Charging And Accepting Interest

Paying or requiring interest on loans is a common part of American life.  For instance, credit cards often have high interest rates triggered by a certain amount of time without payment (or paying less than the statement balance each month as opposed to the total balance); student loans accrue interest over time at fixed rates.  Principal is the amount borrowed or loaned, and the interest is a sum paid/required beyond that amount, a percentage of the principal added to it.  It is logically possible to pay or accept interest without anyone mandating it, as foreign as this is to much of America's economic structure.

Someone who refuses to provide a loan apart from an agreement to pay back the principal plus any additional amount is charging interest; they are actively requiring it as a condition to loan money in the first place.  Contrarily, someone who allows another person to utilize their money does not charge interest if the latter individual freely offers repayment with interest as an incentive for the former individual to initially provide the loan.  In this case, the one offering the principal for use by a second party has not charged anything because they are accepting an offer.

Either scenario winds up with the person lending their money gaining an additional amount above the amount loaned out, given that the debtor does indeed pay everything back.  However, the means of acquiring that interest is incredibly different.  One of these means is passive on the part of the one providing the funds.  This is what happens with high-yield savings accounts, where the interest paid to the one putting their money in the account helps offset the eroding power of inflation or even stay ahead of it by multiplying the principal month to month, on which a new amount of interest is paid.  Thus, funneling money into a high-yield savings account is like making a loan of sorts.

Loaning money or other capital, especially to vulnerable people in need of financial assistance, while charging interest up front is objectively distinct from receiving interest offered by the other party.  This logical truth is of enormous relevance to a key Biblical command about interest: that of not charging interest to one's fellow countrypeople (Deuteronomy 23:19-20).  Yes, it is not merely usury to charge interest to one's countrypeople at a given high rate, but it is sinful to do so at any rate!  It is nonetheless logically possible to accept interest without actually charging it.  Similarly, if a poor person voluntarily repays a loan and supplies anything past the principal, the one who accepts the "interest" has not violated the obligation of Exodus 22:25 and Leviticus 25:35-37.

Even on an amoral level, there is nothing exploitative (one person trampling on another) about one party using the payment of interest to those who supply them with funds as a way to attract investors.  It might seem like a trivial distinction, albeit a correct one, but there is no small gulf between demanding/requiring interest of others and taking additional money that they give to you in return for having assisted them or permitted them to borrow money.  The difference is one that does divide a Biblically sinful act, exacting interest from fellow countrypeople or those in one's community, from an innocent one, taking interest that a bank, businessperson, or other borrower freely shares to prompt a flow of resources that likewise benefits them.

A Sabbath Walk

In Jeremiah, God tells the titular prophet to address the people of Jerusalem in condemnation of carrying a load through the city gates when walking through them on the Sabbath.  Quite overtly, it is the carrying of the load through the gates, likely for business purposes, that is treated as sinful, not walking into or out of the city.  God says nothing in these instructions to Jeremiah condemning mere walking on this day in accordance with how this is not itself called sinful in the Torah.  The very first chapter of Acts also mentions a "Sabbath day's walk" without any hinting towards prohibition of this activity.  I have singled out one verse from a longer portion of Jeremiah 17 on this matter (see verses 19-26), but verse 27 and the relevant part of Acts 1 are included here:

Jeremiah 17:27—"'But if you do not obey me to keep the Sabbath day holy by not carrying any load as you come through the gates of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day, then I will kindle an unquenchable fire in the gates of Jerusalem that will consume her fortresses.'"

Acts 1:12—"Then the apostles returned to Jerusalem from the hill called the Mount of Olives, a Sabbath day's walk from the city."

Yes, nowhere does the Torah forbid walking on the Sabbath—or eating, drinking, changing clothes, bathing, and so on.  What it does plainly allow is anything involved in the physical exertion required to conduct and monitor daily burnt offering sacrifices (Leviticus 6:8-13) and offerings specifically made on the Sabbath (Leviticus 24:1-9, Numbers 28:9-10).  Moreover, while walking on the Sabbath is not evil according to the Torah and is explicitly permitted in Jeremiah 17 and Acts 1, there is no particular duration of time or amount of distance that is permissible to traverse versus evil.

Walking on the Sabbath is allowed for the maintenance of physical health, for the sake of mental relaxation, for the sake of savoring the freedom ironically granted by the Sabbath's absence of "work".  Yes, it is a day to relish in freedom from daily professional or agricultural labor, specifically of a physical kind.  It is a day where "your male and female servants may rest, as you do" (Deuteronomy 5:14), a day to be upheld "so that your ox and your donkey may rest, and so that the slave born in your household and the foreigner living among you may be refreshed" (Exodus 23:12).  These descriptions of liberation and rejuvenation are from the very wording of the allegedly unlivable laws revealed by Yahweh in the Old Testament so many pseudo-Christians fear or despise.

Anyone who thinks the literal prescriptions in the Torah or any elaboration on these laws in the prophetic writings excludes walking around one's home or outside of it on the Sabbath is deeply mistaken.  Since the Bible insists otherwise, they could indeed only have assumed, which is epistemologically irrational by default in addition to the concept they hold to being Biblically erroneous.  The Sabbath is in some isolated passages one of the more ambiguous moral issues the Bible addresses, but there is enough that is specifically forbidden (see Exodus 34:21, 35:3), required (the offerings I mention above), or allowed (like walking) that certain moral boundaries regarding the Sabbath are very clear to someone who has thoroughly read the Bible without making assumptions.

The Sea Urchin: Neurons Without A Brain

Empirical observation, or repeatable sensory observation, cannot in any way illuminate whether or not there really is an interior consciousness or only the outward illusion of it, and it does not follow logically from any external behaviors that a creature which seems to have a consciousness truly does.  Visual perception yields only fallible evidences of outward actions.  A person can assume other people and non-human animals have their own minds and thus irrationally believe, but this is neither self-necessarily true like logical axioms nor confirmed by extended logical necessity in light of any other verifiable facts.  Consciousness in other beings does not by necessity exist because it seems to.  Only one's own consciousness, as far as the existence of minds is concerned, can be demonstrated, for to doubt or reject one's own existence, one has to rely on the fact that one already exists to think such things.

It is popular to conflate the brain and mind although, wholly apart from scientific prompting, it is very obvious that consciousness must be immaterial.  There is nothing about the concept of a mind that by necessity entails that it has a body.  The very fact that there is no logical contradiction, such as God existing and not existing at the same time (each status excludes the other), in a mind apart from a corporeal shell alone already proves that they must be metaphysically distinct, whatever their casual relationship.  Also, a fresh corpse differs from a live body in that it is inhabited by a consciousness.  If I die, and my body still exists, it is the absence of my immaterial mind that makes the body a corpse.  The body could still remain.  A thought is regardless not a neuron; an embodied consciousness animates its body but could only be distinct from it.

None of this logically or even Biblically requires that there is an afterlife, or at least an immediate sort.  Perhaps human or animal consciousness, for instance, only exists or perceives when it is integrated with its body and, as applicable, its respective nervous system (which is not consciousness but correlates with it).  Indeed, this is actually what the Bible itself teaches: the dead are unconscious until a physical and phenomenological resurrection (Ecclesiastes 9:5-10, Job 3:11-19, Psalm 6:5, Daniel 12:2).  Perhaps it is the case, though it does not philosophically have to be true and is in no way provable, that, while separate from the body, the mind is causally sustained by the body.  Even then, though it would appear that the immaterial consciousness of a human with absolutely no correlating neurological function has died, other animals have wildly differing nervous systems.

