Hades And Gehenna

Acts 2:27 uses the word Hades in reference to the Sheol of Psalm 16:10 and the general Old Testament, with Luke 16:19-31 perhaps seeming in isolation to present Hades as a dimension people go to right when they die.  It tells the story of a poor man named Lazarus who goes to a quasi-heaven while a selfish, rich man goes to Hades and is tormented in flames.  Even if was not a parable, though, it would still not suggest, and certainly not affirm, anything similar to eternal torture in a hellacious place.  In fact, Hades is not the hell Jesus speaks of one way or another.  For the latter, Jesus uses the word Gehenna, such as when he says in Matthew 10:28 that humans can only kill the body but that God can annihilate both body and soul in hell.  The ultimate irrelevance of Luke 16 to the direct doctrine of hell is very overt.

The story of the rich man and Lazarus is actually parodying a very unbiblical concept of the intermediate state, as the Bible plainly and repeatedly (though it needs to only say this one time) says that the dead have no ability to think or act before their resurrection (Ecclesiastes 9:5-10, Psalm 88:10-12, Daniel 12:2, 13, Job 3:11-19); they are not reunited with God or Christ until their resurrection if they are righteous or redeemed (John 14:2-3, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18) and are not resurrected for punishment in hell, which culminates in permanent death (2 Peter 2:6, Matthew 10:28), until after the return of Christ if they are wicked (Revelation 20:11-15).  Still, Luke 16 would say nothing about the duration of hell even if it was about Gehenna, the lake of fire, instead of Hades, or if Hades was taught as an intermediate afterlife.

The precise details about the true Biblical nature of Sheol aside, the text of Luke 16:19-31 never has God or any of the characters say that the experience in Hades will last forever.  No aspect of the story touches on this issue at all.  The Bible already says in Revelation 20 that Hades is thrown into the lake of fire, where unrepentant sinners are killed (Romans 6:23, John 3:16).  The Hades of the Bible is neither an everlasting state of being nor a realm of consciousness at all.  Within Luke 16 itself, these things are not specified.  The relevant verses are scattered about the Old and New Testament outside of this lone chapter of Luke.  Someone who fallaciously thinks that the chapter is talking about what the wicked immediately face upon death or who conflates Hades with hell/Gehenna/the lake of fire would still be in error for thinking this teaches anything about eternal conscious torment.

There is a gulf described in Luke 16 that stops Lazarus and the other righteous people from coming to help the wicked in their afterlife, who are tormented by flames and unable to have their tongues cooled: there is comfort for the righteous and pain for the wicked.  Jesus and the characters in the parable do not say anything about the length of time the rich man of the story would suffer.  It does not teach or even imply anything about the duration of pain.  If Sheol/Hades did involve punitive suffering, it would end regardless when the wicked are summoned to the great white throne to be judged, sentenced to hell, and killed there once and for all.  The Bible teaches the latter things elsewhere.  Hades, though, is really a condition/realm of the dead where there is unconsciousness, the total absence of experience.  Either way, Hades does not involve eternal torture.

Game Review—Dying Light 2 Stay Human (PS4)

"Dura lex, sed lex.  The times we live in are ruthless, and the law must be so too."

—Dodger, Dying Light 2 Stay Human

Dying Light 2 immediately reveals its much higher ambitions than those of the original game.  As the introductory cinematic shows, the situation is far more dire for humankind by this point in the franchise: the Harran virus was actually cured, yet a new variant called THV escaped from an experimentation zone and decimated human civilizations around the globe.  No longer confined to a single Middle Eastern city, the virus poises a very promising setup for an exploration of despair, power, and survival in the context of a world with literally a handful of cities left.  Of lower quality than the former game's, however, is the less focused story.  The far more disjointed or lackluster plot still comes with an enormous amount of content and heightened player choice, whereby decisions to irrevocably hand a region over to a given faction provide permanent changes to the game.  In turn, various traps or convenient objects/installations are placed around the map.  The complex tensions between the factions and your personal decisions as a player become more restrictive as you proceed.

Production Values

Many times, the tendency for the game to load visual details after I waited around for several moments in an area reinforced how unpolished the game is.  Facial skin sometimes appears greenish-gray when you first walk into a room until the right colors and textures load.  Twice, a trader's head in the Bazaar didn't even show up at all for a few moments, leaving me looking at a headless merchant!  On a separate occasion, a zombie I had just killed (I know that conventional zombies are already dead and then reanimated, but that is not the kind of zombie here) rose into the air as I walked over the body.  In a separate instance, an enemy's dead body got caught in a wall and spasmed rather than falling to the ground.  Still worse is that I once loaded the game only to find that it took over a minute for building textures and the very presence of enemy models to gradually appear in stages.  

Visual glitches or bugs are normal and quite extreme.  Even when there were not hordes of infected onscreen or around my character (to the game's credit, a large amount of zombies can occupy the same area) freezes made me have to close and reopen the game at least three or four times.  Also, the certain aspects of the audio cut out at seemingly random times.  Worst of all is that an optional mission that opens up after meeting Delta could not be completed because some of the objective items would not show up.  While it is better for this to happen with a side quest instead of a story mission, this one paves the way for the player to access guns outside of the more recently added Tower Raid Mode.  All the ammunition you collect from specific enemies after killing them remains of no use without completing this mission.  However, you can thankfully still craft the limited use Boomstick firearm with 100 pieces of scrap, which can be very useful in its own right despite breaking after a relatively small number of shots even at the highest upgrade level.

Gameplay

Aside from crafting and the fairly large amount of time spent in conversations with other characters which the player must periodically choose the dialogue for, the gameplay is mostly split between parkour and its affiliated exploration or combat.  Like with the first game, performing basic parkour actions like grabbing and climbing provides very small XP boost for one skill tree, while slicing enemies or shooting them from afar provides a small XP boost for another skill tree.  Completing missions or fulfilling miscellaneous optional tasks rewards the player with larger amounts of experience points.  As one fights, though, non-projectile weapons break, gradually deteriorating with each successful strike.  To continue using them, you must expend resources to have special merchants restore them or you must create and install modifications that can extend their capacity of usefulness.

As for the map, expect a much vaster digital landscape than Harran's.  You can use binoculars to mark areas like inactive safe zones at windmills on the map from a distance, with some regions only becoming available after a certain point in the story.  Initially, you have to simply walk or run or leap from one above-ground structure/object to another to navigate.  Remarkably, the stamina bar does not get used up during traversal by sprinting or holding onto ladders even if high above the ground, but it drains when swinging a weapon, aiming a shot with the bow, or holding onto a ridge or rooftop.  Stamina also drains when using the paraglider or grappling hook unlocked during the main story.  Soaring using this paraglider and ground vents to launch Aiden into the air does thankfully reduce the time spent traveling around, as does the fast travel system (each region on the map has one station that can be used to travel to any other unlocked station).

Central to the game just like with its predecessor, the day-night cycle is far more embedded into the gameplay and some mission objectives than in other games like Borderlands 2.  At night, the zombified enemies grow more aggressive, with the larger and more vicious enemy types called Volatiles emerging from their indoor daytime zones.  Getting seen by a Volatile for long enough or from a sufficiently close range triggers a chase that can attract many other Infected if you are unfortunate or not careful enough.  Throwing down a UV light (the Infected are very sensitive to it) temporarily repels nighttime Infected and restores Aiden's immunity timer, which tracks how long he can stay away from direct sunlight or UV light.  While it seems like skin cancer and artificial "sunburn" from prolonged, regular UV exposure at the miscellaneous human structures would be highly detrimental to human health, compared to immediate death from an Infected, this at least extends people's lifespan overall!

