Delusions About Workplace Productivity

The obsession with worker productivity—often due to the hope of extracting every last penny from employees and consumers—can be accompanied by the belief that more hours will entail more productivity.  However, concentration or personal investment in work can wane as the hours stretch on, which might result in fewer tasks being accomplished or tasks being completed, but only with the bare minimum level of attention (or perhaps not even enough to ensure quality).  This is not necessarily because of employee laziness or intentional sabotage of the end goal.  No, simply having workers act, especially with mentally or physically demanding jobs, for long periods of time can have a draining impact that greatly increases the likelihood of lesser work or less polished work being done.  Employers or managers might think very fallacious things about this issue in their emotionalism.

They might think that more hours of labor means the same level of output will come out of each hour from each person, or that adding more hours of labor is the default/best approach to maximizing human output across industries and roles.  It is not a social study or any other such secondary or hearsay evidence that points to the alternative, but it is true by logical necessity, and thus true independent of fluctuating social trends (as well as independent of what is observed in a given case), that decreases in human productivity become more probable with longer hours.  Where that line is depends on the individual worker and not an extrapolated average of other workers' productivity or some other such irrelevant thing.

Replacing people with machines to boost productivity, as well as perhaps begrudgingly extending hours or hiring more staff members, seems to be quite popular when applicable as a means of achieving greater output.  Cutting hours to make the most of heightened employee concentration is not, and certainly not cutting hours while keeping the same amount of pay to ensure the workers' financial stability and incentivize them to actually care about their work.  Even with jobs that literally depend on an employee being on standby (as with customer service), meaning that the tasks will not be constant or necessarily predictable, one might see employers cut hours without keeping the same overall pay, but expect the same total level of productivity for other fallacious reasons when the very nature of the job's output fluctuates.

Productivity of a professional kind is not the ultimate thing it is regarded as by a certain kind of stupid, classist, or socially conditioned person [1], but it also is not facilitated by longer hours alone.  Reducing hours to intensify the window of peak attention and increasing pay (and especially both together!) are the best ways to promote and reward greater productivity.  It is just that these are the very things that the typical employer or manager is unwilling to do because of irrationalistic allegiance to tradition, or maybe because they would have fewer ways to hold a sense of power over financially desperate employees.  Whatever manipulation or threats they might be accustomed to relying on would not have the same potency when a worker does not need them quite as desperately.

Human productivity, though it could very greatly from person to reason and is not monolithic or deterministic in any way, is made far more probable with these two conditions met independently or together.  It is not ever likely on its own to be enhanced by any superficial employee appreciation events or free but cheap company merchandise when there is no livable (or better) compensation or, as long as it does not come at the expense of livable income, fewer hours.  Corporate/professional productivity is a utilitarian thing at best, having no inherent significance except as a means to an end.  Making it successful as a means to the employee end of working to live without being swallowed up or suffocated by it is always a more pragmatic option as it is.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/01/the-greatest-form-of-productivity.html

Why The Universe Functions As It Does

Someone who wonders why the flow of electrons generates a current that can be utilized to power technology like automobiles, cellular phones, and gaming consoles might not just be wondering about the probable scientific correlations behind it, or about how the current scientific paradigm on the nature of electricity, which might be tossed aside by the masses within the year, relates to broader atomic theory and quantum physics.  They might also or instead be pondering the more foundational, important issue of why out of all the many logically possible phenomena that could have happened when electrons flow, the generation of electric current is the one that is observed.

Likewise, one person might wonder about why fire is present in the observed natural world at all, or why it has the qualities it does rather than certain other logically possible alternatives.  Another person might instead dwell on the scientific reasons why fire reduces some materials to ashes, and they might focus on hearsay about the temperature of the flame and the molecular composition of the burning material having to be just right to convert a given substance to ashes in a specific timeframe, as if that is the deepest level of metaphysics relevant to the issue.  More than the physical/environmental circumstances having to be just right, why does fire consume materials to begin with instead of freezing or dampening them or having no macroscopic or chemical effect whatsoever?

Usually, when asked something like this, the typical person, a non-rationalist, will just recount what is directly observed (or allegedly observed by someone else in a likely distant laboratory or natural environment) or cite whatever the predominant paradigm is at the time while assuming it is true because it is contemporary and popular.  The former is not an explanation as to why on a causal level one natural event follows another—as if a being with human limitations could ever know that one material thing in the external world is truly causing another rather than that the two are correlated on the level of subjective perception [1]!  Still, neither the former nor the latter is a proof as to why, out of all the logical possibilities (and non-rationalists, who do not know or affirm axioms, cannot know what is possible or impossible), what we see is how the universe functions when this could have been very different.

Logic is intrinsically supreme over the scientific method (epistemologically) and the natural world itself (metaphysically) on every level [2].  No one will begin moving from the less foundational layer as to why a scientific occurrence would exist to the more foundational one without at least coming closer to being a rationalist.  Non-rationalists, not knowing or accepting logical axioms and the other necessary truths that follow from them, cannot know anything, though they can assume things, for all knowledge depends on reason and all belief apart from logical necessity is assumption.  Beyond not having genuine knowledge of any concept they happen to think of or hear about, they are also too philosophically lost to even grasp what truly makes something logically possible.

It is not empirical observation that makes something metaphysically possible.  No, it must be logically possible already, which is dictated by consistency with the inherent truths of axioms, if it is going to be observed, and not every possibility about the physical cosmos is true at once.  Why, when one lets go of a bucket, does it fall below instead of floating in place or diagonally ascending in one direction or another?  This is just as logically possible as objects on Earth falling downward until a surface catches them.  Why does a lithium ion battery not recharge itself by default rather than requiring the electrons to be forced back to the anode by an external cord?  Why is there less oxygen at higher altitudes than at ground level instead of an equal or greater amount?  Though no logically contradictory qualities are possible, the universe did not have to be as it is (or appears to be), and yet it is one particular set of logical possibilities that would apply to how it functions.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2019/07/correlative-relationships.html

[2].  For elaboration, see posts such as these:

A.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/06/scientific-contingencies.html

B.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/09/rationalism-is-not-evidentialism.html

The God Who Mocks

Love and hatred are not necessarily exclusive, not in the sense that it is impossible to experience both at once towards the same person or situation, and not in the sense that if one is morally obligatory, the other is immoral.  The Biblical God loves people (Deuteronomy 10:19, Psalm 103:11-12, John 3:16) enough to not want any of the wicked to perish and to offer mercy to all of them (1 Timothy 2:3-6, 2 Peter 3:8-9).  He also hates plenty of them, a doctrine neglected or denied entirely by many so-called Christians because it makes them subjectively uncomfortable (Leviticus 20:23, Deuteronomy 25:16, Psalm 5:5-6, and so on).  More than this, God is described as actively mocking certain people in Psalm 2:4.

The first verses of this chapter speak of human leaders raging and rallying together as if they can overpower God, though the text also mentions an unspecified "anointed" figure aligned with God.  Acts 4:23-27 teaches that at least in part, the passage of Psalm 2 pertains to the collusion of Roman powers against Christ.  Unlike some New Testament descriptions of Messianic prophecies, this one is relatively more overt in the Old Testament, for it mentions words like "son" in reference to a figure connected with Yahweh.  However, there is more here than just Messianic language and a declaration of God's superiority to seething, arrogant, irrational human rulers who think they could overcome the uncaused cause.

Just as Psalms affirms more than once that God hates certain people (Psalm 5:5-6, 11:5) and sees David celebrate his own hatred of the wicked (Psalm 139:19-24), something that cannot itself be inherently evil if God himself hates them, verse 4 of its second chapter says that God scoffs at the aforementioned rebels against him, laughing at them.  The Biblical deity is not a being that harbors only unconditional affection for his enemies, but one that is also full of fury, loathing, and mockery.  Righteous people, once they are the only humans still in existence (Matthew 10:28, 2 Peter 2:6), are going to share in this rightful contempt towards the dead bodies (they are not animated by souls that suffer forever!) of Yahweh's enemies in the eschatological future (Isaiah 66:22-24).

It is only someone who disregards or mocks reason, truth, justice, or those aligned with them that could deserve condemnation or scorn for their mockery.  These are the kinds of people that Yahweh is said to despise.  According to Psalm 2:4, he scoffs at the immoral, or at a minimum the particular set of immoral people mentioned in the chapter.  Psalm 37:13 adds that he laughs at the wicked because of their future destiny, which many verses, including the one referenced at the start of the sentence, plainly say is one of cessation of life on a permanent, phenomenological level.