Despite being omnivorous animals with teeth for eating algae or other creatures and behavioral reactions to stimuli, sea urchins, similar in the following regard to jellyfish and coral [1], lack a central nervous system, including a brain.  They have neurons, but not a centralized mass of neurons like humans.  They even have a nerve ring around the mouth like that of a starfish, another oceanic organism without a brain [2].  Along with many other animals, sea urchins live and act as if they are conscious despite having nervous systems that differ from the human kind to the point that some have neurons without a brain.  Further removed from the human nervous system than urchins, in fact, sea sponges reportedly have no neurons whatsoever and yet are still living animals [3].

What this would mean, aside from what is already logically true by necessity about the nature of consciousness as aforementioned, is that even observation of other creatures very much points to a nervous system or a nervous system of a particular kind not being a requirement for the existence of an immaterial mind.  The correlation between mind and body could be such that a mind like that of a human is only tied to a nervous system like that of a human--however, I could never know if other creatures are conscious or what their consciousness does not entail because I am neither those other creatures nor omniscient/telepathic.  It is not just dogs and horses that act like they are conscious, though.  Sea urchins eat, reproduce sexually, and live potentially up to a century or longer, and they have no brain, only neurons.

Only an utter fool would ever think science proves the existence or nature of other minds, or that it is science and not logic and introspection that prove truths about consciousness and one's own mental existence.  Likewise, only an irrationalist would think that anything other than logical necessity and possibility is the core grounding of truth, and this includes those about consciousness.  All the same, scientific evidence certainly suggests that a number of animals really do have their own immaterial minds--for a mind can only be immaterial even if it lives and dies because of its relationship to an arrangement of bodily matter--without a brain or, in the case of sea sponges, any nervous system.  This plainly contradicts the unscientific (and more importantly, illogical) belief that only central nervous systems can produce minds.  The mind is not the brain one way or another for reasons of logical necessity.  Animal behaviors and neurology still pose a way to show that, even according to contemporary paradigms of neuroscience and biology, a mind would (as far as empirical observation makes it seem) not be identical to a brain anyway.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2024/08/the-neurons-of-coral.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2024/05/an-alternate-nervous-system.html

[3].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/12/the-sea-sponge.html

No Afterlife Or A Terrible One

As tumultuous and horrid as this life can be, there is no guarantee that suffering will end with death.  A host of logically possible afterlives having nothing to do with true justice could loom ahead, worse than anything presented in even the most heretical, exaggerated distortions of the Biblical hell in fiction.  Alternatively, there might be no afterlife at all, and while this would provide the purest form of escape from the very capacity for pain itself since one's consciousness completely dies without any eventual resurrection, that would give current life an utter finality that also entails grimness.  A short or troubled life, and many lives are deeply troubled, would have its own tragic aspects even if they pale in comparison to endless torment of any kind.

In both cases, this life on Earth could be the best we will ever have, either because there will be no continuation of life once our consciousness expires with our body or because the eventual afterlife might be worse than anything earthly life could possibly force up on us, having nothing to do with morality (which automatically excludes eternal torture, which could only be unjust, meaning an amoral afterlife could feature this kind of torment).  These genuine logical possibilities are not true in actuality just because they are possible; all the same, only an irrationalistic person would think them either philosophically impossible or unworthy of an existential soberness that far exceeds whatever any lesser trials of this life could deserve.

Even if there is no afterlife so that death brings true, final release from the misery or potential misery of existence [1], the fact that there is neither everlasting fulfillment in the truth ahead nor default peace behind would be a brutal reality.  Soul oblivion is not a terrible fate in itself.  You no longer exist in order to worry or fear in the first place.  It is that not existing as a mind, embodied or unembodied, logically necessitates that one can no longer experience any sort of pleasure or relief or empowerment or excitement.  Compared to eternal bliss, nonexistence of the mind is outright awful [2].

As long as one perceives anything at all, one exists as a consciousness, and whatever one is immediately experiencing with regards to the external world is certain at least on the level of fallible perceptions.  There is not a single further moment of life that is proven to await us because of our present experience, though death may seem near or far at a given time.  In turn, there is nothing logically necessary about an afterlife, and if there is one, it would not necessarily be pleasant whatsoever for anybody.  Objective logical truth, concerning both necessity and possibility, is true no matter any being's subjective wishes or reaction if they are aware of it, but it would not be subjectivist to strive to cherish one's life in light of how there might be no afterlife or only something worse than this to come.

[1].  A.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-burden-of-consciousness.html

B.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/08/wishing-to-have-never-been-born.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2024/06/death-is-not-worst-fate-logically-or.html

On Remote Work

The technological capacity for a great deal of professional work to be done remotely was present before COVID-19; it was the pandemic that merely catapulted virtual work into the forefront of public focus.  Not every job can be done remotely, such as onsite inspections or directly manual labor.  The scope of remote work is thus limited to jobs that truly can be performed from smartphones, tablets, or computers (phones and tablets are computers, but I mean in the conventional sense of laptops or desktops)—at home or in a desired third-party location.  As for objections to working at home when the job does genuinely allow for it, there are only so many reasons why an employer would staunchly demand for their workers to appear in person, especially when they themselves might hypocritically be prone to work remotely, without jeopardizing their safety in road travel or wasting potentially hours each day by driving or sitting in traffic.  None of them are rational.

One invalid reason is because remote work is not traditional: it is not something executives or managers were used to at the onset of their career.  Because it is unfamiliar to them or because they had to come to a specific physical location to work, they think it is pragmatically or morally necessary for other people to do the same, when technology often makes this unnecessary.  Another similar reason is because they think that company culture is threatened if workers are not congregated in one place.  This can entirely be a subcategory of the first reason, though it is worth addressing directly.  First of all, it is not logically impossible for a company culture to be preserved by digital communication, including a culture of kindness and helpfulness.  Second, company culture is objectively meaningless beyond a company not having a culture of stupidity (like forcing in-person work without need) or immorality.  Work is left to itself about labor for pay and not about what might frequently be nothing more than the facade of camaraderie.

Still another illogical reason to oppose remote work is because its objectors stupidly think that remote workers are inherently lazy.  This is a problem with workers on an individual basis and not with remote work itself.  Even so, irrationalistic leaders might think that if they cannot see employees, everyone will try to misuse this situation to get paid for doing absolutely nothing.  Nothing about this makes it true that remote work by nature stifles productivity.  This does not logically follow, with logic being all that dictates truth and falsity, possibility and impossibility, and relevance and irrelevance, as opposed to studies, feelings, and social norms.  An employer's wishes are objectively irrelevant.  In actuality, having more time to themself outside of working hours could easily mean an employee has more energy to immediately invest in their work and fewer obstacles to exerting consistent concentration.  The freedom to not commute can also lead them to regard their work more positively, since it is objectively no longer as much of an imposition on their life.

Thus, he or she can be more productive or psychologically devoted to their work, instead of spending time at an office recovering from having to wake up early to prepare to navigate through potentially crowded roadways in order to gratuitously arrive at work.  However, such logically necessary facts are not what employers tend to be concerned with.  Some, many indeed, simply like having the power to make other people's lives miserable or confined for no reason other than sheer subjectivist, egoistic whim.  They might think that if they suffered in the workplace, it must remain the same for future workers.  They could also merely crave their organizational power to make others comply with their whims or leave the company, personal financial standing be damned.  This is not even about the alleged need to directly observe workers to enforce efficiency or "make" them actually work.  It is about utterly asinine self-gratification.  In the context of the petty social construct of the workplace, this is expressed by exercising power to make the employer feel superior on invalid basis or to intimidate or "punish" employees into submission.

