An Idiotic Universalist Objection

The road that leads to destruction, not eternal torture, is wide, and many travel on it (Matthew 7:13-14), the Bible teaches.  This is not what soteriological universalists think.  They suppose that everyone will eventually be saved, which would contradict both the heretical doctrine of eternal torment in hell and the genuine Biblical doctrine of annihilation in hell for unrepentant sin.  Some of them might think that whether or not the Bible is true, both eternal torture and soul annihilation as punishment for wrongdoing are unjust.  There is no way whatsoever to know if morality exists, although the evidence for Christianity establishes the probability of Biblical morality being true, but only one of these two types of punishment is logically erroneous and thus unjust (if there is morality) by default.

If there is no such thing as morality, eternal torture is still the worst category of thing that a person could experience by far.  It involves pain, and it never would end.  The only aspect that could differ from person to person or moment to moment would be the degree of the suffering.  Only a fool would ever reject this, though I have encountered or heard of people who have.  If there is such a thing as morality, eternal torture is one of the only things that would be inherently unjust, as with punishing an unwilling innocent person for someone else's actions (justice is treating people as they deserve, so doing this could only be unjust if moral right and wrong exist at all).  Eternal suffering for any wrongdoing would be inherently unjust because it is infinitely disproportionate to whatever offense or offenses are in question.

It would be worse than any sin being punished.  This is not true of genuine death, which would end pain, as well as the very capacity for pain [1] (although biological death might not turn out be the same as phenomenological death as far as logical possibilities for an afterlife go, this is not what the Bible teaches [2]).  It would also bring a definitive end to evil by destroying evildoers.  There is nothing about this that contradicts any necessary truth about the nature of justice, though eternal torture could only be unjust if morality exists.  If it does not exist, again, there is still nothing worse than this: some forms of eternal torture would be objectively worse than others, but there is no class of experiences worse.

The final penalty (it could be preceded by some amount of torment and the execution itself will likely be very painful) of the Biblical hell is that of death, the permanent exile from conscious existence and the very capacity to experience pleasure and peace because one has been shut out from life itself.  Ezekiel 18:4 says that the soul that sins will die.  John 3:16 and Luke 13:3 and 5 say that those who do not repent will perish.  Romans 6:23 says that death is the fate contrasted with eternal life (with Daniel 12:2 and John 3:16, among other verses, necessitating that if the righteous receive eternal life, the wicked do not).  Matthew 10:28 says that the wicked will have their soul and body destroyed in hell, while 2 Peter 2:6 says that the wicked will be burned to ashes.

Plenty of other direct or indirect affirmations of annihilationism are found in the Bible, including how Revelation 20:15, speaking of hell when the resurrected masses of the unrighteous are sentenced, calls the lake of fire "the second death."  This is very obviously the justice of Yahweh, and it is absolutely untrue that there is an inherent philosophical problem with annihilation as there is with eternal torture.  It is not that death such as the killing of wicked people in hell is just another unjust distortion of Yahweh's character like eternal punitive torment.  Universalists and general theological emotionalists who happen to oppose annihilation on moral grounds just as they do eternal torture are very lost indeed inside and outside the context of Biblical philosophy.

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

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/06/sheol-and-hades-part-one.html

Advantages For Entering The Workplace

Allegedly, the entire purpose of professional work in the modern, Western sense, aside from potential subjective fulfillment, is to make one's life easier than it would be living as a hunter-gatherer or farmer.  In spite of all the obstacles that the workplace itself often interjects into human life, at least given how it is typically oriented, there are ways to enter the workplace with more convenient degrees of preparation.  Fluency with more than one language and the ability to readily use hardwares and softwares one might encounter in the conventional office, when possible, can be major helps.  Of course, without knowledge of and alignment with logical axioms and other necessary truths, nothing is knowable, but this post will focus on skills or experiences rather than on a deep connection with reason.

The multicultural and global relationships in many cities or between countries make communication with a wider audience more pragmatically useful than before.  Being bilingual (or tri-lingual, and so on) poses a significant advantage not only for effectively navigating specific situations, such as when it is easier to talk with a client in a non-primary language one has somewhat mastered, but also for earning a greater income.  For example, doctors who work in areas with high demographic diversity might need to be able to speak more than one language, and their greater compensation can reflect this need.  There is practical benefit and financial gain to be had.  For those who organically learned multiple languages when they were young and did not have to struggle to expand their linguistic arsenal as an adult, the reward is much easier to attain.

As for technology, with the enormous reliance on electronics and software for business operations—everything from basic email functions to Zoom meetings to cloud data storage—experience with using hardware and software, or quick adaptation to them, will help someone immensely with a wide variety of jobs.  Like with becoming multi-lingual, it is easier to develop this familiarity when one is young or when opportunities are presented ahead of one's professional career.  A person in this situation does not have to catch up to such an extent and not necessarily with the immediate weight of financial desperation.  One could always learn through training after getting hired or with the aid of personal practice outside of working hours, but this is the option, when applicable, that does not risk one getting passed over for a role or the possible stress of only learning about technology right when it is most helpful to already be proficient with it.