Scattered about the different regions of the map are zombie-occupied GRE research buildings with inhibitors, special items that can be used in batches of three to upgrade either Aiden's health or stamina--both of which increase his maximum immunity timer.  Not only does exploring these centers become far more easy at night, when Volatiles go outdoors and there are not as many Infected inside overall, but enhancing the immunity meter as a byproduct of health or stamina upgrades facilitates staying away from UV sources at night.  Since a great deal of the game's objectives can only be completed at night or are much more manageable this way, it is in the player's best interest to find as many inhibitors as possible.  Killing Revenants, optional boss figures that only come out at night in specific areas marked as GRE Anomalies, is among these objectives; they have the ability to resurrect other Infected due to their more advanced evolution (how exactly they do this is not clarified).  Defeating them yields special resources when looting their corpse and also unlocks a nearby GRE vehicle with an inhibitor.

An alternate mode called Tower Raid sees players fight their way from one floor of a tower to another until they reach the roof, alone or via co-op.  As much as this differs from the campaign, the mode extends the already enormous number of hours one can play without having completed everything.  Three difficulty levels, four playable characters with their own primary weapon and competencies, and a self-contained system of perks and other upgrades gives Tower Raid some depth of its own.  Perks and improvements to Raid-specific weapon blueprints bring permanent enhancements that carry over from one run to the next, while the money, weapons, and other items found within a run are not usable in others.  Which weapons you find reduces to a matter of random chance, yet the stronger ones can impact the finale quite a bit: the last stage, if you make it to the roof, entails confronting a boss and a stream of Infected (including sporadic Volatiles).  A very powerful firearm, for instance, significantly reduces the risk of dying and the time needed to defeat the creature.  Adding to the challenge is how the immunity timer counts down throughout each floor and roof fight.  Between the story missions, side quests, GRE facilities, special bosses, collectibles, and Tower Raid mode, one could easily play Dying Light 2 for at least 150 hours.

Story

Individuals called Pilgrims wander from one human community to another delivering news or items, the only means of long-distance communication many people would have after the collapse of formal civilization around the world.  One Pilgrim, Aiden, comes to the fictional European city of Villedor to search for his sister Mia, who was experimented upon by a GRE scientist named Vincent Waltz along with him when they were children in hopes of learning more about THV.  Within Villedor, the residents of a centralized living area called the Bazaar find themselves in tension with the Peacekeepers—a faction that considers itself righteous as it metes out potentially extreme penalties (far harsher than Biblical ones in some cases) for offenses in the alleged name of order.  A murder of a Peacekeeper serves as a catalyst for Aiden to begin choosing allegiances as circumstances force him to grapple with the growing threat of what Waltz will do to achieve his own goals.

Intellectual Content

In the highest form of zombie storytelling at elaborate scales, malicious or philosophically insane humans are always the most dangerous or central antagonists for taking advantage of others' vulnerability amidst the threat of the zombies.  The first Dying Light has Suleiman, the hypocritical egoistic relativist who tries to compel the playable protagonist of that game to embrace and contribute to chaos as the one true order.  The second has the aforementioned Peacekeepers and the Renegades, the latter comprised of bandits and sadistic individuals who terrorize others.  However, Aiden has to work with the Peacekeepers to an extent throughout the primary narrative.  Their harsh laws come up both in mandatory and optional missions.  Below, see a screenshot of the laws written in their headquarters.

Besides not addressing acts like kidnapping or rape, Peacekeeper law assigns theft amputation of the hand at best or execution at worst; compare to the Biblical punishments for theft, where all stealing of belongings is prescribed restitution of varying ratios depending on the exact circumstance (Exodus 22:1, 4, 7-9, Leviticus 6:1-5, Numbers 5:5-7) and only stealing a person receives execution (Exodus 21:16, Deuteronomy 24:7), with those who cannot afford restitution becoming temporary servants/slaves that either go free automatically after six years if any debt remains (Exodus 21:2, Deuteronomy 15:12, Leviticus 19:33-34) or immediately if they are abused (Exodus 21:26-27, Deuteronomy 23:15-16).  Various Peacekeepers and other characters speak as if they genuinely believe that difficult times legitimize severe punishments that might otherwise be unjust (and it is not as if the Bible sometimes having objectively far less severe punishments than many other philosophies and legal systems means its moral system is true, but its laws are far less severe despite being widely misunderstood!).  In reality, if a penalty is unjustly harsh, no circumstance changes this.  Emotional persuasion based on utilitarian benefit alters nothing about logic or morality.

Peacekeeper stupidity goes beyond the assumption that utilitarianism for the sake of deterrence is correct or at least valid to live out.  One Peacekeeper just assumes (or acts like she assumes) that a woman named Elena is a murderer who poisons others based on an accusation and says she will only change her mind if evidence to the contrary is presented, or else Elena will be executed.  It is irrational to assume anything at all, and while innocence or guilt can never be truly proven by logical necessity, disregarding the very need for evidence, however epistemologically fallible its nature is, before punishing someone is also irrational.  Aiden and thus ultimately the player has to choose with a timer counting down, in a micro version of the game's moral decisions, to support the planned killing of Elena prematurely along with the Peacekeeper or not drink a potential poison himself to show her innocence.  Yes, if Aiden does not endanger his life by drinking the alleged poison, Elena will die!

Non-Peacekeepers likewise fare poorly in their moral philosophies.  Even the sequel's non-playable protagonist Lawan says that her moral stances emanate from the highest court in all the land, her own conscience/whims.  First, only a fool believes they can know good and evil exist (or do not exist), as opposed to that it is logically possible that they exist or evidentially probable; second, only a fool thinks the existence, particulars, or epistemology of morality has any connection to one's personal feelings, perceptions, or preferences.  The draconian utilitarianism of the Peacekeepers and the subjectivism of Lawan are all logically incorrect aside from the very existence or nonexistence of good and evil.  Perhaps the player will think of these ramifications when decisions must be made about who to hand a region over to, the Peacekeepers or the Survivors.

Side missions, indeed, frequently expose the player to the espousing of more logical falsities by NPCs.  An examples is the series of quests centered on finding additions for a book collection.  Other than the idea that philosophical knowledge (aka, this encompasses all knowledge) is only/primarily achievable through literary familiarity and education and not from looking to the laws of logic alone, the characters that Aiden has to interact with promote many laughable concepts.  In the first book run, Aiden brings back the Bible.  Several missions later into this quest series, he brings back the Torah—the first five books of the Bible.  The quest giver rejoices as if this is not a glaring redundancy.  I have encountered this sheer idiocy before outside of a game, when someone spoke of the Bible and the Torah as if the Torah was a separate document from the Bible rather than literally a portion of it.  Also asinine is how the quest giver talks of the Torah as if it is just part of the "broader Torah", a seeming allusion to the so-called oral Torah consisting of fallacious ideas and social constructs promoted by Rabbis that often contradict both logic and the philosophical doctrines of the "written" Torah, or the actual first five books of the Bible.  Thalia, the assistant to the man who initially tasks Aiden with retrieving books, is quite irrational herself!

Conclusion

Hours upon hours of main and side quests await in Dying Light 2, so the issues do not pertain to a paucity of content.  Stay Human is a great game on the level of getting longevity out of a single base purchase.  The deluge of glitches and the weak central narrative severely hinder this massive sequel from climbing to all the heights that could have been.  None of the significant flaws thwarts the incredible scope of the title and the depth of its gameplay and progression, but they do complicate its holistic quality.  Simply put, Stay Human fails to rival the game that launched the franchise while managing to not forfeit all success.  If a very prolonged game with prominent parkour, zombie-focused combat, and an impactful day and night cycle sounds appealing, then the only game I can recommend more strongly than this one is the excellent, superior first Dying Light.