Because this entails enormous philosophical error at the very heart of their misplaced worldview, it is the most irrationalistic of these reasons why certain corporate figures oppose remote work.  The objective truths of logic are disregarded, and these people likely assume morality either does not exist or is in their own favor simply out of convenience, all of which is far more far-reaching than idiotic workplace observation habits or thoughtless love of tradition.  If an employer really cared about the time and safety of their workers, they would not force them to needlessly forfeit additional sleep to spend up to hours getting ready to risk their lives driving on a regular basis, nor would they "mandate" any mass scale office attendance that contributes to extensive environmental emissions.  Corporate talk about how companies are "family" is sheer bullshit in plenty of cases that is only used to distract workers from such things.

Yes, Deuteronomy 24:5 Does Prescribe The Submission Of Husbands To Wives

Where can one find the first command in the Bible for husbands to submit to their wives?  Do not start with Paul's letters, but with the divine laws in the Torah.  Numbers 5 and 30 briefly mention limited scenarios where wives should submit to their husbands, but not only is the doctrine of general or unilateral submission based on gender not taught, but this would be illogical.  The idea that women are made to submit and men are made to lead is illogical because stereotypes about capabilities or personality are false [1].  It is additionally rejected by Deuteronomy 24:5, where Moses recounts how God mandates that "If a man has recently married, he must not be sent to war or have any other duty laid on him. For one year he is to be free to stay at home and bring happiness to the wife he has married."

There is no way that endeavoring to bring about a spouse's happiness, whether one is a man or woman and thus a husband or wife, does not involve a degree of sheer submission to them.  One party is doing what they can to prioritize or please the other party, so that it is logically entailed by bringing happiness to someone in this way that the former is submitting to the latter.  Therefore, a handful of ways in which spouses are to situationally submit to each other are prescribed in the Torah, not just wives to husbands.  Deuteronomy 24:5 does not have to use words like "submit" to convey a moral idea that necessarily requires the submission of husbands to wives.  What makes this even more ironic is that many who champion the illogical and heretical idea of unilateral submission in marriage would almost certainly think the Torah and general Old Testament is very hostile to the concept of gender equality.

Ironic indeed, given that they likely think women were created all but strictly for the happiness and benefit of men according to Genesis 2 and that this going in the inverse is sinful, though this very chapter presents men and women as equals along with Genesis 1 and Genesis 5:1-2.  If anything, Deuteronomy 24:5 explicitly teaches something that clarifies what was already logically and Biblically (Genesis 1:26-27, 2:24) the case: that if wives are morally required to submit to and assist their husbands, then husbands are to submit to and assist their wives.  It is as if God explicitly commanded this in his formal revelation in case some people would fallaciously consider husbands exempt from practicing marital submission despite how it is logically impossible for an action that can be committed by either gender to be morally required for one and optional or evil for the other at the same time.

Seeking the happiness of a spouse is not tied to the literal anatomy of gender, as with Biblical circumcision, since women have no foreskin to circumcise because they lack a penis.  Thus, logically and Biblically, the obligation for all the righteous in non-abusive situations (Exodus 21:10-11, 26-27, and so on) is to "Submit to one another" as Paul touches upon in Ephesians 5:21.  Yet this is a mere single verse before the renowned "Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord" in Ephesians 5:22.  The context is plainly gender egalitarian!  According to the concepts espoused in the very same New Testament epistle, Paul is not against living out gender equality inside or outside of marriage.  It is not as if Paul does not elsewhere likewise insist that wives should love their husbands (Titus 2:3-5), so just as he does not actually say that husbands are not equally obligated to submit to their wives and actively teaches the opposite (see also 1 Corinthians 7, where he teaches reciprocal submission), he does not actually say that wives are not equally obligated to love their husbands.

Would wives not be obligated to love all others, including their own husbands (Leviticus 19:18, 33-34, Matthew 22:37-40, Romans 13:8-10)?  Logically, this would be as erroneous and hypocritical as all other gender stereotypes.  Biblically, this is absolutely not what Paul himself proclaims in Ephesians 5 or anywhere else.  This would be sexist against men, but alas, many complementarians and pseudo-egalitarians are more fixated respectively on illicitly controlling or pushing back against any real or illusory oppression of women that this goes unnoticed or at a minimum unacknowledged by some—as with issues like marital or general physical abuse of men by women.  For some reason, without even appealing to the other verses like the ones I have mentioned, complementarians exalt the notion of only wives submitting to only husbands while not teaching, based on a consistent misunderstanding of Ephesians 5, that only husbands should love only wives.

Paul is also not the only New Testament author to perhaps seemingly deny the logical and Biblical truths of gender egalitarianism, only for the context to in reality directly exclude complementarianism.  Peter says in 1 Peter 3 that husbands are to do in the inverse what he has just called for wives to do, which is submit to their husbands (1 Peter 3:1-7).  His wording of "In the same way" when he addresses husbands in verse 7 directly requires this, again, despite how he does not use the word submit when speaking to them of how to interact with their wives.  In the Old and New Testament, to summarize, the Bible does in truth put forth gender egalitarianism as a central part of its doctrines of marriage and broader human life.

The fact that gender-based complementarianism as opposed to individualistic complementarianism [2] is intrinsically false by logical necessity already disqualifies it from being even possibly true.  If the Bible disagreed, it would be in error rather than logic, which due to being true in itself cannot be false, unlike assumptions, scientific paradigms, the claims of historical documents, miscellaneous religious philosophies, and so on.  Reading the Bible from start to finish without making assumptions will, though, reveal that it teaches a philosophy of gender and marriage very different from what you might have heard from the majority of people in your life—or all of them.

Logic, people.  It is very fucking helpful.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2020/06/refuting-gender-stereotypes-unnecessary.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2019/12/complementing-ones-spouse-in.html

The Last Trumpet

As Paul puts it more than once, the resurrection of the righteous occurs with the use of a trumpet (1 Thessalonians 4:16, 1 Corinthians 15:51-52).  The resurrection of Jesus is but the first of many (15:20), the latter being raised to life in the eschatological future.  While the Bible does not say everything relevant to the issue in one place—indeed, it does not do this with a great many things—it does say enough to establish that this resurrection of those committed to Yahweh does not occur before some seven-year Tribulation as one might hear from evangelicals.  Supposedly, God is to remove Christians from the world before a time of great judgment and suffering comes, which itself leads up to the Second Coming.  What Paul says in conjunction with what Revelation and/or Matthew state teaches this.

This resurrection trumpet Paul has mentioned is called the final trumpet (1 Corinthians 15:52), and yet if this sounding happens before the events of Revelation at large as many evangelicals believe, then it would not be the last one mentioned in Biblical eschatology: Revelation 8:2, 6-13, 9:1-21, 10:7, and 11:15-19 address a series of seven trumpets that announce cataclysms for the inhabitants of the world well into the period evangelicals refer to as the Tribulation.  There could not be a "final" trumpet before the seven years in which seven more trumpets are used, but this is a contradiction that many evangelicals are quite comfortable to overlook.  They might not even notice the disparity.  However, even these seven trumpets are not the only ones that are clearly presented as being used during the so-called Tribulation.

One trumpet is spoken of in Matthew 24:31 as resounding at the literal return of Christ (24:30).  Here, the text says that the return of Jesus is marked by a trumpet that precedes the gathering of the elect to him, which overlaps with what Paul describes in 1 Thessalonians 4 and 1 Corinthians 15 when he writes of the resurrection of the righteous being connected to a trumpet, as well as how not all Christians will sleep (literally fall into the soul sleep of death, as Daniel 12:2, Ecclesiastes 9:5-10, and more teach).  Some of them will be gathered and given their bodies capable of eternal life while still alive.  In fact, this is the very trumpet Paul speaks of in 1 Corinthians 15.  The last trumpet, once again, cannot come before another trumpet seven years later, or else it would be logically impossible for it to be the last one!

