One Of Cinema's Greatest Plot Revelations

The Saw films are, contrary to what some non-viewers might expect, incredibly complicated in very clever ways on a thematic and storytelling level.  Exploring very fundamental but deep issues of moral responsibility, supposed justice, the capacity for change, the looming nature of death, whether there is any objective meaning in life, the franchise is intentionally, overtly, aggressively philosophical in ways that almost no other contender manages across its entire respective series.  The first film focused more on the existential desire to live and to what it takes to seek life passionately in the face of death.  So well-crafted is the story and so intense is the philosophical emphasis that it is one of the few movies that rises above the low general production values that were distinctly improved upon as early as Saw II.

Almost all of the films end with a twist, only some of them foreshadowed by what is shown or stated earlier in the runtime, such as with Saw II and its "safe place" comment.  As each installment ends with a revelation or confrontation of some kind, the interlocking plot threads tethering the entire franchise become more clear, and sometimes these connections are brought to light ahead of the endings.  For example, the contents of a letter in Saw III come to light multiple movies afterward.  The climax of the ironically titled Saw: The Final Chapter (followed by Jigsaw, Spiral, and the upcoming Saw X) illuminates key events in or between multiple movies.  The extensive use of flashbacks in all but 2021's Spiral keeps most of the more recent entries intimately connected with the exact details of the prior films.

In 2004, the original Saw started the trend of having an often elaborate or genuinely incredible twist.  It is not a requirement that a plot twist ever be subtly telegraphed beforehand, though rewatching, replaying, or rereading a story might nonetheless show that there was never an actual misdirect.  Yes, Saw's climactic reveal is objectively spectacular as a narrative revelation even though there is nothing suggesting that it is on its way.  Protagonists Dr. Lawrence Gordon and Adam have been trying to escape a lethal predicament.  Awakening in a bathroom at an unknown location, they find their legs chained and hacksaws at the ready.  Seemingly, their abductor wants them to cut off their own feet to escape.

An apparent corpse rests in the middle of the room with a pistol and a pool of blood by the skull, implied to be the body of a suicide victim.  Desperation and a countdown for the kidnapper's "test" or "game" drives Dr. Gordon to saw off his foot and attempt to kill Adam, as a voice recorder had instructed.  Once Dr. Gordon shoots Adam in hopes of satisfying the Jigsaw killer, assures his companion that he will crawl away to find help, and leaves the wounded Adam chained in the bathroom.  Once Adam listens to a pre-recorded tape, the corpse turns out to be an illusion; it only seems that the body is dead.  In Saw III, we see Jigsaw, or John Kramer, prepare himself to lay on the floor with the help of accomplices.  In Saw, while Adam remains trapped, the body simply begins to rise as it is unveiled that it was not a corpse at all.

The unmoving body in the room is ultimately the Jigsaw killer himself.  John Kramer walks out and seals the terrified Adam in the bathroom to die alone, uttering a recurring phrase of the franchise: "Game over."  In a franchise often involving situations that are not as they might initially appear, such as how the assembled abductees in Saw V could have all survived their traps instead of struggling as individuals if only they worked together, this grand finale reveal is one that stands out not only as the first of its kind in the series, but also one of the most objectively unexpected and intelligent twists of the long-running franchise and general cinema.  It is not foreshadowed.  It takes multiple sequels to find out more about how early traps like this were set up.  The ending is one of many reasons that the first Saw rises above its meager visual effects as a masterpiece of storytelling.

The Irrelevance Of Scientific Correlations To Ethics

The scientific method can show that there is a correlation between a living being losing a certain amount of blood and dying and can help measure the approximate amount of blood loss a given organism can take before expiring.  It can reveal correlations that connect uses of brutal force with lasting bodily impairment, and it can show the physical consequences of things such as burns on the skin of humans or animals.  Is it immoral for a person to burn someone else or casually kill them, though?  If so, would either of these be universally evil or objectively wrong (in a moral sense) only in select circumstances?

Whether there is moral value to any being or any action is entirely beyond the scope of science.  On the level of subjective sensory correlations that can never even be proven to be strict causal relationships (almost everything about the nature of these is misunderstood by the irrationalistic masses), there are many things that can be shown to be physically harmful for biological creatures.  If I was to intentionally slice open my skin, I can feel pain, but this only shows, again, on a subjective plane unverifiable beyond that the perceptions are there, that one event can follow or be adjoined with another in a correlative sequence.

Some people see that one event follows another and desire to avoid the outcome, in the previously mentioned case, that outcome being the experience of pain.  This is not the same as pain of all or some kinds being morally wrong, as in what should and should not objectively be done if such a thing exists.  This is mere pragmatism, which is inherently amoral on its own and, if some things are good or evil, might be very much in violation of morality--for instance, if murder is immoral, it would still be morally wrong to murder someone who says they will commit an act of abduction before they actually carry it out.

What many are really appealing to when they pretend like science has anything to do with grounding or revealing moral obligations is conscience.  This subjective, irrelevant set of moral feelings is not shared by all people, and even among those who have a conscience, their moral feelings could vary so wildly that someone looking to social conversation for prompting instead of reason would still find that there is no such thing as a universal reaction based upon conscience.  If something is good or evil, however, it is good or evil no matter what people believe, wish, feel, or do.  What people's worldviews are is already beyond science; this is foundational metaphysics and epistemology, and their feelings such as those of conscience are a matter of introspective, individualistic psychology.

If anything at all is evil, it is not because of science, but because the nature of the uncaused cause is such that this is so.  There could be no other moral authority; either the uncaused cause has a moral nature and this is what makes something good (and deviation from this evil) or it is amoral and thus everything else is amoral as well.  It is not because of science that it can be known that if one thing is evil, an equivalent or subset of that thing is also by necessity evil, as this would be known (as well as metaphysically true in the first place) because of logic.  Science at most shows what happens or what seems to happen in the world of matter.  Moral value, rights, and obligations are all, if they exist, unable to be accessed by the senses entirely.

True Insanity

In entertainment or in everyday social interactions, one might see someone joke, or maybe even sincerely say, that they are "going insane" if they start forgetting details about their daily lives.  Comparatively minor examples like forgetting where they placed a television remote could stir up anxiety about what a more general, thorough breakdown or shift in memory or sensory perceptions would be like.  It might really feel as if one would be insane if all of the sudden sensory experiences would shift from moment to moment so that it seemed like objects are appearing or disappearing, or if all of the sudden it was difficult to retrieve or keep memories about relatively basic practical things.  It might seem to some people like they would be insane if they cannot so much as simply relate to what others claim to perceive on this kind of level.

True insanity is nevertheless not at all the involuntarily perception of external environments or objects that are not there and is not the perception of external objects that are there; no one with human limitations can even know if all of their sensory experiences are more than just that, mental perceptions within their consciousness as opposed to actual physical things.  The seemingly numerous people who assume and believe that they can know their daily experiences connect with the external world, that their memories of events are accurate, or that they can know the existence and contents of other minds, to give just some examples, are utterly delusional--they have succumbed to the true, voluntary insanity of irrationalism in its many forms.

Anyone can be insane, no matter the state of their mental health in a pathological sense.  Even when a person's sensory perceptions and memories are abnormal or illusory as in the case of psychosis, not that anyone can truly know if many such experiences are illusory, they are always capable of holding onto rationality at least by recognizing logical axioms and the existence of their own consciousness.  No demon from hell or mental disorder could ever stop a person from, even with a vague sort of focus, realizing or dwelling on these truths that they would be relying on even to simply exist or perceive anything at all.  To not be capable of directly knowing these things is to not exist as a consciousness at all.  As it turns out, the emotional or social difficulties in fully embracing rationalism deter even those who do not have psychological disorders from recognizing or living for these core truths, which they could have absolutely no excuse for not discovering.

The only true and deepest kind of insanity is the one all of these lifelong non-rationalists relate to.  It is the insanity of rejecting or ignoring reason and the truths that it grounds and reveals.  To reject the uncaused cause, the logical possibility of morality, or the probabilistic evidence for Christianity is also insane, as is any other assumption, contradictory belief, or irrationalistic neglect of any grand truth about possibility or necessity.  There is but one way to discover and hold to genuine sanity: to unite one's beliefs with the objective laws of logic and intentionally refrain from believing anything that is either false (if it contradicts reason or some other truth) or unverifiable.  In this sole and true sanity, a love of reality can take hold as each rationalist comes to life in ways that are otherwise impossible.