To mock such people makes one like God no less than loving them and showing persistent, deep mercy to them makes one like God.  The Bible teaches that God does all of these things.  Of course, there is nothing logically incompatible about these qualities independent of Biblical doctrine or whether the Bible is true in the first place.  There is nuance here in its philosophical positions, but it neither embraces contradictory ideas nor puts forward something too challenging to grasp for anyone who actually tries without making assumptions.  Yahweh loves, Yahweh hates, and Yahweh mocks, the latter two dispositions only being held towards the unrepentant wicked.  

Motivations For Opposing Abortion

Being against abortion out of rationalistic consistency (though no moral obligation is provable, one can be consistent in them and be committed to living for the only values system that is probabilistic, that being Christianity's widely misunderstood moral tenets) and egalitarian humanitarianism does not contradict logical axioms.  It is possible to be pro-life without making any assumptions, without elevating the unborn over those outside the womb, and without discriminating against anyone because of their gender.  Certain liberals pretend this is not the case, that someone can only be pro-life in an effort to ignore those who have already been born, to control women, or to preserve systematic poverty that does make it easier to exploit workers (a tired, desperate worker is less likely to resist workplace tyranny).

None of these things are true.  Perhaps some people with political or economic power do oppose abortion because they want a steady supply of poverty slaves, too desperate or manipulated to easily escape exploitative labor.  Declining birthrates would mean a smaller pool of people to potentially exploit.  This is possible, but even if it was the only reason why any living person was against abortion, it would not be the only logically possible motivation and would still be irrelevant to whether abortion really is morally permissible or abominable.  There is also the fact that it does not follow from one person hating abortion for this reason that anyone else does as well.

Another motivation that might be present for some people, but that has nothing to do with the real logical, scientific, or moral nature of abortion, is misogyny.  It is possible for someone to condemn abortion because it is something done to a woman's body to terminate a pregnancy, the thought of a woman exercising autonomy frightening or angering them.  It neither follows from this being possible that a pro-life person is driven by sexism against women nor follows from some people doing this that others are.  No one has a right to do anything immoral, and the same things are obligatory, evil, or amoral for both men and women.  The issue is whether fetuses are humans and whether killing unborn humans for any reason other than to save the mother's life is immoral.  The moral rights of the unborn as humans and the moral freedom of people outside the womb would be the same regardless of age, size, or gender.

This is the true egalitarianism of pro-life ideology itself when it is not connected to any fallacies.  Even if pro-choice philosophy was true, it would still not be the case that everyone who opposes it must be motivated by classism or sexism against women or that they will trample on people the moment they are born.  These are liberal myths that are just as false as the conservative idea that no moral issue could be more important than abortion.  Is a pro-life proponent rational just because they are pro-life?  Not at all, as anyone can believe that which is true and demonstrable for irrationalistic reasons like emotional comfort, societal encouragement, tradition, or sheer fucking assumptions made without any external pressures from other people or experiences.  They are also not irrational simply for being pro-life.

People are not necessarily pro-life because they want to trap the poor in lifelong labor or shackle women to motherhood.  In fact, this is likely to not even be hinted to be the real motivation by even the most emotionalistic conservative fools.  Rational or not, there are many reasons someone could be pro-life, and there are no rational reasons at all why one would be pro-choice since inseparable tenets of this stance include at least one of the following: that moral obligations are knowable through conscience, that the unborn are not human, that some humans have rights and not others due to preference or legal norms, that convenience justifies killing a person, or that men are irrelevant to the nature of abortion and whatever a woman wants deserves to be supported because she is a woman.  As false or assumption-based as many conservative beliefs about abortion are, the liberal pro-choice stance is inherently irrational and in many of its forms sexist itself, just against primarily men, as if all people are not capable of knowing and striving for the truth no matter their gender even if almost no one does.

Blessed Are The Peacemakers

A verse that might be fairly popular in some modern pseudo-Christian circles, which tend to be full of people who know neither logical necessity nor the Old Testament (or the New, for that matter!), is Matthew 5:9, where Jesus exclaims that those who are peacemakers are blessed.  Assuming that there is some disparity between the moral philosophy of the Old Testament and that of the New, such people might have never even considered that the Old Testament prescribes peacemaking and that the New Testament actively teaches both that peace is not supreme and that the more conflict-oriented parts of Mosaic Law are not unjust.  The idea verbalized by Jesus does not conflict with any of this:

Matthew 5:9—"'Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.'"

One of the Torah verses connected with this is not something many might initially think of despite making peace being the literally stated goal.  Warfare is not to be the first inclination of political powers, and even when there is an increasing risk of armed conflict, peace should be pursued before any blood has to be shed.  This is a central part of Deuteronomy's prescriptions for how to handle impending warfare when there is already a hostile situation between nations:

Deuteronomy 20:10—"When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace."

See here for detailed elaboration on the surrounding verses and why they are not sexist [1] against either men or women, despite how in isolation some of them might appear so.  Even then, Deuteronomy 20:10's prescription of making peace with wartime enemies instead of rushing into sieges is not unrelated to what Jesus says about peacemakers.  In fact, because he says he does not abolish the obligations written in Mosaic Law (Matthew 5:17-19), in no way would be oppose sincerely seeking peace ahead of battles and then killing all combatants if this offer is refused.

Specifically treating one's enemies in accordance with their full human rights, which do include the right of each person to have their lost or stolen property returned (Deuteronomy 22:1-3), is also addressed in the book of Exodus.  Peace is still not the primary focus, as the passage is about particular obligations towards people and animals regardless of whether eliminating conflict is the intention, but peace is not irrelevant to the actions:

Exodus 23:4-5—"'If you come across your enemy's ox or donkey wandering off, be sure to return it.  If you see the donkey of someone who hates you fallen down under its load, do not leave it there; be sure you help them with it.'"

Other parts of the Bible, including words of Jesus himself, acknowledge directly or indirectly (but still by logical extension) that pursuing or maintaining peace is not always obligatory.  While attempting to be a peacemaker before military sieges is universally mandatory according to Yahweh's laws, peace is not the only or most important thing to prioritize.  For instance, people are not required to make peace with a kidnapper, but they are obligated to put them to death (Exodus 21:16).  Ecclesiastes and Matthew are more explicit in saying that not every situation morally calls for being a peacemaker:

Ecclesiastes 3:1, 8—"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: . . . a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace."

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

Peace for the sake of peace is an illogical and unbiblical goal.  The only reason why someone would try to bring this about is for emotionalistic/subjectivist or societally conditioned reasons.  In the very same book of the New Testament where he is presented as calling peacemakers blessed, Jesus clarifies that he is not against all forms of conflict, or else people could not legitimately oppose their family members for the sake of philosophical truths, such as (according to Christianity, at least) the obligation to follow Christ.  He also says in Matthew 5 after uttering "Blessed are the peacemakers" that there is nothing morally deficient or mutable about the Torah laws that correspond to God's nature, which clearly allow some instances of warfare and mandate some instances of capital punishment.  Peace truly should be sought in select circumstances and also cannot matter most.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2024/05/the-torah-on-treatment-of-wartime-male.html

The American Nightmare

The American Dream, historically available moreso to people of a particular demographic to begin with, has given way to a nightmare of a life where almost every waking moment is devoted to labor, either to serve a likely abusive employer for pay or to address practical needs like cooking and cleaning in one's "free" time.  The glaring exception is the life of someone who is already wealthy enough to not need to work or has the right connections to bypass the scrambling of the standard American seeking more accessible employment.  Hard workers can be overlooked as it is, but even those who work hard might be trapped within the almost insurmountable pitfalls of the contemporary minimum wage, one of the worst obstacles to upward economic mobility.  Entirely apart from the exact concrete numbers within a given established economy, the concept of an unlivable minimum wage is logically invalid: there is no basis for requiring a minimum wage that does not really guarantee a baseline level of financial security for the full-time worker.

Still, the conrete numbers are astonishingly inadequate.  Though some states have their own respective minimum wage, the federal minimum wage remains at $7.25.  Working 40 hours a week only earns an abysmal $290 at this rate, falling short of even $300 for a single week.  If someone worked 40 hours every week, with absolutely no absent days due to sickness they can scarcely afford to remedy anyway, they would barely cross the threshold of $15,000.  Suppose that their rent is only $1,000 a month and not higher, as is not uncommon.  Not only would monthly rent or a mortgage likely eat through the majority of their monthly and annual pay, if not all of it, but securing an apartment, heralded as the more accessible option compared to buying a home, is often locked behind a ridiculous and arbitrary requirement.  Prospective renters must usually show evidence that they make three times the cost of rent on a monthly basis.  How the fuck is someone receiving $7.25 an hour supposed to be able to afford this?  And even though employers can and often have paid more than the federal minimum wage just to hire workers, it takes a great deal more than $7.25 to be remotely livable.