Content:

 1. Violence:  Arms, legs, and heads can be forcefully cut free of the rest of a body, living or dead, and they can be charred by a Molotov or a Goon's fire attacks.  Blood is commonplace.

 2.  Profanity:  "Shit," "fuck," "bastard," and so on are used throughout the game's many hours.

 3.  Sexuality:  Some dialogue with Thalia is sexually flirtatious, and she even says she is very aroused by Aiden's body and the conversations the two share about books and ideas.

Dissociation And Sleep

To be awake, a being must be conscious.  They are perceiving, experiencing their thoughts along with any sensory experiences applicable.  To dream, one must also be conscious.  Unconsciousness in the sense of not being aware of one's bodily surroundings is not the same as true unconsciousness.  A dream entails mental imagery and perhaps even mental audio, so it cannot be experienced apart from a consciousness that is actively perceiving.  What a dream cannot genuinely feature is physical sensations because the mind has retreated away from the senses for sleep to ever arrive; even when awake, it is not as if one can know if sights and sounds are mental correspondents with external things or exclusively within the mind because it is logically possible for these stimuli to be purely mental, rather than being external physical realities (a chair one sees a few feet away) or caused by material substance (a sound coming from a radio).

As I elaborate upon here, there is only one way to know if one is awake or dreaming, as difficult as it can be to identify it [1].  A person otherwise is assuming, is ignoring the issue, or has not discovered all of these very precise truths despite making no assumptions and looking to the inherent truth of logic.  What of a case, however, where a person is on their way to falling into slumber, yet they have not actually become asleep?  Not entirely unlike someone who focuses so intently on their work that background noise fades entirely out of immediate perception, their mind distances its focus from all sensory stimuli to the point that it is shut out of conscious awareness.  They are also not necessarily imagining anything, recalling anything, or thinking about any aspect of any matter.

It might seem rather ambiguous experientially (it is only subjective perception, not logical necessities, that can be epistemologically ambiguous) because a person is so dissociated at this point that they might not directly be thinking anything at all, not even passively seeing mental imagery.  At the same time, they would have to be awake since they have not yet fallen into actual sleep.  It might even suddenly seem to them like they were not asleep a few moments ago if an abrupt noise shakes them out of the dissociation, if they recall anything of the previous moments at all.  While in this state, however, there would be experience of such a passive nature or to such an extreme degree of dissociation that a person is oblivious to even the self-evidence of logical axioms and their own existence.

Now, no matter if someone perceives anything at all or rationalistically knows how to prove they are awake/still awake if they were actively thinking (again, see [1]), they can only either be awake or asleep.  There is no other possibility whatsoever.  It is not that there is sleep, the status of being awake, and a third, hybrid state that is in between the other two.  Just as someone can only be phenomenologically or biologically dead or alive at a specific moment, though they could be in the process of dying at a given time, a person is either asleep or awake.  This is a logical necessity and not a scientific truth.  That is, it is a matter of pure reason that there are no other metaphysical options, and thus someone can know this apart from the regular experience of going to sleep and reawakening.

The condition of extreme dissociation while awake and approaching the border of sleep simply exemplifies an unusual metaphysical status, one where dissociation is so strong that a person could be conscious on one level, in that their mind has not truly retreated within itself away from the senses and bodily experience (something only possible due to the truth of mind-body dualism), and yet they are not thinking or perceiving anything.  They are not dead, not phenomenologically or biologically asleep, and also not consciously thinking.  At least dreaming still involves consciousness that is not only in existence, but also that actively perceives!  Such a narrow range of scenarios of this kind are logically possible.

Their mind still exists and yet is not known in this duration--for they are not actually thinking in order to grasp the objective, intrinsically necessary truths of logic that illuminate other matters like introspection, which a rationalist has absolute certainty of.  Alongside dreamless sleep, this sort of state is the only one in which a person can exist as a conscious being but be unaware of anything at all: to dissociate like this means there is no grasping any passive sensory stimuli that cannot be proven to exist outside the mind (with one exception; yet again, see [1]), no exploration of their own mind itself, and not even any direct reflection on the logical truths that do not depend on the mind and that are needed to know its presence and nature to begin with.  Even non-rationalists, who do not know or acknowledge the metaphysically inherent truths of reason and their epistemological self-evidence, at least experience their own mind when awake or dreaming, despite only believing in assumptions regarding them.  A person this dissociated is conscious but ironically cannot be conscious of it!

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

The Sum Of Its Parts

That something, if applicable, is the sum of its parts or greater than its individual parts is not a mathematical, geometric, or scientific axiom, though it is true of mathematics, geometry, and science.  It is related to a logical axiom, and any particular example that follows from this is not self-evident.  That something is the sum of its parts is a truth about identity when there is this sort of applicable metaphysical constitution--that is, when one thing is made up of others, whether of a set containing multiple individual units of the same kind, a physical object composed of many particles, and so on.  However, it is the abstract truths of reason that are at the very core of reality and on which all else stands, and it is only what might be called the law of identity that is itself axiomatic regarding this issue.

An axiom is a self-evident truth: to fall into this category, it must be relied on even when denied, which makes it unavoidable.  It is not self-evident that grass is green, for perception of color requires a consciousness, which is itself self-evident to someone who makes no assumptions, and then, of course, the color green, like any color, would only be possible if it is consistent with logical axioms.  To doubt one's own conscious mind, one has to exist as a consciousness, and even though this is self-evident, it is only the laws of logic, which would still be true even if false (rendering their falsity an impossibility) that are self-necessary.  One of the axioms of logic is that a thing is what it is.  This is self-evident because if something is that which it is not, then it still is what it is, and thus the law of identity is true regardless.

It and other logical axioms are true independent of matter and would have to be true in order for any composite object to exist (or else it would be impossible beforehand); it is also true in a way that underpins mathematical groupings, such as how 5 is equal to 1 added to 1 added to 1 added to 1 added to 1.  Not even the logical truth as it pertains specifically to mathematics is self-necessary or self-evident, but this hinges on the fact that a thing is what it is independent of and thus metaphysically prior to all examples.  A given number being itself or a given number being reached by the addition of two other numbers depends on the law of identity and that certain things or or do not follow from others.  It is not the other way around so that numeric quantities ground the laws of logic!

The so-called axioms of equality in mathematics are not axioms at all.  They hinge entirely on the real logical axioms, which are more foundational and are what is truly self-evident, along with one's own conscious existence, though the latter still depends metaphysically on the former and is revealed epistemologically by the former.  However, that something is the sum of its parts, or that the whole is greater (literally, larger or more complete) than the individual parts, is still absolutely certain.  It is just not evident in itself.  Without these logically necessary truths, all the same, it would be impossible for anything to be true regarding numbers, which would of course encompass their identity and relations.  Logical axioms are not assumed or arbitrary starting points as other alleged axioms are.  They are things that cannot be false.

The Boundaries Of Time Theft

A concern of tyrannical and legitimate business owners alike, time theft is the act on the part of an employee of exaggerating hours worked, doing nothing during paid hours, or (sometimes) working unauthorized overtime hours, all of which deprive the employer of money not earned properly if paid out.  Even so, actions that do not really steal from employers are erroneously considered time theft by some.  For instance, is having a 5-10 minute conversation with a coworker about things unrelated to the job or company while on the clock stealing from an employer?  Is there always work that demands attention at all moments across all jobs?