Revelation 20:4-6, specifically mentioning people who died well into the rule of the "antichrist" (Revelation 13), says Christians killed by the beast or at his command are restored to life in the first resurrection.  There cannot be two resurrections in the first resurrection, as evangelicals commonly posit, perhaps obliviously.  A rapture before the tribulation period would be the first resurrection and the one at Christ's return would be the second, but the Bible says that the one at his return is the first and that the second resurrection, that of the wicked and unrepentant, is reserved for at least a thousand years later (Revelation 20:5).  The Bible teaches no "pre-Tribulation rapture."  It does teach a resurrection of the righteous and a transformation of the bodies of living Christians both tied to a trumpet, which is in turn tied to the Second Coming, which comes at the end of the beast's reign and not before.

Who Will Buy The Products?

On a pragmatic level wholly separate from any moral errors therein, it is by logical necessity contrary to a greedy corporation's own ends to trample on workers and consumers.  Two very publicly controversial issues of recent years illustrate this.  If either artificial intelligence/general machinery phases out human workers for good en masse or if employers refuse to increase wages and salaries to account for the rising cost of living, eventually, people simply cannot afford to keep paying companies for their goods and services.  Many of these products are not necessary for survival or basic physical health as it is, which could easily impact the choices consumers would very likely make if forced into a sufficiently desperate scenario.  Greed hyper-prioritized on an enormous scale carries the seeds of its own downfall.

Suppose Company A gives minimal raises or little to none at all, its leadership hoping to keep more consumer expenditure for themselves.  The employees are already not paid enough for their families to get by on a single full-time income.  This is aside from Company A intentionally keeping some of its workers below the threshhold of hours necessary to incur the added expense of worker benefits like insurance.  Because of this, the employees are unable to truly save for a financially stable future; immediate needs like food, electricity, and rent or a mortgage persist, and this does not account for expensive healthcare emergencies.  If Companies B, C, D, and so on do the exact same things, people who are not already wealthy enough to leverage the likes of investments in their favor will struggle severely to ever gain their economic footing.

Prices will almost certainly keep rising due to inflation and plain corporate greed.  After all, those coveted annual and quarterly numbers are not going to just increase themselves.  Entire industries based on nonessential purchases would erode—yes, mere survival for the sake of survival is stupid and meaningless, but you cannot as much as subjectively enjoy anything if you are not alive to do so.  Because workers are not paid enough to be at liberty to keep the economy functioning without sacrificing their literal needs, the companies who maximized profit to such an extent would have shot themselves in their feet.  Companies could then shift their attention solely to rich clients, but this still significantly restricts their potential earnings, and it is not as if even the ultra wealthy have infinite resources or would automatically be willing to conduct business with them (especially if their products and services are not "high-end").

After a point, and that point could vary depending on the economic factors of a person's location, time in history, and so on, the only reason a person would ever continue trying to amass wealth is egoism, the pursuit of as much power as they can obtain, or a passive kind of stupidity that prioritizes irrationalistic expansion.  All the same, the type of person who might try in vain to seize eternally inflating profits or deprive workers of livable compensation could on one hand use every method they can get away with to reach for these respectively impossible and asinine goals.  They might also, on the other hand, be the exact type of person whose heart would panic at the prospect of their own methods conflicting with increasing profits: why would the masses spend money on their products when they cannot afford things vital for living or can afford nothing beyond this?

The same employers or shareholders who devoted themselves so pathetically to a social construct over logical necessity and concerns about moral obligation would have exhausted their best pragmatic chances at securing long-term flourishing.  There is no contradiction between human workers receiving livable compensation or better (rather than being forsaken whenever possible for machines and AI software), consumers having excess discretionary income, and corporations making genuine profits.  Attempts to support the latter of these three things by disregarding the former two will, if extensive enough, devastate the ability to generate increasing profits.  There cannot be infinite financial growth with limited consumer markets, a limited world population, and a limited number of logically possible goods and services anyway.  One of the corporation's best hopes for securing and keeping profitability is ultimately not depriving workers of wages or replacing almost all of them with artificial intelligence.

A Graven Image

In the words of the King James Version, Exodus 20:4-5 teaches that it is a sin to make "any graven image" (see also the repetition of this in Deuteronomy 5:8-9).  What precisely constitutes a graven image?  Reading only verse 4 of Exodus 20 might give the impression that this would be a physical representation of any being or item whatsoever in heaven, on land, or in the waters of Earth, regardess of the purpose for which the image was created.  Verse 5 clarifies that the commands are actually about idolatry, the making and worship of a material object, such as one carved out of wood, as if it is divine or representative of the divine nature.  As if Exodus 20:5 is not sufficiently clear even in the NIV, in which verse 4 merely speaks of an image rather than using terms like "idol" or "graven image," Deuteronomy 4 elaborates on making images pertaining to worship of idols and the natural world:

Exodus 20:4-5—"'You shall not make yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.  You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous god . . .'"

Deuteronomy 4:15-19—"You saw no form of any kind the day the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire.  Therefore watch yourselves very carefully, so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape, whether formed like a man or a woman, or like any animal on earth or any bird that flies in the air, or like any creature that moves along the ground or any fish in the waters below.  And when you look up to the sky and see the sun, the moon and the stars—all the heavenly array—do not be enticed into bowing down to them and worshiping things the Lord your God has apportioned to all the nations under heaven."

It is making an image to worship the depicted being that is idolatrous, for God has no physical form as the uncaused cause ("You saw no form of any kind"; Genesis 1:1, John 4:24); though a true deity could hypothetically fashion a body for itself, an uncaused cause is not corporeal, as it is what set in motion the causal chain that led to the creation of material substance in the first place.  Hence, the idol capturing the form of a man or woman or any kind of non-human animal misrepresents the nature of God, making it unsuitable as an aid for direct worship.  Exodus 20 outright says that idols should not be worshiped or shown reverence, so the context is not about making or appreciating images being otherwise evil, and Deuteronomy contrasting the forbidden images with the formless nature of God, along with the subsequent condemnation of worshiping celestial bodies, clearly establishes that image worship rather than designing any image is sinful.

Crafting a sculpture of a man or woman or any other lesser animal (Genesis 1:26-27) to depict creation apart from idolatrous motives is not condemned.  Neither is allowing an artistic form of what one recognizes as something other than God to compel one to worship the uncaused cause, from which all contingent things directly or indirectly derive, Biblically immoral.  Once again, every prohibition of images in the Torah is about images intended for use as idols.  A sculpture of animal forms—and humans are indeed animals—designed for a purpose such as artistic expression or educational usage is not at all what the Ten Commandments or any corresponding portion of broader Yahweh's Torah laws declare evil.

To worship an idol is to worship the likeness of a contingent physical creature or object rather than the immaterial uncaused cause (Romans 1:22-25), the supreme being [1].  However splendorous the creature or natural world is, it falls far short of the divine glory.  Idolatry of this kind, where the practice is intentionally done to treat nature and the animals within it if they are really divine, is inside and outside of Judeo-Christianity utter folly.  By logical necessity, it is invalid.  Biblical philosophy does not even have to be true for the practice to be stupid!  Using a graven image as an object of worship is a baseless activity at best.

It is humans who actually carry the divine "image" (Genesis 1:27), yet worshiping people is not permissible because they are not God (Deuteronomy 13:6-10, 17:2-5) despite being god-like by virtue of being created by God to reflect his own image (Genesis 5:1-2, John 10:34-36).  How much further removed from the likeness of God are graven images!  The sin of idolatry still does not change the fact that an image like a sculpture does not have to be intended or actually used for idolatry.  All images do not inherently fall within the category of a forbidden representation of something from the physical world.  Exodus 20 itself does not leave this unspecified.