For asinine reasons, some look down on the people who make a minimum or generally low wage rather than regard those who oppress them with anger, hostility, and contempt.  Fallacious reasons for this abound, including the idea that anyone who makes minimum wage must be lazy or all but subhuman.  In a mere 15 minutes, I make more than the federal minimum hourly wage, and the cost of living—not the cost of spending extravagantly on luxuries unrelated to health and physical survival, but that of basic living—can still be frustrating.  It would be far more devastating for the poor, such as those working a minimum wage job with little to no savings.  If people have a right to life, as the conservatives who often oppose minimum wage updates insist (and as is Biblical to an extent), they have the inflexible moral right to have access to affordable life necessities like housing and food in exchange for their full-time labor.

Certainly, capitalism does not inherently require that people be denied such things; American-style hyper-capitalism does.  Yet many people reject capitalism itself as if has only one logically possible form, or they revere America's form of it.  Why might someone revere this system and the philosophy that underpins it?  They might be content for people to suffer not for the sake of justice or laziness, but to ensure greater corporate profits and thus a "thriving" economy, or perhaps they might be fortunate enough to not be as directly impacted by the worst of American capitalism and fallaciously conclude that there must be nothing wrong, because they are not the ones suffering.  Alternatively, whether poor or not, they might be hopeful that one day they will somehow be the ones in the billionaire's seat.

Sometimes, the same fools who champion America's hellscape version of capitalism will pay lip service to the Biblical God.  But would they mandate that farmers leave crops at the edges of their field and not return through their fields or vineyards a second time so that vulnerable people like the poor can eat freely, as Yahweh requires (Leviticus 19:9-10, 23:22, Deuteronomy 24:19-21)?  Would they acknowledge that money cannot be the highest priority of one's life if one is aligned with God, as Matthew 6 states?  Do they acknowledge that the love of money can lead someone to indulge in any kind of evil, as Paul does in 1 Timothy 6:10?  No, a great number of people who claim adherence to Christianity are slaves to consumerism, classism, and economic exploitation of others.  They do not and are likely to never even attempt to actually live out what Judeo-Christianity prescribes towards the poor.  They seemingly want the poor to be present to make themselves feel more accomplished, less lazy, and more worthy of whatever wealth they have deprived others of through unbiblical means.

The American Nightmare is not their concern because they benefit from its machinations and they do not care for logical or morality, only for self-gain.  Such delusional slaves to the social construct of money, and to oppressing people even if they are logically and morally in the wrong, could only be hypocrites of an extraordinary degree—thinking they earned all of their wealth when they acquired some of it through unfairly depriving others, thinking they are aligned with a God who would extinguish their lives in Gehenna for disregarding the poor, and (probably) thinking they are rational despite fallaciously living for a social construct rather than sheer logical truth.  What philosophically inept, damnable fools these insects are.

What Does Leviticus 11 Mean By Insects?

The class of insects includes roaches, ants, beetles, bees, and butterflies, all of which a person might easily see in their lifetime.  Their body, encased in an exoskeleton made of chitin, is segmented in three main parts, the head, thorax, and abdomen, with three pairs of legs fastened to the thorax.  Contemporary taxonomy would classify insects as such, and the language assigned to this broad group of animals is a malleable, arbitrary social construct like all other human language--words are not scientific environments or objects, so they can be contrived, discarded, or changed even if nature does change.  All the same, in the dietary laws of the Torah, the word insect is used for bugs that walk on all fours.  Twice are these dietary laws detailed: once in Leviticus 11 and once in Deuteronomy 14.

Now, Deuteronomy 14:19 only says that flying insects/bugs are not to be eaten, mentioning nothing about the number of legs in their basic anatomy either as a figure of speech or as an exact description.  It is Leviticus 11 that mentions a number of appendages.  Locusts, katydids, crickets, and grasshoppers are permitted here as food because they are said to walk on all fours despite being flying bugs, having "jointed legs for hopping on the ground" (11:20-23).  These back jointed legs are noticeably different from the other four and are used for jumping.  In the text, these bugs are called insects.  Some have assumed that this means the Bible asserts that insects as people might think of them in the modern sense have the incorrect number of limbs and thus the Bible is in error and incapable of originating from God.

Ancient Israel would not have used English, though, and thus would not have employed the word "insect" with its modern definition.  The Hebrew word is, like the casual meaning of the English word bug, supposed to be for miniscule creeping things in general.  Insect would be a loosely connected term chosen by translators.  However, at the time of writing this, the Google definition of insect includes a more colloquial, broad usage of the word in reference to any small invertebrate animal without specifying three pairs of legs.  Even within conventional modern English, not that words have any sort of ultimate meaning beyond what the speaker means by them [1] or that words cannot shift in their general societal application, insect does not have to strictly mean a bug with three pairs of legs.

The text of Leviticus 11 still acknowledges that organisms like grasshoppers and crickets walk on four legs and have a pair of legs for jumping.  Altogether, this would be six legs, and having three pairs does not mean that the likes of a grasshopper would always walk on six legs; they might do this sometimes and other times walk about without using their back legs, as can be occasionally observed.  Assuming another culture's language will always have words that exactly correspond to a different language thousands of years later is idiotic (even if the idea was true, it is regardless always idiotic to assume anything whatsoever, for one is thus not relying on logical proof and blindly believes to some extent).  Holding that every single one of the kosher bugs can only use all six legs when walking is likewise asinine.  Anyway, phrases like "walking on all fours" can be used to somewhat literally speak of otherwise inapplicable events like humans crawling with their hands, though they are actually bipedal, and the kosher "insects" do walk on four legs; they just also have another pair which can also be used in walking.

As an analogy, the Bible speaks of the sun and moon and stars (Genesis 1:16, 37:9, Deuteronomy 4:19, 17:3, Revelation 12:1).  The sun can itself be one of many stars in the universe, as modern cosmological evidence would indicate, and still someone on the ground could distinctively refer to the sun, the primary source of daytime light, the moon, the primary source of nighttime light, and the additional, seemingly smaller objects of light that can be seen dotting the night sky.  There is no inherent conceptual difference here which logically excludes the sun also being a star that just happens to be closer to Earth and thus much more prominent.  Different words are being used for what in this case would ultimately be the same type of cosmic body.  Likewise, the Bible using the word insect more loosely in English translations and saying that bugs like grasshoppers walk on all fours does not contradict anything about formal taxonomy.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-relativity-of-language.html

Manoah's Wife

The story of Manoah's wife—and Manoah—ironically features the unnamed spouse as the more central figure.  Found in the 13th chapter of the book of Judges, which addresses the broad historical period after the Israelite relocation to the Promised Land yet before the monarchy, it tells of how the angel of the Lord visits a man's wife (the man is called Manoah) to tell her that she will give birth to a son who is to be a Nazarite (Numbers 6:1-4) from birth (Judges 13:2-7), and thus she is not to drink any wine.  After she is told such things, the woman finds her husband and informs him of what has happened.  Is it the case that the Biblical deity interacts with men over women?  Does he regards women as secondary to men in their spirituality rather than equal (not primary over men, as some pseudo-"egalitarians" might lean towards)?  Absolutely not!

Manoah prays that the stranger will return, and return he does—to Manoah's wife when she is in a field and he is not present (Judges 13:8-9).  If there was some misogynistic bent to Yahweh so that he irrationally treats women as incapable of handling grand philosophical events, it would have been displayed here.  Now, a given case of an angelic being appearing to a man or woman does not mean even in isolation that the Bible teaches that one gender is closer to God, that one is more spiritual or righteous than the other (as opposed to individuals differing here).  However, one example of a visitation to a person does refute the idea that God will only engage with the opposite gender of that figure.  This in combination with how it is the angel of the Lord, more than just a mere angel, who manifests before Manoah's wife more than once refutes any misogynistic complementarian compatibility with this story.