Hypocritically, some of the same people who think the answer is yes might hold to the contradictory idea that it is nonetheless office conversations like these that are so important to personal and corporate growth that employees must give up remote work for the good of industry.  As in, laughing about non-professional matters with coworkers is supposedly terrible because it detracts from profit-generating labor (as opposed to potentially making them emotionally invested in their office culture), but it is also so "foundational" to sustaining the workplace that remote work is a monstrous scourge.  Neither of these things is true!

As long as the work gets done each week on time, it gets done, even if there are regular breaks for eating or talking.  There is no need to rush to finish a week's worth of work on a Monday (if the work schedule is standard; it might not be), even though some employers or managers might make assumptions regardless.  If you finish the work for the full week or most of it, depending on if this is doable given the job, early in the workweek, they might think you are simply being lazy and frivolous for the rest of the week.  If you do it throughout the week, there likely will be "free" time, which they might likewise object to even if there is nothing automatically valid about this response.  Certain managers truly have nothing to do for their own role other than contrive excuses to micromanage employees, and illogical charges of time theft might be an easy way to fill their own time.

They can overlook how some jobs by their very nature involving waiting time, like a receptionist position at a small business.  The role is needed, but there is not necessarily a constant flow of work to be done throughout the entire shift.  Part of the job is by nature objectively reactive.  No matter what a productivity-obsessed employer believes, there is literally not always something to do at every job while someone is clocked in.  Some jobs might require constant, direct labor.  Others do not.  All the same, the latter sort of jobs might still call for having someone in a paid standby position, though hours might pass without anything getting done or truly needing attention.  Having someone available to perform tasks as they arise and paying them during that waiting period is still vital, and the employee talking with coworkers or engaging in personal reading on the clock in such an interval would absolutely not be time theft.

Companies that ruthlessly react to even non-cases of time theft like this are very likely to steal from their employees by underpaying them for their hours or years of labor, not paying for all time spent working, or some other such bullshit.  Oh, and Biblically, withholding wages past the very next sunset after a worker's shift ends is theft (Leviticus 19:13, Deuteronomy 24:14-15).  Practically all conventional companies in America are guilty of this!  The most devastating and widespread time theft occurs when thriving corporations that could easily pay their workers genuinely livable compensation or better fail to pay wages this promptly.  Legitimate employee time theft from these same companies is trivial by comparison.

Mothers And Fathers

Parental authority and status, given that the parents are not erroneous or sinful either in the sense of mistreating their children or telling them to sin (these would obviously contradict other Biblical doctrines whether or not this is stated in these words) is affirmed over and over in Mosaic Law.  One is to honor, but not universally or emotionalistically obey, one's father and mother (Exodus 20:12, Deuteronomy 5:16, 27:16).  One is to not strike, outside of self-defense, or curse one's parents, mother and father alike (Exodus 21:15, 17, Leviticus 20:9).  In matters of bringing their children before the community to be examined or punished, both parents are involved if living (Deuteronomy 21:18-21, 22:13-17), and together they could act as two witnesses with testimony for or against charges of criminal sin (17:6, 19:15).

Proverbs 30:11 and 17 very plainly acknowledge the equal right of both parents to be respected as people and as parents, though this does not mean that abusive mothers and fathers are to be tolerated, praised, or loved more than any other fool.  None of this follows logically and Mosaic Law already addresses the just response to various forms of abuse, none of which involve partiality or lenience based upon the sinner's parental status.  Earlier in Proverbs, verse 8 of chapter 1 emphasizes listening to one's father and mother when they are in the right--one could not be obligated to submit to them if they are in the wrong.  There is nowhere taught any sexist obligation for a biological parent of one gender or the other to have a greater responsibility in raising their children on any level.  The same is true of the obligation to honor one's parents on the part of sons and daughters.

The verses mentioned so far do not even include the New Testament passages that affirm the equal authority of mothers and fathers (Matthew 15:3-6, Mark 7:9-13, Ephesians 6:1-3) and husbands and wives (Ephesians 5:21, 1 Corinthians 7:3-5).  Though it would not need to reiterate things that have already been established, the New Testament also reiterates in miscellaneous places that obligations are equally held towards fathers and mothers (Romans 1:30, 1 Timothy 1:9).  As parents or fellow spouses, neither mothers/wives nor fathers/husbands are actually said to have special privileges or obligations, moral closeness to God, and so on because they are the mother or the father.  Both are people and both are parents.  As such, it would be logically impossible for them to have gender-specific parenting duties, like cooking, working outside the home, or pushing their children towards philosophical accuracy.

None of these things can only be done because one has a penis or a vagina, and they would thus be morally good, bad, or neutral in themselves for all people.  Men and women are equal bearers of the divine image (Genesis 1:26-27, 5:1-2) and this is not contradicted in any of the parenting obligations of Christianity or childrens' obligations to their parents as stated in the the Torah or elsewhere in the Bible.  As metaphysical equals, there is no special authority a husband or wife has over the other or over any children they might have.  It is not authority of fathers over mothers or mothers over fathers that is taught by the Bible.  It is also not righteous to respect fathers over mothers or vice versa.  Any patriarchal or matriarchal parenting or marriage ideologies are both unbiblical and also irrational separate from Christianity's doctrines and probable veracity.  

What Is Marital Unfaithfulness?

Logical truths are objective, so they are not determined by subjective preferences or any amount of consensus.  They simply are true in themselves.  This by necessity includes truths about romantic partnerships, marriage, and sexuality.  Truth is not grounded or revealed democratically.  I have heard some people say that a couple can always "define" what cheating is within their relationship, as if cheating could be non-cheating on their whim or vice versa!  Things are what they are.  Preference or perception is irrelevant in full.  A disapproving husband does not make a married woman looking at other shirtless or naked men (or other such men) besides her husband with excitement unfaithful; an upset wife does not make a married man looking at other women in bikinis or lingerie (as if this clothing is only for women) or nude women with excitement unfaithful.

Agreement between a couple that they think flirting with other people or any other irrelevant thing is infidelity does not render it true.  Various people might, left to their individual selves or due to the arbitrary pressures of their given social community, have wildly different desires or expectations or personal (i.e. mere conscience or ego-based) objections for the behavior of their spouses.  Some people might be genuinely alright with their husband or wife having actual sex with someone else during their marriage, while others might not be bothered by flirtation but be against extramarital sex, while still others might think that even looking at someone else out of sensual or sexual admiration (the two are not the same!) or finding someone else sexy in the privacy of the mind is betrayal.

Logical truth is true no matter how hurtful or inconvenient or unpopular.  It does not logically follow from adultery being a marital betrayal that extramarital flirtation, fantasizing about other people (unless one is fantasizing out of the desire to do something adulterous), masturbating to other people of the opposite gender, regularly or not, or just masturbating without any stimulation, is adulterous or a betrayal in any way.  Not only would it not follow from one thing being immoral that the rest of these are, but there is absolutely nothing contradictory--in the sense of logical impossibility or conflicted motives--about a woman or man loving their spouse, including sexually, and visually/mentally delighting in the bodies of or flirtatious conversations with other people of the opposite gender.