[1].  See here:

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

B.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/07/god-and-empty-space.html

Digital Physics

How does a video game character visually react to being struck or shot?  How do particles like dust and debris act onscreen?  How do the environments, or objects like crates or trees, react to the likes of virtual gunfire, explosions, or melee attacks?  How do a character's limbs move as they walk or fight or stand in place, and how do electrical discharges appear in the game?  All of this pertains to digital physics.  So would computer generated effects for film and television, of course.  The people and objects in a video game have no physical presence, something hardware does not have in common; the former exists only as imagery on a screen.  Nonetheless, if the device really exists as perceived, the imagery exists, albeit without true physical form despite its causal dependence upon material hardware to exist.  Dynamic lighting (where light and shadow changes based upon real-time factors like shifting the character model position or camera), destructible environments, and more can be used to great immersive or storytelling effect—but whether due to intentional game design or software glitches, digital physics do not have to reflect the observed physics of the physical world.  

The purpose of this could be to present a universe or a corner of the universe that is explicitly distinctive from our planet and the way its matter appears to "behave."  Either way, this overlaps with a much more pressing philosophical issue than anything about mere storytelling or physics.  Storytelling and physics alike are slaves to logical possibility: nothing logically impossible—like it being true that something which follows by necessity from another concept is false or someone being both dead and alive at once—can be true.  This goes beyond physics into broader metaphysics, but digital physics depend on such truths by default.  It cannot be true that one thing which follows logically from another is false (at least in that it really does follow), because then it logically follows from something that logical necessities are not true; thus, pure reason itself can only be true.  Actual and virtual physics are constrained by consistency with reason, not the other way around.

The physics of a video game or an animated film certainly do not have to represent the behavior of particles in our sensory experiences outside of virtual entertainment: anything that is logically possible, rather than scientifically accurate as much as fallible, unverifiable perceptions can be carried, can be portrayed.  It is impossible to include any element that truly contradicts the necessary truths of reason, as logical axioms would have to still be true even if they are false, and thus are inherently correct and inescapable even in entertainment and virtual constructs.  It could never be the case that there is nothing true about a virtual world because then it would be true that there is no truth there, for example.  It is just that such metaphysically self-necessary, epistemologically self-evident axioms are true in themselves independent of real or virtual physics because they cannot be false.  Logic can be misunderstood, ignored, or denied, but it can never cease to be true and therefore can never cease to be.

Nothing shown in a work of fiction can truly be impossible, not even when the physics do not align with "real" physics (as if we can know which logically possible set of physics is really there behind the veil of perception).  What could be the case is that an idea, whether or an abstract philosophical concept or an event, contradicts a person's assumptions or expectations, whether  of a character or storyteller or viewer.  If someone holds to anything else, they are in blatant error, for true contradiction such as the untruth of logical axioms is impossible in even all fiction by virtue of being intrinsically impossible.  Necessary truths cannot be false in any instance, not even hypothetically, because, again, their falsity requires their veracity.  Any worldview holding otherwise is by necessity false and cannot even be portrayed in digital worlds with regards to their virtual physics or anything else.  At most, a character in a game or work of any other medium could only erroneously claim otherwise, regardless of if the creator is using them as a mouthpiece.  The immutable veracity of logic remains unchanged.

The way that physical (non-digital) particles, objects and environments function is confined by the fact that nothing can contradict logical axioms and other necessary truths, and so science is fully contingent on consistency with reason, as all other things are, in order for each of its tenets to even be possibly true.  The same is true of digital physics.  This means that anything that does not contradict logical axioms can be fashioned to appear onscreen, yet without the additional constraints of representing the laws of physics as they appear to us in our sensory experiences, unlike if someone was to record something like Earth's meteorological phenomena.  This is a great asset to exploring what could have been true or what one day could be.  In digital physics, we can escape what could change in our sensory experiences and the material process behind them (for scientific patterns could have been quite different and it is possible, since they are not logically necessary, for them to change at any moment) by retreating to virtual world, but nowhere can we escape strictly logical truths.

Hunting And Fishing

In an ultimate sense, fishing is just a particular type of hunting despite the common separation of vocabulary.  Baiting fish into accepting a hook might be somewhat different in method than using firearms or bows to kill an animal such as deer on land, but both are about drawing an animal in or killing/catching it, and both can involve a great deal of strategy.  Hunting "and" fishing, though, can be approached far more flippantly than Biblical ethics allows for, and this can be seen happening frequently.  As far as the treatment of animals goes, Genesis 1 would only convey that people are to preside over animals without mistreating them as part of God's creation (1:28-31), as well as that humans are superior because they have the divine image (1:26-27, reiterated in 5:1-2), but it would not specify what exactly constitutes mistreatment--although active malice would be an illegitimate motive either way.  Both people and other creatures are said elsewhere to have the breath of life (Genesis 2:7, 7:15, 20-22), but it is human life that has the higher priority (9:1-6).

Mosaic Law is where more is clarified.  One should not yoke two animals of different sizes or strengths together for agricultural labor (Deuteronomy 22:10), prevent an animal from eating the grain it is treading (Deuteronomy 25:4), take a mother bird along with its eggs or hatched young (Deuteronomy 22:6-7), or leave an animal to wander or suffer even if it belongs to one's enemy (Exodus 23:4-5, Deuteronomy 22:1-4).  From each of these, there it at least something else not mentioned that would also be sinful by logical necessity if the former thing is immoral, and at times this would pertain to humans rather than animals alone.  Paul actually acknowledges this more than once in the New Testament amidst his affirmations of Yahweh's Torah commands [1].  Additionally, when God relented from destroying Nineveh and Jonah objected, he pointed to the city's animal lives and not just human souls when pointing out how he has a basis for being concerned for its destruction (Jonah 4:10-11).

This is not because animals cannot ever be permissibly killed by people or used for their resources.  The sacrificial system in Israel required the killing of animals, though not in prolonged and torturous manners, to atone for human sin.  Human life is to be prioritized over animal life, as is consistent with Genesis 1:26-27 and as exemplified in how to handle an ox that gores someone to death (Exodus 21:28-32 [2]).  There is also a major difference between killing bugs that invade one's home or hunting animals for the sake of something like food or clothing and killing animals just to exert power over them, impress other people, or participate in social norms.  That animals are a good part of God's creation imbued with the breath of life, just like people, would necessitate this.  Similarly, hunting for population control when a species threatens the balance of the ecosystem or threatens/encroaches on human safety would be in accordance with the higher standing of humanity.

This is not why many people I have known say they hunt or fish or hope to do so.  Passing time and fitting in with other people are more commonly their objectives.  Consider, however, what fishing does, particularly to small fish, when there is no goal but relaxation or competition.  To render such a fish unable to breathe when pulled above the water, potentially experiencing local pain from the hook and whatever barbs it might have, only to release it right after is incredibly exploitative of a living thing.  It might be done for no other reason than a rush of excitement, a frenetic competition among the philosophically unconcerned, or out of a mere recreational habit.  When a person does not even have a survival or resource-based reason to catch the fish and use its body afterward, they are casually and perhaps willfully disregarding the life and wellbeing of another creature.  The same would be true of hunting on land when there is nothing more than tradition, contest, or personal enjoyment at its heart.

