The Imposition Of Will In Democracy

Democracy of any degree inevitably involves the imposition of will, except it is the collective wills of the majority rather than that of a singular figure or aristocratic class.  If someone thinks democracy is valid or even morally required because it avoids a person exerting their will over another, then they believe in something utterly contradictory!  If a political system is valid, or even obligatory, it cannot be democracy, because the relativism of this framework is inherently opposed to strict alignment with reason and all that it entails, as reason is inherently true and thus what any moral obligation--including the one that makes democracy allegedly good--depends on in the first place.  However, since any moral imperative can only be possible if it is consistent with reason, then democracy is erroneous by default.

Logic is inherently true because its falsity would still require its veracity.  Democracy, though, is not aimed at adhering to the verifiable truth, much less in every aspect of governance.  At best, whether it is pure democracy or that of a more nuanced democratic republic [1], a democracy has a 51% majority hopefully stumble in the right direction.  It is about glorifying the subjective desires of a given population's majority, which is of course irrationalistic to its core.  Something is not true because the majority wants it to be or believes it is, and no one has justification to believe in anything unless it is fully verifiable by logical self-evidence (axioms and one's own conscious existence) or by extended deductive necessity.

What many proponents of democracy also do not seem to ever seriously consider, besides the fact that it is by logical necessity relativistic and thus false, is that when the majority imposes its will, there is nothing about democracy that inevitably trends towards validity or benevolence.  There is also the assumption that benevolence is good.  Whether democracy is morally good depends on two entirely unprovable but possible things: that there is such a thing as morality and that morality is such that democracy in particular is good.  Whether a given direction a particular democracy is headed in is good would further depend on the nature of morality, if it exists.

Because democracy being morally upright is already illogical for the aforementioned reasons, it is not even possible for democracy to itself be good because it can never be rational, and whatever moral obligations and righteousness might exist would reduce to a matter of logical possibility, since logical axioms cannot be violated.  Many supporters of democracy I have spoken to, though, seem to think that with enough people involved or if they are "educated" sufficiently (rather than if they are rationalistic enough), democracy almost inevitably brings societies in a morally better direction and that this thus makes the political framework good; they do not seem to grasp the real ramifications of how, whatever they mean by morally better and whether or not their moral ideas are even true, democracy is always fragile.  A society is a sudden majority vote away from going in a vastly different direction.

A slight majority is all that would be necessary for a purely democratic society to abruptly start killing every second-born child, for instance, or torturing someone the general public dislikes because it brings them pleasure.  Democracy is not stupid and contrary to reason (and thus to any moral obligations that do exist, which would have to be consistent with reason to be true) because of this special potential for instability and viciousness.  This potential is nonetheless ignored by many of those I know who are in favor of democracy, but the real problem is that reason cannot be false, and no one could possibly have a right or an obligation to be in the wrong by pursuing majority whim over necessary truths and actual justice, if there is such a thing as the latter.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/12/a-republic-is-kind-of-democracy.html

The Difference Between Humans And Human Relationships

A relationship between persons is just literally how the two humans relate: how they feel about each other if they have interacted and the kind of immaterial bond their minds have.  Relationships hinge on people, not the other way around.  What this in no way necessitates is that to end a relationship or scale it back is always a denial of someone else's humanity or of any potential moral obligations towards them.  To reject humans is to reject relationships with the them, or at least positive ones, but to reject relationships with certain people is not at all automatically the rejection of humans or concern for them.

If all people have some baseline level of value and at least certain inherent rights by virtue of being human (Biblically, examples would include those addressed directly and by extension in the likes of Exodus 21:26-27, 22:25, Leviticus 19:13, and Deuteronomy 19:15), then they have that value no matter what they have done or how you feel about them.  This is not the same as a romantic or non-romantic relationship with them, whether they are your parent or child or spouse or anyone else, having this same level of importance.  

Accordingly, there is no demonstrable reason why anyone should take relationships so seriously that they persistently endanger or erode their mental or physical wellbeing for the sake of preserving a flawed relationship--what I have seen people believe the contrary about this (that one should sacrifice oneself for others and that this is knowable) most often has to do with marriage.  It would not follow by logical necessity from the existence of inherent human value, however, that relationships should not be tossed aside for the sake of self-preservation or general self-benefit.

For instance, a dating relationship that due to relational stress interferes with the observable health of either party is not as important as the people in it, if people have genuine moral value and thus rights.  Leaving the relationship is not the same as disregarding the other party as a human.  People might matter one and all, or perhaps nothing has moral value (it is impossible to know because either is logically possible).  Either way, there is no moral necessity in prioritizing relationships with other people, including immediate biological family members or significant others, and subjective emotional preferences are of course of no metaphysical relevance here.

One can truly love a person or forgive them for a legitimate offense and then break away from a relationship with them.  Again, a person and a relationship with that person, in the form of a romantic or platonic bond, are obviously not the same.  This has not stopped many people I know from acting as if it would be required by the former having extreme significance that the latter must be fought for practically no matter what.  Such a thing is objectively untrue; since humans are not interpersonal relationships among humans, though the latter metaphysically depends on the former, one of these can certainly be fled from without truly dismissing the other, and it is not humans themselves!

"Who Are My Mother And My Brothers?"

Several family members of Jesus arrive outside a home in which he is speaking, say Matthew 12 and Mark 3, trying to find him (12:46-47, 3:31-32).  Upon being told that his mother and brothers are searching for him, Jesus asks, "Who are my mother and my brothers?" (3:33; 12:48).  He then proclaims that everyone who does the will of God (in Biblical context, those who do what is morally obligatory as rooted in God's nature) is his brother or sister or mother (12:49-50, 3:34-35).  With great conciseness, Jesus draws attention to how family connections are not of all-encompassing significance, in spite of the particular obligation to honor one's parents (Exodus 20:12, Matthew 5:17-19), all while being explicitly gender-inclusive with his statements.  The content in the short passage of Mark 3:31-35 is highly important indeed.  In many places elsewhere, Jesus speaks about family.  In this passage, he openly declares all of his followers his mother or siblings.

An absence of references to female family members would crucially not logically require that the philosophy verbalized by Jesus here is misogynist, but there are explicit references to both men and women being included in his meaning.  Neither is excluded or in possession of a lesser status simply by logical extension, which would still be true either way (basic logical consistency and Genesis 1:26-27 refute anything else), but also by the literal wording of Christ.  In fact, he frequently emphasizes gender equality when he speaks about allegiance to biological family and the superior nature of allegiance to God and the morality grounded in his nature (Matthew 10:35-37, Luke 12:52-53, 14:25-27).  No one is closer to God or Christ (or in alignment with logic or morality) by virtue of being male or female (Galatians 3:28 is relevant as well).

At the same time, beyond gender, biological ties of any kind, whether to one's parents, siblings, children, or extended family members are not of supreme centrality anyway; spouses and in-laws are not different in this regard.  In the name of a pseudo-Christianity, some people I have encountered act like family is the greatest aspect of reality, not the necessary truths of reason (on which all else hinges), God, the righteousness rooted in God, and Christ.  Jesus affirms that there are things greater than family (see Deuteronomy 13:6-10, in isolation or also paired with Matthew 5:17-19), and he also identifies everyone who does what is morally required of them in God's name as one of his family members, in a nonliteral yet even more important sense than that of a blood relationship.  Genuine Christians are already family in this life before they enjoy eternal life together (Mark 10:29-30, Matthew 19:29) as they are Christ's figurative family.

As for the intensity of how Jesus presents the relative status of biological ties, one way he directly describes the social impact of his teachings is that he has come to the earth to bring a sword and division, not peace (Matthew 10:34, Luke 12:51).  The examples he immediately provides afterward in both Matthew 10 and Luke 12 are of family relationships engulfed by dissension, with sons and daughters being justified in opposing even their own parents they are to honor--obviously, any important philosophical truth is greater than parents either way, and the Bible agrees.  This is hardly the same level of devotion to family that many eagerly claim for themselves in the name of Christianity!  Peace, including peace with family members, is utterly secondary at best to one's allegiance to God and righteousness, and there is a more important family of true Christians than their biological mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, and all other such relations.

What Makes Something Supernatural?

A dragon, yeti, or kraken would not be by default more supernatural than a common ant or dog—unless it has some genuinely supernatural ability or underpinning to it.  What makes something supernatural is its immateriality, or the lack of any physical substance.  A variety of immaterial things exist by logical necessity and can be proven; they tend to be ignored or conflated with some irrelevant metaphysical thing, however.  The laws of logic themselves are among them, neither mind nor matter, although mind itself is immaterial because a thought, unlike a neuron, is intangible and is what animates the bodies of conscious beings.  Reason metaphysically confines all other things with its intrinsic truths (reason being false would require that it is still true), including physical objects, but it is independent of all of them.  The space that holds matter would by necessity likewise not be made of matter itself.