Electricity And Quantum Physics: Within One's Reach

Apart from the technological structure of modern society, a person's only exposure to electricity might be observing lightning in the sky, seeing electric fish if if they live by certain bodies of water, and encountering static electricity.  Electrical utilization has become so commonplace that it could be taken for granted.  Turning a light switch on closes the circuit to allow the flow of electricity, but outwardly all someone sees is the light bulb suddenly producing light, a useful but commonplace thing.  Charging a phone reverses the flow of electrons from the cathode to the anode, where they are repelled by the surrounding electrons once charging stops and begin flowing to the cathode again.  All that someone outwardly perceives is that a dead or dying phone regains power.

There is no hint of a subatomic world here at the level of visible objects.  There is not even a hint of the atomic model at the macroscopic scale.  Electric flow is tied to electron behavior, and this involves the atom.  Since electrons are some of the individual particle components of atoms along with protons and neutrons (which break down into various quarks), they would of course be subatomic, and since subatomic and quantum physics are the same concept, electricity, on current paradigms, is generated by quantum activity.  Something mistaken to be too esoteric for a willing person to grasp is directly connected to something treated in the opposite way.  Quantum physics is philosophically unverifiable, not incomprehensible.

Yes, hearsay and even direct visual observation are just perceptions.  Stare at a fire, and you do not know that the fire is there because there is no absolute certainty in this kind of perception beyond the immediate mental experience.  The perception exists.  One's mind exists in order to experience perceptions of any kind, illusory or not.  Whether the macroscopic flame is really there, however, is not something that logically follows from sensory perceptions of this kind.  If this is true of what one sees in direct experience, then of course particles that cannot even be directly seen by the mind are uncertain.  This is not the same as there not being a fire, and believing this epistemological truth is not the same as believing it does not exist.

It is not as if the strong force holding quarks into the protons and neutrons of the nucleus, the superposition of electrons, and the electron cloud model are as much as suggested by macroscopic observations, but they are not beyond peoples ability to understand as concepts.  Science, including the more overtly philosophical parts of it, is not particularly difficult to understand.  It is not verifiable beyond subjective perceptions.  It is often only sought out of personal curiosity and does not reveal objective truth, much less the most foundational truths of all such as logical axioms.  Still, all scientific phenomena, though reflection on them is almost always prompted by experience or hearsay instead of logical necessity, are more conceptually accessible than the intimidation of some people would imply.

Many try to make scientific frameworks and probabilities seem beyond the reach of all but some elite group of professionals.  The things which some people take for granted about scientific experiences at the macro scale, though, are not even entirely divided from the more abstract fields like quantum physics that would, on the physical level, underpin the cosmos.  Along with neuroscience and general cosmology, quantum physics would be the most important of all sciences, and it would actually be the foundation of the other two.  Science in all forms is wholly lesser than logic, morality, and God, but it is not beyond a willing person's comprehension.  Anyone who truly appreciates science and not a fallacious and (in this case) elitist attitude about science would celebrate this, not deny it!

Movie Review--Before I Go To Asleep

"You store up information for a day, and when you wake up in the morning, it's all gone.  You're back to your early 20s."

--Ben, Before I Go to Sleep

Before I Go to Sleep, like Memento before it, which is does somewhat fall short of, explores the epistemology of memory and just how at the mercy of involuntary recollections or lack thereof we truly are.  Something that so many seem to utterly take for granted and only make assumptions about is what makes so much of life hinges upon.  Nicole Kidman makes for a great protagonist in a film that uses the uncertainties of memories and their absence as a catalyst for a story about self-awarenesss, relationships, and loss.  The horror of having to tell a significant other about the tragedies of their life only for them to forget by the next day, the existential despair of knowing you have memory problems while being largely powerless to change the situation, and the desperation of your life wasting away are all emphasized in a drama that is elevated further in no small part by its main cast.  It does not reach the heights of Memento, but it is still a competently made and brilliantly acted movie.

Production Values

Very emotional performances are indeed a core part of this movie, appropriately matching the genuine weight of the subject matter of personal identity, memory, and marriage.  Nicole Kidman fluctuates between confusion, despair, determination, and relief as the main character who has to deal with not only amnesia, but the barrage of increasingly difficult information.  For a character who mostly forgets daily events and discoveries each night, her Christine needed to rely on the emotionality of waking up every morning as if years of her life have not already passed.  The rest of the trio of primary characters are played by Mark Strong, who gets the change to play someone other than a villain, and Colin Firth, who frequently uses his facial expressions to make his words seem all the more personally charged.  As Before I Go to Sleep is by no means an action movie, quiet moments where mystery, glances, or tears take the spotlight require excellent acting, and that is one area where the film does not falter.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

A woman named Christine wakes up next to a man in a bed.  In the nearby bathroom, she finds pictures and notes identifying the man in the bed as her husband Ben.  He says that an accident damaged her head over a decade ago and left her with daily memory loss that resets back to her memories from around 20 years old each time she falls asleep.  A call from a Dr. Nasch informs her that someone is actively trying to help her restore her memory, and he has previously shown Christine evidence that she was actually attacked by vicious blows to the head rather than having suffered a mere accident.  Suddenly, memories break through, and at random, they might even carry over to the following day.  An ocean of serpentine emotions and claims from other people leave Christine confused about her past and the man saying he is her husband.

Intellectual Content

Before I Go to Sleep shows how an amplified version of an epistemological limitation that already exists--we all have a partly involuntary capacity for storing memories with or without amnesia, after all--could so very easily disrupt much of life and leave someone at the mercy of other people, whether they are malicious or benevolent.  Having a memory of an event simply does not mean that the recalled thing actually occured, as it does not follow from the mere presence of a memory that the memory must be accurate, just as it does not follow from not remembering an event that it never happened.  Though how one recalls the past might be slightly incorrect, wildly incorrect, or perfectly accurate, there is no way to know without being completely free of certain limitations altogether, with the contents of the memory itself being what one can know, as well as the logical possibility of any event that does not contradict necessary truths.  Only the basic self-evident veracity of the laws of logic and the direct contents of one's consciousness, which includes immediate sensory perceptions as well as introspective states, are knowable without memory.  Logical truths are necessary truths that could not have been any other way, so even if a person forgot literally everything except what they were immediately focusing on, they would be relying on logical axioms and broader logical truths metaphysically and epistemologically in everything.  Moreover, one could always at least know that one is having experiences in each moment even if one cannot know if sensory experiences or memories of the past correspond to real stimuli and events.  Christine does not ever seem to realize these truths, but she would have to remember her memory issues to even retain awareness of them, and she nonetheless relies on the laws of logic and on introspection no matter how much she understands their core nature.

Conclusion

One of the more famous amnesiacs in cinema is Dory from Finding Nemo/Finding Dory, the fish who has short-term memory loss.  The vulnerability, terror, and confusion of memory loss are still not quite on display in Dory in the more devastating ways they are in Before I Go to Sleep, which, though some people might dislike the slower, more emotion and dialogue-driven nature of the plot, does directly delve into these ramifications of amnesia.  Memory as a function of consciousness that is necessary to focus and think beyond the present moment is certainly something most people do not seem to truly appreciate, but that might make films like this all the more impactful for broad audiences.  Again, Memento soars higher with its more unflinching look into the epistemology of memory with a protagonist who cannot keep new memories even for a full day, unike Nicole Kidman's character, but Before I Go to Sleep is far from awful.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  Only very light, occasional blows are shown.

 2.  Profanity:  "Fuck," variations of "shit," and "bastard" are used.

 3.  Nudity:  Within the very first scene, Nicole Kidman's character is seen naked from behind.

The Quest For Self-Esteem

Self-esteem is in no way something only irrational, selfish, or shallow people seek after.  It is nothing more than the general state of approving of oneself, which can be manifested in more precise ways like positive emotions towards oneself or by achieving contentment about one's life circumstances or abilities.  However, there is nothing deeper than the necessary truths of logical axioms at the foundation of all reality and possibility, and thus nothing could matter more or even as much as these logical truths.  Either something matters, in which case logic has to matter as well since it is what dictates the truth about itself and everything else, or nothing matters, no matter how strongly or personally someone longs otherwise.  Self-esteem, then, cannot possibly be something that is rational or morally good to pursue in itself, but only in relation to things that are more fundamental and serious.

Most people routinely act as if what they are really after is nothing more than to feel good about themselves in the moment, no matter what they believe or why, no matter how apathetic towards matters of logical necessity they are, and no matter what they have done or still do to other people.  The quest for self-esteem is shared by many people, but only a few, whether or not they actively strive for this introspective contentment or approval, are really worthy of it.  What if someone feels good about himself or herself even if they believe that the self-verifying intrinsic truths of logical axioms are false, or that some heinous evil is permissible if only it is convenient for them?  What of all the slaves to assumptions and hypocrisies that are too stupid to know their left hand from their right hand?