When Manoah does follow his wife to the angel after the second appearance, he asks what he and his wife are to do for the child, and the angel emphasizes that it has already told his wife her instructions (Judges 13:10-14).  Moreover, it is the wife that responds to Manoah's fallacious overreaction with correction when the angel ascends in the flames of the family's sacrifice to Yahweh, insisting that the two of them will die because they have seen God: as she points out, if God wanted to kill them, he could have done so already rather than accepting their offering and sending them the predictions of a future child (Judges 13:22-23).  Manoah's secondary relevance to this story, of course, does not mean that it is really the inverse of American complementarianism that is Biblical, that God relates more to women or esteems them more highly.  It means that God does not show irrationalistic and unjust favoritism, which includes favoritism on the basis of gender (Genesis 1:26-27, 5:1-2, Deuteronomy 10:17, Romans 2:11).

The Torah is not misogynistic—or misandrist.  When people believe or say such things, they are assuming without reading or distorting either the actual content of the text or the ideas that would logically follow if the text is true.  Even then, there is hypocrisy.  There is little to no outrage I have ever encountered at large about the way that Lot's rape by his daughters in Genesis 19 is seldom overtly called rape, but the mere inclusion of a narrative that does not prescribe or in any way moralistically support the murderous rape of the concubine in Judges 19 might be held up as if the Bible is misogynistic just for saying this happened.  As if they are the primary or universally relevant way to tell what Yahweh's moral character is over his actual universal commands in the Torah, stories like that of Manoah's wife, who is treated by God and his angel in Judges 13 as autonomous and capable apart from a husband, contradict complementarian heresies.  They present women and men as people, equal in their humanity and their capacity and need to serve truth and God.

Pantheism's Errors

Matter and spirit cannot be the same, no matter what pantheism, the philosophy that nature is divine (and thus a consciousness in some way), holds.  Matter is physical and consciousness is immaterial, lacking physical substance, whatever the causal relationship between the human mind and body.  Even God or any other explicitly spiritual beings sustaining the cosmos is not the same as them being the cosmos; not even pagan animism is pantheistic in the strictest sense because there is a distinction between the spirits, such as nymphs, and the natural environment they inhabit, such as water or trees.  This alone excludes the very logical possibility of literal pantheism because the two things it regards as the same are fundamentally different.  Even a sort of theistic panpsychism, where all matter is conscious and this is a "divine" hive mind, would still mean that consciousness is in matter rather than that it is the universe.

More foundational than even the difference between matter and consciousness, which would include any divine consciousness, is that which grounds all truth.  Some forms of pantheism might treat reality as if there is only the divine universe.  Without the necessary truths of reason, though, nothing would be true and nothing would be knowable; logical possibility is determined by what is consistent with logical axioms.  As intrinsically necessary truths, logical axioms and what follows from them is neither mind nor matter.  Matter and mind alike could have existed or not existed.  Axioms and other necessary truths would still have to exist because it is impossible for them to not be true.  Thus, not everything is divine, though reason is more foundational than the divine, and there is an inevitable difference between reason, mind, and matter, the former both being true and existing independent of the other two (and of other existents like metaphysical space or time).

The laws of logic are distinct from all else because they alone are true in themselves, could not have been any other way, and dictate and reveal the truth about all other things.  The universe is not the same as everything that exists: the laws of logic, empty space [1], and the uncaused cause [2] would exist independent of matter.  While everything is governed by reason, there is no single thing that all existents are ultimately manifestations of.  Regarding the uncaused cause, which exists by logical necessity in light of contingent things, it could not be made of matter or else something of the universe would have always existed, and yet an infinite causal chain would mean the events of the present could never be reached.  Since there is an immaterial uncaused cause, however, this being must be separate from the universe, which is made of matter.  Once again, here is a logical proof that pantheism is false.

Moreover, my own consciousness perceives an external world of matter--the former is not the same as the universe not only because it is demonstrably nonphysical, but because the external world is just that.  It would have to be external unless a given material thing I visually perceive is really just a mental experience, corresponding to nothing physical beyond my mind!  If my own mind is not the same as matter, the uncaused cause, which would have been wholly immaterial before the cosmos, could certainly not be part of the universe.  At most, it could imbue physical substance with a supernatural (separate from or above nature by virtue of being immaterial) power that dwells within it, and perhaps after creation it fashioned a body for itself.  None of this is consistent with pantheism in its basic form.

There would also be no difference between pantheism and metaphysical naturalism if the universe is divine spirit and vice versa, yet the two philosophies are very different.  The former holds that the physical is spiritual or an extension of a theistic being and the latter holds, except in alternate forms like emergent naturalism for consciousness [3], that there is nothing immaterial at all that exists, and thus no spirit (again, emergent naturalism does not have this same flaw, for one's own consciousness is absolutely certain for all rationalists, though it is not the only immaterial thing that can be proven to exist).  Amidst pantheism's other aforementioned errors--not unlikelihoods, but outright logical falsities--its conflation of mind and matter alone is enough to render it untrue.

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

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

[3].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2019/08/emergent-properties.html

Made To Be Inhabited

The early chapters of Genesis put forth the creation of humans, male and female, by a God who calls them very good after making them the pinnacle of his creation (Genesis 1:26-31), with Genesis 5:1-2 reiterating that human men and women are specifically made in God's image and tasked with presiding over ("subdue") the land and rule over other animals.  In Isaiah 45:12, God (Yahweh) says that he created Earth and humanity on it, and verse 18 soon adds that Earth was created not to be empty, but to be inhabited.  Between these chapters of the Bible, though there is a definite emphasis on humans having a special status in relation to God and general metaphysics, nothing is said that touches one way or another on the issue of extraterrestrial life.

What do Genesis 1 and Isaiah 45 not say about this matter?  Neither part of the Bible states nor in any way hints at something which requires the doctrine that life was not also created or permitted by God to come about from abiogenesis and/or evolution (abiogenesis and evolution do not logically necessitate the other, and there is a God either way [1]) on other planets.  That Earth was created to be inhabited, which is consistent with the current lack of evidence for extraterrestrial life, has nothing to do with whether other planets were or were not also meant to be inhabited or wound up that way through one process or another.

Nothing about alien life forms, from microorganisms to humanoids to eldritch creatures, contradicts human exceptionalism over terrestrial animals or the concept of humans having the divine image.  Even if God directly created life on Earth, with or without subsequent theistic evolution, it could have been allowed to evolve from abiogenesis on another world.  There is no philosophical tenet of Christianity, whether directly articulated in the Bible itself or which follows logically from the ideas that are stated therein, that is incompatible with the existence of all sorts of extraterrestrial creatures.

Logical axioms and absolute certainties and so on are true by necessity, so they could only be true either way.  There is still an uncaused cause, whether or not it is Yahweh, God's existence also being a logical necessity in light of the fact that anything exists at all besides logical truths and empty space [2].  Like evolution and a host of other biology-related issues, extraterrestrial life changes very little.  It certainly cannot be more foundational than necessary truths, God's existence, and whatever moral obligations exist.  Quite literally, the universe being inhabited in planets other than Earth is of little intrinsic consequence to the core nature of reality.

Either option is logically possible, so that whichever is the case, the cosmos could have been the other way.  The same is true of whether this life takes the form of macroscopic organisms or microscopic ones, whether these creatures are peaceful or hostile, and whether the extraterrestrials, if humanoid or capable of serious intelligence (which is grasping the necessary truths of logic without assumptions and not having familiarity with scientific contingencies or living in a technologically advanced culture).  If there are alien entities somewhere in the universe or hypothetical multiverse, there is no single type of anatomy or physiology they would have to possess, but the logical ramifications of their existence are relatively limited on their own.

[1].  See here:

A.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-uncaused-cause.html

B.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2024/01/spontaneous-generation.html

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

Personal Finance Stupidity

There are only two overarching categories of factors that can impact someone's personal finance: external factors and internal factors.  The former includes employers too stubborn or materialistic to provide raises, while the latter is entirely within a person's own ability to directly manage.  On one hand, undercompensation and all sorts of workplace exploitation truly can devastate the lives and futures of workers, and some people refuse to acknowledge this.  On the other hand, stupidity can stop someone from accumulating wealth or utilizing their current possessions, such as if someone purchases a new vehicle every year merely so he or she can experience some emotionalistic thrill—or partly purchases it and then pays high monthly amounts for a prolonged period of time, all for no legitimate reason at all.

The asinine spending habits of certain individuals could in no way exempt employers from any obligations they might have towards their employees, since it could not nullify any legitimate human rights of workers.  Employers still have a moral obligation to not oppress their workers on a moralistic worldview like that of the Bible, such as by paying unlivable wages or even by paying out wages after the sunset following the end of a day's labor.  Yes, that is singled out as a grave sin in the Bible (Leviticus 19:13, Deuteronomy 24:14-15).  Certainly, though, no amount of income or rapid payment would prevent stupid people lacking devotion to anything but immediate emotional excitement from squandering what they make so that they are always in gratuitous debt (aka, non-medical, for instance) or at least without any savings.