There is also the uncaused cause that created the cosmos or at least initiated the causal chain that led to the creation of matter, and time, which is not only nonphysical, but it is also required for material events to occur and it is logically possible for it to exist without the universe.  A mere dragon or yeti is not like these things: while some conceptions of such creatures would have explicitly supernatural origins, such as in many tales of fiction, they would just be animals.  A unique power such as breathing fire, a physical substance, would even be hypothetically compatible with scientific laws as they are popularly presented today, though it is consistency with logically necessary truths that really makes something possible or impossible in an ultimate sense.  Some people would still think of dragons and such as supernatural despite there being nothing about this that would have to be true.

Ironically, these people might deny the immateriality and therefore supernatural nature of these existents which can be proven.  They might at least reject that any of this is knowable.  Though the following is subject to the unverifiability of sensory perceptions or hearsay, a host of science-adjacent phenomena like photons are also supposed to be immaterial, yet this is not the typical way that the word supernatural is brought up.  In its somewhat accurate but more colloquial usage, it is either used to simply refer to anything subjectively abnormal (a very erroneous meaning of the word) or specifically to theological/spiritual beings like God or demons or even pagan entities like the Olympians, the Aesir and Vanir, and most of the Enneads, although they are not uncaused causes and are partially physical beings with superhuman abilities (like the true Biblical Jesus).

Of the Egyptian Enneads, only Atum is closer to a true god, but since he created himself, he cannot have been an uncaused cause and his proposed nature is not even logically possible, as something would have to exist before it existed to engage in self-creation.  He would nonetheless be supernatural as a being that came about without a material cause and that has powers that transcend the cosmos—the notion of him creating himself is just an inherent impossibility!  Calling this supernatural is still conceptually accurate because anything that is distinct from the physical universe would be separate from or above nature.  Would this have to be true of some unusual creature like the Loch Ness Monster, commonly thought of as a plesiosaur?  Not at all if it is just an animal!

This is why I said something like this would be no more supernatural than a familiar animal like a dog.  Yes, any animal mind that exists, as a consciousness, would have to be immaterial whether or not it is metaphysically brought into existence by a certain arrangement of matter, as emergent naturalism in this regard would hold.  The body of any creature, of course, would be and could only be physical.  Cryptozoological entities, wholly separate from whether or not any of the individual examples actually exist/existed, would not be supernatural just because they would be elusive or featured in fiction or perhaps very strange compared to the animals one might be regularly exposed to.  The idea that they would be supernatural because they are mythical or because evidence has not been found for them is asinine.  Supernatural does not mean bizarre or exotic.  It means something is immaterial and therefore not made of physical matter.

Thoughtless Oaths

On the matter of oaths, God communicates a significant amount of moral doctrines to Moses in the Pentateuch.  For instance, a full 21 verses address the Nazarite vow in Numbers 6, specifying what the man or woman who takes this optional vow must abstain from although such actions are otherwise permissible, as well as how they are to restart the duration of their vow if they falter and how they are to go to the priest at the end of the devoted period.  In all vows, though, God requires that the person making the oath do so without any flippancy whatsoever.  It does not actually matter what the content of the vow is.  To casually take an oath or prematurely commit oneself when one does not realize the ramifications of such a thing is condemned:

Leviticus 5:4-5--"'"or if anyone thoughtlessly takes an oath to do anything, whether good or evil (in any matter that one might carelessly swear about) even though they are unaware of it, but then they learn of it and realize their guilt--when anyone becomes aware that they are guilty in any of these matters, they must confess in what way they have sinned."'"

The thing promised could be amoral/nonsinful or even morally good in itself, such as paying for the special care of one's elderly parents, and still, thoughtlessly vowing to do whatever it might be is immoral.  This subject is addressed in Leviticus right after the matter of accidentally or obliviously coming into physical contact with the corpses of unclean animals or human uncleanness (5:2-3) and is situated in a context of unintentional sin (4:1-31, 5:2-6, 17-19).  No dishonesty was intended, and the thing might be done exactly as promised, but dishonesty is not actually the problem in view: that would be the carelessness in a person's thoughts and words.  Care is also prescribed when Deuteronomy revisits vows, focusing on oaths in God's name or addressed to God, for Yahweh will not exempt someone from the content of an oath just because they were rash:

Deuteronomy 23:21-23--"If you make a vow to the Lord your God, do not be slow to pay it, for the Lord your God will certainly demand it of you and you will be guilty of sin.  But if you refrain from making a vow, you will not be guilty.  Whatever your lips utter you must be sure to do, because you made your vow freely to the Lord your God with your own mouth."

The only logically necessary exception, which the text does not have to mention in order for it to still have to be the case, is vowing to do something which is irrational or evil, and thus which should not be done in itself.  Since it is impossible to be obligated to do something that one has an obligation to not do, it is clear which issue supercedes the other if someone was stupid enough to vow before God to do something sinful.  Someone who promises to commit murder or some other sin, whether of lesser, equal, or greater severity, should not act on their oath since they have pledged to do something evil.  Either way, they have sinned in making an oath to do something evil or in vowing to do something and not following through, which in this case is a moral necessity.

In all situations other than this, a person sins if he or she makes a vow thoughtlessly, however good the object of that oath is--even if someone takes Nazarite vow to temporarily submit himself or herself to unnecessary restrictions to express special devotion to God (Numbers 6:1-21).  The obligation is not just to do whatever one vows as long as it is not sinful, at least to the absolute best of one's ability.  There is also an obligation to not commit oneself to anything without sincerity and genuine understanding of the thing which one is pledging oneself to, at a minimum without making assumptions or misunderstanding the issue in question.  Rather than making vows, which are obviously permitted by God's laws in the Torah but can be morally dangerous, it is safer in one sense to simply let one's yes mean yes and no mean no.

Alleged Bible Contradictions: Deuteronomy 23:3-6, Ruth 1:4, 22, And 4:13, 16-17

The book of Deuteronomy contains a stern prohibition of allowing Moabites or Ammonites into "the assembly of the Lord", yet Ruth is said to be the great-grandmother of King David, not exactly someone shunned from Yahweh's assembly.  Should he have been, according to Deuteronomy?  The degree to which and duration for which the Moabites were not to be treated in an entirely identical manner to other foreigners, which is in turn how Israelites are to be treated since all people are humans with the same rights and obligations (Leviticus 19:33-34, Numbers 15:15-16), are not what many claim.  The reasons why the Old Testament does not contradict itself on Moabite exclusion and inclusion are nuanced, but nonetheless simple due to the logical necessities that link one concept or text to another.

Below are the central passages:

Deuteronomy 23:3-6--"No Ammonite or Moabite or any of their descendants may enter the assembly of the Lord, not even in the tenth generation.  For they did not come to meet you with bread and water on your way when you came out of Egypt, and they hired Balaam son of Beor from Pethor in Aram Naharaim to pronounce a curse on you.  However, the Lord your God would not listen to Balaam and turned the curse into a blessing for you, because the Lord your God loves you.  Do not seek a treaty of friendship with them as long as you live."

Ruth 1:4, 22--"They married Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other Ruth . . .  So Naomi returned from Moab accompanied by Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law, arriving in Bethlehem as the barley harvest was begining."

Ruth 4:13, 16-17--"So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife.  When he made love to her, the Lord enabled her to conceive, and she gave birth to a son . . . Then Naomi took the child in her arms and cared for him.  The women living there said, 'Naomi has a son!'  And they named him Obed.  He was the father of Jesse, the father of David."

The truth of the matter relates to many key points about what is and is not being said, the length of the obligatory exclusion from God's assembly, and the fact that mere behavior in a narrative does not contradict that behavior being condemned elsewhere (though Ruth and the Israelites who welcome her are not sinning).  For one thing, I want to point out the very narrow scope of the Deuteronomy 23:3-6 commands one way or another.  The text does not say to kill Moabites or Ammonites on sight (see Deuteronomy 2:9 as well) or do things to them that the Torah elsewhere condemns as inherent sins (Exodus 20:15, Deuteronomy 24:14-15, and so on).  Nor does it permit them without utter prescription.  All it literally commands about the Moabites is to not include them in the assembly of God or make a national treaty with them for ten generations.  Adherents of Rabbinic Judaism, that incredibly irrationalistic and unbiblical worldview, however, mistook this for a sexist passage--they believe that Deuteronomy prohibits only male Moabites and Ammonites from this privilege but does not apply to women.

Even if this did not contradict the Bible, it would contradict logic, for sexism is irrational and unjust: there is no valid stereotype of men or women, since gender is only a type of physical body, and something doable by either gender could not be immoral for only one of them.  Indeed, though contradicting logic is far more important since this alone renders something inherently impossible, everything about this is Biblically erroneous.  The real reasons why Deuteronomy 23 does not contradict Ruth have nothing to do with sexism.  It is not that Ruth has the right to mingle fully with the Israelites because she is a woman, which would be absolutely sexist against men.