Pragmatism and emotionalism (which is not emotion itself, but a philosophical approach to emotion) are invalid by default because they do not make things true; anyone's feelings of attachment to these ideas are objectively meaningless, and their beliefs reducing down to emotional persuasion are inherently meaningless either way.  With or without any sort of moral significance to necessary truths and knowledge of them, non-rationalists are insects who are beneath even the newest, most overwhelmed rationalists.  Too irrational, desperate, and ideologically superficial (which is itself a subcategory of irrationality) to bear living like they are not as intelligent or morally upright as they wish themselves to be, they settle for self-esteem devoid of the only qualities that could make it objectively good, and even more deeply, in alignment with the necessary truths that remain the heart of reality with or without a moral layer to reality.

You cannot deserve to be or feel happy, content with yourself, or believe false things about yourself because you want to.  This is nothing but the erroneous philosophy of emotionalistic subjectivism that is adhered to only by fools.  There is literally nothing else to base your worldview and life on other than reason besides assumptions or falsities you have already identified, and yet reason is true in spite of all the denial, ignorance, and apathy of non-rationalists combined.  Non-rationalists cannot even understand self-esteem itself as it truly is in the fullest sense because they have never abandoned assumptions, sought absolute certainty and necessary truths, and then refused to allow emotional excitement or peace to decide what they believe.  They believe things about self-esteem and more on the basis of assumptions, cultural pressures, emotional appeal, and subjective persuasion.  For this, they cannot find rationalistic peace and the deepest kind of self-esteem that can only come from knowing, savoring, and living for the truths of rationalism.

Retaining Employees

Complaints about how difficult it is to retain employees could in some cases be tied to industry challenges, the very nature of the job in question being a short-term or less stable one.  Efforts to retain workers here are not necessarily manipulative or born out of irrationalistic neglect of workplace exploitation.  For companies and employers who make a job a place of hostility, unnecessary tension, and genuine injustice, to wonder why workers leave when they can afford to is asinine.  Compounding the irrationality, the same employers who wonder why people leave might think that they simply are not doing enough to entice employees to stay, but not when it comes to removing the core moral problems.  No, they would rather try to conjure up cheap, superficial company gatherings or the like instead.

Many businesses cannot thrive to their greatest extent without employees who remain with their company for relatively long periods of time, develop or establish their skills, and are supportive of their company culture.  It is not exactly unsurprising that many employees seem to be taking great care to avoid abusive or sometimes even shallow workplaces, and still some employers think that if they only occasionally offer free meals or pressure people to meet up as a group outside of work to "bond," they do not need to pay well or avoid things like slander, micromanaging, and piling on extreme amounts of work.  The real factors that are most likely to inspire employee loyalty are for the most part ignored across a multitude of companies.

Employers who desperately want or need to retain employees do not deserve to have workers stay unless they are willing to provide livable compensation, not impose irrational demands (whether they are arbitrary, hypocritical, emotionalistic, or gratuitous), and not dehumanize their workforce.  Though being an employer does not make someone abusive or domineering, there are many employers who think that it is best for their business to oppress the very people who their business relies on: their workers, their vendors, or their consumers.  Since it is easier to conceal the abuse of workers or vendors from the public, and because trampling on them is assumed to be morally right or unimportant by many people, it is the employees whom a certain kind of employer will use and discard at whim.

To believe anything is true because of preference, appeal, or pragmatic consequences is of inherently irrational.  To act on irrational ideas or even truths that have only been assumed is irrational.  Cruel, selfish employers are guilty of this.  They might additionally be irrational in that they not only believe and do all of these emotionalistic or egoistic things, but they also are or act surprised when employees quit or share their negative experiences with others.  What kind of fool would expect people to remain loyal to abusive employers and working conditions?  What kind of fool would expect someone to sacrifice their mental health, their physical health, or the whole of their free time to support a company that does not treat them as anything more than a disposable tool?

Any employer who is not a rationalist, like any politician or other leader, does not deserve any sort of power until they first abandon their irrationalism and seek the most foundational power of alignment with reason.  Until or unless they become a rationalist, an abusive employer might legitimately ignore or misunderstand the rather glaring fact that it is often never in an employee's interests to show loyalty to a company that does not treat them as a full human being whose work-related dimensions are among their least important.  Employees are not rational, morally upright people by virtue of being employees as some liberals like to pretend, but they have done nothing wrong by Biblical standards even in suddenly leaving a predatory company without providing any notice whatsoever.

Food Sacrificed To Idols

If there was widespread, open worship of the Greco-Roman pseudo-deities in modern America, evangelical Christians, if they were consistent with the rest of their legalism, would think that eating food offered (or "sacrificed") to idols or the pantheons is evil.  Paul addresses this phenomenon in his own era as he writes in 1 Corinthians 8:4-8.  He does not have to mention Deuteronomy 4:2 to be consistent with Yahweh's command to not add to his instructions.  There is no condemnation of eating such a thing, even if the pagan philosophies and practices associated with the sacrifice of food to idols are invalid. 

What might seem like an egregious yielding to paganism is something that Paul, as any Christian theonomist who understands Mosaic Law would realize about this matter, recognizes as permissible: eating meat sacrificed to idols is not problematic if one is not ideologically allegiant to paganism.  Meat is just meat, and offering food to nonexistent or lesser spiritual entities (lesser than Yahweh) does not mean a person is worshipping or entering an agreement with them.  To participate in the consumption of such meat is not to participate in any sort of psychological or outward act of devotion to any pagan being.

Paul affirms that idols have no power because they are mere objects (1 Corinthians 8:4).  He goes so far as to admit that even if there are or were such pagan entities, Yahweh would still be greater and more philosophically central, ultimately because he is the uncaused cause and the one whose nature grounds moral obligation altogether (8:5-6).  Yahweh and Christ are the beings Paul advocates for submission to because they would have authority beyond that of the pagan pantheons, which contain many so-called gods or goddesses who are created beings even according to their own worldviews and stories.  Without elaborating extensively, Paul touches upon this by mentioning how God and Jesus (which he correctly distinguishes as separate metaphysical beings) created the world and by extension its people and animals (8:6).

Of all the things supposedly repealed or nullified by Jesus in Mosaic Law, the dietary laws are among the only things that either by logical necessity are not universal obligations according to Christianity or that are more ambiguous as to whether they are obligatory.  The dietary laws of the Torah, however, only prohibited eating certain kinds of animals not according to whether their flesh had been sacrificed to idols or pagan pantheons, but based on criteria such as whether a creature of the water does not have fins and scales (Leviticus 11:9-12).  Even under the full dietary restrictions of Mosaic Law, it is not the association of the food with pagan worship that is the basis for abstaining from it.

As strange as it might seem to some, as with how many other controversial things are Biblically nonsinful, eating meat that has literally been offered to pagan pseudo-deities or the physical images depicting them is not immoral according to Mosaic Law, the only moral revelation in the Bible that is direct, holistic, and precise all at once on a consistent basis.  Paul acknowledges that this is not ultimately problematic even if it offends or terrifies some Christians.  If a person wishes to eat or do any other such nonsinful thing, they are morally free to do so.  If a person wishes to not eat or not participate in any other such nonsinful thing, they are morally free to not partake.

Wishing To Have Never Been Born

In this life of limitations, the only real reason to continue onward besides subjective motivation or the potentially illusory evidences pointing towards Christianity and its morality is the unknowability of certain things.  Whether morality exists, what its obligations would consist of, whether there is an afterlife, and whether that afterlife has anything to do with whatever moral obligations exist are all of immense importance here.  Other than moral or other extreme existential issues like an afterlife, all of which reduce to logical truths, there is of course absolutely no reason not to kill oneself.  Even without trials, the mere moral meaninglessness of reality, necessary truths included, would entail that there is no objective basis for pursuing life.

As for suffering, there is always either pain or at least the capacity for pain present in human existence in its current form.  No, this kind of desperation and agony was not present in the Biblical Eden until sin, and they are promised to be removed from New Jerusalem (Revelation 21:1-5).  The likelihood of Christianity being true does not always make life easier to endure in the present except by providing a philosophically consistent and evidentially probable support to keep living.  Trials still come.  This is both logically possible, for the very existence of a conscious mind always brings the possibility that from one cause or another it would eventually experience pain, and it is Biblically emphasized.