Already being multi-lingual and capable of utilizing various softwares are not the only things that can give someone an advantage in the workplace, but they are two of the most prominent ones besides just being rational.  Without knowledge of reason, no one actually knows these things as opposed to having assumed beliefs, sensory perceptions, or memories that are mistaken for knowledge of the thing itself.  Still, being in a position to speak multiple languages fluently and requiring little to no technological training to be confident before one starts a career will make the entire affair far simpler from the start.  Besides, it can literally be profitable to be in such a place ahead of time.  With how ruthlessly and needlessly (or asininely or immorally) competitive the business world can be, a rationalist can do select things to make personal benefit more likely in the future, leaving them with more energy and time to directly focus on the things of core philosophical substance outside the workplace or even while they work.

"Fathers [Or Parents], Do Not Exasperate Your Children"

Paul twice mentions how children should act in a way underpinned by the honor all children owe their parents (Exodus 20:12, Leviticus 19:3, Deuteronomy 5:16, and more) right before mentioning how children should not be trampled upon by their parents.  He touches on the ethical duty of children towards their parents in Ephesians 6:1-3 and Colossians 3:20 (also less emphatically in Romans 1:30) and on some of the inverse duties towards one's children in Ephesians 6:4 and Colossians 3:21.  As with all things, a great deal of these passages could be misunderstood by those making assumptions.  The obligations in both directions are vital, but what Paul says about those of the parents has been more prone to distortion among those I have interacted with.

Ephesians 6:4—"Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord."

Colossians 3:21—"Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged."

The phrase "in the Lord" in Ephesians 6:1 clarifies what would already have to be true anyway, that children do not have to do absolutely whatever their parents insist, as parents must direct their children to do that which is objectively morally required alone and not what is in accordance with the parents' own preferences; children only have the obligation to obey their parents when they are not being irrational or immoral, including by imposing their mere whims while thinking their status as parents legitimizes this.  Otherwise, obedience to one's parents, at least as a young child, is a way of expressing them a mandatory level of baseline honor.  The phrase "of the Lord" in Ephesians 6:4, as shown above, makes it clear that parents are to instruct their children only to fulfill actual obligations as grounded in the divine nature.  Anything at all that a parent simply wishes their child to do or not do, such as not watch horror films, is entirely outside the scope of this logically and Biblically.

Even in administering proper guidance and instruction, though, no parent is permitted to do so in a manner that dehumanizes or as much as carelessly provokes their children.  The fact that no such exact command is specified by God in the Old Testament does not mean that God later changed or that Paul is merely contriving a non sequitur conclusion.  A baseless or emotionalistic harshness in parenting or in any other context is already inherently irrational no matter what the Bible says or whether its contents are true.  And, in a variety of ways, the prescriptions involving criminal justice revealed in the Torah parallel the obligations parents have.

For instance, just as someone punished by a governing body must actually have done something wrong and not something an accuser or judge subjectively dislikes (Exodus 20:16, 23:1, 7, Deuteronomy 25:1, etc.), parents should not discipline their children for things that are not erroneous; just as there must be no overpunishment even of evildoers if their sin warrants a given legal penalty (Deuteronomy 25:3), there are inflexible limits to even legitimate verbal or physical discipline, which could certainly exasperate or embitter children in addition to being contrary to reason and punitive justice.

I have been using the word parents, and most translations of Ephesians 6:4 and Colossians 3:21, even the NIV with its conceptually accurate gender neutral phrasing in many verses, simply address fathers before bringing up exasperation or training.  Besides all of the purely logical reasons why an obligation like this would have to be for men and women as I have repeatedly brought up in other cases, what in context points to Paul not denying any such thing?

The Greek term translated fathers in both verses can also reportedly refer to both parents.  However, gender-specific parenting responsibilities would not even be consistent with the idea Paul just held up favorably in the first three verses of the same chapter of Ephesians or the preceding verse of Colossians, appealing to the binding universality of God's moral laws expressed in the supposedly sexist Torah's commands well before the New Testament era, for only fathers to have an obligation to teach or discipline their children.  Fathers and mothers could not be equal as parents while having different ethical parenting responsibilities towards their children (nor, in an ultimate logical sense, could they be equal in standing as parents but not as spouses due to shared humanity and the necessary falsity of gender stereotypes).  A host of purely logical reasons would render this false one way or another, while the Old Testament says nothing about gender-exclusive obligations in parenting.  Nor does Paul.

Deuteronomy 21:18-21 is unflinching about acknowledging the strict mutuality of parenting obligations and the obligations of children towards their parents, including in the discipline of their child and serving as witnesses against their children in cases of capital sins.  In fact, a father and mother serving as witnesses against a child who has resisted legitimate discipline from both parents is precisely what Deuteronomy 21:18-21 deals with.  How could this entail only fathers chastising their sons and daughters or only fathers, not mothers, being obligated to not be arbitrary or oppressive in that chastisement?  It could not, not while still being logically correct and morally just.  Deuteronomy is clear about both parents having the same rights and duties.