Still, since these distorters of Judaism think the "masculine" language referring to Moabites in the original Hebrew means women are excluded from the meaning despite how the verses never differentiate between men and women, let us explore why they are linguistically incorrect anyway.  Explicitly male words like "man" and "his" absolutely can and often do refer to men and women alike, and sometimes both are mentioned and then referred to in male terms.  For just a handful of verses displaying this trend while speaking of moral obligations (all in same the Torah as Deuteronomy 23, not even counting other Old Testament books), see Exodus 21:20-21, 26-27, Leviticus 13:29-39, Numbers 5:5-10, 6:1-21, Deuteronomy 13:6-10, and 15:12-18 in older or more word-for-word translations like the King James Version.  Male words do not in themselves logically require that whatever is said is not meant for or applicable to women as well, regardless of the Bible, but the Old Testament uses male language like this rather frequently, directly specifying that women are included.

Certainly, sexist fools have selectively and erroneously tried to pretend like Biblical verses include or exclude women in accordance with whatever their personal or cultural philosophical assumptions are, not in accordance with what does and does not logically follow from the literal concepts articulated or what other parts of the Bible already illuminate about this.  These Rabbis and their philosophical blunders are stupid on every possible level, though Rabbinic Jews must all but revere them if they choose to hold to the illogical and unbiblical societal conditioning they face.  If forbidding Moabite men from the assembly but allowing Moabite women is not why there is no contradiction in the Old Testament on the inclusion of Moabites, then, what is?

People not obeying their moral obligations as described in Mosaic Law does not contradict the idea that the Law is correct, so Deuteronomy 23 and Ruth 4 do not conflict on this level.  Perhaps some moral philosophy other than the one in the Torah is truly correct, yes.  In this case, people could still disregard or actively trample upon any given obligation, and this would not nullify the obligation itself.  But the obligation to keep Moabites out of the assembly of God nonetheless is put forth in Deuteronomy 23 itself as having a time-restricted nature.  The tenth generation really is the tenth generation.  After this, Moabites are free to fully coexist among the Israelites like other foreigners.  The tenth generation is not presented as a euphemism for an indefinite number of generations, as many hold, which would absolutely then contradict Leviticus 19:33-34 and many other such verses as it is.

Even aside from the clear limitation on how long this exclusion from Yahweh's assembly was to last, do not assume that that the phrase "as long as you live" in the NIV must refer to all Israelite generations without a limit.  The word forever is how other translations state this part ("for ever" in translations like the KJV), but in no way does this have to mean literally forever.  See Exodus 21:5-6 and even Deuteronomy 15:16-17 in the very same book, which are clearly speaking of at most a particular person's lifetime using this wording, as a servant who declares lifelong commitment to their master/mistress is not said to either have eternal life in this world or remain a perpetual slave in some afterlife in order to continue their servitude.  Then there is Jonah 2:6, where the prophet Jonah's relatively brief time in the ocean before being swallowed by a giant sea creature is called "for ever" or "forever" depending on the translation.  Obviously, neither of these situations involved any sort of unending duration.  The same could be true of Deuteronomy 23 from this alone aside from the boundary of the tenth generation.

Inside and outside the Bible's teachings, there is simply nothing correct about the philosophical foundations of the stance of Rabbinic Judaism on Moabites and the assembly of Yahweh.  Certain common or historically impactful interpretations of Deuteronomy 23 absolutely contradict both logic and the Bible, including Deuteronomy 23!  The passage teaches nothing racist or sexist.  If it did, that would not make racism or sexism valid.  Logic would render this part of Biblical philosophy false.  Perhaps nothing is in reality good or evil, but logical contradictions cannot be true, and actions that can be done by anyone are by nature good or evil for anyone.  Morality is Biblically universal (Leviticus 20:22-24, Deuteronomy 9:5-6, 18:9-13, and many more): Moabites are not subhuman and do not have more or fewer obligations or human rights than Jews.  Ruth is not an exception to some eternally inferior Moabite status because of her gender and she is not lesser than Israelites because of her ancestry, and David is not an imposter king of Israel because he is descended from her.

The Accessibility Of Having Money "Work" For You

"Don't work for your money; make your money work for you," some might say—usually people who are already wealthy or economically stable and can afford the money and time necessary to allow their money to "work for" them in the form of long-term investments and compound interest.  It is not that this recommendation is erroneous, which is untrue.  It is that those positioned to benefit most from the more passive means of generating wealth are the ones who need it the least, and summarizing their approach in (on their own) vague statements like that in the beginning of the post can obscure how inaccessible the implementation is for many.

To obtain the money you can eventually allow to work for you, you need to initially work for pay, likely on a fixed schedule with a particular hourly wage, unless you steal or by extraordinarily fortunate or improbable chance acquire money without any effort (including by being born into a wealthy family or accidentally discovering abandoned money).  There is no such thing as skipping right to secure investments with compound interest unless you are literally born into wealth!  By logical necessity, you cannot just consistently make your money work for you unless you 1) actually have money and 2) have enough money leftover to invest after paying for necessities and/or having some amount of immediately accessible funds for emergencies.

Clearly, those struggling to gain any financial footing due to factors like unexpected layoffs, high costs, and low compensation relative to high costs are incapable of presently acting on this advice.  Besides, there will still probably have to be a period of time after putting the money "to work" where someone would still need to work for their money in a conventional job to, on one hand, amass more money to put to work, and, on the other hand, support themselves while their investments generate significant returns.  This is what the wealthy who have the monetary resources to direct into investments and the leisure time to monitor them closely might overlook.

In their case, it is classist to casually tell others who are struggling that they simply need to make their money work for them instead of working for a wage or a salary.  Making your money "work" for you rather than always having to work for money is the pragmatically superior option, but it is not available to everyone, and sometimes the people who promote this course of action do not acknowledge the barriers to living this out.  While there is nothing classist about the concept, it can easily be promoted in a distinctly classist manner by those who want to exude the illusion of intelligence and self-made success when their passively-generated wealth really stands on no such thing.  They had to possess some amount of wealth already!  More importantly, they likely obtained or maintained it by worker exploitation of some kind or by eager ideological slavery to the social construct of money.

For the kind of wealthy person who treats making money as an amusing game with little to no urgent stakes beyond ego and reputation among other wealthy people of the asinine kind, of course the potential difficulties of putting one's money to work without regularly working hours at a formal job might go unnoticed.  No one is stupid or detached because they are rich, but someone wealthy and willing to treat their money as a fortress might have never thought about how the people most in need of the benefits passive income brings are often unable to pursue it.  Alternatively, they might not care.  To believe in errors or present the inaccessible as the immediate solution to personal finance problems is flawed regardless, and truths about more passive wealth generation cannot be acted upon by those in true need.

Movie Review—The Nun II

"You have my eyes."

—Irene's mother, The Nun II

None of the Conjuring spin-offs besides Annabelle: Creation are genuinely great films.  Ranging from abysmal to mediocre, they lack the profound characterization of The Conjuring 2 or the excellent atmospheric horror of Creation.  2018's The Nun relied on a multitude of cheap and usually very telegraphed jump scares, but it had occasional moments that transcended its lackluster efforts, such as when a group of nuns is revealed to be an illusion.  The Nun II has no such thing.  Full of abundant yet incredibly undeveloped characters, relationships, events, and plot threads, as well as jump scares, it is an omen for the franchise as a whole: it needs to change its course of quality or be exorcised from cinema.

Production Values

Perhaps the only quality in the entire movie is found in the sets and framing of certain locations.  The opening, for instance, boasts some competent cinematography to complement the acting of the extremely minor characters shown, but in every other regard, there is nothing but squandered potential far past the point of merely being mediocre.  Taissa Farmiga, like practically every cast member, is wasted on shallow character development that never rises above terrible execution.  Storm Reid, who plays her rebellious companion, has given far better performances than this and with more to do as an actress.  Then there is the way that nothing in the lore is thoroughly addressed.  Many things come to light or happen practically just to stretch out the runtime of a very random story.

Without yet even getting into the laughably irrationalistic and unbiblical theology presented very seriously, albeit in very vague snippets that do not even try to delve into any sort of depth, the plot has no aspects that are not woefully superficial or brief.  One of my personal favorites is the issue of the goat in the stained glass that turns out to actually be affiliated with a demon, maybe even Satan himself.  Where does the goat demon go to when it just disappears twice?  It literally is unaccounted for in the story for a long period of time, even when the children it hunts are screaming at another apparition and are very vulnerable to its attacks.  In a later scene, once it reappears, it impales a girl and then just vanishes again with no one commenting on it whatsoever even after Valak is defeated!

Story

Some spoilers are below, not that the story is anything of remotely decent quality.