Jesus does say that there will be trouble in this world (John 16:33).  Indeed, as asinine as the objection to theism or Christianity is on a logical and moral level since it solely is about emotional dislike, the so-called problem of pain is one of the most distressing things in all of philosophy for many Christians and non-Christians alike.  As I have pointed out before, this even spans rationalists and non-rationalists: no one needs to be particularly intelligent or interested in the nature of reality to feel the pain that can be a part of reality.  If there truly is no pre-conception consciousness for humans, which is entirely unverifiable, the only way to escape both pain and the possibility of it is to cease to exist, including by having never come into being.

Either way, the only way to inherently avoid all pain is to never have been in conscious existence of any kind.  When wishing they had never been born, this is ultimately what people are grappling with even if they make assumptions about the matter.  They experience disappointment, loss, sadness, or pain, and they wish in those moments that they never had a mind which would face these burdens.  What they long for is something like the Sheol of the Bible even if they do not realize what the Bible truly teaches, its logical possibility, or the evidence for it.  They hope for either total nonexistence of the mind or for a dreamless, perceptionless state where there is not even comprehension of reason or the self.  This is what Job desired for during his own great trials (Job 3:11-19).

Since there is not even a guarantee that death will bring release, as there are many logically possible afterlives, some of them far worse than anything in this life, only something like Sheol (Ecclesiastes 9:5-10), the annihilation of the second death (Matthew 10:28, 2 Peter 2:6), or New Jerusalem (again, Revelation 21:1-5) would actually end the suffering in their own ways.  One is temporary nonexistence or soul sleep, one is a permanent death of the soul with no resurrection that follows, and the other is eternal bliss.  In truth, anyone who wants an end to their suffering could only have it through one of these three types of fates.

This is not to say that the Biblical afterlives are true by necessity, only that soul sleep, annihilation, or eternal bliss are the only ways for a being already in existence to find a true escape from despair or mental illness or terror or pain.  The only other way to ensure this would be to have never been not just born, but conceived at all.  Of course, if that has already happened, it has already happened, and no human will can undo past events.  All of us who are born can choose rationality or irrationality, and we can to a limited extent shape our life circumstances in accordance with reason, morality, and personal preferences, but suffering, moral obligations, and the metaphysics of potential afterlives are inseparably tied to the issue of why we should continue to live at all.

Yahweh's And Allah's Love

The deity of the Quran is neither totally different from the Biblical "Father," or Yahweh, nor totally similar.  What follows is only to put forth several similarities and contrast several differences between Christianity and Islam and not to treat the differences as some inherently obvious moral inferiority of Allah, who is distinctly not loving towards all people regardless of their deeds unlike Yahweh.  Though there is evidence that the Biblical religion is probably true and proof that Islam contradicts its own tenets elsewhere, each of these attributes of God is logically possible on their own, and to be or become a Christian because a degree of unconditional love is personally appealing, as it admittedly is for many Christians, is absolutely idiotic.  Love is only good if it corresponds to the divine nature, and so one cannot know love is good apart from that.  Otherwise, no matter how existentially satisfying or personally alluring it is, there is no basis for thinking love is good rather than sometimes appealing or useful.  Christians tend to start with this assumed premise.

Now, Allah's mercy is frequently referenced in the Quran, such as in Surah 2:159-160, 191-192, 3:89, and 4:175.  This is not at all an exhaustive list of relevant verses.  Mercy, being a withholding of justice when someone has already erred, does not require that one is loving prior to a person's repentance unless love is already morally owed to everyone, which is simply not true on the Islamic worldview.  According to Surah 4:107, "Do not argue for those who betray their own souls: God does not love anyone given to treachery and sin."  The verse before this says God is "most forgiving and merciful," as does verse 110 shortly after.  Mercy is not the same as love, so there is no actual contradiction in the doctrines proposed here.  However, Allah does not love everyone as long as there are people who are unrepentant by the standards of the Quran.  Surah 3:32 also says, just after mentioning divine forgiveness and mercy in 3:31, that God does not love those who ignore his commands.  Yet again, in Surah 3:140, it is clearly stated that "God does not love evildoers."  The Quran does not teach an all-loving God.

There is a difference between hating someone and not loving them.  Someone could both hate and not love another person or could hate and love them together, as well as love them without the additional presence of hatred.  Allah's love is very explicitly conditional in the Quran, whereas the love of Yahweh (Deuteronomy 10:17-18, John 3:16, Romans 5:8), though sometimes accompanied by hatred that is denied by many assumption-making Christians (as mentioned in verses like Leviticus 20:23, Psalm 5:5-6, 11:5, Proverbs 11:20), is constant, universally directed, and such that he was willing to do more than just accept repentant sinners.  He is willing to have his Son die for them (again, Romans 5:8), something Jesus was resolved to submit to because it was the Father's will (Luke 22:42).  The differing (but sometimes rather overlapping) doctrines on the nature of Jesus aside, Yahweh and Allah, though presented as the same being at least up to a point in the Quran, have exclusive qualities.

The Quran, as anyone who reads both it and the Bible without making assumptions can see, is not a book wholly contrary to Christian philosophy as many have heard.  The differences there are still no minor thing, spanning everything from criminal justice to the nature of hell to the ontology of Christ to the love of God.  Love is not the only part of Christian ethics in that it is vague and incomplete on its own, and just as crucially, the love demanded by the Bible is not shallow, subjective, emotionalistic affection, but a commitment to treating people as they deserve as image bearers of God no matter one's circumstances.  According to many Christians, Biblical love is in conflict with the very deeds demanded in the Torah that the Pentateuch and gospels alike say are loving (Leviticus 19:18, Deuteronomy 6:5, Matthew 22:37-40), so they are obviously believing an impossible contradiction.  It is just that goodness is either way grounded in God, and since the Quran repeatedly says Allah does not love people unconditionally, love is not a universal requirement in Islam.  It is owed to the righteous because God loves them and to show it otherwise is an optional mercy.

The Null And Near-Death Experiences

"This horror was the afterlife, and it was waiting not just for the evil ones among us but for all."

--Jamie Morton, Revival

There have been many afterlives in the universe/multiverse of Stephen King's stories, ranging from those of the ghosts in the Overlook Hotel of The Shining to the hub in Afterlife from which people can choose to relive their exact lives or descend into nonexistence.  In other stories of his, as with many general stories across mediums, the afterlife is unaddressed altogether.  Characters die without any direct attention going to whether they have consciousness after death in any form.  King's Revival, if it was the only book in the interconnected stories to touch upon an afterlife, has its main character Jamie Morton receive what appears to be a premature sighting of the Null, a dimension where hundreds upon hundreds of dead humans are said to be marched across a decaying city, naked and terrified, by ant-like creatures that sometimes crawl and sometimes stand upright.  The black sky has holes through which great howls and lights come, manifestations of or companions to a great universal power.  Moreover, enormous, malevolent beings the eldritch entity Mother calls the Great Ones hover above this mirage of a sky, perhaps waiting to consume the humans they seem to observe, or perhaps intent on enslaving them without the hope for a second death.

Seized by fear, Jamie assumes that this is the afterlife for everyone, not just the wicked (as if it could be justice for even the collective wicked of humanity to be tormented eternally as Mother is implied to do to all people for non-moral reasons).  Mother insists that there is no death, no light, and no rest here in the Null, though she was either lying about at least the lights since Jamie sees powerful lights and "living" colors that transcend earthly luminosity or meant light in a metaphorical sense.  She might have lied with her words and sensory projections about the very existence of the Null or other details.  In fact, she has to have only made it seem as if everyone's fate is the Null, although Jamie is irrational to have made any assumptions at all based on the number of people he sees, as the aforementioned afterlives from The Shining and Afterlife and others I have not listed do not involve hellish slavery, physical torment, or a supernaturally sustained eternal life in agony.  Jamie does not have access to this fortunate evidence, doomed as he might be to this afterlife anyway for having previously come into contact with the "secret electricity" tied to a grand energy that is itself connected to the Null, according to his traumatic, supposed look behind the veil.

He has therapy sessions in which he tries to cope with the severity of his vision and the seeming evidence that Mother's domain really is awaiting him once he dies.  Because the ghosts of The Shining or Doctor Sleep have not appeared to him, and he would be unable to prove if they are real if he was to see them, he does not even have any experiences with the afterlives that are more directly presented in other stories in the same universe, making contrary assumptions based on incomplete, perception-based evidence.  Jamie is not the only one that makes assumptions about the afterlife; the therapist mentions how many people, including the apostle John in Revelation, have claimed to see an afterlife that does not feature a ruined city or ant monsters or any of the other sights of the Null, and when Jamie pushes back, his therapist is content to assume that all near-death experiences are false if he also dismisses the genuine possibility of what Jamie describes being true (and this or something like it could be true or could have been true in reality, as it does not contradict the necessary truths of logical axioms).  Jamie says that a child who allegedly saw inside heaven saw only one miscarried sister he had not heard of before his experience, but that there were numerous murder-suicides linked with the dangers of the secret electricity on Earth.