Nothing about the nature of a type of instruction or discipline changes with the gender of the parent carrying it out.  And, aside from the Greek term seemingly encompassing both parents and not strictly fathers, Paul never says, "Fathers, do not exasperate your children, but instruct them in the Lord, for you must fulfill this role and not mothers."  Yet this is exactly what some assume the actual Ephesians 6:4 means.  This would contradict pure reason, a host of Old Testament verses like Deuteronomy 21:18-21, and the content and ramifications of New Testament verses like Ephesians 6:1-3 and Colossians 3:20.

It makes no difference whether someone is a father or a mother.  He or she would err by treating their child, whether a son or daughter, in such a way as to deviate from reason and justice, including by sating a personal desire to exert control, by using unduly severe words, and so on.  Not being harsh for the sake of harshness is among the moral duties parents have towards the children they are to raise to, hopefully like their parents, hold to truth and not arbitrary, unauthoritative impulses.  Paul summarizes such things which, unmentioned in the Old Testament, logically stem from Yahweh's revealed moral laws.

A Potentially Enormous Negative Consequence Of Saving Money

A person being financially cautious to the point of not spending any money on non-necessities has limited ramifications for the broader economy.  If only one person spends money in this extremely careful manner, the impact could be very minor.  In the case of many people restricting their spending to only what they truly need, then major consequences could ripple throughout the local or national economy as a whole.  All products and services are supposed to satisfy some need or resolve some problem, even if it is only the problem of wanting a luxury that one does not have, and even if the product or service does not actually fulfill its role well.  But when large numbers of people withhold their money except for things they need to expend it on, entire businesses and industries can lose massive amounts of revenue—restaurants, theaters, and more.

Then, when these businesses or industries struggle to continue in the wake of decreased consumption, the employees are likely laid off, which makes it more difficult for them to get rehired because of woes in the rest of the industry and a smaller pool of potential employers (which might be inundated with applications from other laid off workers).  As the economy further descends into instability, a larger number of people are likelier to begin holding onto money rather than spending it, which leads to and worsens all the same issues that sparked this downward spiral to begin with.  Those who were more freely spending money when a smaller group saved with extreme diligence could find economic conditions deterring them from the (ultimately) luxuries they were accustomed to.

The ironic truth?  Careful, successful financial management that benefits one person or household will probably have negative consequences in some way for another person or household in a society where, contrary to Biblical employment and poverty laws, the economy is needlessly engineered for some people to be oppressed in order for others to prosper.  At least, it is crafted to enable some to prosper even more than they would have at the expense of others.  Living in such a system is not the fault of the lower or middle class person who, without malice or greed or any degree of irrationality, sought to bolster their own financial standing by saving all money they could.  It is not quite their fault, at least not primarily, that parts of the economy stand or fall based upon how much people are willing to part with for things they do not literally need for mere survival and baseline safety.

Is it wrong to save money when keeping it from circulation can have devastating effects?  No, this does not follow logically, and one can hold onto one's money while having genuine concern for the displacement of workers who also need money that will be harder to come by due to the lack of spending on what is not needed to live.  It is not that every industry that does not cater to direct needs like those for sustenance and shelter should never be established either.  On one hand, not everyone can find a job within the industries addressing genuine needs in non-exploitative ways because they do not require that everyone work in them (there could easily be fewer jobs than prospective workers); on the other hand, this approach to society would eliminate many things that inject joy and relaxation into what is otherwise at the level of habitual outward activity a life of monotonous, perhaps suffocating dullness of labor for survival.

Obviously, even if all employers paid their workers well (not just better than the abysmal compensation at another company), it does not follow that all workers will save money or spend carefully albeit not with total restraint beyond non-necessities.  All the same, many workers never received compensation that covered all of their survival and basic living expenses and left enough afterward for significant saving while still leaving room for flexible spending on non-necessary things.  Economic downturns like the cycle described in this post, even when they are spurred on by someone being financially responsible or rational, only make it more challenging for those already suffering from the commonplace oppression of workers or from their own asinine consumerism and lack of self-control.

Unless there is an an economic system or set of safety nets in place that truly benefit everyone (Leviticus 19:9-10, 15, Deuteronomy 24:14-15, etc.), even saving money can have a terrible impact on the economy as a whole, putting one's own gains made by saving money at risk.  Damned if you do, and damned if you don't?  Well, that is how the American economy is increasingly structured to be for those who are not already wealthy enough to not be personally affected by major instability or to relocate to a more stable city, state, or country.  A string of happenstance expenses could nullify years of consistent saving anyway.  Sometimes, though, saving money itself sets in motion things which unfortunately deteriorate an economy at a widespread level.