This does not mean it would always be immoral to fish, for one could fish or kill other aquatic animals for any of the aforementioned positive reasons on the Christian worldview.  Not that narratives are the core revelation of Yahweh's moral nature rather than Mosaic Law, Jesus oversees a miraculous catch of fish when he tells Simon where to place his nets, and so many fish are snared that the nets break and the boats start to sink (Luke 5:1-7).  Humans are not in error for simply using animals for their own benefit in certain cases.  It is that the context for this legitimate killing or harvesting for resources is far more narrow than many people might be inclined to image, including people who think of themselves as Christians.  Harming or killing them unnecessarily is not a valid expression of human supremacy.  If someone identifies as a Christian, there is an extreme degree of hypocrisy in their professed worldview and their misconceptions about that worldview if they would reject any of this.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/12/what-logically-follows-from-biblical.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2025/06/a-bull-with-habit-of-goring.html

The Alleged Strongest Fear: A Refutation Of Lovecraft

There are some issues more objectively worthy of fear than others—the genuine logical possibility of an afterlife of eternal suffering that has nothing to do with alleged justice is far more weighty than a house swarming with roaches no matter what anyone feels—but fear itself is an emotion, and emotions are experienced subjectively.  People who are afraid of the same basic things can experience their fear to different degrees, and what terrifies one person might leave another psychologically unaffected altogether.  Fear is fear; fear can only be experienced subjectively within a being's consciousness.  These are objective logical necessities.

H.P. Lovecraft, the infamous father of a particular kind of cosmic horror storytelling, said that the oldest and stronger emotion of humanity is fear, and the oldest and strongest fear is that of the unknown.  While this sort of idea meshes well with the thematic thrust of his cosmic horror stories and their supernatural and/or extraterrestrial entities like the telepathic, dreaming Cthulhu, it is philosophically false.  No specific category of emotion is automatically stronger than another, such as fear over anger or happiness over grief, because emotions are objectively subjective in their intensity (and why would fear have existed before other emotions, as Lovecraft assumes?).  There is also no specific manifestation of the exact same fundamental emotion, such as fear, that is automatically more intense than another kind.

What is unknown is not necessarily terrifying because it is unknown.  I cannot know beyond my mere perceptions if grass really is green.  This does not frighten me in the slightest, although epistemological limitations themselves and certain other unknown truths (like whether or not morality exists or which of the many possible afterlives, if any, await me) can.  Also, what is known can be absolutely dread-inducing on a subjective level and logically worthy of such an emotional response.  For instance, a person can be terrified of a mental health condition that they can rationalistically know with absolute certainty, for introspective states of mind are directly experienced and cannot be illusory wherever one makes no assumptions.  Someone could alternatively/also be horrified by the fact that truths like logical axioms, which can be known with absolute certainty, do not depend on their whims or convenience or feelings whatsoever.

Lovecraft's own stories do address deeper philosophical substance (as stupid as he himself and his worldview of atheism, scientism, and hyper-racism are) than many, and thus emphasize metaphysical and epistemological issues that could instill deeper fear than others.  They still do not even begin to explore the most severe forms of cosmic horror.  Human powerlessness and implied moral nihilism are tied to the grounding of the horror in Lovecraftian narratives: the nature of reality itself is the source of the terror.  Apocalyptic cataclysms connected with superhuman beings next to which we are like miniscule ants is one thing, however.  The ultimately illusory Lovecraftian afterlife of something like Stephen King's Revival [1] far exceeds, as far as objective worthiness of fear goes, the mere awakening of Cthulhu or the overwhelmed reaction of a character to the scale, power, or eldritch appearance of the other such beings in Lovecraft's writings.  The most fear-worthy kinds of Lovecraftian horror go far beyond what he himself utilized.

Even then, someone might not find such things especially fearful in a subjective sense, though they can nonetheless recognize the objective significance of them and how, if anything, their nature would merit the utmost fear out of the scores of logically possible things which can neither be proven nor disproven by humans.  Though he cannot have truly known anything as a non-rationalist who did not start with proper recognition of the real nature of logical axioms and other necessary truths (free of all assumptions), Lovecraft was right that fear can be immense and overwhelming, and that this could be directed towards that which is unknown or, for humans, unknowable.  No emotion, however, is by necessity stronger across people than others in spite of how some things people could be afraid of are plainly more deserving of it; also, the way fear is experienced by a given person could fluctuate and is in all cases felt subjectively.

[1].  See here for additional exploration of this:

A.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/07/a-kind-of-non-theological-hell-mother.html

B.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/10/beyond-lovecrafts-horror.html

When Moses Pleads For Forgiveness Of The Israelites

Following the scouting expedition to learn more about the state of the Promised Land of Canaan (Numbers 13:1-25), when the scouts other than Caleb object to proceeding because the inhabitants were large in size (13:31-33), the general people of Israel lament their supposed fate of death or captivity (14:1-9).  Yahweh says to Moses that he will kill the Israelites at large and create a greater and more powerful nation through Moses (14:10-12).  Saying that the inhabitants of other nations like Egypt, not that perception or reputation metaphysically dictates the nature of something or epistemologically reveals it, might think that God only brought the Israelites out of Egypt into the wilderness to slaughter them there (14:13-16), Moses pleads with God to not bring this about.

This is actually not the first time such a thing occurs in Biblical narratives.  When Moses comes down from Mount Sinai in Exodus 32, he finds the assembly worshipping golden calves as if these metal forms crafted by Aaron are what brought them out of Egypt (32:1-8).  Yahweh says that he will destroy them and make a great nation of Israel through Moses (32:9-10), Moses appeals to God on behalf of the community (32:11-13), and God relents (32:14).  As with Exodus 32, Numbers 14:20 says that God relents, forgiving the rebellious people who had gone as far as to talk about stoning Moses, Aaron, and Joshua.  More than once has Moses asked for the preservation of Israel in spite of its errors and more than once has God chosen this.

It is important that this is case where one person asks for forgiveness on behalf of others and the forgiveness is bestowed.  This would not have to be soteriological forgiveness (2 Peter 3:9) that would spare them from being killed in Gehenna after their resurrection (Daniel 12:2, Matthew 10:28, John 3:16, 5:28-29, 2 Peter 2:6).  No one is given this status except when they request it or commit to Yahweh/Christ (John 3:16 again, as well as verses like Revelation 22:17).  However, though the collective Israelites were forgiven, someone still had to ask for it [1], or else God would not have done so.  The person in this case happened to be Moses rather than the individuals he interceded for.  Indeed, they were not absolved of all judgment because God still decreed that the offending Israelite parents who complained about their children being taken by other people would die in the wilderness before their children would enter the Promised Land (Numbers 14:21-35).

The Biblical doctrine on forgiveness always requires that someone ask for it in order to receive it.  While it is not immoral for a person to voluntarily forgive another person unprompted, as this is permissible mercy that is not required, it is never obligatory to extend forgiveness apart from a sincere request for it (Luke 17:3-4).  Someone who is personally forgiven still deserves to be killed or otherwise punished if they have committed a sin that is also a Biblical crime (for instance, if they kidnap according to Exodus 21:16, they still deserve execution), and this in turn still does not clear them on a soteriological level.  It is still crucial that the Torah recounts examples of God forgiving and/or sparing a wicked community because one of its righteous members asked for it, despite how the sinners are not the ones making the request.

[1].  A.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2020/01/imitating-divine-forgiveness.html

B.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/12/forgiving-like-yahweh.html

Before Common Era

Historical events like coronations, natural disasters, wars, and the like cannot be demonstrated by logical necessity to have happened.  Maybe they did, and maybe they did not, as long as they are logically possible; there is still testimonial, hearsay evidence that certain events did take place—even if the documentation is from an eyewitness who made no assumptions and did not distort any information, it is still hearsay for future readers.  The epistemology of history is seldom broached in a rationalistic way, but something that is more likely to come up in conversation is the terminology of dividing historical eras.

On a very broad scale, the timeline of recorded history is separated into BCE and CE, or "Before Common Era" and "Common Era".  Becoming more widely used in the 1900s, these words are the more neutral replacement for BC and AD, which have very distinctively Christian origins.  Now, someone who uses the abbreviations BC or AD, as well as the full phrases "Before Christ" and "Anno Domini" (the "year of the Lord"), does not have to be a Christian.  It is not as if use of these phrases in any way necessitates that a person has ideological respect for Christianity, much less explicit commitment to it.  The words were just the norm.