People can change their own personal finance behaviors despite having no control over how their employers act, and many appear to refuse this or persistently commit to bettering their position.  Maybe they assume that they "deserve" a vacation on an emotionalistic basis despite having no way to embark on this trip other than debt although they are doing nothing to seriously prevent or escape owing money.  In such a scenario, the problem is not strictly that the consumer is being undercompensated as a professional worker, which is unfortunately probable; maybe they truly are somehow rather fortunately not being exploited in this manner at all.  They are either way responsible for how they misuse the resources they do have.

It is true that no employee would be forced into poverty or financial desperation by societal factors if they found a sufficient amount of work that is livably compensated, but at the same time, even in poverty, a fool could absolutely harm their own financial standing by spending blindly on unnecessary things (especially if they will not use them!), making purchases based on sheer emotion rather than in accordance with rationalistic truths, and spending more than they make.  Spending money just to impress other people or chase a moment of materialistic happiness is philosophically asinine no matter someone's financial status, and yet there would seem to be no shortage of people who do such things.

Other than something like salary/wage negotiation, leaving for a new job, or remaining at a company long enough to get an automatic raise, there is nothing one can really do to obtain higher compensation for oneself.  With whatever money does come inside your sphere of control, it is no longer an idiotic or greedy employer's fault if you overspend with asinine motivations or without regard for your own psychological and economic stability.  It is also true that people with little to no self-control in this arena are very likely to lack it in more crucial ones.  A rationalist is unlikely to ever be in ongoing consumer debt, but if someone is emotionalistic with their purchasing habits, then they are already in the clutches of the great error of emotionalism, and this almost inevitably stems from neglect or misunderstanding of the abstract logical necessities that govern all things.

Alleged Bible Contradictions: Ecclesiastes 9:5-6, 10, And 12:6-7

In this case, the allegedly contradictory passages to be focused on are from Ecclesiastes.  One says that the dead have no knowledge or perception, lacking any emotion or activity.  This would entail a total lack of conscious experience in an afterlife.  The other passage does mention clearly that the spirit returns to God when dust returns to the ground.  Dust returning to the ground is the Biblical description of what happens when the body dies (Genesis 3:19, Ecclesiastes 3:19-21) because God imbued dirt with the breath of life to create Adam (Genesis 2:7).  Aside from this, if the spirit is confined to the body during life, then the spirit could only "return" after bodily death.  Does the Bible teach conflicting afterlife positions in the same book?

Ecclesiastes 9:5-6, 10—"For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even their name is forgotten.  Their love, their hate and their jealousy have long since vanished . . . Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom."

Ecclesiastes 12:6-7—"Remember him—before the silver cord is severed, and the golden bowl is broken; before the pitcher is shattered at the spring, and the wheel broken at the well, and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who made it."

What Ecclesiastes 12:6-7 does and does not say is crucial.  Logically, a spirit does not have to cease to exist in order to be unconscious; in the same way, it is logically possible for someone still living on Earth to be in a dreamless sleep despite how this requires that they still exist.  I am not assuming that spirits do exist after biological death, although consciousness is demonstrably immaterial in either case.  It is simply not true that the concept of a spirit departing its body after death and still existing on some level requires that the soul remains in a state of perception, even to the point of recognizing or having the capacity to recognize self-evident truths like logical axioms or that mind's own existence.

This neither is said in Ecclesiastes 12 nor follows logically from what verses 6-7 do say.  Ecclesiastes 9, on the other hand, is incredibly direct with its declaration that the dead think, perceive, and do nothing.  They are not experiencing bliss or torment, for they are truly dead.  Of course, if the dead really know nothing, not even that which is self-evident, they would have to be totally unconscious at best.  Other parts of the Bible, when examined apart from assumptions, will often no longer even seem to contradict this, because either nothing is clarified in those verses about whether or not there is an afterlife or they are really about the afterlife following the resurrection (Daniel 12:2).

The book of Ecclesiastes does not teach contradictory philosophies of the afterlife, with verse 7 of chapter 12 suggesting nothing about the immediate entry to heaven that many Western readers simply assume, spurred on by theologians who are themselves merely assuming in their irrationalism.  All it states is that the spirit returns to the God who created it, something that does not logically necessitate that the spirit would be conscious.  Indeed, three chapters prior, the author makes some of the most plain and central statements about the state of the dead before the resurrection in the entire Bible.  Not even Job 14:10-12, Psalm 6:5, and more are this explicit, unlike Job 3:11-19.

An Employer Lie About Unions

Plenty of companies lie all the time.  They lie about how competitive their compensation is, obscuring the real amount offered until someone is well into the interview process, only to hear that the pay is abysmal or mediocre.  They make verbal or written promises they do not keep.  Their websites might blather on about an illusory company culture of positivity and collaboration that is nowhere to be found past superficial, insincere statements.  Their PR departments can try to deceive nations into thinking that they had no way of stopping a worker death or making an executive's misbehaviors come to light.  With worker's unions, the collective organization of employees that gives each more bargaining power since threatening or firing multiple workers is harder to navigate than threatening or firing one in isolation, they might attempt to discourage unions by making the membership dues sound invasive, expensive, or greed-driven.

Union dues cost money, yes—and the union can obtain significantly better compensation (and benefits) for employees to more than make up for whatever measly amount is spent on an individual's annual dues, which reportedly tends to be around 1-2% of their annual gross pay.  It is just to the deceitful, greedy employer's advantage to give the misleading impression that unions will financially hurt workers when it is really the undeserved, bloated financial hoarding of some employers that will be hurt by a successful union.  Propaganda is the promotion of ideas and claims with no regard for necessary truths and rationalistic verification; as such, since these kinds of employers cannot possibly be slaves to reason and God rather than to stupidity, greed, and arrogance, they have nothing more than fallacious propaganda that they hope will deter workers from daring to no longer settle for exploitative.

Initiating a union of workers can be extremely difficult.  Businesses with multiple locations might close a building down for allegedly unrelated reasons once its on-site employees rally together, employees might be fired in the likes of a communist witch hunt if they show any sympathy at all to unionization, and others might be bribed into refusing to join union efforts only to be trampled on later.  An employer who wants to prioritize his or her needlessly (and unjustly) large wealth that is mostly derived from the labor of other people—usually underpaid, discarded people—would certainly dread the thought of those "selfish" workers wanting livable compensation, genuinely competitive benefits, and greater job security.  To preserve their facade of importance and the abusive foundation for their own prosperity, they might oppose unions at practically any cost.

The antics are driven by irrationality (they are motivated by assumptions and egoism, not by alignment with necessary truths) and desperation at the prospect of losing their illicit empire.  As I have emphasized before, it is not necessarily true that an employer will be cruel, dehumanizing, hypocritical, and so on.  These qualities do not logically follow from merely being an employer.  In my country and many others, it is simply the norm for many employers to choose to be this way.  They have also likely gotten away relatively unscathed for long enough or have enough assets or connections that they can rely on their monetary or social power to fight philosophically legitimate resistance.  Lying about the nature of worker's unions (or being irrational enough to actually think that union dues must outweigh the employee's financial gains from unionization) is actually one of the less terrible things, in one sense, that they might resort to.

Human Resources

The human resources department can treat people as just that: nothing more than human resources to be used and tossed aside for company/employer gain.  What some people might assume is there to protect them, even if they stupidly conflate corporate compliance with national and local laws with moral correctness, can function in a malicious, incompetent, or dismissive way.  It can also be an especially insidious tool for an oppressive employer to protect themself no matter their stupidity and perpetuate many kinds of intentional exploitation, from underpayment to deception to illicit discrimination.  If you go to HR, beware--they might not at all be the rational or sympathetic listener(s) one might hope for.

Involved in everything from the hiring process to the navigation of formal employee complaints, HR has a crucial role in every company of such a size and structure that the department is present.  There is nothing about being an HR representative that means someone is irrational in any form, such as by making assumptions about the nature of business, taking the side of an exploitative employer (who would be their own employer as well), or trivializing legitimate employee concerns.  Many people are irrational nonetheless, and human resources staff members are not exempt from this likelihood.  Their organizational power just makes them more equipped to wreak devastation with whatever stupidity they have.