Everything That Has Breath

Across its 150 chapters of poetic declarations, Psalms comments on the praise and worship of Yahweh frequently.  The final verse of the entire book, Psalm 150:6, centers on this subject, following five verses that all begin with encouragements to praise God in various ways.  The very last verse calls for everything that breathes to praise the divine being, in one sense directly calling upon Gentiles to do exactly this, though the communities separate from national Israel did not specifically enter a covenant with Yahweh to receive prosperity and protection for doing what is righteous and disaster for doing what is wicked.  No one is an exception to what the Psalmist says, as the words emphasize the more overtly egalitarian philosophy of the Old Testament without going into specific examples of demographics:

Psalm 150:6—"Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.  Praise the Lord."

The scope of everything that has breath necessarily includes Gentiles, who are no less human than Jews and bear Yahweh's image just like them (Genesis 1:26-27, 5:1-2, 9:6), meaning they would have to possess the same rights and obligations.  "Everything that has breath" also encompasses men and women, the young and old, the rich and poor, and so on.  Logically, this is entailed by the concept the wording points to without the verse saying it quite so specifically.  But another portion of Psalms does offer a more exhaustive description of what the idea behind Psalm 150:6 would already require.

A mere two chapters prior, Psalm 148 is incredibly explicit about how it is fitting for everything in the natural world to praise Yahweh, from seemingly inanimate physical substances like snow and clouds to every human inhabiting the world, regardless of ancestry, gender, or age.  That the text specifies "all nations" and "all rulers on earth" directly puts forth the universality of this when it comes to geography, nationality, and race.  Of course, if praising Yahweh is a human duty, it is also obligatory for women, not only for men; this form of egalitarian consistency is likewise celebrated in Psalm 148.  It would already be entailed by the very nature of Yahweh (as the one deity according to the Old Testament) and moral obligation that praising the divine being would be everyone's ethical responsibility.

Psalm 148:7-12—"Praise the Lord from the earth, you great sea creatures and all ocean depths, lightning and hail, snow and clouds, stormy winds that do his bidding, you mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars, wild animals and all cattle, small creatures and flying birds, kings of the earth and all nations, you princes and all rulers on earth, young men and women, old men and children."

Jews and Gentiles, men and women, rulers and the governed, and the old and young are all in view by explicit acknowledgment.  Other subcategories of humanity like the rich and the poor or the sick and the healthy also have to be equally relevant, although not every single subcategory is directly specified.  Collective humanity can literally do what the probably unconscious structures like mountains, hills, and trees cannot do: verbalize their respect and adoration for the supreme being, without whom they would not exist as contingent entities.

To many Christian readers (real or alleged Christians), it might not be surprising to see affirmation of all people worshiping God, at the very least by praising him in a manner unfitting for any other being.  Even those who pretend like the Bible teaches a kind of moral relativism between Jews and Gentiles or men and women would probably accept this easily.  However, it likely would shock or puzzle many in the American church when Psalms insists that only the living have the capacity to praise God.  The dead do not and cannot praise God because they perceive and do nothing (Ecclesiastes 9:5, 10, etc.).  Psalms addresses this throughout its many chapters, as in Psalm 6:5 and 115:17-18.  The ESV includes the Hebrew word Sheol in its English translation of Psalm 6:5, Sheol being the "realm" or state of the unconscious dead, so that version is displayed below (all other verses shown here are from the NIV).

Psalm 6:5 (ESV)—"For in death there is no remembrance of you; in Sheol who will give you praise?"

Psalm 115:17-18—"It is not the dead who praise the Lord, those who go down to the place of silence; it is we who extol the Lord, both now and forevermore.  Praise the Lord."

Everything that has breath can and, as far as humans are concerned, should praise God to some extent.  Yet when the dead breathe no more, their ability to reflect on and favorably acknowledge God comes to an end.  According to the Old Testament, there is no afterlife where the righteous or repentant go after their bodies die so that their spirits praise God.  As their conscious thoughts cease, so does their praise.  This is echoed by King Hezekiah in Isaiah 38 (verses 18-19) after he recovers from an illness that was set to bring about his death.  Only the living have the power to think and act.

An eventual resurrection to eternal life solely for the righteous (eternal life is solely for the righteous, not a future resurrection) means that they at some can point praise God further (Daniel 12:2), but death Biblically deprives everyone of the ability to direct attention to God.  Worship in all of its forms is within the grasp of none but the living.  While the opportunity remains, while we still breathe, let us praise God.

Can A Material Really Break The Laws Of Physics?

There are multiple ways someone could come to wonder about the universality of scientific laws (physics).  They could see trends like the "rising" and "setting" of the sun or the way objects fall to the ground and reflect, whether rationalistically or not, on the nature of these phenomena.  Or, they might encounter publications with titles that claim some discovery reveals exceptions to or the falsity of some familiar scientific idea.  Sometimes, such headlines might really be conveying, albeit in a very "clickbait" manner, that the version of a law of physics assumed to be true by scientists or for which there was evidence actually has previously undiscovered nuances—or that in addition to a given law of physics there is also another one at play in a particular situation.  Neither of these things quite means that a law of physics was literally observed to be violated or turned out to be false to begin with.

