act meant to dehumanize his enemy, though the latter is already dead.  This is yet another thing that refutes Rabbinic Judaism's race-based, morally relativistic, unbiblical (and illogical in light of each of these errors!) distortion of the fewer-than-alleged Noahide Laws, which Genesis never says constitute all human obligations anyway; desecrating a corpse is not among the supposed seven laws for all humanity.  Indeed, Amos makes it clear that it is inherently wicked to desecrate the body of an enemy; even the body of a capital sinner who has been put to death should not be left exposed for a full 24 hours (Deuteronomy 21:22-23), for the sinner was still a human carrying the divine image.  In Amos, a particular ramification of the universal obligation to not desecrate a human corpse, as well as the land it is displayed on, is addressed in the issue of burning someone's bones as if to disgrace the person, who is no longer living.

King Josiah, also with great clarity, is presented as a monarch who acts righteously and also burns the bones of pagan worshipers to defile the altar.  Instead of intending to desecrate a person's body or the living human they once were, he is acting to desecrate altars used for illicit worship, the worship of other gods and the natural world.  The motivations of the king of Edom and King Josiah are different, and the situational contexts are different.  Josiah behaves not out of malice or to degrade another person (as nuanced as it is, one could still express degrading treatment towards a corpse), but out of reverence for Yahweh and to deter pagan practitioners from conducting further worship in the area.

That Josiah's actions were predicted by a prophet of Yahweh does not automatically render them upright.  First, it does not follow from something being prophesied that it is a morally valid state of affairs.  Second, events are prophesied in the Bible quite regularly that involve people violating all sorts of moral requirements by the Bible's own standard.  For instance, in Ezekiel 21:18-23, the king of Babylon is predicted by God to turn to omens to decide which of two paths to take, one of the exact practices Deuteronomy 18:9-12 says were sins of the Gentile Canaanites for which God hated them and would drive them out of the land.  Another example is how followers of Yahweh and Christ are said ahead of time to be persecuted by the beast (Revelation 13:5-8, 20:4), or how many people will refuse to repent of sins like murder and theft after the eschatological trumpet judgments (Revelation 9:20-21).

Obviously, as Revelation 9 itself says, these behaviors are wicked, or else they would not need to be repented of as it says general humanity will refuse to do.  There are many examples across the Old and New Testaments of prophesied events which involve someone practicing immorality of one kind or another.  So, both logically and Biblically, that Josiah's burning of human bones on the altar was predicted by God through a prophet does not mean what he did is righteous.  In his case, it was, but, as clarified, this is not because burning someone's bones as if to defile the dead person is ever permissible, whoever the bones belonged to.  It is strictly because of Josiah's motivation.

When The Wealthiest Oppressors Do Not Relent

Completely aside from issues of logical veracity and moral legitimacy in pursuing wealth by basically any means possible no matter the consequences, the wealthy "elite" literally shoot themselves in their own feet when they bring about widespread poverty and do not even attempt to seriously hide how predatory their employment, manufacturing, and sales practices are.  For one thing, a lower class with high probability of climbing into the middle class due to genuine hard work and a middle class that is not at risk of dissolving into the lower class will probably not be enraged that certain people have much more than they do, because they have all they need to survive and live comfortably in some degree of luxury—or they have a fair chance at reaching this point.

If people were not struggling despite working hard or for many hours (including past the full-time threshold), it is unlikely that anywhere near as many who are not already infected by greed of their own would be so dissatisfied with the amount they currently possess.  When masses of people slave away with less to show for it than a literal Biblical servant at the end or their seven-year maximum term (Deuteronomy 15:12-14), left with little to no free time and savings even after responsible spending on food, power, transportation, healthcare, and so on, they might naturally begin scrutinizing the economic and labor system they live under, even if not rationalistically.  They might have nothing left over after paying for necessary expenses, and that is if they are not pushed into debt simply to survive in a modern society.

People who do not have surplus money to spend cannot contribute to the continued profits of the non-necessity businesses and those behind them—or, if they do, they are handling their resources very irrationally under the circumstances.  Alternatively, they might validly lash out against the kinds of founders, executives, investors, and politicians that are making their lives so desperate through the likes of low wages and planned obsolescence.  These same figures could have actually kept getting away with living for their incredibly erroneous and hollow priorities.  But that would require that they not make the oppression so overt that almost everyone who does not rely on something like massive inheritances, nepotism, or theft struggles simply to get by from one day to another, drawing more attention to themselves and their asinine excesses.

The irony is that even extremely delusional, miserly, classist parasites clamoring for every additional dime they can siphon away from workers and consumers could actually, in all likelihood, avoid such widespread outrage—which can damage their ongoing profits—simply by not siphoning away as much.  No rational person cares that others have more than they do in itself, or if they are bothered, they do not let it shape their beliefs and behaviors.  All the wealthiest oppressors would have to do is pay workers enough to be comfortable in the current economic conditions (as in, truly livable compensation), save for extreme personal circumstances not reflective of the economy's inherent nature, and not place unnecessarily high or non-mutual prices on consumers; they could hold onto all other resources with their inflexible claws.  By non-mutual prices, I mean a price that might be inflated to more than the bare minimum necessary to make a sustainable profit, with no additional quality being reflected for in the form of product longevity, useful or desired features, etc.  The buyer merely pays more for heightened profits for the misers at the top of the hierarchy.

On a pragmatic level, someone could hoard money needlessly, reflecting their false philosophy centered on a social construct, without as much opposition if they just do not cross these specific lines.  Now, no rationalistic person would ever live for monetary wealth, the societal power so often stemming from it, or the hedonistic worldview wealth can allow someone to more lavishly express.  They would live for reason, the necessary truths that cannot have been any other way, not for a social construct or emotionalistic high.  Perhaps literally no one who does not inherit extraordinarily high sums like billions of dollars with no active effort ever makes billions of dollars in a system like the American capitalist economy without engaging in some sort of theft, especially wage theft.  Thus, they are by nature not living for reason and morality, but for things which are inherently lesser or meaningless altogether.

Social opposition or the lack thereof is not what legitimizes a business investor's/owner's worldview, priorities, or practices.  Something is not illogical or immoral because any amount of people object to it, suffer because of it (and then literally anyone psychologically suffering because of a true idea would make it false, an outright logical impossibility), or feel it is false or wicked.  Yet, the idiots who run many of the most powerful corporate entities could mitigate public outcry and all difficulties posed by it by not being quite so unrelenting, gratuitous, and inconspicuous about their dismissal of workers, consumers, and the poor.  Such figures cannot eliminate the dissatisfied masses without having no one to exploit for the perpetuation of their extraordinary profits or lord their wealth over—again, aside from any logical and moral errors in their worldviews and actions, they make maintaining their objectives much more difficult for themselves by not toning down their own stupidity.