Measures can be taken to minimize the ramifications of such a person's errors, yes.  One can be guarded about what information one provides to HR so that they have less to misinterpret through the lens of assumptions or quiet hostility.  Indeed, it is always the fault of the person doing the misinterpreting, so it is not as if it is an employee's doing that they misunderstand whatever information one submits to them, but if it makes one more comfortable, more information than is absolutely necessary can be withheld in the event that one does need to go to HR with a concern about, say, abusive employee behaviors.  After all, they are usually not devoted to reason and morality as opposed to helping the company as a whole/the top of the company hierarchy or trying to ensure mere legal adherence.

For virtual communication, you can always blind courtesy copy (Bcc) your personal, non-work email address on any vital emails sent to HR, especially in the case of any email you would need access to if a baseless or retaliatory firing seems to be on the horizon.  Here--and this same tactic can be used against managers or anyone else as applicable--you can ensure to the greatest extent possible that you can produce written evidence of a certain corporate practice, as well as times problems were brought to the attention of leadership.  Plenty of people lie whenever it benefits them, but in this way, you can trap a malicious or suddenly "forgetful" company figure.  Similarly, whether the email goes to HR, a manager, or someone else, you can ask for clarification about irrational or immoral requests/charges, giving them the chance to either double down on their bullshit or deny they ever said it altogether, freeing you from the expectation to act on the prior instructions.  This leaves an email trail you can Bcc yourself on or come back to later.

Of course, another strategy to protect oneself with HR is to just sidestep the department completely and consult an attorney if truly needed.  Precautions like these allow you to trap or manipulate HR or other corporate personnel so that, without engaging in irrationality oneself, one's own needs can be met.  HR is not your default deliverer from unjust treatment, not is it by necessity a servant of the employee.  Human resources is often there to engage in damage control for the employer; it is most likely that a random HR department will serve the employee's needs when they overlap with the whims of the employer.  While it is irrational to trust anyone at all, because other minds cannot be known and past actions or words do not prove how someone will act in the future, trusting others in the workplace can be particularly catastrophic.  Human resources does not have to be this way, but it can and many times is reported to be aimed at merely minimizing legal costs to employers in the event of a brewing lawsuit.

Memory Aids

Without memory, one could not remember logical truths about memory, truths which are inherent and thus objective and fixed even if one forgets or never discovered them.  There are things like logical axioms and other strictly necessary truths about reason itself, as well as about consciousness and introspection, which are constantly before someone even if they do not notice them, and thus they are epistemologically accessible in all situations where one is conscious.  With other things, like the precise times and dates of various events (past or upcoming) or the steps for a given procedure, a person has to remember more than what is self-evident or pertinent to logic and consciousness.  Perhaps they will struggle as individuals to store all of the relevant details within their minds.

There is not necessarily a fixed limit to what humans can memorize across different categories.  What might seem overwhelmingly complex as far as committing to memory goes can be managed even if it is only cemented in the mind portion by portion for one person or another.  It is logically possible (since it does not contradict axioms)--and there are also examples of people who have accomplished these things--to be familiar with numerous languages at once, to recall precise, miscellaneous details about Biblical and/or Quranic passages, or to, most importantly, be able to dwell on or remember a multitude of reason's abstract necessary truths on an ongoing basis.

When it comes to lesser things than philosophical truths, but things that might be of practical or professional usefulness, there is always the option of external memory aids, including transactive memory.  You remember, but you remember where you wrote information or who to consult so that you can in turn recall something else.  One can remember that one wrote a password in the notes application of one's phone, or that one can ask someone else to remind them of an upcoming doctor's appointment.  Not everyone has to remember everything themselves in this regard although it is hypothetically possible (again, it does not contradict axioms) for a person to not need to stand on environmental cues, electronic or conventional notes, or other people.

Since some of these things are very entrenched in our culture through handwritten or electronic notes/reminders, with the likes of social media notifications and cloud storage, a certain kind of person might not even attempt to lock many things within their mind.  If their mind is already occupied with things of true substance and knowability and lesser things are not memorized in order to maintain focus on the former, this is one thing.  It is another to purposefully rely as exclusively as one can on something other than one's actual memory to remind one of something.  This forfeiture of autonomy where it might otherwise be found can be a form of philosophical laziness that expresses a disregard for reality, even if specifically for the reality of human nature and memory.

Misunderstanding Luke 16:16-18

Luke 16 is a very misrepresented chapter of the New Testament.  The parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31), if it was meant as a real clarification of some immediate afterlife or an eternal afterlife for the wicked (the latter would be inherently unjust and thus irrational), would contradict numerous clear or subtle doctrines stated in the Old and New Testaments [1].  Immediately before this parable is a very brief mention of Mosaic Law and also of divorce.  Luke makes his closest statement to Matthew 5:17-20, and it comes right before his declaration on divorce that, in its immediate context and in light of numerous other passages far more foundational and plain, could not condemn divorce without contradicting reason and the Bible.  All relationships between ideas are governed by strict logical necessity, even if the ideas are false, so there is no way inside or outside Christianity that divorce could be sinful in itself.  Contradicting reason would render Luke 16:18 outright incapable of being true.

Luke 16:16-18--"'The Law and the Prophets were proclaimed until John.  Since that time, the good news of the kingdom of God is being preached, and everyone is forcing their way into it.  It is easier for heaven and earth to disappear than for the least stroke of a pen to drop out of the Law.  Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery, and the man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.'"

As sometimes happens when people talk about language, Jesus uses words that speak of language itself standing in for the concepts the writing or speech is assigned to.  The strokes of a pen refer to the moral obligations that, if the Torah is true, obviously are not just words on a physical material.  The concepts are what matters.  What Jesus would be communicating, unless he is philosophically conflating written symbols with actual moral obligations and other abstract concepts, is the enduring nature of morality as described in the Law.  I will focus on what a mere selection of the relevant verses in Mosaic Law obviously prescribe or permit regarding divorce, the topic of Luke 16:18.

Still, note that Jesus, even in this statement that seemingly contradicts so much of the Bible and makes him an obvious heretic if it meant what many pretend, does not say to never divorce; Matthew 19:9 records him as providing a justification for divorcing over sexual immorality regardless, and even this is in turn extreme and all but misleading hyperbole or heresy against the religion of Yahweh he claimed to affirm.  In the most literal sense, his words in Luke 16:18 only say that divorcing someone and marrying a new partner afterward is adultery.  Divorce is still not itself condemned, whatever the reason.  The irony is that whatever the New Testament says, it is only the Law from God, which both plainly (Exodus 21:10-11, Deuteronomy 21:10-14, 24:1-4) and sometimes less directly (Exodus 21:26-27, Leviticus 22:14, Deuteronomy 4:2) allows divorce for both genders and for many reasons, that holistically reveals the Biblical morality of divorce, and remarriage is clearly nonsinful according to Deuteronomy 24:1-4 (and 4:2, a verse relevant to many subjects).

See also, before I elaborate on some allowances for divorce in Mosaic Law, what Malachi says about whether God's nature that grounds morality changes:

Malachi 3:6--"'I the Lord do not change.'"

James 1:17 only echoes this in the New Testament, not that the New Testament would ever be correct in a matter it contradicted the Old Testament on.  If Jesus is not using words in a completely unconventional manner (since their exact meaning is determined by the speaker's intent and ultimately nothing else), either Jesus is massively exaggerating about divorce and remarriage for psychological/rhetorical impact or he is an irrationalist who thinks contradictions can be true--and also a heretic that thinks Yahweh's righteous laws are evil or that Yahweh's moral nature changed.  He would also both contradict and heretically reject his own philosophy of Mosaic Law articulated just two verses prior to Luke 16:18!  I have already mentioned verses in this post from the Torah that certainly permit or indirectly require divorce.  

I will show one of the more subtle but still highly relevant passages, Exodus 21:26-27, to emphasize how even some less directly connected verses very much clarify the freedom and moral right to divorce in many circumstances.  I have placed Deuteronomy 15:16-17 before Exodus 21:26-27 in the arrangement below to highlight the parallels between Biblical slavery and marriage even further.  With or without Deuteronomy 15:16-17 (see also Exodus 21:5-6), Exodus 21:26-27 absolutely allows divorce for something that has nothing to do with adultery or broader sexual immorality:

Deuteronomy 15:16-17--"But if your servant says to you, 'I do not want to leave you,' because he loves you and your family and is well off with you, then take an awl and push it through his earlobe into the door, and he will become your servant for life.  Do the same for your female servant."

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.'"