After a priest is immolated in his own sanctuary, Irene, a survivor of Valak from the first movie, is called on by the Catholic hierarchy to tend to the matter.  Priests have been dying, and Irene uncovers how Valak is involved.  Still bearing the cross marker on his neck from before, Maurice works at a boarding school, unaware of how he is possessed by the demon as it searches for the eyes of Saint Lucy (the historical figure of which was reportedly killed in 304 AD), which receive very little real attention or elaboration and are only used as an, unsurprisingly, underdeveloped plot device.

Intellectual Content

As well-crafted as some of the films in the overarching story are, The Conjuring has never represented Christian philosophy very accurately despite its Catholic trappings and references to the Christian deity.  One way this is evident here is the depiction of seeming human souls.  Valak can take any form, yes, so it could be impersonating some of the dead, but the souls shown contradict the real Biblical doctrine of the intermediate state before eternal life (or before destruction in hell).  In the world of The Conjuring, spirits of dead humans can interact with the world or be manipulated by other spirits.  In Christianity, which the franchise very loosely appeals to, the only thing that stirs up the otherwise unconscious spirits of the dead is the likes of sorcery, as with the witch of Endor summoning Saul (1 Samuel 28), or, in the case of Moses and Elijah at the Transfiguration (Matthew 17), divine power.  They are asleep until their resurrection (Daniel 12:2, 13), experiencing nothing at all (Ecclesiastes 9:5-10).

Sister Irene also invokes God and the Holy Spirit when trying to stop Maurice's possession, not even mentioning Jesus, but the impact of various things on the demon is utterly haphazard and more about extending the plot than anything of real theological weight or narrative stakes.  However, the most egregious philosophical thing related to her character is what she says about belief literally making parts of Christianity true and encouraging epistemological faith, not faithfulness to evidential probabilities, to a fellow nun.  Belief does not make anything true except that one believes, of course.  Even if metaphysical idealism is true and it is conscious experience that intentionally or unknowingly holds matter in existence, logical truths are not true because of belief, and neither would the existence of a supreme mind like that of God have anything to do with whether one believes in it, or, in turn, things like the presence of demonic minds or moral obligations rooted in the divine.

Conclusion

How far from the film that debuted Valak is this pathetic entry!  The heights of The Conjuring 2 are nowhere to be seen here.  Valak has been used yet again, but in a story that is a maelstrom of unfulfilled story ideas, poor characterization, and lore so shallowly explored that a vision scene shows something that could have made for a much better film than this abomination.  Almost worse than the demon it features, The Nun II is one of the most egregious entries to ever be released in the The Conjuring franchise.  Neither established horror actress Taissa Farmiga nor the limited connections to the broader story of other movies do anything to elevate this often directionless film with the depth of a puddle.  This is an awful cinematic offering.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  Some scenes include killings with blood, such as one where a hook falls on someone's head and leads to a pool of blood on the ground.

Still Dependent On Reason

Even if one was omniscient or lacked the epistemological limitation preventing knowledge of whether general sensory perceptions match the real external world [1], this knowledge would still depend on reason [2].  The truth about scientific issues also would depend on reason on the level of metaphysics, for nothing other than logical axioms can be true without axioms first being true, and yet axioms and other necessary truths are independent of all else, having either self-necessary veracity or following inevitably from another necessary truth.  The law of identity, for instance, can only be true.  If a thing is not what it is, then whatever else it is would still be what it is, rendering it true by self-necessity enjoined with the other handful of logical axioms.

This is true in the absence of all concrete examples beyond itself.  Still, an earthquake cannot be an earthquake, a star cannot be a star, and a vein cannot be a vein unless the law of identity is already true.  Likewise, if a stone exists, it is true that it is false that this very stone does not exist, but this is because of the inherent truth of the logical law of non-contradiction, as it might be called.  Furthermore, since one thing has to follow or not follow from another--without this, not even other axioms could be true since it follows from their falsity requiring their veracity that they are intrinsically true--this is a necessary fact independent of science altogether and that science entirely hinges on.

It is a logical necessity that there can be no laws of nature without a natural world (one follows from the other, since a physical world is a metaphysical prerequisite to the existence of scientific laws, or there being a way it behaves), and there can be no external world of matter without it being true that something is true, yet this is a matter of logic and not of science.  Things are true of the scientific method or of the natural world, but not ever strictly because of the cosmos.  Logic is separate from the material world and is still what it depends on.  Among many other things, if there is a material environment or object, it follows that it is not some environment or object other than what it is, and it also follows that it is not immaterial.  All of this can only be true if some things follow by logical necessity from others.

Logic has to be true for anything else to be true and it is also true in itself, regardless of all else.  Neither God nor nature can escape it, alter it, or have any relationship to it except one of utmost, strict metaphysical dependence.  The laws of reason are the supreme existent because of this, for a thing that is true in itself and that cannot be false cannot not exist.  Nature and even the uncaused cause, which is itself both something with an absolutely certain (logically necessary in light of contingent things) existence and vast superiority over the universe, could only be lesser than logic, for it alone is true in itself, and it is only logical possibility and necessity that allow for or require there to be an uncaused cause and physical cosmos.

Nothing but logical axioms has to exist in itself, because even the necessary existence of empty space, which is also distinct from the matter it holds and does not depend on God to create it since it is already present [3], only exists because it is both logically possible (consistent with axioms, which cannot be false) and necessary in light of the logical truth that the absence of matter still means there is a metaphysical dimension where it could have existed.  Other necessary truths that follow from axioms cannot even be true on their own, since they hinge on axioms, although they are inherently true in that nothing else could have followed and that since axioms cannot be false, the other logical truths stemming from them likewise cannot be false.  Metaphysical naturalism and epistemological scientism are somewhat popular in the modern West and yet are just as intrinsically, demonstrably false as theistic irrationalism (which is metaphysical) and epistemological fitheism.

[1].

A.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-reliability-of-senses.html

B.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/07/dreams-and-consciousness.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2021/05/omniscience-still-hinges-on-reason.html

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

Jeremiah 17 On The Sabbath

It is not a sin to do anything at all on the Sabbath on a mental or physical level.  In the examples given in Exodus 35:1-3 and Numbers 15:32-36, prohibited actions are always examples of physical work, for instance, like collecting natural objects outside.  Elsewhere, in Jeremiah 17:19-27, the prophet of the same name as the book is told by Yahweh to go to the gates of Jerusalem and proclaim to the rulers and people of Judah that God warns them to be careful in taking the Sabbath seriously.  Keeping this command by not working on the Sabbath is promised reward in the form of Judah's longevity and prosperity and violating this obligation is promised destruction.  This very chapter does also somewhat touch on what is permitted on this day as opposed to strictly what is not.

Following verses condemning the bringing of physical workloads out of homes (17:22 or into/out of the city (17:21) on the Sabbath, Jeremiah 17:27 says that people should not carry a load on the Sabbath when they walk through the gates of Jerusalem.  In this verse, which does not conflict with anything said in the Torah about the scope of prohibited work or permitted activity on the day of rest, it is acknowledged that people can certainly still walk around and perhaps even travel in and out of cities to some extent on the Sabbath.  Walking and generally moving the body is not immoral.  These acts still require mental or physical effort, but they are not the type of labor denounced.  It is performing gratuitous work, such as physical professional labor that one is not being forced to complete on the Sabbath, that is condemned.

In fact, Numbers 28:9-10 within the Torah prescribes the sacrifice of two year-old lambs without defect, for to offer a blemished animal to Yahweh would be immoral (Deuteronomy 17:1), on each Sabbath while the priesthood is still active.  Yes, Mosaic Law itself requires that the priests engage in whatever physical labor is necessary to make Sabbath offerings each week!  The brief account in Numbers 15:32-36 about a man caught picking up sticks on the Sabbath is one of a person who could have collected wood ahead of time (although to start a fire needlessly, with the type of exceptions addressed below, is already specifically condemned in Exodus 35:3) so his physical work is unnecessary, and still the people who found him would have been engaging in physical activity by walking around, escorting him to the assembly, and perhaps even executing him on that very day without sinning themselves.

Jesus references the Sabbath offerings in Matthew 12:5 in the context of affirming that of course it is not all mental or physical activity or effort that is evil on the Sabbath.  It would be sinful to merely survive consciously in many circumstances from the start of the Sabbath until its end if so.  He further pronounces helping animals and people as lawful on the Sabbath, for it is not sinful to do that which is good (Matthew 12:9-14).  Again, though, the Old Testament over and over neither condemns all activity on the Sabbath nor withholds miscellaneous examples of things one can do on the day of rest.  It is also not the case that Jesus rejects or alters Mosaic Law.  Rather, he freely speaks of its enduring obligations and righteousness (Matthew 5:17-19, 15:1-20, and 18:15-16, for instance).  His philosophical stances about the Sabbath are not presented as contrary to the Torah's theology even in "spirit."