Both of these characters in actuality made assumptions based upon potentially illusory perceptions or hearsay.  It is possible for all near-death experiences to be accurate if everyone has a vastly different afterlife in different realms and different mental states, though the correspondence of them to anything other than the hallucinations of a dying person (in cases where someone is not yet actually dead) is epistemologically uncertain, as is whether a multitude of sensory perceptions in this life match with anything beyond mere subjective experiences within the mind.  However, it does not follow from one near-death experience being illusory that others are, especially given how diverse some of them can be despite the reported mass similarities in accounts from people living on our Earth outside of Stephen King's literary mythos.  The therapist disputing the veracity of Jamie's glimpse of the Null--not his experience of the perceptions, but whether the perceptions are anything but hallucinations of a kind--are idiotic since he thinks that if the child who claimed to visit heaven was seeing an illusion, Jamie probably did too.

While the truth about a matter is the truth regardless of if humans can know it, and it is logically possible for an afterlife like the one presented as supposedly real in Revival to exist, the reasons why most people either accept or reject the possibility of at least certain near-death experiences being true are wholly irrational.  It does not logically follow from seeing a chair or a fellow person that they are actually there, the same being true of the details in a real or imagined afterlife where one is not omniscient--or at a minimum free from select epistemological limitations.  It also does not follow from there being evidence against the veracity of a particular kind of near-death experience that the afterlife envisioned is ultimately false.  The only afterlife with anything more than subjective perceptions in its probabilistic favor is eternal life in the Biblical paradise of New Jerusalem or a second death in the lake of fire, the latter of which brings true, permanent nonexistence (2 Peter 2:6).  Jamie's therapist does not realize or care about any of this.  Jamie himself has only assumed that everyone must go to the Null since he saw so many people inside.  This is demonstrably untrue in light of the other Stephen King stories that tell of far less oppressive afterlives, and the evidence of real life points to a very different duality of afterlives.  Near-death experiences are in either case not proof of a specific afterlife, although some of them have significant evidence in their favor (to be addressed in other posts), any more than seeing a smile on a person's face means they are happy.

The Preservation Of The Quran

Muhammad, founder of Islam, initially used oral recitation to companions in order to convey the alleged revelation from the angel Gabriel, the contents of which were eventually recorded in Arabic writing by others and meticulously copied.  The first caliph reportedly had multiple memorizers contribute after Muhammad's death so that the written Quran would mirror the original statements.  The preservation of the original Quran in Arabic--translations to other languages might have to make tradeoffs or exchange a word for a loose equivalent--is commonly emphasized in Islamic apologetics.  Since the events of the transmission entail a historical claim, and not in the logically necessary sense of there being an initial creation event for time and the material universe, of course one cannot truly prove and thus know with absolute certainty if this perfect preservation actually happened.  However, the veracity of this does not actually matter in the way some might imagine.

A book claiming erroneous or partially true metaphysical ideas could be perfectly preserved and still be false.  The mode or strictness of textual preservation is absolutely irrelevant to whether the entire philosophical system therein is correct.  I could make up a religious, a scientific, or a more foundational/abstract metaphysical system that is actually logically possible (as in, it could be or could have been true because it does not contradict logical axioms) tomorrow and have my friends or children, if I eventually have any, copy it perfectly and then have their own friends and family members do the same for many generations.  Total copy-to-copy accuracy in English could be attained with great care even if unlikely.  Nevertheless, unless the ideological system attested to was both logically possible and happened to be true out of all competing possibilities, the preserved text is not true, and even if it was, no one could know its worldview is true if it only contained non sequitur claims or presupposed notions.

Moreover, a book could be mistranslated or partly distorted over time and still convey truths, though perhaps only the original document(s) is fully true to reality in its meaning.  The ideas behind the words align with or deviate from reality no matter the wording used to communicate them, and words are arbitrary, shifting constructs anyway.  Accidental or perhaps even intentional alterations to the text might mean only that the text was not accurately transmitted from one time or group to another.  Logically, there is nothing necessarily true about this invalidating the whole of the text on a translational level when moving from language to language; small errors in some parts do not mean other parts were similarly distorted.  More importantly, none of this requires that the concepts the original words referred to are false.  Epistemology and metaphysics must as always be distinguished here.

The accuracy or inaccuracy of the Arabic Quran to the original documents might be of great significance to whether Islamic tradition/history is honest about itself.  It just does not mean one way or another than the Quran is truly accurate religious revelation from God.  Claiming something is true is not what makes it so, either in the sense of historical hearsay about copying or in the sense of the contents of a text saying this of themselves.  The purity of textual copying is a red herring to whether the text testifies to any real moral obligation when it says to cut off the hands of thieves (Surah 5:38) or to correct details about the afterlife like how people and stones are fuel for hellfire (Surah 2:24).  Is it true that Muhammad was visited by an angel?  Islam has inherent contradictions due to the Quran affirming parts of the Old Testament and yet conflicting with them, but the accuracy of one copy and another is not what determines if Islam is true or false.  Ultimately, it is very simply but wholly irrelevant.

Openness About Compensation

To hide how little some or all employees might be paid, a selfish employer might enforce a policy prohibiting open discussion about compensation between workers.  Not all employers are like this, but doing everything from directly discouraging openness about pay to firing people for bringing it up among themselves is a tactic one might hear of quite a bit.  For those who think there is some grand obligation to honor this, silence about their compensation is the norm, and it might not even dawn on them that they might not be paid as much as they deserve.  A seemingly common "justification" for this is that talking about the similarities or differences in pay between employees could stir up jealousy, though anger or shock is perhaps far more likely.  This policy only ensures one thing, after all.

There is no actual benefit to anyone except for employers who refuse to pay everyone the same for the same kind and amount of work or who do not pay people based on their merit as an individual worker.  It certainly does not benefit workers too naive or distracted to realize that they are being underpaid, and it might instill a false hope that effort, accomplishment, and sincerity alone will earn an employer's positive attention.  Yes, in some cases, being open about one's compensation might stir up some jealousy, but so what?  If someone is jealous over not being paid as much as someone else when they are avoidably incompetent, then they do not deserve to be paid more regardless of their feelings, and if workers are irate over not being paid equally when they are all competent and have the same roles, then anger is not an invalid reaction.

Even incompetent workers are workers, and they are people, and thus they deserve livable compensation as it is, but any merit-based pay differences beyond this are not some injustice.  It is thus not only not true that openness about pay is bound to trigger jealousy or that it follows that this would make such openness immoral, but there are moral reasons (at least on the Christian worldview) why suppressing openness about this matter is itself the injustice.  Structuring society in a way so that a significant portion of one's entire lifetime is spent trying to earn enough money to survive, possibly spend on conveniences or pleasures, and still hopefully have enough to save for retirement is no small thing, and the many people who have to orient their schedules and energy around work do not deserve to be in the dark about how well they are being paid for this.

People work for money.  In a very different sense than they usually seem to mean by the phrase, conservatives are right when they think that people in general do not want to work right now--almost no one would work or would want to professionally work if it was not for needing monetary resources to survive comfortably within modern society.  This is not selfishness on its own.  Unless a person is materialistic/consumeristic or acting in a predatory manner in order to gain more money for himself or herself, there is not anything about wanting money that makes someone greedy.  This is not true of employers who do not pay livable wages/salaries or who do not reward merit beyond this: if they have the resources to pay employees in accordance with both of these factors and do not, they are the ones who are irrational, selfish, arrogant, or apathetic (though some worker might be these things as well).

An employer like this will try to undeservedly profit off of others by not giving them what is called for by human rights (and conscience and cultural conditioning do not reveal what humans rights are) or by individual merit.  Pressuring or doing whatever he or she can to outright force employees to never share their compensation with other workers, once again, only benefits an employer/manager who gains from having access to earnings that might belong to those under them.  Openness about compensation is one way to fight this kind of exploitation.  It is not oppression of employers to practice this.  It does not even have to entail workers constantly talking about their pay!  What it does ensure is the heightened deterrence of underpayment and the liberation of workers at least from the misleading impression that they are all by necessity being paid equally for equal work and having their individual contributions rewarded.