However, it should not surprise a thorough rationalist if scientific laws were to not apply to all matter even at the same scale (microscopic versus quantum, etc.).  It is logically possible for differing laws of physics to apply to different regions or objects within the universe, and yet the matter in each region or object would be bound to their respective physics.  Logical facts alone are universal in themselves; it does not follow necessarily that any scientific laws, laws that have no inherent truth anyway and thus could have differed from their exact current manifestation, must be true of the totality of the cosmos.  But as for laws of physics that are in place, though there is no intrinsic necessity to them and they could abruptly change, can any physical substance really "break" them?

For something to truly violate the laws of physics, it would have to involve the manipulation of matter by a non-material cause.  Otherwise, whatever the phenomenon is, it would already have to be outside the scope of physics, meaning it could not violate the laws of physics as opposed to transcending them altogether (like logical necessities or the basic existence of God).  That is, if some matter of truth is not a matter of physics, none of the laws of science are suspended or altered by this fact on its own.  Only an intervention by a supernatural entity can break or violate the laws of physics in the ultimate sense.

So, a material cannot ever actually break the laws of physics by itself, even if the laws of physics governing one region of the cosmos, one universe, or one material differed from the physics governing some other region, universe, or material.  However matter naturally behaves in a specific location or concerning a specific material is what the laws of physics dictate for that applicable area or thing.  It might shock some people, especially non-rationalists, if evidence was to arise that the physics of some other planet or an even more distant corner of the universe function quite differently than those of Earth, but the laws of physics would still not be broken, but simply not universal, which is already logically possible.

All you have access to when it comes to which scientific laws are present, short of being omniscient or much closer to it than to human limitations, is perceptions of how the physical world behaves.  Only logic and introspection and anything illuminated by them can truly be known.  There is no way to know if one's experiences through the senses like sight, hearing, and taste accurately match the real external world, much less how large the universe is or if the laws of physics differ somewhere far removed from your ability to observe with any of the senses.  Since logic does not require that physics must be the same everywhere or that even the physics one immediately perceives must be more than an illusion, there is truly no way to know which possibility is the case.

Game Review—Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker (Switch)

Mario actually debuted in the 1981 Donkey Kong arcade game and only then became the main face and marketable character of a fictional universe.  Luigi, Peach, Wario, and Yoshi have since received their own spin-off games or subfranchises.  So has one of the many Toads in the overarching franchise.  Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, first released for the Wii U in 2014 before coming to the 3DS and Switch in 2018, is not exactly the most explicitly philosophical game, but not every game has to be a Metroid Prime, Bloodborne, or Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice to have objective quality as an artistic work.  What Treasure Tracker primarily stands on, it executes very well, though its scope is very narrow.  It grants the Toad leader introduced in 2007's Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii a much more central spotlight.

Production Values

Unsurprisingly, Treasure Tracker, even as a 2018 release on a Nintendo platform, looks great, and not just for a Switch game.  It benefits immensely from the platform's regular first-party aesthetic boost and the stylized graphics.  Rarely did the environments show pixelated edges, though one screenshot was uncharacteristically blurry.  Central characters Captain Toad, Toadette, and Wingo, the enormous bird that bothers both protagonists by flying away with them or their stars, have excellent models with smooth animations.  Diverse in color and function, the many environments to be traversed are often unique from each other, with their own clear animations and very distinctive perils or features: fiery dragon-like entities, goombas, hammer-throwing koopas, falling platforms, and much more.

Gameplay

Treasure Tracker is divided into a series of episodes, collections of levels often tied to a specific playable character in the case of the first three and a collection of levels related to Super Mario Odyssey in the case of the fourth.  Episode 1 is spent playing as Captain Toad as he tries to rescue Toadette, Episode 2 is spent playing as Toadette as she tries to rescue Captain Toad, and Episode 3 alternates between both playable characters.  Both when it comes to flipping between pages of the onscreen book that displays each mission and when it comes to certain mechanics, the game utilizes the Switch's touch screen, a very rare thing despite how much the 3DS and its own predecessors heavily relied on this feature.  Titles for the Switch tend to have very little to no touch screen functionality, so for Treasure Tracker to do anything with this actually makes it stand out.  For instance, tapping an enemy can freeze them in place or send a piranha plant back to the opening they emerged from.

Levels tend to be very small, dense with crevices that items like gems or coins could hide in.  Most have a small cube-shaped mass where the player's character cannot fall off the map by walking to its edges, though some do allow the player to fall in certain places.  As condensed, short, and straightforward as many levels are, the environmental design and puzzle elements vary significantly and trend towards genuine creativity, especially further into the game.  Yes, some can be finished in less than two to three minutes; the sheer volume of levels and the differences between them somewhat make up for this extreme brevity.  Rotating the camera is often a necessity to fully see where to go or find optional items.  A total of three distinct levels of camera magnification also help with visibility.  Sometimes, Toad or Toadette will be very small on the screen if not for the two closer zoom-in settings.