One does not have to read all the way to the New Testament to find such clarifications, however.  Among the Old Testament points about the Sabbath is how Jeremiah 17 permits something the Torah never teaches directly or by logical extension.  No, activities like breathing, walking, eating, and the protection of one's own life are not immoral even on a sacred day of rest.  To walk in and out of a city is not prohibited work despite it requiring effort to varying extents.  Nowhere does Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, or Deuteronomy teach that people must remain motionless or do nothing for their convenience, safety, or pleasure on the Sabbath.  When Jeremiah 17:27 says to not carry a load when a person walks through the city gates on the Sabbath, it is by default regarding the mere walking through the gates as innocent.

Artificial Intelligence And The Potential Future Of Business

For now, artificial intelligence does not eliminate all jobs; it displaces some and creates others, such as with AI testing and programming in the latter case.  Certain jobs are easier to supplant with AI by nature, leaving others relatively safe for a time, and there would also have to be some persistent human oversight if this product of technology is to not in one way or another fail to benefit people (for instance, by a rogue AI seeking to eradicate the species).  While some kinds of output being enhanced or automated entirely by relying on AI can be helpful for business financials in the short-term, employees are the ones that suffer from this trend initially.  Depending on which of the logically possible directions the development of AI in business takes, though, workers left jobless would not be the only ones hurt.

A key problem for the very goal of relying on AI over workers—cutting costs such as those infernal employee wages or salaries to increase profits—is that there can be no profits when there is no consumer spending, and there will not be casual spending by the masses if they do not have jobs to generate income.  If companies were to abruptly, totally replace as many people with hardware or software at the earliest possible points, many workers would at large no longer have the financial freedom purchase a great many things (some might irresponsibly continue to do so).  Sales would decline because there would be little to no available money to spend, particularly on non-necessities.  This is if nothing else changed about a civilization other than its AI-related joblessness.  What if additional factors changed simultaneously?

Really, transitioning to AI to the point of sidestepping human labor would be positive if the machines addressed things like agricultural and other physical labor needs so that people could rest or focus on more philosophically important matters.  Again, some degree of human involvement would be necessary to ensure as much as possible that the artificial intelligence is acting in human interests, but many jobs could be eliminated as far as the need for constant, burdensome labor is concerned.  The problem in this case is not necessarily that machines could replace human workers; it is that if they do, many societies are intentionally structured so that resources would be needlessly kept from the people who would no longer have to conventionally work in order for there to be a thriving community, all for the sake of artificial class division, arrogance, and greed.

Workers being replaced by AI, aside from the unverifiable issue of whether a given AI is truly conscious and probably dangerous to humanity, does not have to be some devastating deathblow to millions of people with no morally valid (as opposed to the likes of stealing) or pragmatically obtainable way to survive other than professional labor under current social paradigms.  This does not follow.  It would depend on how and why it is implemented.  If advanced enough, machinery and artificial intelligence could absolutely deliver people from the drudgery, confinement, and risk of many kinds of labor.  At the same time, this would be if they had or were provided the resources to enjoy such a life—and American-style capitalism is not compatible with this.

"You Must Not Eat Their Meat Or Touch Their Carcasses"

Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 outline the dietary laws, clarifying which animals are allowed to be eaten.  Beyond merely not eating the flesh of the listed unclean animals or others in their categories, a set of commands that is never opposed or revoked in the New Testament [1] because there would be no reason for it to be (Matthew 5:17-19, Malachi 3:6, and so on), God does specifically say in Mosaic Law to never touch the carcasses of these animals.  This instruction about interaction with dead unclean creatures is included in Deuteronomy 14's briefer summary of the dietary laws and associated obligations, but it is Leviticus 11 that more exhaustively brings attention to the limitations on handling various animal corpses.

Leviticus 11:1-3, 7-8--"The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, 'Say to the Israelites: "Of all the animals that live on land, these are the ones you may eat: You may eat any animal that has a divided hoof and that chews the cud . . . And a pig, though it has a divided hoof, does not chew the cud; it is unclean for you.  You must not eat their meat or touch their carcasses; they are unclean for you."'"

Deuteronomy 14:7-8--"However, of those that chew the cud or that have a divided hoof you may not eat the camel, the rabbit or the hyrax.  Although they chew the cud, they do not have a divided hoof; they are ceremonially unclean for you.  The pig is also unclean; although it has a divided hoof, it does not chew the cud.  You are not to eat their meat or touch their carcasses."

Those who did happen to touch the carcasses were to wash their clothes (Leviticus 11:23-28).  With unclean lizards (11:29-31), the breaking of pots they fall into while dead is prescribed (11:33), though this might require some degree of physical contact to dismantle the object since the lizard is still inside.  Even then, becoming unclean because of such creatures in any other context is condemned (Leviticus 11:41-44, Leviticus 5:2, 5).  Such things would by extension apply to the dead bodies of octopuses, sharks, dolphins, starfish, sea slugs, and other macroscopic aquatic organisms:

Leviticus 11:10-11--"'"But all creatures is the seas or streams that do not have fins and scales--whether among all the swarming things or among all the other living creatures in the water--you are to regard as unclean.  And since you are to regard them as unclean, you must not eat their meat; you must regard their carcasses as unclean."'"

If touching a living unclean creature was condemned, then touching its corpse would certainly be prohibited, since human corpses are presented as unclean in themselves (Numbers 5:1-4, 6:6-7).  If touching the lifeless bodies of humans, who are made in God's image (Genesis 1:26-27, 5:1-2) makes someone ceremonially unclean, then certainly touching the body of a creature that is by default itself unclean for humans would also make someone unclean after it dies.  An obligation to never touch the carcass of an unclean animal, on the contrary, does not require that touching a living unclean animal is also sinful, and this is aside from how the Torah teaches as a vital doctrine to not add to its commands (Deuteronomy 4:2, 12:32).

Touching an unclean animal's corpse, though, is a form of contracting uncleanness that is actually condemned outright, whereas contact with the uncleanness of human bodies is prohibited only under special circumstances, like if a person is a Levitical high priest (Leviticus 21:10-12) or if they are a man or woman under the Nazarite vow (Numbers 6:1-8).  An ordinary Levitical priest is also to never make himself unclean for the human dead except for his parents, children, and siblings (Leviticus 21:1-4)--all immediate family members.

Leviticus 5:2 and 5 together also touch on how physical contact with the dead body of an unclean animal is sinful, even if a person engages in this without realizing it, yet verse 2 specifies that this applies whether the animal is wild or domestic.  Like how touching a living unclean animal is not condemned, keeping unclean animals on one's property is not condemned.  It really is just directly touching the carcass that is sinful beyond eating the meat.  This makes the Biblical morality of touching unclean animal corpses yet another example of a matter that could be severely misunderstood by legalists, albeit one of massively lesser importance than many other issues that could be or have been distorted by fools.

[1].

A.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/09/that-which-defiles.html

B.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2024/01/kill-and-eat.html

Discrimination Against Neither The Poor Nor The Rich

The Bible is very clear about its commands regarding the treatment of the poor.  Agricultural communities should not touch the very edges of their fields or go over their land a second time to take every bit of the food the land has produced (Leviticus 19:9-10).  Poor workers, like all laborers (Leviticus 19:13), are singled out as deserving to be paid their wages each day before the sun goes down (Deuteronomy 24:14-15).  Every seven years, all debts are to be annulled within a nation's borders (Deuteronomy 15:1-3), which would tremendously help the poor, and it is sin to withhold assistance from someone by not loaning to them because the year of debt cancellation is near (Deuteronomy 15:7-11).  A poor man or woman is not to be exploited in lawsuits (Exodus 23:6).  Poor men and women have the option of selling themselves into a temporary slavery where they are to be treated well (Exodus 21:26-27, Deuteronomy 5:12-15, and so on) and released every seven years with liberal amounts of physical resources (Deuteronomy 15:12-18).  The poor are never to be charged interest (Exodus 22:25), and their pledges, items taken as security for debts, are to be returned each day before sunset (Deuteronomy 24:12-13).

All of these commands of Yahweh, which are to be kept always even according to the New Testament unlike what some culturally relativistic "Christians" would pretend (Matthew 5:17-19, 15:3-9, etc.), provide a default safety net for the poor.  If agricultural industries intentionally saved food for the poor, accessed free of charge, if debts were cancelled without concern for profits moreso than people, if Biblical slavery was practiced as the alternative to crime and an escape from dire poverty, there truly would not have to be anyone poor, or at least anyone dying of hunger or thirst because of their class.  Storing up wealth would be much easier when payment is delivered the day of one's work and when one's collateral is not snatched away at the first opportunity.  Having at least some mandatory sources of food would greatly alleviate the psychological burdens on the poor that could obstruct doing something to escape.  While for reasons I will list below, partiality to the poor or the rich (in other words, classism in either direction) is of course irrational independent of the Bible (for it is rooted in the philosophical errors of stereotypes) and would still be condemned by the Bible, there are verses in the Torah that directly focus on the evil of discriminating against one or the other.  One of the verses I mentioned above, Exodus 23:6, is provided here in its full wording.