A male or female slave must go free, save for optional mercy on the victim's part, for abuse.  So too should husbands and wives.  The fact that Deuteronomy 15:16-17 speaks of male and female slaves eagerly, lovingly pledging themself to serve a master or mistress for life rather than automatically going free in the seventh year (Deuteronomy 15:12) only makes the overlap more extensive.  Abuse entitles a slave to leave even if they had promised lifelong commitment, and marriage is no different in these regards.  Exodus 21:26-27 and Deuteronomy 15:12-18 do not mention divorce at all, but they have crucial and logically necessary ramifications for it.  This is aside from the passages in the Torah that do allow it for other specific reasons, ultimately for any sin at all (Deuteronomy 24:1-4).

For another unstated yet logically necessary justification for divorce, look at any of the capital punishment laws.  If death or morally permissible divorce ends a marriage before God, then anyone who commits a capital sin, in forfeiting their right to live out the rest of their lifetime, forfeits their marriage.  None of the capital punishment passages touch on divorce, but it follows whether someone likes it or not that divorcing a capital sinner of any sort is both not condemned and allowed by virtue of what capital punishment is.  The marriage will or at least should end one way or another!  Also, adultery, as a capital sin (Leviticus 20:10 and Deuteronomy 22:22), deserves death, so it also cannot be true that it is Biblically the one justification for divorce (or one of two; 1 Corinthians 7:15) from this alone.  Examples like the following also entitle someone to end a marriage:

Exodus 21:14--"'But if anyone schemes and kills someone deliberately, that person is to be taken from my altar and put to death.'"

Leviticus 20:27--"'"A man or woman among you who is a medium or spiritist must be put to death.  You are to stone them; their blood will be on their own heads."'"

Concerning murder, the sin would have to be carried out against someone outside the marriage for a spouse to be alive to divorce anyway, but for many reasons the sin does not have to be directed at the spouse.  Capital sins already warrant divorce by nature in the absence of a conflicting or superceding obligation taught by the Law, and all sins, against anyone, are basis for divorce if a spouse is displeased enough (Deuteronomy 24:1).  Indeed, if the Torah never once provided specific examples of divorce or divorce-adjacent things being permissible (or required in Exodus 21:26-27), the lack of prohibition concerning divorcing a spouse for his/her moral errors would on its own mean it is not Biblically sinful to do so.  This is independent of the Law's specific acknowledgment of divorce without general condemnation in verses like Leviticus 22:13.  By nature, wherever the line is for morally required and evil things, it would not be necessary to go above and beyond in order to be righteous, by pursuing optional good or avoiding things which are not evil.

Something being obligatory, permissible, or evil does not change based on region or time if all people are capable of carrying it out or avoiding it respectively.  Men and women of any era and place have the metaphysical capacity to divorce and be divorced, whereas abstaining from fruit grown in the first three years of living in the Promised Land (Leviticus 19:23-25) does have geographical and time-bound applicability.  Thus, logically, if morality exists, divorce is not good, optional, or wicked based upon such factors.  The Bible, which can still only be illuminated by looking to reason, absolutely allows for all spouses to divorce for a great many reasons beyond adultery and to marry new partners.  Luke 16:16-17 in truth teaches the Law is still entirely binding (with necessary exceptions like the case of the aforementioned fruit trees of the Promised Land) since it aligns with objective morality.  Like with Matthew 5:31-32 and 19:9, consequently, Luke 16:18 either proclaims sharp hyperbole or utter stupidity and heresy on many levels.

[1].  I address this issue in posts like the following: A.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/07/sheol-and-hades-part-three.html

B.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2024/01/i-will-come-back-and-take-you-to-be.html

Biblically Prescribed Generosity

Generosity is not always Biblically optional.  There are a great many forms it can take where it is not sinful to forgo a given expression of generosity, but there are several particular ways that freely giving to others is required, or particular scenarios where denying people access to one's material resources by neglect or force is sin.  Note below how all people are morally free to take from the standing crops of a person's field, yet not more than they can carry in their hands and eat; this is not theft, which is always evil (Exodus 20:15, 22:1-4, Numbers 5:5-7), and thus being generous in this manner, among others to soon be elaborated upon, is obligatory.  This of course applies to the poor and those who are not destitute, though it is of special benefit to the financially insecure.

Leviticus 19:9-10--"'"When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest.  Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen.  Leave them for the poor and the foreigner.  I am the Lord your God."'"

Deuteronomy 23:24-25--"If you enter your neighbor's vineyard, you may eat all the grapes you want, but do not put any in your basket.  If you enter your neighbor's grainfield, you may pick kernels with your hand, but you must not put a sickle to their standing grain."

Deuteronomy 24:19-21--"When you are harvesting in your field and you overlook a sheaf, do not go back to get it.  Leave it for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.  When you beat the olives from your trees, do not go over the branches a second time.  Leave what remains for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow.  When you harvest the grapes in your vineyard, do not go over the vines again.  Leave what remains for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow."

Beyond just leaving agricultural excess in place for the societally disadvantaged without discrimination based upon their gender or nationality/ancestry, regarding the general approach to the poor, Deuteronomy demands that people not withhold assisting them even when the mandatory year for the cancellation of debts is near (Deuteronomy 15:1-3; how unlike American norms this is!).  Generosity, when someone can genuinely afford it, is required in the sense that people are not to be "tightfisted" with their wealth when faced with those less prosperous than them.  While, for instance, giving to a particular random homeless person is not obligatory, neglecting the general poor beyond refusing to leave the specified portions of one's crops for them is directly condemned:

Deuteronomy 15:7-10--"If anyone is poor among your fellow Israelites in any of the towns of the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted towards them.  Rather, be openhanded and freely lend them whatever they need.  Be careful not to harbor this wicked thought: 'The seventh year, the year for cancelling debts, is near,' so that you do not show ill will towards the needy among your fellow Israelites and give them nothing.  They may then appeal to the Lord against you, and you will be found guilty of sin.  Give generously to them and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to."

Verses 12-17 right after this are relevant to generosity as well.  The way that the use of temporary servitude is listed immediately after these details about how to treat the poor in one's community, without explicitly saying this, points to how this kind of slavery, in which the man or woman is to be treated well (Exodus 20:8-11, 23:12, and so on) to the point of potentially wanting to remain a slave for life (Exodus 21:2-6, Deuteronomy 15:16-17) or else they go free with no opposition (Exodus 21:26-27, Deuteronomy 23:15-16), is an ideal way to escape poverty.  Not only would the poor person have the option of selling their labor to an individual household while possessing every rigid human right affirmed in the Torah, as opposed to working for a profit-driven and exploitative corporation or resorting to theft or other sins to survive, but he or she is also to be freed after six years of servitude and given abundant material resources on their way out.  Even pragmatically as opposed to morally, this is obviously a superior way over the modern American employment system to actually curb poverty without dehumanizing workers:

Deuteronomy 15:12-14--"If any of your people--Hebrew men or women--sell themselves to you and serve you six years, in the seventh year you must let them go free.  And when you release them, do not send them away empty-handed.  Supply them liberally from your flock, your threshing floor and your winepress.  Give to them as the Lord your God has blessed you."

It is not just generosity to freed servants that is commanded by God.  Giving to the Levite, foreigner, fatherless, and widow from a person's supply of food yielded by the Promised Land is explicitly codified.  While giving to the Levites in the third year of residence in the Promised Land is no longer possible and thus cannot be morally obligatory, the remaining prescriptions already addressed here are not, since they are accessible today and thus required.  Yes, the following passage deals with something which is not universal in its binding nature (see Deuteronomy 26:1-11 for context) as with something like an agricultural community intentionally leaving the aforementioned sorts of food for those most in need, but it still expresses the sort of generosity that is otherwise continually obligatory since it is tied to God's unchanging moral nature (Deuteronomy 4:5-8, Malachi 3:6):

Deuteronomy 26:12-13--"When you have finished setting aside a tenth of all your produce in the third year, the year of the tithe, you shall give it to the Levite, the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow, so that they may eat in your towns and be satisfied.  Then say to the Lord your God: 'I have removed from my house the sacred portion and have given it to the Levite, the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow, according to all you commanded.'"

Again, not every kind of generosity is merely optional.  In the right circumstances, it is an absolute moral necessity on the Christian worldview to give or to not be unwilling to share--the most obvious categories mentioned in the verses I have included here being those of substances needed to live, such as food.  Sharing one's bread with the hungry, which is in no way limited by the teachings of the Bible or the logical necessity of the concept to literal bread, is listed among the miscellaneous just deeds of a righteous person in the book of Ezekiel (18:5, 7, 16).  To do this, which is a matter of justice according to the Torah and Ezekiel, one must be generous.  It is impossible to hold onto one's resources with no intention of benefitting others in any situation and obey certain commands of Yahweh.