Nudity In Eden

The creation and fall story in Genesis emphasizes that the first humans were naked and had no anxieties about this state (2:25).  After they disobey God, the man and woman realize they are naked (3:7).  They would have been able to perceive this about themselves before, of course, but their psychological attitude towards their nudity changed.  God makes garments of skin and clothes them (3:21), but nothing is said about nudity being evil or sexual, with the two not being equivalent anyway.  The skins are implied to have come from the sacrificed animals, a reminder of the severity of sin and how it demands death, as well as a way of expressing that God must extend mercy to escape this deserved fate for wrongdoing.  To see, appreciate, or practice extramarital nudity would still be morally permissible (Deuteronomy 4:2).

The evangelical stance is that it is sinful or at least "shameful" to be seen naked by anyone other than one's spouse, as well as sinful to see the nudity of a person one is not married to except perhaps in a medical situation, if even that.  Not only does the text not say this or even hint at it, but if it taught that there is something sexually shameful about nudity, it would be objectively false because nudity is not sexual; sexuality is sexual, and it can be expressed or enjoyed with or without clothing.  As for the text itself, Genesis 3 leaves no ambiguity about whether this was God's intention in providing animal skins to cover the bodies of Adam and Eve after they betrayed him.

That Adam and Eve were given clothes despite being in each other's presence--not that them observing or being observed by other humans, regardless of whether they were clothed, is sinful in the first place--would mean that it is impossible for God's covering to have anything to do with shielding them from the curious or admiring eyes of people outside the marriage.  While holding that strict literalism is the intended meaning of many Biblical passages and that Adam and Eve were the first husband and wife, those who object to this think that the very context of being clothed in the presence of one's spouse for symbolic purposes means that there is a moral obligation to not see nudity or be seen naked by those outside the relationship!

It would also be false that God's good creation of the openly unclothed human body would lose its status of goodness simply because the moral alignment of the first humans' minds had shifted.  Marriage did not become evil because humans had sinned.  The nature of something like marriage has to do with marriage itself and God's nature (and, of course, the logical truths that govern all things).  The same is true of nudity.  Emotionalistic love of tradition even as so many prudish Christians are hypocrites by craving the sight of the human body is what keeps this logically and Biblically erroneous idea in power.  Whether nudity is or is not sexual actually makes no difference here, despite nudity being intrinsically nonsexual--it is a nonsexual thing that can be perceived or used in sexual ways, like many other things.

Even if nudity was sexual, though it is by logical necessity a nonsexual thing that can be enjoyed sexually, human sexuality is still nonsinful according to Biblical philosophy because it is a creation of a God whose nature is moral goodness (Genesis 1:31).  Sensory pleasure of sexual and nonsexual kinds is a divinely intended part of human existence.  To shun the human body or sexuality in any way besides that of personal, non-ideological aversion is to forsake a vital part of Biblical metaphysics and ethics.  Having a subjective preference to not see nudity or be naked before others does not mean someone believes anything irrational or does anything immoral, and nudity is not morally mandatory.  It is instead the highest physical creation of God that all are free to find physical comfort, sensual fulfillment, and sexual delight in.

The Parables Of The Talents And Ten Minas

In the middle of addressing eschatology and the afterlife, shortly after speaking of the increasing intensity of disasters leading up to his return in Matthew 24, Jesus tells a series of parables.  The second is called the parable of the talents, found in Matthew 25:14-30.  With talent here being a name for a kind of money in the parable itself but also standing in for personal skills of individuals, the story pertains to both the variations in circumstances people find themselves in, the wait for the return of Christ, the way Christians handle their terrestrial lives, and the rewards bestowed by God for active commitment.  The parable of the 10 minas in Luke 19:11-27 tells a very similar tale, with some differing details.  The parable of the talents unfolds as follows.

A person puts his wealth in the hands of a trio of servants before he departs for a journey (25:14).  The different servants are given varying amounts of initial money, with one receiving five talents, another two talents, and another one talent.  Verse 15 specifies that each was bestowed this money "according to his ability."  Though ability can certainly be enhanced or broadened in many cases, the starting capabilities of the servants determined what they were given.  Everyone except for the servant who has the one talent uses the money to double their portion of the wealth, while the other servant merely puts the money in a hole to hide it (25:18).  Upon returning, the master says that the first two servants will share in his happiness and congratulates them for their goodness and faithfulness, only to take the last servant's talents, give them to the one who now has 10 talents, and then cast the lazy servant into "darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (25:28-30).

In the similar but very distinct parable of the 10 minas of Luke 19, one person received 10 cities and another only five from their monarch once he returns, but both received cities, whereas the exact rewards in Matthew 25:14-30's story are not mentioned.  The increase of money in the minas narrative only factored into the degree of reward, however, not into whether a reward was received.  As for the lazy servant of the parable of the talents, he either represents non-Christians who have not reconciled to God, yet are faintly familiar with the concept of him, or Christians who squander their lives by simply doing almost nothing.  That this servant is thrown into a place of darkness and weeping (Matthew 25:30) strongly suggests the former even though many parables do not perfectly encapsulate everything in Christianity.  Indeed, if some of them were meant to be literal, they would outright contradict vital parts of Biblical philosophy.

The two faithful servants of Luke 19:11-27, though, are given jurisdictions that are actually closer to what various passages--none of them parables of Christ--say Christians, or at least some of them, will preside over.  "Do you not know that we will judge angels?" asks Paul in 1 Corinthians 6:3.  Revelation 20:4-6 also briefly describes how certain followers of Christ will reign from thrones in this world for a thousand years, sharing in what is otherwise the divine practice of grand judgment from a throne.  Whether it speaks of an actual reign on Earth before the final judgment of Revelation 20:11-15 or is analogous to something that is perhaps even greater, this refers to what might very well be Christians ruling over cities as part of their reward.

Even on their own, the related parables of the talents and 10 minas already touch upon divine rewards for how life is lived, in addition to the basic but crucial prerequisite of eternal life.  As the parable of the workers in the vineyard from Matthew 20 parallels, all who turn to God will receive their eternal life, but beyond this, the extent and types of rewards a person will earn for their righteousness--which cannot erase their past guilt, but is still worthy of commendation--are dictated by their beliefs and deeds.  Rather than intimidate Christians, this should be encouraging: it is not as if life in New Jerusalem is said to be aimless or to not reflect their genuine intellectual and moral triumphs.  For the servants of God who invest themselves more fully into knowing and living in light of reality, the Bible says there are greater splendors that await them.

Receiving And Extending Mercy

The words of Jesus in Luke 6:36 say that we are free to be merciful just as Yahweh, the Father, is merciful.  Just as God is kind and merciful to "the ungrateful and wicked" (Luke 6:35), we are like God in this regard whenever mercy is expressed.  James 2:13 even clarifies that judgment without mercy will be given to those who are not merciful, though showing mercy is not the Biblical way to procure the ultimate salvation from the second death.  Emphasizing the inverse of this, Matthew 5:7 has Jesus state that the merciful will be given mercy.  It is true that receiving divine mercy can prompt someone to extend it to others, yet there is much more to the subject of mercy than might be imagined.

Those who are merciful can expect to receive mercy for acting as God does, yes, though there are certainly wholly irrational reasons to seek or offer mercy, such as out of selfishness (because it can benefit oneself) or emotionalistic appeal.  Many Christians are irrationalists and might only would want mercy from humans or God because they do not want to face a just fate.  The misuse of mercy by most people and the way that almost no one at all actually understands what mercy is and is not does not mean that mercy is problematic, of course.  On the only moral-religious worldview with any evidence in its favor at all, it is a necessity to receive mercy to secure redemption and eternal life.  It is nonetheless not a moral necessity even on the part of Yahweh or Christ.

As a prerequisite to salvation, it is indeed needed if fallen beings are to be pardoned for their sins; even reaching a morally perfect life after the slightest moral error in the past, with perfection being attainable by everyone (reason and the Bible agree on this, as with Job 1:1), would do nothing to erase the guilt of what was once done or believed.  A certain kind of person confuses an optional exemption from true justice as a moral obligation because both justice and mercy are part of God's character, but these are very different types of needs.  If God had never desired to show mercy to anyone, he would not have done anything wrong by letting or causing all the unsaved to descend into oblivion of the mind (Ezekiel 18:4).

As something that reflects part of his nature, though, mercy is objectively good on the Christian worldview.  It just is not and cannot be obligatory, as it can only exist if justice exists and there cannot possibly be an obligation to not be just.  To be merciful is to imitate the Biblical God knowingly or unknowingly, but what determines if someone is merciful is determined by what is just.  A person is not merciful because they abstain from treating someone as their meaningless conscience or social norms would have them act.  This is achieved when they have not treated a person as they deserve in a punitive sense, which corresponds to God's nature.  To not kill someone for a forms of theft besides kidnapping (Exodus 21:16), for example, is not mercy.  No one deserves to be executed for such a sin even if all sin deserves an eventual biological death (Romans 6:23), so mercy would instead be not calling for the full ratio of restitution, or not calling for restitution or servitude for the debt at all (Exodus 22:1, 3b-4).