What one feels about this is subjective.  It is all true all the same.  Indeed, some people might, again, not be emotionally hurt or opposed to their spouse having extramarital sex--as if their feelings make it valid or immoral to begin with.  Biblically, much like murder or theft or a plethora of other actions, adultery is always immoral (Exodus 20:14) no matter whether a husband or wife is fine with or even encouraging of their spouse having sex with another person--not an additional spouse in the form of sex within a polyamorous marriage, but extramarital sex.  Yes, it also obviously goes both ways for men and women despite the occasionally specific phrasing of "another man's wife" (Genesis 1:26-27, Exodus 20:14, Malachi 2:13-15), which itself is an absolutely idiotic basis for believing in a misogynistic interpretation [1].  The Bible does not pretend like the other aforementioned things are adulterous (Deuteronomy 4:2).

It is not the spouse who has not done anything adulterous who needs to change for their insecure, jealous, or emotionalistic partner.  It is the insecure or perhaps irrational partner who needs to change or be silent.  Just as emotion and agreement do not make adultery any less of a betrayal even if it is voluntarily encouraged by the other spouse if something like the Biblical stance is true, no amount of rage will make it so that extramarital flirtation or masturbation to other people alone is in any way adultery.  There is not necessarily any betrayal of any kind there because there is, first of all, no adultery in any of this on its own and, secondly, because these things can be done without infringing upon a thriving sexual relationship between spouses.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/10/another-mans-wife.html

The Hebrew Midwives

The ninth command of the Ten Commandments does not address all deception in Exodus 20:16 and Deuteronomy 5:20.  The commandment in question is against false testimony rather than all forms of lying together.  Elsewhere, Leviticus 19:11 does label lying as evil outside of slander in particular (or else it would not be condemned), and yet there is a story very early in the Bible where two women are shown favor by God for lying.  Before Moses was born, adopted by Pharaoh's daughter, and tasked by I AM with returning to Egypt to free the Hebrews, the king of Egypt was desperate to control the Hebrews living in his land.  Oppressive labor does not stop them from multiplying (Exodus 1:8-14), so Pharaoh tells Shiphrah and Puah, who are midwives and Hebrews themselves, to kill any baby boys when they emerge from the wombs of their people (1:15-16).

The women, however, refuse to obey the ruler.  They arrive at a home, seemingly perform their service, and then allow any newborn boys to live.  To Pharaoh, who summons them when he learned how the male babies of the Hebrews were not being killed, they outright lie, claiming that Hebrew women give birth faster than Egyptian women (1:17-19).  If true, this would mean they would not have had the chance to directly fulfill Pharaoh's command since they were not present at the time of birth.  This is not what the text has already clarified as being their real actions beforehand.  They lie flagrantly to the king of Egypt, and Exodus 1 is not silent God's reaction to this.  It is not at all the typical reaction of God in many other circumstances, where lies are sins (Leviticus 19:11 again) that damn people to the lake of fire (Revelation 21:8, 22:15).

Not so with Shiphrah and Puah: in the wording of verses 20-21 in Exodus 1, "God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous.  And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own."  Like the Israelites at large, they were prosperous in the sense of multiplying in spite of the oppression around them.  Their glaring deception is rewarded by God, but not because deception is morally permissible under ordinary circumstances, such as when one is not trying to thwart a worse sin on the part of somebody else.  It is precisely because this lie is uttered in order to save innocent lives (there could be other such causes of equal or greater significance that would make lies the lesser evil) that it is not ultimately some grievous sin against truth.

For the sake of a greater truth than what they had really done with the Hebrew women in childbirth, Shiphrah and Puah are not guilty when they deceive Pharaoh.  On the contrary, God blesses them because of their deception, going as far as to give them families of their own, a fitting reward since they helped other Hebrews keep their male babies safe for a time.  At some point after hearing their lie, Pharaoh orders all of his people, now including the Egyptians, to kill every Hebrew boy that is born by throwing him into the Nile and to allow baby girls to live (1:22).  The story of how Moses escapes this fate is far more familiar to the masses than the role intentional deception played in sparing Hebrew babies for a time.

Later in the chronological sequence of Biblical narratives, Rahab lies to the servants of Jericho's king.  She insists that Israelite spies who in actuality stayed in her home, hidden away on the roof (Joshua 2:6), left her dwelling already (2:4-5).  Thus, she keeps the Israelite spies alive and arranges for her entire family to be spared when the massacre begins (2:12-20), and she and her family are indeed not killed (6:15-25) once the walls of Jericho fall.  Rahab is in fact listed as an example of righteousness in Hebrews 11:30-31 for sheltering the spies as she did.  The Hebrew midwives Shiphrah and Puah are not the only Biblical figures who are guiltless, blessed, or commended for lying for the sake of a greater truth and to honor a greater obligation.  Only one of these examples would be enough to establish the Bible's clear stance on lying to prevent more severe sins, and still there are two.

Workplace Friendships

It is possible to have friends in one's coworkers, regardless of whether there is communication and meeting outside of working hours or workplace-adjacent contexts.  It is even logically possible that one will happen to find a rationalistic person at a given company, though this is very, very unlikely.  Such a person is worthy of special respect, devotion, quality time, and loyalty because their own allegiance would be to the truths of logic that are self-necessary, absolutely certain, supremely foundational, and immutable.  They would be concerned with far more than the petty social construct of professional workplaces and the pursuit of material wealth or status, and thus they, if they are really rationalists, are not fools to lament, manipulate, toy with, or dismiss.

A rationalistic relationship is based on things of inherent veracity and substance.  More than other workplace friendships rooted in circumstances (happening to work at the same company at the same time), these relationships can last solidly even after one or both people depart their jobs.  If it was just based on the circumstantial accessibility of being right next to someone during the workday, after all, then an exit from that workplace would mean the end of the primary reason for the friendship.  More than other coworker relationships, a rationalistic friendship is also based on something transcendent and true in itself, so the basis of the relationship does not disappear when someone leaves a job.

On the contrary, once the convenience of having to be around the other party of a lesser friendship is gone, the friendship will far more likely than not dissipate.  When among non-rationalists, though, there are the added concerns of cautiously revealing professional obstacles, personal information, or philosophical stances, as they might try to use this against you if they, in their drifting irrationalism and probable emotionalistic egoism, think they can somehow benefit, such as by advancing in their career.  While I can never know the contents of other minds (if they exist in the first place), and neither can any being with my human limitations, at least with rationalists, it is enormously less likely that they will ever resort to pettiness, misrepresentation, or asinine priorities.

People can never have the fullest possible relational intimacy, non-romantic or otherwise, without having thorough adherence to a shared worldview, and of course that worldview cannot be valid unless it is true, and in turn it cannot be validly held to unless it is logically demonstrable by self-evidence (as with the truth of axioms and to a different extent one's own conscious existence) or deductive necessity in light of axioms.  The vast majority of people one will meet in the workplace, managers, coworkers, and clients, will all but certainly not be rationalists.  The most they could hope for in their friendships is arbitrary satisfaction based upon emotionalism or pragmatic gain.  They cannot possibly stand on anything of actual demonstrated veracity or significance, or else they would be rationalists.

The Food Laws Of The Quran

The basic categories of forbidden foods listed most often in the Quran are carrion, blood, pig's meat, and any otherwise permissible creature the names of other gods are pronounced over, but there is an exception given for people who are desperate with hunger (see Surah 2:173, 6:145, and 16:115 for all of this).  Surah 5:3 again mentions carrion, blood, pig's meat, and any animals a god besides Allah has been invoked over as immoral to eat, adding that a strangled animal, one afflicted by a great blow or fall, killed by a beast of prey, or anything sacrificed to idols are to be avoided.  In cases of a violent blow or fall or goring by a predatory creature, the animal can still be eaten, if alive when found, as long as it is slaughtered correctly according to the same verse.  Eating seafood is allowed in general and on pilgrimages in particular (Surah 5:96).