Exodus 23:2-3--"'Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong.  When you give testimony in a lawsuit, do not pervert justice by siding with the crowd, and so not show favoritism to a poor person in a lawsuit.'"

Exodus 23:6--"'Do not deny justice to your poor people in their lawsuits.'"

Leviticus 19:15--"'Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.'"

James 2:1-4--"My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism.  Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in.  If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, 'Here's a good seat for you,' but say to the poor man, 'You stand there' or 'Sit on the floor by my feet,' have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?"

Now, classist stereotypes and inherent philosophical hypocrisy, at the heart of all discrimination against someone based on their socioeconomic class, are as I said irrational independent of the Bible's veracity.  It does not logically follow from having no money/wealth, little money, or a great deal of money that one has a certain worldview or personality.  Having or not having wealth does not mean that someone will make assumptions about those who are not in their economic class, or in any way prioritize money more highly than its metaphysical status merits.  If the Bible said otherwise, it would not even be possible for that part of the Bible to be true.  These are necessary truths of reason, and thus experience and the Bible have to be consistent with them to even potentially be correct.  Though the absence of the verses I listed would not mean the Bible is classist, it does explicitly condemn this in all directions.  Also, the poor and the rich are both made in God's image (Genesis 1:26-27, 5:1-2), neither wealth nor poverty is condemned in itself (Deuteronomy 4:2 and 12:32 even say not to add to God's commands), and there are obvious examples of material wealth being a direct reward/blessing from God (Deuteronomy 15:4-6, 28:1-14, Job 42:10-15).  Without the other passages from the likes of Proverbs and the New Testament that also address wealth and poverty to varying degrees, the Torah is extremely clear.

No one is to be treated better or worse as a perpetrator or victim because of their class.  This is also taught indirectly in other ways.  If the Bible only said, for instance, that nonsexual assault without permanent injury is to be punished with monetary restitution that ensures the victim's healing and compensates them for missed work (Exodus 21:18-19), then it would already not matter if the offender or victim alike is rich or poor.  Justice would require such compensation if this is truly from God.  Thus, like how the obligation to not punish people for the sins of others (Deuteronomy 24:16) is already required by that of, say, executing an offender himself or herself when they sin accordingly (as with Exodus 22:20-22), it is not as if the Bible would teach that classism is just or permissible if not for Exodus 23:3, 6, and Leviticus 19:15.  Furthermore, it would in no way be ambiguous in light of Genesis 1:26-27 or other verses whether favoritism towards anyone because of their class is an injustice.  The contrary is logically impossible; the Bible agrees with reason.

There are no exceptions to what reason and justice require for the equal treatment of the rich and the poor in these ways.  Just as men and women are to be treated equally as victims (Exodus 21:15, 17, 20-21, 26-32, Leviticus 20:9) and as offenders (Leviticus 20:10-12, 14-16, 27, Numbers 5:5-7, Deuteronomy 13:6-10, 17:2-7), and just as foreigners (Exodus 22:21, 23:9) and the native-born are to be treated identically (Exodus 20:8-11, Leviticus 17:8-16, 24:13-22, Numbers 15:13-16, Deuteronomy 24:14-15, and so on)--with a small number exceptions for foreigners abroad (for instance, contrast Deuteronomy 15:1-3 with Leviticus 19:33-34)--the poor and the rich are to be recognized as people having the same human rights.  To show favoritism to one or the other is unjust.  It is irrational even apart from this.  Someone who thinks themself a Christian and discriminates against another person on the basis of class is guilty of a serious wrong.

The Clear Monotheism Of Deuteronomy

Genesis 1 clearly says God created the entirety of the initial cosmos and all of the first humans, and Numbers 27:16 calls Yahweh the god of all humankind/flesh or the giver of breath to all living things depending on the translation.  Yahweh is indeed the uncaused cause in the Torah's philosophy, and the sole one, in fact, though Genesis does not say this quite so openly.  Its exact wording only teaches that Yahweh preceded physical matter, humans, and animals and is metaphysically responsible for creating them.  Does the Torah in any way teach that other gods exist alongside Yahweh, though?  When I use the word gods here, I am exclusively speaking of literal uncaused causes, the only concept of a truly divine being.  A created/contingent being, like Athena is to Zeus and Zeus is to his own parents and so on in Greek mythology, is not a god or goddess; they could be superhuman in lifespan or explicitly supernatural in power, but to be an actual deity, a being must have not been created.  Many entities of pagan philosophy are no such thing.

Even so, the worship of one deity or pseudo-deity (like a demigod) over others with simultaneous acknowledgement of the existence of more is called henotheism.  According to some people, the Torah—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy—is henotheistic despite its reputation for rigid monotheism.  One can see frequent mentions of beings featured in pagan religions early in the Bible.  A host of statements such as a handful to be highlighted do not settle on their own whether the Torah teaches henotheism, with monotheism allegedly becoming predominant in later texts like the prophetic writings of the Old Testament.  For instance, see Exodus 12:12, written below.  It is still the case that, for instance, the phrasing of Yahweh passing judgment on the gods of Egypt could be meant in a way that denies their very existence.  This would simply not be overly clarified in the verse in question.

Exodus 12:12—"'On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt.  I am the Lord.'"

Exodus 20:3—"'You shall have no other gods before me.'"

Again, alone, these verses do not particularly establish explicit monotheism in the Torah's theology, but it certainly goes further than Exodus 20:3 in condemning the worship of other gods as something evil, deserving execution.  Neither do those like Exodus 22:20 with its prescription of capital punishment for anyone who sacrifices to a god other than Yahweh.  Deuteronomy 17:2-5 later addresses in its direct wording all acts of worship expressed towards other gods or the natural world, in saying that any man or woman who does such a thing has committed a sin worthy of death; however, Exodus 22:20 still teaches some form of theological exclusivity in prohibiting sacrifices to other gods, as do Deuteronomy 17 and 29 in a more holistic manner.  There is no inherent henotheism conveyed in such passages, since it would come down to whether the author meant that other gods actually exist, even if they are not true gods and goddesses but lesser superhuman beings.  Similarly, in Deuteronomy 12:31, for instance, nothing necessitates that the philosophy espoused in the text would entail the existence of Canaanite gods, only that some people practice those religions in the name of other gods and that it is righteous to not imitate them:

Exodus 22:20—"'Whoever sacrifices to any god other than the Lord must be destroyed.'"

Deuteronomy 12:31—"You must not worship the Lord your God in their way, because in worshiping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the Lord hates.  They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods."

Deuteronomy 17:2-5—"If a man or woman living among you in one of the towns the Lord gives you is found doing evil in the eyes of the Lord your God in violation of his covenant, and contrary to my command has worshiped other gods, bowing down to them or to the sun or the moon or the stars in the sky, and this has been brought to your attention, then you must investigate it thoroughly.  If it is true and it has been proved that this detestable thing has been done in Israel, take the man or woman who has done this evil deed to your city gate and stone that person to death."

Deuteronomy 29:18—"'Make sure there is no man or woman, clan or tribe among you today whose heart turns away from the Lord our God to go and worship the gods of those nations . . ."

While there is not any logical necessity in these exact words communicating nothing but monotheism, a philosophy holding that only one uncaused cause exists (or in a much looser sense, lesser "gods"), they certainly do not contain any strict affirmation of henotheism.  A person could assume they teach this, but it would only be an assumption, an unproven non sequitur believed on the basis of mere preference or custom or persuasion.  If there is no overt declaration of henotheism, then, does the Torah teach monotheism?  Though the ideas of Genesis 1 do require that Yahweh preceded the universe and is the God of all the cosmos and all humanity, it does not directly contradict the existence of multiple uncaused causes.  Indeed, it is not in Genesis but in Isaiah that it is directly articulated that Yahweh was not preceded by another deity/"god" (Isaiah 43:10) as opposed to being created by the real uncaused cause or some other being created by the true uncaused cause (and so on, however far back the causal chain would go to the real deity); of course, if Yahweh is the only god, this would also require that he is the uncaused cause.  Other parts of Deuteronomy are in fact very plainly monotheistic, just like the eventual declarations of Isaiah (Isaiah 43:10-11, 44:6, 45:5-6, 18, 21-22, 46:9):

Deuteronomy 4:39—"Acknowledge and take to heart today that the Lord is God in heaven above and the earth below.  There is no other."

Deuteronomy 32:39—"'See now that I myself am he!  There is no God besides me.  I put to death and I bring to life, I have wounded and I will heal, and no one can deliver out of my hand.'"