Again, there could be nothing wrong about being without mercy, for this is not the same as being unjust by treating people more harshly than they deserve.  It remains true that mercy is an integral part of Christian values in another sense, something that God practices, delights in, and desires even though even he would not need to extend it to anyone in order to be good.  Showing mercy for emotionalistic reasons is still asinine.  Showing mercy out of gratitude for the divine mercy received, out of a sincere love of other people (though love does not require mercy, only that one treats others as their moral rights deserve), or out of the strategic hope that someone might be inspired to turn to redemption are what is rational or morally good.

Lovecraft's Fixation On The Ocean

The ocean, not only for its relative lack of exploration but also for its very exotic life forms, is much like what an alien-filled foreign planet might be like. There might not be any public evidence for alien life (which would not be the same as logical proof), but the creatures of the open ocean in all of its depths do not always share the more typical features of surface organisms.  While his letter to Donald Wandrei suggests that H.P. Lovecraft was utterly terrified of the ocean and its living things from a very young age, the vastness of global oceans, the "indifference" of the sea (it takes consciousness to be indifferent, and the ocean does not appear to be sentient), and the creatures therein go nicely with the subject of some of his most renowned stories.

Tentacles alone are not Lovecraftian or related to general cosmic horror, but the tentacles hanging from the head of Cthulhu belong to the most widely recognized entity of his cosmic horror.  Cthulhu's appearance is a composite of octopus, humanoid, and dragon-like features.  The Great Dreamer sleeps in the underwater city of R'lyeh, waiting to be released from his slumber.  The 1926 short story The Call of Cthulhu , which directly inspired the 2018 video game [1], has Cthulhu telepathically "call" to humans in anticipation of his ascension.  As one of Lovecraft's grand beings, the Great Dreamer is metaphysically far above humanity, and his very awakening would be catastrophic.

Cthulhu is not the only water-related monstrosity of this fictional cosmos.  The short stories Dagon and The Shadow Over Innsmouth have the Deep Ones, and all of these pale compared to some of his other entities.  Azathoth, suggested to be the deity of this universe, is among the latter.  The transdimensional or supernatural eldritch beings of his cosmic horror are often associated with the oceans of Earth or, if not a plane of existence beyond the physical cosmos, with outer space and inhuman worlds.  The most popular of his extraterrestrial or supernatural entities is nonetheless Cthulhu, and thus ocean waters and sunken cities might come to mind when thinking of him.

As unexplored as they ostensibly still are, the ocean and many life forms within it have been recorded, and the latter can indeed look alien.  Below the waves where buoyancy clashes with gravitational pull and light becomes scarce below 200 meters, the organisms do become far more like what people might think of when imagining extraterrestrial creatures on some distant planet.  Only half a foot long but with a very abnormal head, the barreleye fish of the twilight zone has upward-facing, green eyes that are underneath a transparent forehead.  In the midnight zone below the twilight, larger creatures such as the Atolla (alarm) jellyfish reside, with their potent bioluminescence.  The giant squid, among other beasts, can also be found here, its eight arms contributing to its approximately 30-40+ foot length.

With extreme pressure, darkness that is only dispelled by bioluminescence, great distance from human presence on land, and animals that are rather bizarre, the mesopelagic, bathypelagic, and abyssopelagic zones of the deep sea are the closest thing on Earth to the scope of deep space and the metaphysics beyond it.  The size, physiological functionality, and appearance of many such sea creatures are all but actually extraterrestrial.  Lovecraftian horror goes past focusing exclusively on Earth and even the universe itself with some of the more explicitly supernatural beings, but even the telepathic Cthulhu is bound to the waters of this human plane.  For its partial similarities to the cosmos outside of our planet, the sea was the ideal place to put the Great Dreamer who is but one of many cosmic horrors.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2021/03/game-review-call-of-cthulhu-switch.html

Henry Ford's Approach To Compensation

1913 saw the introduction of Henry Ford's moving assembly line, where parts from outside suppliers were put together far more quickly.  Only a year later, be began compensating workers very highly for the time (up to $5 a day, double the previous compensation model) while reducing their workday by an hour.  The goal was that the employees would be motivated to perform their roles well, to stabilize turnover, and could purchase from his own inventory, not necessarily the elevation of the working class.  More applicants, longer seniority, greater output of effort, and the ability for them to directly or indirectly increase his own sales were the consequences.  More financially secure workers have more money to spend, perhaps on vehicles like Ford's, or they can spend more in the local area as a whole, which brings more money to other establishments, which in turn allows them greater flexibility in the broader community buying things like automobiles.

Yes, profit is what remains after all expenses, including payroll, are paid from the revenue, so for the short-term, low wages might boost profit. The moral dimensions of this aside, enough of this either leads to a workforce that cannot afford to pay for the products or services of their own industries (short of perhaps true minimal, practical necessities) or trampled workers that, unless they have corporate "Stockholm syndrome," have no loyalty to their companies.  When the community at large cannot afford what is being sold, company profits will wither.  Now, livable or premium compensation do not have to mean someone is always paid enough to afford whatever their labor provides for others.  A company that creates/distributes cars costing $1,000,000 are not paying their workers unlivable wages if they are unable to purchase a one million dollar product.  What Ford did nonetheless helped expand his revenue.

Ford sidestepped several low wage problems while doing something that would strike many modern Americans as more foreign: his repair workers at one factory were paid only when in the break room and not while enacting repairs.  Once comfortably situated in the room and receiving pay specifically to wait around, they might not exactly want to leave the leisure to go fix a malfunction.  Not only would they have to get up again to perform more labor, something many people like to avoid when possible, but their payable time would stop until they resumed their break.  A way to minimize the number of disturbances would be to simply perform repairs with the best quality work one is capable of.  Thus, there was incentive for both high quality of effort/results and long periods of relaxation.  Not paying workers for actual work is still exploitation of a kind by default, yet the highly atypical approach to compensation here provided incentives of its own.

In the modern American workplace, employers can moreso tend to actively, intentionally underpay workers with the goal of leaving more profits (for themselves or shareholders) and treat inactivity as a sign of inefficiency or laziness.  An employee who has no immediate tasks to fulfill might need to remain on standby, and he or she might only be inactive because they competently handled all of their current job duties.  Because they are good workers, they have nothing left to do.  A great many employers do not acknowledge this.  The multiplication of pointless tasks by employers and workers pretending to be busy just to pass time are what naturally results from this kind of stupidity.  The sarcastic notion of walking fast or looking intently at a computer screen to seem busy is sometimes turned to as a reaction to this madness.

Ford did not bother with this nonsense of automatically treating all workers at ease as useless employees.  Like all non-rationalists, he still had his errors and sins.  The full $5 a day had asinine restrictions.  An antisemite, he wrote four volumes of The International Jew proposing fallacious and slanderous ideas about Jews, which reportedly played a role in inspiring Hitler and by extension the rise of Nazism in post-WWI Germany.  When it came to workplace practices, though, his actual practices were pro-worker to abnormal degrees.  Doubling maximum pay, encouraging leisurely breaks as long as work is finished, and stimulating the local economy all do not have to kill every business and could indeed lead to greater success.  An example from the historical record like Henry Ford's business is not what makes this true or what it is necessary to discover this, and his company remains an example anyway.

Waiting For Christ's Return

Natural cycles like the motion of celestial bodies and the birth and death of human generations repeat over and over well after the ascension of Christ.  Peter predicted as much when he said that the continuation of such cycles would be noted by people wondering if or when Christ's return would occur.  As he puts it in 2 Peter 3:4, "They will say, 'Where is this "coming" he promised?  Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.'"  There are several noteworthy details and ramifications of this passage, which seems to address the Second Coming of Jesus even as it also specifically mentions God and other eschatological events, despite how Yahweh and Christ are very obviously separate beings according to the Bible (such as in Matthew 24:36).  Either way, the contents of 2 Peter 3:3-9 are very much reflective of the Biblical period between the departure and second arrival of Jesus and then the planet being laid bare by fire as verse 10 mentions.