Now, the Quran prohibits consumption of pig in isolation from any broader category.  While it is supposedly revelation that affirms the Torah (Surah 2:53, 3:3, 5:45-46, 48, 6:154, 17:2, 61:6), and Surah 6:146 does acknowledge that God prohibited any land creatures with undivided (unsplit) hooves to the Jews, Leviticus 11:4-8 and Deuteronomy 14:3-8 preclude consuming pig because a land animal must have both split hooves and chew its cud to be permissible as food, the pig only having split hooves.  In Quranic ethics, other such animals that only meet one of these requirements are allowed to be eaten, a glaring contradiction between the Islamic text and the Torah it says is from God.  Moreover, Leviticus 11:9-12 and Deuteronomy 14:9-10 allow only animals of the water that have both fins and scales; Surah 5:196, as well as the other aforementioned verses on sinful food, clearly permit the likes of lobster, crab, shark, and shrimp, all forbidden in the Torah.

Yet again, the Quran contradicts the Torah it says is from Allah on moral matters, allowing many foods that are condemned by God in Mosaic Law.  Not even the New Testament actually denies the ongoing nature (Malachi 3:6) of the dietary laws in the Torah: passages like Matthew 15:1-20 and Acts 11:1-18 are really about things other than food, like washing one's hands before meals, and the New Testament affirms the perfect righteousness and immutability of core obligations mentioned in the Old Testament over and over (Matthew 5:17-19, Romans 7:7, Hebrews 2:2, James 1:17, and so on).  If the Torah is true, as both the New Testament and Quran say, then the Quran is by necessity contrary to reality.  If the Torah is false, the Quran is still in error since it claims otherwise.  Very rarely is the Quran consistent with what is morally permissible or evil as described in Mosaic Law.

That both condemn eating pigs does not alter the very different reasons why.  The Quran even misrepresents the Pentateuch's restriction on eating fat: Surah 6:146 says that Allah forbade the Jews to eat the fat of cattle and sheep except what is on their backs and intestines and what adheres to their bones.  In actuality, while Leviticus says to not eat blood as the Quran does (Leviticus 17:10-14 and 19:26 are just some relevant verses), Leviticus 3:17 and 7:22-24 condemn eating all fat, though some verses in chapter 7 specifically mention sacrificial animals like cattle, sheep, and goats.  Fat, like blood, regardless of the creature it comes from, is not to be consumed.  The Quran does not even get what Mosaic Law says right!  In acknowledging the Torah as a prerequisite to later Islamic revelation to Muhammad, the Quran puts its doctrines in a state of utter contradiction.  Not all of them could possibly be true at once.

The Parable Of The Lost Coin

Between the parable of the lost sheep (Luke 15:3-7) and the more popular story of the prodigal son (15:11-32), one can find the parable of the lost coin.  In just two verses, Jesus tells a story about a woman who has 10 coins but loses one of them, paralleling the shepherd of the previous parable who has 100 sheep but loses one.  He describes God and his angels as rejoicing at the repentance of a single sinner by having the woman celebrate finding her misplaced coin, inviting her friends and neighbors to share in her joy and relief.  The brevity of the passage touches on crucial matters, with the simplicity of the parable making it even easier to realize how it relates to other doctrines taught in the book of Luke and elsewhere.  Some of these issues are secondary to the most predominant focus, yet they are still acknowledged or brushed up against.  In full, here is the entire parable and the explanation Jesus himself offers immediately afterward.

Luke 15:8-10--"'Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one.  Doesn't she light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it?  And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, "Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin."  In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.'"

It is true that not all aspects of parables would have to be logically or Biblically valid outside of figurative meaning in the context of what even Jesus himself presents as a fictional or hypothetical story.  Even so, note that the parable centers on a woman owning her own money, a form of property.  If the metaphor is supposed to correspond to cultural practices of the time and region, then clearly women historically had property in Israelite society.  If the metaphor is supposed to align with literal Biblical moral teachings, then clearly it is not evil on Judeo-Christianity for a woman to have her own property (as the Torah affirms, which will be addressed below).  Also, the gender of the woman's friends are not specified, though it is both logically possible and Biblically permissible to have very psychologically and physically intimate friendships with the opposite gender without any sexual or romantic feelings, and even if these feelings are present, all involved can still be close, genuine friends.

These matters are tangential to the primary intention of the parable in a sense but nonetheless important.  In no way does Luke 15 contradict any sexism concerning money and broader property (or friendship) prescribed by God in the Torah because there is no such thing.  Deuteronomy 15:12-15 even requires that female servants receive property upon being set free as with male servants.  Numbers 27 commands that daughters not be excluded from an inheritance just because there are no sons.  Leviticus 12 and 15 as well as Numbers 5 and 6 prescribe that women offer their own animal sacrifices, with Numbers mandating that women bring the same animals as men for the same sins [1].  Moreover, Numbers 5:5-7 prescribes that women make restitution if they sin in a way deserving of this penalty (theft is the example in these verses).  Unless women had their own animals or income, it would not be possible for them to bring sacrifices or make restitution.  More than a few coins or the means to earn them is directly allowed for both men and women in Yahweh's perfect Torah laws (Deuteronomy 4:5-8, Psalm 19:7).  A woman owning coins in the parable corresponds to very literal rights and obligations women Biblically have not as women, but as humans.

Likewise, the delight God has over the repentance of each individual sinner is affirmed as literal, or else the entire parable of the lost coin is hollow in its context.  Jesus reinforces the literality of this point with as much clarity as the fallible contructs of human language can convey in verse 10.  Yahweh is not like his prophet Jonah, who bubbles with anger when the people of Nineveh repent and therefore are not killed (Jonah 3-4).  He takes no pleasure in even the deserved death of the wicked for their sin (Ezekiel 33:11), either their death in this world or the second death of annihilation in hell (Matthew 10:28, 2 Peter 2:6, Revelation 20:11-15).  When the wicked man or woman repents and turns to God for forgiveness, "he will freely pardon" (Isaiah 55:7).  Sin does not go unpunished forever, but while someone is still in conscious existence, even while in hell before they are burned to death [2], there is always the hope that they will be saved by the God who wants none to perish (2 Timothy 2:3-4, 2 Peter 3:8-9) if only they repent while they still can.

The central purpose of the parable of the lost coin, as obviously pro-woman and supportive of female property ownership it is on its own and in connection with the true doctrines of the Torah, is not the value of women--who are not greater than men, but equal to them.  Though these issues are of extreme logical and Biblical importance, the main purpose of the parable is to communicate the great depth of the divine joy when an individual turns from his or her sin and thus from the path toward permanent death (Matthew 7:13-14) to eternal life (Ezekiel 33:12-20, Romans 2:6-8, 6:23).  Gender is irrelevant to the nature of sin both on the part of the victim (for instance, see the repeated emphasis within Exodus 21), if there is a victim for a given offense, and on the part of the one doing the evil (for instance, see Leviticus 20:15-18, 27) because the actions are the same.  If the Bible denied these truths, it would be in error, since this equality is correct by strict logical necessity.  But while gender equality is a vital part of the foundation of any logically possible moral system, and while repentance is contingent on there being sin to begin with and thus cannot be more philosophically important than the core nature of sin, Luke 15's parable of the lost coin focuses first and foremost on how God does not reject the contrite sinner.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2024/08/equal-access-to-animal-sacrifices.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/07/while-there-is-life.html

Talking About One's Marriage

If your spouse (or boyfriend or girlfriend) wants you to never discuss any legitimate problems within the relationship with other people, you have a controlling partner.  I do not mean someone who has a subjective preference for you to not talk about such things outside of the relationship but recognizes it as just that, a non-obligatory personal desire.  This is someone who demands or gently but deviously pressures you to keep anything that might make the relationship look strained (even if it is) from others.