You do not strictly have to complete every single level to beat the game, since some levels can only be unlocked with enough total gems, and you do not need all gems obtainable up to that point to proceed; any levels that come afterward are locked until the completion of these particular areas.  Replaying any mission is an easy affair.  Actually, there is a potential incentive to replay besides finding missed gems, and that is locating "Pixel Toad," a Toad somewhere on a flat surface in each level that is animated as if from an earlier era of gaming.  Here, Treasure Tracker leans more into observation than it does outright puzzle mechanics, though some reorientation of or navigation through an area might be necessary.  The Pixel Toad is visible oftentimes without even walking around the map: camera adjustments can reveal its exact position.  

Should you wander around hoping to stumble into Pixel Toad more directly, it generates a sound when the player stands in close proximity—but sometimes the pixelated figure is outside the walkable area.  This noise does not automatically clarify where in the immediate vicinity it is, though.  Camera manipulation might still be needed!  When you see Pixel Toad, you press on his location through the touch screen to complete the level.  As simple as it is, this and other touch screen functionality like spinning wheel-directed mechanisms really are uncommon on the platform.

Story

While celebrating over a star (the kind obtained in Mario-related games), Toadette is abducted by Wingo, compelling Captain Toad to venture his way to the bird for a rescue.  After passing through a multitude of environments, however, he winds up taken himself in an event which leaves Toadette free to pursue the avian kidnapper to liberate Captain Toad.

Intellectual Content

Such a game as this is nowhere close to gaming's heights of exploring the nature of reality.  Even at the level of navigating worlds, there is nothing as perilous as some feats in Super Mario Sunshine or as relatively abstract as the environments and mechanics of Super Mario Galaxy, the game that set in motion the eventual release of Treasure Tracker.  This title is for the most part about simplicity, relaxation, and quite narrow exploration.

Conclusion

Treasure Tracker does an excellent job of delivering increasingly complex and diverse environmental puzzles with strong visuals, but it is very limited in basically every other aspect.  This can tend to be the case with games in the massive Mario franchise and its branching titles, even as many of them have more layered mechanics than this title.  The simplicity is usually not this extreme.  There remain distinctive pillars of quality in Treasure Tracker, as much as it is but a narrow representation of what its broader universe has produced.  Even so, Captain Toad from Super Mario Galaxy came a long way before even 10 years had passed!

Ecclesiastes On The Living, The Dead, And Those Who Have Never Been Born

It is logically true that life is neither inherently pleasant nor inherently painful.  However, living means there is always the capacity for suffering.  More specifically, only a conscious being could experience pain, and short of the power to do anything logically possible whatsoever, humans are left without a universal ability to will away burdensome feelings or thoughts or the problems that could give rise to them.  The Bible comments repeatedly on how suffering and deterioration are not foreign to this life following the introduction of human sin.  Trouble is not something rare by default, nor does it inevitably amount to a minor affair; this is precisely the opposite of what Jesus predicted would befall many of his followers (such as in Matthew 24:9), and it is absolutely not what many, whether Christians or not, do indeed experience.

The author of Ecclesiastes, who calls himself the Teacher and identifies himself as an Israelite king (1:1, 12), does not shy away from such grim truths as the facts that pain is widespread, likely, and devastating.  Words like the following are seldom spoken by those in the church, yet they are not only correct, but straight from the book the church supposedly looks to for its religious doctrines.  Emotionalistically cheerful optimism is nowhere to be found:

Ecclesiastes 4:1-3—"Again I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place under the sun: I saw the tears of the oppressed—and they have no comforter; power was on the side of their oppressors—and they have no comforter.  And I declared that the dead, who had already died, were happier than the living, who are still alive.  But better than both is the one who has never been born, who has not seen the evil that is done under the sun."

The dead have the advantage of no longer facing the struggles of life "under the sun", making them in a sense objectively better off than those who still live with all of the pains and complications of this human existence.  Later in this post, I will address why the author of Ecclesiastes, to be consistent with what they themself present, would not mean that those who have died are happier in that they (some or all of the human dead) are conscious in some blissful afterlife.  No, they are "happier" in that they do not face the turmoil and grief and oppression that can come from this life.  But those who are the best off in this manner, the Teacher correctly acknowledges, are those who have not yet tasted conscious existence at all.  They alone of the three groups mentioned have not experienced the trials or potential for suffering—if not one, then the other—that are inescapably part of life in a fallen world.  This is logically true: as far as avoiding suffering goes, only never coming into existence at all truly and utterly avoids pain [1].

As for the dead, according to Ecclesiastes itself, they cannot experience happiness.  Whatever their circumstances in life and the moral alignment of their deeds, they have descended into total unconsciousness.  The ESV is quoted below for its inclusion of the Hebrew word Sheol, the Old Testament word for the place/state of the dead, in the English wording, which reinforces that the author is speaking about the same Sheol a multitude of other Old Testament verses mention.  What those who die face afterward is not exactly what most people claim the Bible puts forth.