Movie Review—Weapons

"Every other class had all their kids, but Mrs. Gandy's room was totally empty.  And do you know why?  Because the night before, at 2:17 in the morning, every kid woke up, got out of bed, walked downstairs, and into the dark . . . and they never came back."

—Narrator, Weapons

With an unusually modern setting for its ultimate storytelling turns, Weapons relies on its ambiguity and overlapping character-focused chapters, which retread the same basic timeline, to build up to a grimly comedic (my wife laughed quite a bit!) and quite visually brutal conclusion.  When almost an entire classroom's worth of children leave their houses one night, a town erupts into emotional chaos.  Red herrings abound, including events that could have had massive ramifications for the plot as a whole in another film.  Here, they contribute to the tangled web of sub-narratives that unravel enough to reveal the true reason for the disappearances, which in turn highlights that other matters hide in unspoken, unseen backstory.  For all that remains enshrouded in uncertainty, the movie does give away why its title is Weapons, and the splintered paths of each character intersect enough in an increasingly dark manner to bring necessary clarity about the bizarre occurrence.

Production Values

Frequently, Weapons utilizes a cinematography which emphasizes darkness, and when applicable, figures moving, whether slowly or erratically, in that darkness.  Daylight scenes are present, but where the movie shines most clearly is the scenes set at night or in scarcely illuminated buildings.  Since the basis of the story is a group of children from the same classroom leaving their homes at night, it is fitting that so many shots feature a lack of light.  Jumpscares occasionally leap into a scene, but, like the strongest horror offerings, the film stands mostly on atmosphere or gradual buildup to an intense final act.  Falling short of the well-crafted aesthetic and camera work, incredibly weak dialogue is particularly dominant in the first third of the runtime, weak in the sense that the speech is often awkward, and not in a particularly "realistic" way.  Many characters speak during these scenes in highly simplistic phrases that do not reflect developed dialogue even as they weave together to first obscure and eventually clarify the heart of the plot.  Some fairly major developments lead nowhere, while seemingly minor details become much more relevant with time.  For instance, as soon as I saw the painted word on Justine's car, I suspected that it telegraphed far more about the real nature of the events than it might appear to, with the immediate context focusing on how certain people in the town perceive Justine.

As for the flimsy dialogue, the performances themselves thankfully come to the rescue of the more lackluster conversations; Julia Garner and Josh Brolin receive the most screen time, each having at least a handful of scenes that effectively show the despair or distress of their character through their acting capabilities.  Cary Christopher carries the role of Alex, the only child from his class not to disappear, with gravity, showing caution and kindness depending on who he interacts with.  The way he is quick to offer assistance even to a very malicious person (in a scene I won't spoil in this paragraph) reinforced the character's innocence quite effectively.  In their more limited screen time, supporting cast members like Benedict Wong contribute well, but the standout role is that of the villain.  Only coming to the forefront much later in the film, Amy Madigan is incredible as antagonist Gladys: her bizarre demeanor and the juxtaposition between her elderly vulnerability and ruthless manipulation are expertly conveyed by Madigan.  Without divulging everything about the story and the place of Gladys in it, I will say that she injects an excellently realized combination of mystery, revelation, and malevolence while also setting up the most extended scene of humor in the entire movie.

 

Story

The abrupt, unexpected departure of multiple children from their homes one night stirs up strife and panic in a town.  With few leads, Justine, a teacher of the classroom that lost students in the incident, investigates by trying to speak with the lone child of the class to not disappear.  Strange dreams and visions begin pointing not only Justine, but also a man named Archer towards a sinister presence.

Intellectual Content

Brief allusions surface to a rather different phenomenon involving children and schools than the one in the film: children missing from school and a floating firearm in a dream certainly would hint that the subject of school shootings was at least somewhat on director Zach Cregger's mind when making Weapons.  This is never directly brought up or otherwise made anything but a tertiary concern at best, though the parallels could certainly be intentional to a degree.  The ultimate reason for people becoming "weaponized" to destroy each other in the story has nothing to do with assault rifles or any other guns; a character's deep willingness to use others for their own gain is to blame.  While this is also unstated and not directly affirmed as an intentional theme, perhaps the director also meant to address how what truly hurts children might not necessarily be what an individual or town (or nation) assumes it is.

I will refrain from giving away too many particulars, but Gladys, once she gains the upper hand over certain individuals, uses quite oppressive threats to coerce young Alex, first into cooperating with her, and eventually to completing tasks on her behalf.  Purposefully or not, Weapons hence showcases how the kindness of abuse victims can be exploited by those without such traits when he makes a seemingly sincere effort to help Gladys in a time of physical weakness.  It does not follow from this that ruthlessness is morally permissible or pragmatically mandatory, but prioritizing kindness absolutely leaves a person vulnerable to whatever the unkind might do to prey on the willingness of others to help.  Other than how a moral dilemma within Judeo-Christian ethics relates to an action taken by Alex near the very end of the movie, which I will not detail to avoid spoilers, this contrast of kindness and coldness is one of the most significant philosophical layers of the entire work.

Conclusion

Lacking some of the excellence within its reach, Weapons does use its chapter-based storytelling, emphasis on darkness, and slow burn mystery to great effect.  Even in its more humorous moments, which are not omnipresent, a generally persistent tonal brutality serves as one of its strongest assets.  Not every horror film with comedic elements needs to balance the two genres evenly or allow humor to remove the tension or severity from all dark scenes.  Weapons steps away from this blunder even as it relies on odd dialogue choices for at least a significant part of the film.  

Content:

 1.  Violence:  A man is shown (under a form of hypnosis) slamming his head into another person even after the other party has died, bloodying his face.  A crushed skull with the brain matter visible is shown shortly after.  In another scene, a limb is shown after having been pulled off of a person.  In these and other ways, the film is fairly graphic!

 2.  Profanity:  Words like "fuck" are used throughout.

 3.  Sexuality:  A very brief sex scene with no nudity is included.

Early Marriage

It is not true that anyone is obligated to go above and beyond living out actual moral obligations and human rights in their marriage as would also be the case in the workplace and other contexts.  That is, if someone is not sinning by doing or not doing something, they do not have to do otherwise even if their spouse would greatly appreciate it.  Only that which is obligatory, owed to the recipient and mandatory for the doer, has to be done, if there is such a thing as morality.  However, a lack of any and all morally optional expressions of love can, particularly when paired with already present mistreatment or pain, be crippling for marriage if there is a lack of attentiveness and communication, or if these issues are not handled rationally if they arise.

An early marriage might be especially vulnerable to being upset by the absence of supererogatory treatment (good/helpful but not obligatory) if there is not already a solid foundation of overt rationality, warm affection, proactive honesty, and genuine mutuality in other parts of the relationship.  No matter how long each person knew each other romantically before getting married, a couple's early marriage is crucial.  Everything up to egregious mistreatment and extreme irrationality can be forgiven and worked past, but what happens later in a marriage will always chronologically stand on what came before it.  To neglect marital health so early on, or at any subsequent time, is to certainly jeopardize its future.

There is thus an inescapable gravity to how the first days, weeks, months, and years of a marriage unfold.  Even on a personal and pragmatic level rather than for the transcendent sake of rationalistic truth and moral obligation, there are pains and desperation that can be avoided, though that pain can originate from things that are not irrational or otherwise sinful.  There is unblemished oneness that can be pursued, and there are deep pleasures of interpersonal peace that can be experienced.  More than just averting disaster that could have decades' worth of ramifications, intentionally contributing to a quality marriage in its early periods allows for otherwise perhaps inaccessible levels of relational flourishing.

No romantic relationship is guaranteed to last or remain healthy.  The epistemological barriers to knowing other minds [1] pose one kind of difficulty to navigating dating or marriage and this uncertainty.  How people treat each other, permissibly or not, is another type of factor.  From relatively minor day to day interactions to utterly crucial crossroad events, a marriage can be elevated or damned by how its members choose to act.  No one should seek perfection or go above and beyond in the early stages in order to simply become morally lax later on, and it would be utterly irrational and immoral for one spouse to demand that the other go above and beyond, but early marriage is vital.  It either sees a thriving relationship with a high probability of being preserved or a troubled one that can be lifted out of its woes with effort.  Whatever time of strength or wavering follows in the marriage, though, it will in one way or another stem from what comes first.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2022/08/privacy-and-isolation-from-other-minds.html