Aside from the controlling and irrationalistic aspects of this, does keeping such things within the marriage (or dating partnership) truly help?  It might accomplish only the confining buildup of frustration, sadness, or anxiety until it bursts forth in, at a minimum, harsh conversation between the spouses.  This does nothing beneficial for a marriage even if some people fallaciously believe or personally prefer for the initial cause--being silent about problems with outside friends, family members, or therapists--to be pursued.

There is also the fact that, intentionally or unintentionally but negligently, someone might hope his or her partner does not mention relational issues to others because they do not want to stop behavior that might be objectively abusive.  Whether it is someone else raging against their partner having interests, friends, or pasttimes beyond them or seeking to combat or extinguish their partner's attraction to other people, or something else, they want to control their partner in ways they have no right to (and everyone needs to have interests beyond their partner because the necessary logical, philosophical truths of reality are not dependent on or strictly about people).

Wanting your spouse to wait for a certain time to pass before talking about marital struggles with external parties is not necessarily controlling, nor is wanting them to only be accurate in what they say or to leave out a few especially personal details without lying about anything else.  All of this can be done without one spouse being controlling, illicitly demanding, or otherwise abusive.  Even these can be urged out of emotionalistic, selfish motives rather than anything rational, though.

Furthermore, it is not only professional therapists/psychologists/psychiatrists who could be validly told about one's marital problems.  There is nothing irrational, malicious, unfaithful, or slanderous about telling one's friends of either gender about such things as long as one is honest.  This also does not exclude talking to one's romantic partner about the same problems, which would need to happen if they are to be directly resolved together as it is--although an irrational or abusive partner does not need prompting from the other party to realize what they are doing and cease.  In any of these directions, talking about relationship issues is vital when they arise.

No One Can Be Legitimately Trusted

I do not want anyone to trust me even if I tell them something relatively trivial such as that I remember that I ate a certain food a week ago or that I feel a certain way.  I cannot even know if my memories of such events are accurate, only that I have them, and it would require a literal telepath/omniscient being to know that what I say about my own mental states is true.  I know my own mind directly and with absolute certainty.  Whatever I am thinking, feeling, or otherwise perceiving, it is right there for me to experience.  This would not be the case for me with other people or for other people for me unless they are telepathic or omniscient as mentioned above.  If they lack these characteristics, they would be irrational to believe anything another person says that is not an articulation of a strictly logical truth, which would be true in itself and not be subject to epistemological uncertainty.

The difference between what I can know of myself and other minds, as well as the other way around, is distinct.  My perceptions of something like the sensory world, for instance, are uncertain as to whether they accurately represent the external world, though the perceptions absolutely exist as my mental experiences.  Someone else would have to actually be me or have their mind metaphysically bridged with mine in order to know if I am telling the truth about what my senses report to me, however, despite how I know for sure.  This absolute certainty does not extend to hearsay, and it is utterly, inescapably hearsay when another person tells me what they are thinking or feeling.  Whether they are my wife or my closest friends, it would be irrational for me to trust them or for them to trust me--and if they truly knew the interior of my mind, they would not even need to or be able to trust me, and vice versa.  We would know.

No, I do not and trust anyone else and no one else should trust me.  This is not because I am hoping to mistreat them or anything similar.  It is because there could not possibly be any basis for trust in any direction from any person.  If something has to be trusted in the sense of belief in the unprovable, rather than committed to on the basis of evidence (this can be done without fallacious beliefs like confusing perception/probability for logical proof), then it is irrational to believe it no matter what it is.  If something can be known, then it does not have to be trusted.  The existence of an uncaused cause is something that does not have to be assumed [1] or even partially trusted in.  In contrast, if someone was to actually believe that God loves them, as opposed to even believing that it seems likely based upon evidence for Christianity that God loves them, they have gone beyond what is verifiable.

Non-rationalists often seem to confuse trust for certainty and certainty for anything that seems true or that they want to be true.  They believe that trust in science or a religion or other people could possibly be justified by any amount of mere evidence, when many of them do not even begin to base beliefs on evidence, much less the metaphysically intrinsic, epistemologically infallible proof of logical necessity.  I of course do not want anyone to trust me.  This is for the same reason why I would never trust anyone or anything: it is unjustifiable because trust in the sense of belief is irrational.  Words mean whatever they are intended to, so someone could use the word trust to refer to commitment, but not everyone does.  It frequently has a positive connotation of belief when one has no absolute proof even though this could never be positive in a pragmatic or ideological way.

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

Harsh Words

Harsh words are not automatically sinful, though an emotionalistic culture might feel as if they are unjust in themselves.  This can be seen in the church when some people think the Bible actually condemns using the word fool in Matthew 5:22, when it is very clear inside and outside the context of that verse what the Bible is really prohibiting.  For one thing, as my first sentence acknowledges, this is never condemned in Mosaic Law, the Bible's central moral revelation (Romans 7:7) which both Jesus (Matthew 5:17-19) and Paul (Acts 24:14) obviously affirm despite superficially appearing--to fools, ironically--to reject them.

Matthew 5:22 itself is about baseless anger, sometimes translated as anger "without cause," which produces malice, not about random words supposedly having some sort of inherent immorality, which would be logically impossible as it is because words do not have any fixed or intrinsic meaning.  The meaning of any word is only what the user intends by it, and in this case, Raca is a term of contempt, which, although it is not always immoral to hold towards someone (Daniel 12:2, Isaiah 66:24), is about the intention and not mere language.  Jesus himself calls certain people fools later in the very same book of the Bible, in fact (Matthew 23:17)!

Elsewhere in the Bible, one sees that it is rational and righteous to call some people fools or foolish if they truly are a fool (Psalm 14:1, 53:1, Galatians 3:1), such as when Proverbs repeatedly refers to fools (including in Proverbs 26:3-12), so Jesus would not be condemning the arbitrary word itself, which could even be used sarcastically and teasingly and is like all other words a flexible social construct.  He is condemning malice and slander.  This is what James 3:9 also condemns: the use of speech to degrade people made in the image of God, not all speech that is subjectively unpleasant or objectively harsh yet truthful.

Now, James 3:7-8 is exaggerating about how no person can tame the tongue, since there is no such thing as unsurmountable sin, including those of words, as the Bible plainly teaches (Deuteronomy 30:11, Job 1:1, Matthew 5:48).  Moral perfection is always logically possible because something cannot be obligatory unless you are capable of actually doing it (for instance, I cannot be obligated to fly if I do not have the capacity or to resolve a global political issue if I do not have the power to do so).  Aside from the Bible, if something is good or evil, perfection in how one lives is by necessity possible even if it is extraordinarily difficult for someone.  Also, James 3 is separately exaggerating when it says the tongue is set on fire by hell.  It is not literally on fire, and hell is a place of fire where the wicked are burned to death after their resurrection rather than something that affects this life (Matthew 10:28, 18:8).

In the same way that James 3 is saying that hell enflames the tongue, though this organ is not on fire and is not caused to do anything by a non-sentient, future afterlife realm of punishment and cosmic execution, James 3 does not mean that no one can avoid verbal sins.  By condemning the cursing of humans made in God's image, it is also not saying that words like "fuck you" in a playful or otherwise non-malicious context, as if cursing in the Biblical sense is using profanity!  Again, only the intention really matters with such things.  As constructs to be used and tossed aside when a better term is thought of, words are not good or bad.  They are arbitrary sounds and symbols.