If there were lesser "gods," though the word would be very misleading in light of the conceptual distinction between a genuine uncaused cause and beings like the Olympians [1], the Bible would still not be inconsistent with such things.  However, in declaring that there is no other deity, the likes of Deuteronomy and Isaiah are not denying the existence of additional supernatural entities; they, together with Genesis, only present Yahweh as the only deity whatsoever, with all "others" being according to the Torah inanimate idols (Deuteronomy 4:28) and thus by default unworthy of reverence or perhaps demons (Leviticus 17:7).  The Bible is monotheistic, yes.  The Torah is also monotheistic.  It just is not as apparent as many people might expect based upon how fervently some insist that the entirety of the Bible is clearly monotheistic, instead of there being any isolated ambiguity at all about whether it is holding up Yahweh as the supreme God out of a pantheon.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2022/08/a-god-among-gods.html

"Because I Say So"

It is an incredibly arrogant and more importantly irrationalistic thing to tell one's child to believe or do something "Because I say so".  When parents make such a statement, either they have a logically correct reason for whatever they want their child to do—i.e., something both true and knowable by strict logical necessity—or they do not.  In the former case, the parent is treating logical necessity as secondary to their own whims or as unimportant in itself.  In the latter case, the parent does not even necessarily put on a facade within themself that there is a valid reason.  They simply want unwavering, unqualified obedience.  In neither instance can they possibly be in the right.

It does not matter what the real reason why they say this reduces down to.  Perhaps their parents said the same to them as a youth and they stupidly never objected or even attempted to assess whether this is rationalistically valid; instead, perhaps they crave exercising what they perceive to be the power to act as they please as long as their child is the recipient, seeking a deluded form of empowerment.  Maybe they believe, on the basis of erroneous assumptions (assumptions are irrational already), that children cannot understand the reasons they would present.  In any case, they are irrational to believe or behave as if they are above the necessary truths of reason, including the logical fact that it is irrational and/or unjust to force personal whims on other people because they are just that: subjective whims without any authority.

Nothing is true by logical necessity (except that they believe in errors) or epistemologically verifiable or morally good or evil because of their approval, personal pride, or spoken demands.  Employers, pastors, scientists, historians, and spouses might act yo the contrary, and some of the same parents might even selectively object when they do it.  Without necessarily using the exact words, these other people can communicate an identical concept: the logically impossible idea that their preferences or beliefs or illusory authority of some kind (as if anything but logic's necessary truths have inherent authority) makes something true, knowable, or morally good.  They might do exactly what some irrationalistic parents do, neglecting or denying reason in favor of a contradictory and arrogant subjectivism, and pretend like there is nothing higher or more foundational than their own erroneous thoughts.

Reason is not a person's thoughts, yet beliefs are rational or irrational based upon their alignment with reason.  Many people are irrational because they conflate subjectivity with objectivity and preference for truth in one way or another.  It is always more difficult to transition from irrationality to rationality because shedding assumptions and looking to abstract necessary truths requires effort, while making assumptions based on persuasion or preference when one is accustomed to it already takes no effort at all.  Thus, the difficulty of coming to rationalism and the ease of remaining a non-rationalist mean that it is always more likely than not that a given stranger will turn out to be a non-rationalist, if only they are given the opportunity to express their worldview.

Parents are not exempt from any of this.  Mothers and fathers who think being a parent makes them right, or gives them the right to act as if they are correct simply by virtue of being older than their children or being their biological creators, are philosophical insects.  Too incompetent to grasp logical necessity and too self-absorbed to have already turned towards reason, they settle for pretending to be more than they are, preying on the irrationality of any children who would believe them or trying to psychologically manipulate them into giving in.  Saying something does not make it true or morally good, and neither does believing it.  The appeal of egoism stops some parents from discovering or consistently recognizing these basic truths.

Jehu's Deception

2 Kings 10:18-28 tells of how King Jehu of Israel lures the ministers of Baal to their doom by announcing to all the land that servants of Baal are to gather or be killed.  He insists that, whereas Ahab before him served Baal a little, he will serve Baal much.  The promise of a great sacrifice to Baal and/or the threat of death for refraining succeeds in bringing the priests of the pagan pseudo-deity together.  The temple of the false god becomes full, and those in allegiance to Baal worship start their sacrifices.  Jehu has lied, as is affirmed early in this passage (10:19).  He has assembled the priests to slaughter them.  This he accomplishes before having the temple's sacred stone carried out and burned and its structure torn down.

The Bible does not say that God approved of the lies used to set these events in motion.  Even so, Mosaic Law in isolation from this narrative already indicates that God approves of what followed, that being the killing of Baal's priests.  Anyone who sacrifices to another/false deity (Exodus 22:20), worships nature or other gods (Deuteronomy 17:2-7), or even entices others to worship something besides Yahweh (Deuteronomy 13:6-11) deserves to die, so it is not the ultimate outcome itself, the death of the priests of Baal, that would be problematic.  His methods leading up to the actual killing would be the issue.  The wording very directly asserts that Jehu did act deceitfully, and intentionally so.

Under ordinary circumstances, one is to never lie (Leviticus 19:11).  In fact, God is said to hate deceitful people (Deuteronomy 25:15-16, Psalm 5:5-6), who deserve to be destroyed in the lake of fire and kept outside of New Jerusalem (Revelation 20:15, 21:8, 22:15).  Lying to avert a greater sin on one's own part or someone else's is the better course of action than the alternative, and the story of the Hebrew midwives Shiphrah and Puah in Exodus 1, as well as that of Rahab and the Israelite spies in the book of Joshua, exemplifies this.  They are all blessed in one way or another for purposefully misleading Pharaoh or the king of Jericho and his servants respectively, all of whom were enemies of God.

With Jehu, there was no need to lie to simply execute priests of Baal, which is already just in itself and does not require deception.  He does not deceive in order to save the life of someone who does not deserve to die, like Shiphrah and Puah.  His lies are gratuitous.  Yes, the killing of those who worship other gods/goddesses is not evil, and God does tell Jehu afterward that he has done what is right (2 Kings 10:30), albeit partially in reference to killing the sons of Ahab before this.  Jehu's actions towards the ministers of Baal are not fully righteous or fully evil.  Some of God's commands are upheld during this time, and some are not.

Lies are not all Jehu is guilty of from this point in the account onward.  Jehu does destroy Baal worship in Israel (10:28), yet he does not turn away from the worship of golden calves (10:29).  Immediately after telling of how God commended Jehu in verse 30, verse 31 says again emphasizes that he (the king) did not perfectly adhere to Mosaic Law, as is demanded of us all (Deuteronomy 30:11, Ecclesiastes 12:14, Malachi 3:6).  As with many monarchs of 1 and 2 Kings, not excluding David and Solomon, Jehu errs severely when he does refuse to do all of what is obligatory.  Yahweh rewards his selective righteousness by saying his descendants would reign to the fourth generation (2 Kings 10:30 again)--even as he begins decreasing the size of Israel's territory (10:32-33) during the rule of a very morally mixed man.

The Mental Plane: Other Minds

The most genuine form of privacy possible goes far beyond enjoying untracked Internet browsing or having one's body go physically unseen by others behind a material barrier like a wall.  It is only brought about by the inability for other beings to see within one's very mind.  You could be right in front of them, speaking or staring, and they could never know what you are thinking, whatever accurate or misleading clues are evident in your expressions, gestures, or other behaviors.  This utmost privacy appears to be taken for granted by many people, though they might painfully fixate on it in some situations.

Even then, they might overlook the fact that the mental plane is only seemingly shielded from other human minds, for if one cannot see into other minds (if they truly exist), one has no way of knowing if they can see into one's own.  It is just that it really does seem that they do not, as evidenced by the reactions people make when you do something they would probably have thought unexpected.  For instance, something as simple as a surprise birthday celebration would not be possible if people truly knew what others are thinking or that other minds are metaphysically present even if the presence of their physical bodies is concealed from the senses.  No one could ever be surprised in the fullest sense by other people at all if other minds were known.

Likewise, if someone acts shocked at evidence surfacing that another person's earlier statement is a lie, they probably, as far as the fallible, perception-based evidence suggests, could not see into the liar's mind at an earlier time if they did speak a mistruth.  A lie only becomes a deception if the party lied to believes the falsity, and no one could be deceived if people truly saw each others' minds instead of merely observing their behaviors or hearing their words.  Deception is logically impossible unless minds really are not epistemologically (and thus to some extent metaphysically) connected.  While it is not the same as lying, anyone who has ever struggled to keep from divulging information to another person is directly or indirectly hoping that the other party cannot simply gaze into their thoughts.

One's own inability to see into other minds does not mean any other minds that exist would have the same limitation, though: that is, there is no way to know from one's own epistemological boundaries that other beings would share the same confinement.  With non-necessary truths, what is true of one thing does not have to be true of another.  The latter in this case does not logically follow from the former.  This does not exclude some separate being like God gazing into one's thoughts, or even other people as far as I can prove/know, but the mental plane of each conscious being is still directly accessible to itself either way.  What is immediately experienced cannot be an illusion for someone making no assumptions--without avoiding assumptions, though consciousness along with logical axioms cannot be an illusion, a non-rationalist still cannot know this.  They can only assume.