Ecclesiastes 9:4-6, 9-10—"But he who is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion.  For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing . . . Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun.  Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going."

Why does Ecclesiastes propose that a living dog is in a better position than a dead lion?  At least the living have the hope of finding relief from their misery while still consciously existing in order to savor whatever peace or pleasure (though obviously immoral things should never be done no matter the pleasure they result in) they can secure for themselves.  In this regard, it is better to be alive, for an unconscious person cannot experience their absence of pain and worry.  While it might almost seem to contradict Ecclesiastes 4:1-3, Ecclesiastes 9:4-10 only means that the living alone still have a chance to experience joy and accomplishment, because everyone in Sheol lacks perception altogether, no matter who they were in life, just as Job describes in the third chapter of the book bearing his name.

The condition of unconsciousness means the dead experience no pain, including pain from alleged divine torment, but it also means the dead can experience no joy, no comfort, and no excitement.  They are not even at peace except in the sense that they cannot be if agony of any kind due to not perceiving anything.  Whatever release they receive from woe in death only entails the termination of any suffering in their last moments among the living.  To be truly dead, one cannot consciously experience anything in an afterlife, and thus to be truly dead means one cannot even savor the end of some trouble.

Yahweh does not torture anyone without end, which would be the ultimate injustice.  Sheol is not even the actual hell of Christianity, which itself does not torment anyone eternally, instead consuming them until they die (Matthew 10:28, etc.).  However, there is a grim ramification of Sheol's real nature.  The dead are still cut off from experience and thus think, perceive, and carry out nothing.  If you want to accomplish something or enjoy anything which is permissible, the only opportunity you have is restricted to when you live.  This universal fate of unconsciousness in Sheol is of course pragmatically so much better than any sort of endless or even years-spanning torture, but it is worthy of a different kind of somberness, because the unconsciousness of death brings an an end to activity of all forms, to pleasure, and to one's grasp of all that is true and good (logic, God, morality, etc.), not just the capacity to experience pain.  

All perception of objectively and subjectively positive and negative things comes to an end.  You would not know you are dead because you do not grasp or experience literally anything, not even the self-evident truth of logical axioms and your own existence as a consciousness.  In such a condition, the dead could not possibly feel happy, because they have no thoughts or emotions, unlike those whom the Teacher encourages to find happiness with their wives (Ecclesiastes 9:9), for both they and their wives still live.  Yet the dead would be better off in another sense than those living in the grip of suffering, especially if the suffering is extreme.  Still better off are those who have never faced the diverse difficulties of human life to begin with because they have not yet been conceived.  What Ecclesiastes freely declares about "happiness", conscious human existence, and the unconsciousness of genuine death does not involve any contradiction even as it contradicts scores of idiotic heresies.

[1].  See posts like this one:

https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-burden-of-consciousness.html

The Logical Incorrectness Of Calvinism

The logical flaw with Calvinism is not that God shows some people mercy and others none.  By its very nature, mercy only means someone is not punitively given what they deserve (what they truly deserve, not what they "deserve" according to emotional impulse, subjective persuasion, or social convention).  Mercy can be arbitrarily given to some and not others without injustice, since those who do not receive mercy would still be treated justly, as long as they are not in any way punished too severely.  Rather, the logical flaw with Calvinism is that God would be the sole being responsible for sin, for he does not simply allow other beings to sin for a time on this theological philosophy, but he actively forces their wills.  The murderer is not truly guilty of murder, nor does any other sinner really have moral culpability, but God punishes him or her in hell and potentially on Earth anyway, despite God himself being the one responsible!

A Calvinist may object, but this is precisely what Calvinism entails.  God, by predestining all human activity (not foreknowing, but predestining), chooses to deliver some people from sin and its eschatological punishment.  They cannot choose to free themselves by voluntarily seeking God or repentance; their turn is decided by God and not the humans themselves.  Obviously, this would require that, since people cannot make their own legitimate choices and have only the illusion of free will at best, God alone is the causal reason for why their is evil perpetrated by humans.  But then God cannot be righteous, because he is solely at fault, but then if God is evil, there cannot be such a thing as morality, because there is nothing to logically make anything good or evil (as opposed to subjectively pleasant or unpleasant, objectively helpful or harmful, and so on) other than the divine character.  Without God having a moral nature, there could be no metaphysical anchor for ethical obligations.

The clear logical error of Calvinism, then, is that God is supposed to be morally perfect while, as the entity truly making decisions that people carry out as mere puppets devoid of autonomy, he literally forcing people to sin.  If they lack free will, it would also be illogical and unjust, if morality exists, to then punish them for what they have no control over, but then this contradicts the only possible grounding for morality in the first place (God's character).  As unbiblical as Calvinism is, the more severe problem, due to being more foundational, is that it is logically impossible for Calvinism to be true.  Had the Bible really put forth as simultaneously true both divine moral perfection and divine fatalism, where all events (or more pertinent here, at least all human thoughts and behaviors) are caused strictly by God, its theology would have to be false.  Both of these things could not be true at once, though an amoral deity and divine fatalism are logically consistent.