The Author Of Ecclesiastes

The author of Ecclesiastes identifies themself as the Teacher/Preacher immediately in the very first verse of the book.  In the words of Ecclesiastes 1:1 and 1:12, the author also calls himself the king of Jerusalem, and in 1:1, he refers to himself as a son of David.  There is only one son of David who becomes king in the Bible accounts: Solomon, the ruler associated with great wisdom who nonetheless fails to uphold several basic, major obligations of a monarch as prescribed by Deuteronomy 17 in Mosaic Law.

Solomon actually almost does not become the ruler at all (1 Kings 1:5-40).  Adonijah, described here as very handsome and born next after Absalom, tries to take the throne, and Bathsheba and Nathan the prophet visit David so that he would fulfill his promise to Bathsheba, that her son Solomon would sit on the throne after him.  Indeed, Solomon becomes king, but his mother first worries that the two of them will be treated as criminals if David's vow to her before God was not kept (Deuteronomy 23:21-23, 1 Kings 1:29-30).

Her son survives, reigns, and, as Ecclesiastes conveys, becomes fixated on understanding what, if anything, is either objectively meaningful or subjectively satisfying to him.  He contemplates how the universe seems to endure as people labor and die (Ecclesiastes 1:3-7), how knowledge can bring sadness (1:18; almost any rationalist can likely relate to this on multiple levels!), and how power, accomplishment, and pleasure alone do not make a person escape this cycle (2:4-11).  The looming, approaching event of death overtakes both the fool and the wise (2:14-16), which sobers the Teacher.

A great deal of the Teacher's statements nevertheless do not acknowledge many relevant, demonstrable truths.  For instance, they do not dive directly into the rationalistic epistemology of how his subjective perceptions and experiences do not make anything true, such as life or perhaps all things allegedly being meaningless (Ecclesiastes 1:2).  He does not address how logical axioms, the core of necessary truths, transcend even nature and God [1], nor does he readily admit that the finality of human death (though there is resurrection to come according to verses like Daniel 12:2 and Revelation 20:11-15) does not necessitate that everything in the life that precedes it is morally meaningless as opposed to temporary and thus finite.

Even so, the author of Ecclesiastes, King Solomon himself, has a unique position of prosperity in Israel's history from which to dwell on philosophical issues that are accessible to every willing person--for every man, woman, and child can look to the necessary truths of reason and engage in introspection [2].  Wealth and social status are not in any way required to discover and savor what is true by logical necessity, and since everything relies on logical axioms and their ramifications anyway, and they do not stop being true, there is no such thing as an inability to think about the nature of reality even amidst personal suffering or professional toil.

[1].  For some elaboration, see posts like these:

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

B.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/06/the-metaphysics-of-logic-and-god.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-knowledge-available-to-all.html

Alleged Bible Contradictions: Matthew 22:37-40 And Romans 13:8-10

It is true that Jesus and Paul have conflicting theologies?  Jesus does say in Matthew 22:37-40 that loving God with all of one's being (Deuteronomy 6:4-5) and loving one's neighbor as oneself (Leviticus 19:18) summarize Mosaic Law as the two greatest or most foundational commands.  Whereas Jesus mentions two commands, Paul says in Romans 13:8-10 that loving one's neighbor, which he specifies is only one command, fulfills the Law.  Like many other seeming contradictions in Biblical philosophy, this one is not very difficult to identify as nothing more than an ostensible contradiction.  Read the passages below and see if you can notice the reason why Paul speaks this way and why it does not conflict with the teachings of Jesus:

Matthew 22:34-40--"Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together.  One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 'Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?'

Jesus replied: '"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind."'  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: "Love your neighbor as yourself."  All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.'"

Romans 13:8-10--"Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law.  The commandments, 'You shall not commit adultery,' 'You shall not murder,' 'You shall not steal,' 'You shall not covet,' and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'  Love does no harm to a neighbor.  Therefore love is the fulfilment of the law."

As established by verse 8, Paul is focusing specifically on how one should treat other people.  This is the debt we owe all other people: to love them, which can only genuinely, holistically be done by treating them in accordance with God's just nature, as expressed in Mosaic Law.  Love is owed, making it deserved, and thus it is a matter of justice to love others.  The morality of love is not some issue of emotionalistic subjectivism, but it rather encompasses the many individual objective obligations like allowing workers to rest one day out of every seven (Deuteronomy 5:12-15), not murdering anyone (Exodus 20:13), not taking advantage of the disabled (Leviticus 19:14), and so on.  If one does all of these things and the rest along with living out their logical necessary ramifications unstated in the Law [1], one loves others as one should; inversely, if one legitimately loves others, one will treat them as the particulars of morality require.

Jesus, unlike Paul in Romans 13:8-10, specifically addresses how one should regard God and other people.  When it comes to people, he teaches the exact same as what Paul does--that loving one's neighbor as oneself in the genuine sense, as clarified by other parts of Mosaic Law since it is impossible to know what is and is not specifically loving from Leviticus 19:18 alone, fulfills the entirety of the Law's prescriptions for human interpersonal treatment.  There is no contradiction.  Jesus speaks in Matthew 22:37-40 of something slightly beyond the scope of what Paul writes in Romans 13:8-10, yet they otherwise convey the same ethical philosophy of love as it relates to the Torah laws.  To contradict the worldview of Jesus on this point, Paul's would have to entail that we should not love God, which he does not say in Romans or anywhere else.

An irony is that neither loving God nor loving other people accounts for all of Mosaic Law in a very narrow sense.  What of non-human animals (Exodus 23:4-5, Deuteronomy 22:6-7, 25:4, and so on) or the environment (Leviticus 25:1-7)?  The Law does not strictly deal with duties directly to God and fellow humans.  Yes, not mistreating animals and managing the environment ethically are still moral matters that pertain to God's nature and treating them well can certainly express love for God.  But helping an animal struggling under a load, not taking a mother bird with her eggs, and allowing an animal to eat as it treads grain by not muzzling it are also very much about helping non-human creatures.  Is an animal of the non-human kind one's neighbor?  Should one love an animal as oneself or as much as a fellow person?  Absolutely not, because humans have greater value on Judeo-Christianity (Genesis 1:26-27, 5:1-2, Leviticus 24:21).

In a less direct sense, treating animals as morality requires is still about loving God, for they are his creations that also have the breath of life and moral value.  Treating people as they deserve is also in a way about loving God, their creator who imbues them with his own image.  But loving God goes beyond how one behaves towards any being but God himself.  Jesus makes it clear that the obligation described in Deuteronomy 6:4-5 contains all of one's obligations to God, just as the obligation of Leviticus 19:18 links to all the exact obligations one has to others regarding various issues and circumstances.  Paul affirms the latter without denying the former and without his philosophy contradicting the former.  Neither Jesus nor Paul mentions animals in the passages examined, but does this mean they overlook how the Law deals with them as well?  No!  And neither does Paul overlook the love owed to God.

[1].  For one of many examples, Exodus 21:26-27 demands the freedom of a slave whose master abuses them, referring to a male or female slave whose eye or tooth is respectively damaged or dislodged.  These two body parts are not the only ones this obligation would pertain to.  It follows that an abusive injury to a slave's leg or shoulder or toe or any other body part would also nullify any promise of servitude and morally release the slave from any obligation to stay.  A great deal of Mosaic Law is like this, providing examples of one thing from which another would follow.