One's own mind is indeed all that can be known other than the inherent truths of reason, such as logical axioms, and miscellaneous other facts entailed by them.  One cannot know from the sensory perception of vegetation that the plants really are there outside of mental experience, but the perception exists either way.  One cannot know from the fact that it appears like other human minds exists that they do, but one's consciousness is there to experience the fallible evidence regardless.  The mind is knowable through rationalistic introspection with absolute certainty.  Whether the real or seeming privacy it affords from other beings is treasured as a blessed relief or lamented as a source of unwanted isolation depends entirely on a person's subjective dispositions.

The Bible Does Not Trivialize Violence Against Men, By Women Or Men

With physical and verbal violence/abuse, as with other matters, the Bible does not just not deny, but is ruthlessly direct in affirming that nothing is of greater or lesser severity because of the recipient's gender.  According to a multitude of passages, matters of assault, murder, negligent killing/death, corporal punishment, and verbal cursing are to be strictly handled without discrimination on the basis of gender.  The status of slaves and parents, brought up in relation to the aforementioned categories of sin, also surfaces again and again as one of absolute gender equality in the verses below.  No, there are many other passages in Mosaic Law and elsewhere that explicitly affirm gender equality in rights and obligations and just penalties, and there are plenty of passages that do not teach sexism as many pretend, as well as passages that conflict with specific gender stereotypes in their moral prescriptions/condemnations or in their narrative accounts.  Here, however, are examples of verses directly about the issue of gender equality in physical and verbal violence from early in the Torah's laws:

Exodus 21:15—"'Anyone who attacks their father or mother is to be put to death.'"

Exodus 21:17—"'Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.'"

Exodus 21:20—"'Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result,'"

Exodus 21:26-27—"'An owner who hits a male or female slave in the eye and destroys it must let the slave go free to compensate for the eye.  And an owner who knocks out the tooth of a male or female slave must let the slave go free to compensate for the tooth.'"

Exodus 21:28-29, 31-32—"'If a bull gores a man or woman to death, the bull is to be stoned to death, and its meat must not be eaten.  But the owner of the bull will not be held responsible.  If, however, the bull has had the habit of goring and the owner has been warned but has not kept it penned up and it kills a man or woman, the bull is to be stoned to death, and its owner also is to be put to death . . . This law also applies if the bull gores a son or daughter.  If the bull gores a male or female slave, the owner must pay thirty shekels of silver to the master of the slave, and the bull is to be stoned to death.'"

Leviticus 20:9—"'Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.  Because they have cursed their father or mother, their blood will be on their own head.'"

Deuteronomy 12:31—"You must not worship the Lord your God in their way, because in worshiping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the Lord hates.  They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods."

Deuteronomy 18:10—"Let no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire . . ."

While the next verses do not mention both male and female victims in their fundamental linguistic structure like the passages above, there is also a part of the Torah that directly acknowledges a potentially sexual assault (or an assault adjacent to a sexual kind, which still has ramifications for it either way) of men by women other than rape—female-male rape being something stories like that of Lot's daughters in Genesis 19 include in the Bible.  By logical necessity and as would follow anyway from Genesis 1:26-27 and 5:1-2, such women deserve death just like men who rape women (Deuteronomy 22:25-26).  The following verses do not teach in their literal wording or by logical extension that men are morally free to assault women in the equivalent way, or that men doing this would be a lesser mistreatment than the example given, but they do touch directly on a woman attacking a man and condemn a particular act even in defense of her family:

Deuteronomy 25:11-12—"If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, you shall cut off her hand.  Show her no pity."

As the first set of passages certainly emphasize, the Bible very overtly and repeatedly condemns the idea that violent and other sins against women are less severe than those same offenses against men—and the likewise utterly sexist idea that those against men are less severe than those against women.  Moreover, these laws do not exempt women as aggressors, and Deuteronomy 25:11-12 specifically condemns women who do wrong in physical altercations.  The same violent acts or words are equal in nature if the offender is a man or woman and if the victim is a man or woman.  It is logically impossible, even if the Bible is not true, for the same act by or against a man or woman to be different in severity or moral weight because of the genitalia of one party or the other.  The Bible does more than not deny any of this.  In the very first chapter prescribing punishments for particular criminal sins, one chapter after the introduction of the Ten Commandments, gender equality is regularly emphasized.  To not deny the logical equivalence would be enough to be consistent with it.  The Bible does far more.

Contrary to what reason and the Bible dictate, many I have met who call themselves Christians who think men cannot be victimized by women physically or sexually (as if sexual assault is not a subcategory of physical abuse as it is).  Otherwise, they say it is worse for a man to abuse a woman than for a woman to abuse a man; if a man is victimized in some way by either a man or a woman, depending on the specific offense against him, many people simply talk and act as if they do not care much or at all.  Murder is for some reason regarded even by fools I have met as being more equivalent no matter the gender of the perpetrator or victim. With physical assaults short of murder, or with sexual assaults up to rape itself, there is utterly irrationalistic and unbiblical reluctance to acknowledge men as victims, women as violent or otherwise grave sinners, and women as not having some special right to unflinchingly delicate treatment no matter what they believe or do.

If all the Bible ever said about gender equality was that both men and women are made in God's image in Genesis 1:26-27, this would be enough to plainly affirm what reason reveals to any willing person, for gender equality is true by logical necessity.  The ramifications of this include the same tenets of equality in justice put forth in Exodus 21.  This independently true equivalence of men and women as people and the logical falsity of gender stereotypes does not mean morality exists, but that if it does (something that has to be true if Christianity is true), genitals could not possibly determine one's rights and obligations regarding violence and a host of other things.  Anything that does not hinge on literal genitalia, from stereotypical mental traits to the secular or "Christian" complementarian double standards in ethical matters, would be irrelevant to the metaphysics of gender and to moral standing.  In my life, I have very frequently, in conversation with legions of non-rationalists and in entertainment, seen the cultural prominence of the irrational notion that if a woman assaults a man physically/sexually, she has done nothing wrong or significant, or she has committed a lesser offense at best.  The Bible goes out of its way to teach not the inverse, that men are the ones that have not sinned or have trivially sinned in doing such things to women, but to affirm true equality.

The Two Possible Reasons For Low Wages

As multifaceted as business can be, there are ultimately only two core reasons why a company, if applicable, pays its workers too little to survive or flourish on.  There might be plenty of fallacious excuses, of course.  Underpayment might be regarded as an inherent part of most business structures, despite how every business can be restructured, for better or worse, if only those with the most power decide to make it happen.  There are multiple logically possible corporate structures, not that this makes all of them pragmatically, morally, or otherwise philosophically valid.  Businesses only operate in a certain way because they are made or allowed to.

In light of this, there is no inevitable reason why wages and salaries are too low to truly, comfortably live on.  One possibility is that the business has the revenue to support each full-time employee with livable compensation, and leadership still decides otherwise because it would diminish the amount of profit available.  In other words, those at the top of the corporate hierarchy could absolutely pay each of them enough that they do not struggle with housing, food, transportation, basic healthcare, and so on.  The owner could be sluggish about considering updates for compensation to at least match the rising cost of living without any actual malice, but it still reduces down to some sort of fallacy or egoism either way.

The only other possibility is that the business literally cannot survive in its current configuration without explicitly relying on underpayment of workers in order to pay its expenses and make a profit.  If this is truly the case, and it could be particularly with certain small businesses due to being founded on exploitation and resource mismanagement, then the business does not have the financial capacity to continue and be worthy of having employees.  The owner(s) might even privately acknowledge that the pay is subpar, along with any benefits that might or might not be offered; it is just that this is intentional for the sake of keeping the company afloat rather than amassing even more profit.

In one the first category, the company leadership is delusional by virtue of living in an egoistic way, with no regard for reason and morality over their subjective whims and pragmatic success.  In the second, the company is purposefully or negligently engineered from the start to be incredibly inefficient with its resources, including its human resources, who are incentivized to leave whether the owner believes so or not.  Even aside from any legitimate moral errors, and the philosophical idiocy of subjectivist or egoistic beliefs one way or another, low wages or salaries objectively hinder the success of businesses by depriving employees of the one thing professional work is inherently supposed to provide: monetary stability.

There is no valid reason for paying full-time workers anything less than what is required to survive and save money past covering basic living costs like rent, electricity, and so on.  Doing otherwise deprives employees of the only core need that work fulfills--financial stability--and treats them in a way that is by default exploitative.  Even if there is no such thing as morality or if objective morality is really such that this sort of operation is not unjust, it is nonetheless pragmatically asinine.  Businesses, from small businesses to megacorporations, need workers if they are to expand beyond the scope of one single person's output; obstructing the literal reason for professional labor as a whole makes outcomes like turnover far more probable.