What does and does not follow from the way that BCE and CE are used?  Ironically, while new terms are substituted for the conventional ones, the Before Common Era/Common Era system still keeps a general historical division entailed by Christian philosophy.  The words are different, but not the ultimate timeline itself.  Both BC and BCE have the same reference point for what years are before Christ or the Common Era, and both AD and CE have the same reference point for what years start with or are after Christ's birth, also referred to as the Common Era.  2016 AD is the same as 2016 CE, though even the genuine historical evidence for the life and death (as Biblically asserted) of Jesus does not point to his birth occuring in the exact year that starts the "Common Era".

The very likely historical presence of Christ was nonetheless so impactful that it eventually led to even the predominant secular timeline being assigned terms that correspond with the approximated period before and after his birth.  This impact is of no small significance, nor is the prominence and influence of Christianity, either in its truly Biblical sense or its asinine distortions like evangelicalism and Catholicism, limited to the way many people have referenced the calendar and timeline of human history.  Again, cultural visibility and direct/indirect acknowledgement of that visibility by using the word AD still does not mean someone is expressing affirmation of, commitment to, or even a positive disposition towards Christianity.

In spite of the writings of people like Josephus and Tacitus mentioning the historical Jesus, people who have used BC and AD in communication about history might not even think it probable that any such person lived in the first century.  In no way is cultural impact in the future alone a proof that someone lived, died, and resurrected roughly two thousand years ago, but even if it was—and historical documentation could never be the same as a logically necessary truth, so this is only to show what would follow from this impossible thing—relying on the terms BC and AD is not personal assent to this, similarly to how someone can like the aesthetic of cross-related jewelry and still have no philosophical allegiance to or personal interest in Christianity.

The Next Quarter

The calendar year and fiscal year are both social constructs, but the pressure to appease corporate shareholders by increasing stock price relies on them.  Each one has four quarters, and whether it is the calendar year or an alternate fiscal year (for companies that operate on different timelines because of their industry), the push to have some dramatic and relatively visible boost to profits for the next quarter rewards utilitarianism and discourages anything else.  Of course, the stock market is a highly arbitrary construct in itself, even as broader economics is a construct of culture and thus does not have to be installed or executed in one particular way.  To submit to amplified profits and enlarged stockholder value every quarter is only to shackle oneself to greed: if not one's own, then that of the shareholders.

Aside from the sheer stupidity of prioritizing a social construct above allegiance to the necessary truths of logic and whatever moral duties might exist, there are only so many ways the objective of always increasing returns can be carried out, such as by paying workers too little to do anything but perhaps barely survive on, firing employees, raising prices to extract more money from the same amount of consumers, or diminishing the quality and thus the expense of goods or services.  One of the only ways to accomplish this that is not inherently exploitative is expanding the consumer base, but there is still only a finite number of potential new buyers to reach [1].  Somehow, paying executives less than their often incredibly undeserved levels of compensation [2] rarely seems to be considered as a serious option, if at all, by those in power.

The focus on the next quarter means that genuinely oppressive or materialistic tactics are very likely to be used with little to no regard for even how the company will have to deal with the ramifications later on, and this is at the level of pragmatic failure and its consequences, not even the higher moral or rationalistic ramifications.  No matter the way that workers are treated, customers or clients are misled or exploited (by means like planned obsolescence or gratuitous price increases), financial records are altered or counterfeited, or the intrinsic necessities of reason are ignored, some companies might pathetically prepare a fine noose for themselves if only they can make it to the next quarter with better financial standing—aka, with more profits to go to the executives and shareholders—or the deception of better financial standing.

This of course ultimately sabotages companies or at least holds them back.  Without workers, many businesses would not survive since they are not sole proprietorships.  Without enough resources left in the natural world, businesses that rely on harnessing those resources would come to an end, yet a variety of corporate and consumer activities treat this as if it is trivial or will never actually happen.  All of this seems to either never be thought of or to get dismissed as an obstacle to the goal of maximizing shareholder returns and company profitability in the immediate/near future.  These people in question are non-rationalists, of course, so it is not as if they are intelligent and have true knowledge of anything in reality, just assumptions, passive perceptions, and personal preferences.

This emphasis on utilitarian short-term gains, if someone is truly committed to it, will inevitably lead someone to believe or do things that are irrational, destructive, or immoral as long as there is benefit to profitability or reputation—at least the illusion of profitability in order to manipulate the shareholding public or other investors.  They could not truly be devoted to maximizing shareholder value or personal wealth above all else without actually acting like it.  The way this pragmatically hinders long-term and thus greater financial success is ignored, but more foundationally, this is an inherently erroneous approach to reality since it is logic and whatever moral obligations that exist, along with everything these truths would entail, that alone would deserve such passion and dedication as that exemplified by corporate fools recklessly chasing after an endless increase for the next quarter.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2021/10/the-impossibility-of-perpetual.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/09/executive-compensation.html

Judgment And Mercy In Isaiah 26

The Bible is not exactly anything less than utterly cynical about the probability of a given person seeking truth and turning away from sin.  The majority of humankind is outright said to be a lost cause in the end, as with the statement of Jesus that most people will voluntarily walk the path to destruction (Matthew 7:13-14).  Isaiah 26:9-10 says that divine judgment can inspire repentance, but grace, the sort here requiring requiring mercy (the withholding of just punishment, such as out of love), allows the wicked to continue in their wickedness.  In these verses, it is clearly affirmed that at least for the people the prophet had in mind, showing mercy does not lead to any other outcome than those who received it doing whatever idiocy they please.

Of course, this is true on an individualistic basis, because it is logically possible for one person to respond to mercy by turning to reason and justice and another, as well as for one person to react to judgment with unrepentance (Biblical examples include the Pharaoh of Exodus and the inhabitants of the beast's kingdom in Revelation 16) but not another.  However, since orienting oneself towards truth takes effort and perhaps the painful abandonment of assumptions and errors, it is never as likely that someone who cares little to nothing for ultimate philosophical truths, including the issue of moral obligations, will turn away from irrationalism and egoism.

Whether figurative in the sense of general judgment from Yahweh in this life or a reference to the literal consuming fire of Gehenna that burns the wicked to ashes (Matthew 10:28, 2 Peter 2:6, Malachi 4:1-3), Isaiah 26:11 mentions a consuming fire that is reserved for God's enemies, the unrepentant wicked of 26:10 among them.  God himself is also called a devouring/consuming fire (Deuteronomy 4:24, Hebrews 12:29), similar to the fires of hell that extinguish the wicked forever (John 3:16, Romans 6:23, Revelation 20:15), never to be resurrected again.  Those who do not shirk from their sin will fall into both of these fires, the one kind of "fire" being the metaphysical force behind the actual flames of the other.

A subcategory of God's enemies, the rulers mentioned in Isaiah 26:13 are said to be punished by God in the following verse, their body and soul alike dying.  This matches what the Bible says about the first and the second death.  After the first death, people perceive nothing at all in the unconsciousness of soul sleep until their resurrection (Daniel 12:2, Ecclesiastes 9:5-10, Job 3:11-19), and after the second death in the lake of fire, there is no soul left to perceive or even to sleep dreamlessly (Isaiah 66:23-24, Ezekiel 18:4, and again the likes of Matthew 10:28 and 2 Peter 2:6).  In saying these sinful rulers were punished by God in the form of dying, their spirits not rising, Isaiah 26:14's description reflects both the first and second deaths even if only one was in mind when it was written.