All the worse, the seemingly most popular forms of Calvinism are tied to the idea of eternal torture being justice, a heresy against logic and Biblical philosophy.  Sure, Calvinism is compatible with annihilationism (what the Bible really teaches about hell) in that theological determinism and annihilation in hell do not contradict each other, but Calvinism still has its own massive errors independent of the exact version of hell paired with it due to the deprivation of free will and simultaneous "guilt" of the people who on one level carried out the wicked deeds, but in another sense could not possibly be at fault.  Eternal conscious torment would make Calvinism even worse, of course.  This is what many Calvinists loudly hold to.  The ultimate negative and unjust fate (if evil exists) would be to come into being only to be controlled by another entity, forced by that very entity to perform acts it despises, and then be perpetually tormented in an afterlife for those acts they were unable to avoid carrying out.

Calvinism is simply logically impossible.  Not even God can transcend logic because it is inherently true, and thus logic is on the contrary the one thing that transcends and dictates all other things.  But if a Calvinist was to examine the Bible without the irrationalistic folly of their assumptions and biases, they would find it actually posits doctrines entirely at odds with the determinism they espouse.  God wants everyone, not just a group of predetermined elect, to repent (1 Timothy 2:3-4, 2 Peter 3:8-9).  The Biblical Jesus did not die for only the elect—those, on Calvinism, predestined to be saved—because this is plainly contradicted by 1 Timothy 2:5-6 and 1 John 2:2.  And people do have free will, as is provable by logic and experience (or at least it is true that I have free will and that other beings like me can know they possess it [1]), and as is affirmed by the Bible (Leviticus 22:17-18, 21, Revelation 22:17, etc.).  Calvinism is just false all around!

[1].  See here, for one such post where I address this:

https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/09/refuting-assumption-about-free-will.html

The Tongue

James 1 and 3 in no way trivialize the extreme power that our words have for wreaking havoc on other people and our relationships with them.  The apostle is not under the sway of pleasant illusions that obscure how devastating, vicious, and hypocritical words can be, if someone is not careful to restrain themself as often as is needed to keep themself from saying something false or abusive and therefore unjust.  Since using words has an ethical dimension (Exodus 21:17, Matthew 12:33-37, etc.), and speech-related sins might seem easy to dismiss because they do not have the same outward force and severity of actions like physical blows, it is imperative to take the warnings of James very seriously.

Described as a "restless evil" that is "full of deadly poison" (3:8), the tongue is compared unfavorably to animals by James in that while many animals have been successfully tamed by humankind, the tongue can be incredibly challenging to tame (3:7-8).  Indeed, the hyperbolic phrasing of James 3 all but presents sins of the tongue as an incessantly insurmountable obstacle standing between a person and absolute moral perfection (though James 3:2b more subtly acknowledges that perfection is achievable, as do many other Biblical passages like Deuteronomy 30:11-15 and Job 1:1).  Parts of James might ultimately exaggerate to emphasize an important point about controlling how we speak, but the attainability of perfection must not lull someone into lowering their guard whenever necessary.

Without necessarily being a hypocrite on the ideological level, that of believing logically contradictory concepts, the person who exercises no self-control with their speech while committing themself to Yahweh betrays the very moral framework rooted in God.  Such a person has deceived themself if they think this fault is canceled out by the strength of their religious devotion and righteousness in other matters (James 1:26).  Left unchecked, the words that one speaks using the tongue—or, for the same reasons, the words that one writes—can indeed set the course of one's life aflame, as if ignited by hellfire (3:6), and direct one's course to be burned to ashes in the actual hell.  Such stern warnings against misusing our words as those posed by James should horrify those who have sinned verbally against others and inspire deep caution in those who have not necessarily fallen into such evil, lest the latter succumb to the same errors.

The person who does not engage in any form of verbal sin might not actually lack the desire to speak in what is ultimately a degrading or deceitful manner, such as by cursing the humans made in God's image while blessing the God whose image they bear as mentioned in James 3:9.  However, this person must have enough self-control to refrain from uttering just anything that they would like to.  Maintaining this mastery over how one speaks can be far from easy.  All of someone's emotions might roar for them to lash out when there is nothing to justify this response or to lash out more harshly than another person deserves, to the point that it might truly feel like they are unable to control their speech.  Extreme passion never means that actions (and beliefs) are incapable of being controlled.

One's speech has the power to destroy, foster, or protect the wellbeing of others, and even of our very own selves by proximity to how our relationships with others impact us.  It is one of the "tools" by which we can sow in a manner that naturally lends itself to harmony or discord with those around us.  A person who gives himself or herself over to whatever immediate impulses they experience will find it might very well seem almost impossible to stop themself from uttering whatever their heart desires in the moment.  When that happens, the results can be catastrophic in addition to this approach to speech being irrational (emotionalistic or at the very least egoistic) and evil.