These rulers would very likely have been some of those who do not learn and practice righteousness when God shows them mercy.  Whether or not Christianity is true, anyone who is not aligned with at least the inherent logical necessities on which all else depends is not aligned with truth: and if Christianity is true, it would be consistent with the necessary truths that are correct anyway and it would also be dependent on them, for they are true regardless.  Non-rationalists do not holistically care about anything beyond their own subjective persuasion, and thus it is never probable for them to change for the better, whatever logically possible moral system is true if there is such a thing as morality, and it would not be atypical for an irrationalist to not be deterred from their errors and sins even if direct judgment from God was manifested.

Why Social Science Is Not Science

There is no real inevitability to the laws of physics (unlike the laws of logic), other than that a certain physical outcome must result under specific material conditions if and only if nothing about physics changes and no real or hypothetical supernatural force intervenes.  Actually verifying scientific factors beyond the veil of perception is impossible; the best human limitations allow is knowing with absolute certainty that events in the external world appear a given way (that they have or lack fallible sensory evidence), that particular phenomena related to physics are logically possible/impossible, and that certain things follow or do not follow from concepts in physics.  There is no metaphysical (logical) necessity or epistemological guarantee that the patterns we observe or hear about, such as those concerning electricity or genetics, will persist days or moments from the present.

This is the real nature of physics.  Science, which hinges on logic as opposed to the other way around and deals only with the natural world, is far from the stronghold of centrality and certainty many foolishly claim it to be.  But social "science" is not even science!  Concerned with how social beings mentally or behaviorally act, psychology (not psychiatry!), economics, politics, and so on do not deal with the laws of nature which govern how physical substances behave.  This does not mean social science has no significance or even lesser importance, but that it lacks even the alleged constancy of the laws of physics.  It is already fallacious to think that a scientific law applying in one instance means it must apply in another, whether another moment of time or another spatial location.  An additional layer of error makes thinking that one person will behave a certain way because another person did/does even more irrational.

At least matter like soil, stone, and water seems inanimate.  Short of some physical or metaphysical factor changing, the same strictly material circumstances would always yield the same deterministic results.  People are conscious beings--or at least I am.  How some people act in no way forces others to act in the same manner, which is a matter of personal intentionality and volition.  Thus, there are no default "laws" of nature that force someone to pursue one logically possible course of action over another.  Going out into the world to observe how a politician acts during an election campaign or how consumers act on Black Friday is not the same as utilizing the scientific method.

That is not to say that science has nothing at all to do with, for example, how a mass of shoppers will behave on Black Friday.  Gravitation still applies, for example; people walking around a store, unless the laws of physics were to change, will still step along the ground, fall to the ground if they leap in the air, and so on.  Physically rough competition over items can produce bodily injuries.  These factors are a matter of science and can be observed in a repeatable manner, as epistemologically fallible as they are.  But whether an individual decides to join a frenzied crowd in a desperate attempt to get select items is not a matter of stable laws of physics, but a matter of individualistic psychology and choice.  Certainly, one can still visually observe if a person remains outwardly calm or becomes aggressive for the sake of materialistic gain, but this dimension of the situation is not within the domain of science whatsoever.

Even if the laws of physics are consistent across time and space (different laws of physics in different times or regions is not illogical, while logical inconsistencies are impossible), there is nothing about physics that makes one person behave in a given way and another person in some other way.  Social phenomena are always individualistic; even in cases of "groupthink" or behaviors engaged in by a horde of people at once, each individual involved must personally commit to the belief or action.  Their involvement is neither logically inescapable nor scientifically pertinent.  In the example of Black Friday, some might assess the matter as if it is an issue of social "science", but the individualistic nature of intention and choice is really dictated by logic and phenomenology, not physics.

An incorrect conclusion to draw would be that anything wrongly considered social "science" is trivial, or that there could never be anything to gain from paying attention to how specific people and their social constructs like economic systems, political regimes, and business endeavors operate.  None of this follows.  In fact, psychology is a subset of phenomenology, which is second only to logic in how foundational it is to the core of reality and knowledge of reality; one's own psychology is also knowable with absolute certainty through rationalistic introspection.  Now, science is incapable of proving anything because that is a characteristic exclusive to the laws of logic as necessary truths.  Being more like science, or what is sometimes called the hard sciences (such as chemistry, which like all categories of true science is ultimately a subcategory of physics), would not elevate social "sciences" like economics to the level of logic, either metaphysically or epistemologically.  There can be no deterministic patterns in how autonomous consumers respond to financial upheavel or in what precisely happens after a coup, among other things.  This does not render science and what is erroneously thought of as social science philosophically opposed.

Education And Competence Are Not Intelligence

Anyone who does not know logical axioms cannot know anything else, for everything else hinges on axioms because they alone are inherently true.  The only alternative to true rationalism is to believe in assumptions, and if something is assumed, it is not known, for even if it is logically verifiable for any willing person to discover, the believer has only presumed it to be true either actively or passively.  Many people are confused the moment you bring up logical axioms and misperceive the subject, that of the very heart of all things and the only intrinsic set of truths, to be a matter of pure speculation (when axioms are what allows for absolute certainty to begin with), a secondary thing (when axioms have an inherent, self-necessary ultimate primacy), or utterly "incomprehensible" (when axioms are true in themselves and thus the only things that can be understood in themselves without relying on something even more foundational).

Axioms are self-evident because they are self-necessarily true, as even them being false could only be the case if they were still true—for instance, contradictions are possible only if what is sometimes called the law of non-contradiction is false, but this would mean it is still true since the alternative still contradicts and excludes it.  Far more likely than not to be neglected entirely or denied outright by a stranger in conversation if one brings them up, these logical truths are forsaken for the sake of whatever educational trend of outward skills someone can demonstrate.  Educational background is much more familiar for non-rationalists, though they have no knowledge of the nature of education and its distinction from rationality and reason (rationality itself being distinct from reason since it is mental alignment with reason) since they do not know axioms, so they look to a supposed outward indicator of intelligence instead.

To focus on a very particular aspect of this societal trend, it is on the basis of education and alleged experience, among other things, that people are hired for many jobs, though they might not know their left hand from their right hand and would have to rely on rationality, which in turn depends on the objective necessities of logic, to even understand the real nature of education.  They just do not realize this.  Again, a non-rationalist cannot know anything, no matter what they believe or feel, whereas at least an inconsistent rationalist knows logical axioms and possibly some other things that follow from them.  It is just that non-rationalists can still remember, assume, and complete tasks, and so they might be prone to assume that the person who can regurgitate assumed educational information or perform a workplace role successfully does not have merely the capacity for intelligence, but intelligence itself.  Though this does not follow and indeed is false, since only a rationalist could possibly be intelligent, it is easier for non-rationalists to suppose that education and competence must be markers of rationality because they aspire to nothing more than subjective persuasion based upon these things.

They might have memorized information and even believe some things that are demonstrably correct, but they have only assumed that these things are true, never pondered them tightly with the rationalistic goal of discovering that which is self-evident and pinpointing other truths that necessarily follow or do not follow.  Whoever has not done this, no matter their wealth or reputation or career or education, is a goddamn fool, an insect who might believe they are intelligent because of other people's affirmative words or because of their grades or career successes or some other such red herring and would be wrong.  Ignoring or trivializing axioms while basing one's worldview and priorities on that which depends on axioms and in many cases cannot even be proven or disproven, from things as foundational as whether or not other minds exist to less crucial things like the future of the social constructs of the stock market or the college system, is idiotic.  Fools are more likely than not to arbitrarily welcome and encourage others fools, because it takes effort to break away from assumptions to find genuinely demonstrable truths, and very few if any workplaces or educational organizations really foster anything other than this philosophical delusion.