There is an irony in verse 4, specifically, in that anyone who thinks what Peter says "scoffers" will insist is validating at least that part of the prophecy.  Anyone who says that there will be deniers of a prediction, though, will almost certainly be correct even if they could not have known ahead of time, and being right on this point is not the same as the predicted calamity itself actually occurring.  This distinction clarifies the epistemological significance of Peter's claims.  Thus far, there have been people, some of them even Christians, who might deny the possibility or probability of the Second Coming of Christ or Yahweh's final judgment and renewal of heaven and Earth (some forms of amillenialism literally would entail the idea that the Second Coming has already happened in full).  That some people object would again of course ensure that this part of Peter's predictions comes true, but simply encountering dismissal or denial of Christ's return (or other eschatological events that are described more at length in this very chapter) does not mean Christ is just about to come--and does not verify the whole of Christian prophecy.

The "last days," a phrase used in 2 Peter 3:3, at times seems to be used more as a general window of time after Christ's death and resurrection but before the final resurrection and judgement, which are themselves preceded by the return of Christ.  Like with the individual signs listed in Matthew 24, there is no one thing that points to the Second Coming or some other such event being in the very near future on this side of theological history.  These scoffers of 2 Peter 3:3-5 are a prerequisite if the entirety of the Bible is true, but they are not the distinctive marker that some grand eschatological thing is on the very verge of happening.  They are but one among multiple prophetic markers that, since the prediction was made, must come about if all Biblical teachings about the future are accurate.

In addition to the prerequisites of Matthew 24 not being met for the return of Christ at this time (so many things about the world have become better and not always worse!), Peter goes further to insist, in fact, that this "coming" will arrive like a thief (3:10), and what competent thief would come at a time when everyone expects them?  Still, the somewhat unspecified, abrupt nature of his return does not mean that an extraordinary amount of time could not pass between the ascension and Second Coming.  The delay in direct revelation of God or the next coming of Christ, says Peter, is because of divine mercy, as this is the very context in which one finds the renowned statement that God wants "everyone to come to repentance" and for none to perish--in a verse that Biblically refutes both Calvinism and the popular version of eternal conscious torment for every unsaved being all in one sentence (2 Peter 3:9).  This is also the place where another popular statement is made: that a thousand years is like a day to God, and vice versa (3:8).

People who imagine that the Second Coming is imminent all throughout history are dramatically misunderstanding the actual nature of Biblical prophecies even as they might recognize the obligation to do good until that moment arrives (3:11-14).  Even just in the context of 2 Peter 3, the very fact that scoffers would implicitly believe that natural cycles continuing refutes the Second Coming suggests that it would be an enormous amount of time between the first and later comings of Christ on Earth!  There is no need to fret as if Jesus is likely to come today or tomorrow, and even the Biblical details about his return and the nature of contemporary events together evidence that we are actually in some ways far from that great day as it is described by the Bible.  There is immense irony in any doubting of this return actually validating one of Peter's prophecies, certainly.  There is also far more to Biblical eschatology and related epistemology than just this.

Movie Review--Life

"Pilgrim wasn't just seeing things in Mars' soil.  We're looking at a large single cell.  Inert.  Unmistakeably biological.  And, like organisms on Earth, has what appears to be a nucleus, cytoplasm...  The cell wall is thick.  Those hairs look like cilia.  Longer than we're used to seeing on Earth.  More like flagella." 

--Hugh Derry, Life

"These creatures could have dominated Mars for hundreds of millions of years.  But now we know that they hibernate with a loss of atmosphere."

--Hugh Derry, Life

Life is what might be made if Gravity and the original Alien had a cinematic baby.  With the cosmic, cinematic grandeur of the former and a similar one-word title like the latter, it has a directness, elegance, and seriousness that lets it stand tall as a bold combination of philosophical science fiction and horror.  The result is both far more simple than many films about aliens that take their subject matter more seriously than mere thoughtless entertainment and far more elevated than many alien/slasher films.  Life teases and averts tropes like the alien creature attacking a scientist at the first telegraphed opportunity or the black character dying first, and an excellent ensemble cast with Rebecca Ferguson, Ariyon Bakare, Jake Gyllenhaal, Ryan Reynolds, and more do their part to treat the story with all the sincerity and weight necessary to make it a genuinely dark and dramatic movie with an undercurrent of existential awe at the fact that life exists at all.  That Life comes from the director who later helmed Morbius, which was just mediocre instead of the abomination many treat it as, is ironic for two reasons.  It is an example of how director Daniel Espinosa has already risen far above Morbius and it was a film suspected by some to be a stealth prequel to Venom, which launched the Sony-Marvel films that Morbius is part of.  Thankfully, Venom's grave shortcomings do not reflect those of this movie, though it is not narratively connected anyway.

Production Values

Like an inverted version of Gravity that focuses more on the inside of a spacecraft, Life features some broad shots of Earth and the International Space Station together that go far towards showing how the station could be a place that inspires awe before it contains an extraterrestrial horror.  Some scenes seem to echo Gravity so well, which was an incredible film, that I would not be surprised if Life was inspired by it as it was by Ridley Scott's grand science fiction horror movie it pays homage to.  Several ways that this is distinct from Gravity, though, would be the larger central cast and the emphasis on things that happen within the space station instead of outside it.  This puts the focus on characters in peril, such as the one played by Rebecca Ferguson (Doctor Sleep, Hercules), who is, as in every movie I have seen her in, a phenomenal actress who flourishes in dramatic stories.  Ariyon Bakare, Olga Dihovichnaya, Hiroyuki Sanada, and Jake Gyllenhaal are also great at adding personal touches to their characters despite all of them being trapped in the same basic circumstances.  Ryan Reynolds, though, gets the chance to inhabit a more serious role, one where he displays vulnerability and terror, a far cry from the personality of Deadpool he has deservedly become known for.  This was an important step towards establishing his versatility as an actor to a newer audience that might find his range surprising.

Story

Some spoilers are below.

A team of scientists aboard the International Space Station historically recovers soil from Mars, inadvertently bring with the alien soil a form of extraterrestrial life.  At first, the organism is small, resembling a single cell.  It begins growing rapidly while behaving in a docile manner.  Named Calvin by those on Earth who are astonished by the discovery, the creature's multiplying cells can perform multiple functions, and the entity displays a high level of environmental perception and intelligence--in the sense of being able to make use of its surroundings and achieve predatory goals, not in the sense of knowing philosophical truths, of course.  Calvin eventually shows hostility and improvises to escape confinement, searching the space station for water and food as it continues to increase in size.

Intellectual Content

That life takes one form on Earth does not mean that creatures, if there are any on other planets, would animate the same kinds of physical bodies with the same kinds of physical limitations.  The Martian of Life goes through many shapes and appearances that are not standard for terrestrial life, and the only impossibilities here would be that an alien cannot violate the laws of logic by having contradictory physical or mental characteristics.  Any unexpected or foreign trait that is not contradictory in some way is possible.  Overlooking this, one of the scientists on the ISS in the film first assumes that "Calvin" should not be able to survive in outer space without oxygen, but it survives despite this.  Shots from the perspective of the Martian predator also convey that its sensory experiences have a different visual "filter" than that of humans, further differentiating it from humans.  However, as Calvin demonstrates a high capacity for planning, the movie focuses on applications of its intelligence to navigating and adapting to sensory environments.  The abstract, necessary laws of logic are still at the core of all intelligence on a metaphysical and epistemological level, the mere practical applications of rationality being inferior to grasping major philosophical truths that are more fundamental and far deeper than anything that would pertain to biology alone.  While humans rely on these truths even if they are not aware of them and everyone can discover them if they choose to, Calvin shows no hint of caring for or understanding them.  There are of course more abstract sides to biology itself, especially how it intersects with phenomenology, that Life somewhat addresses.

"Life's very existence requires destruction," an astronaut named Hugh says--even a vegetarian life form must kill living things to eat, and even plants themselves can kill bacteria.  While all scientific phenomena could have differed in any way that is logically possible, and it is indeed logically possible for there to be or have been a life form that does not need to consume, the life we experience and observe needs to consume to continue.  This does not make other beings equal to humans or deserving of survival if they threaten human lives, but it is something we share with every creature that consumes to live.  All recorded macroscopic organisms happen to require consumption of something.  Hugh says he does not hate Calvin for simply participating in this cycle, while Miranda says she feels "pure fucking hate" for the creature, though she erroneously admits she thinks this feeling is irrational when her real irrationality is that she believes involuntary feelings are irrational, as opposed to beliefs that do not align with reason and actions that do not reflect devotion to rationalism.  Nevertheless, her dialogue here and elsewhere is part of how the film draws attention to how there is so much more to human life than mere survival.  Miranda and other characters usually get at least one or two personal moments that capture how people are conscious beings with the capacity for personal introspection, which is only possible thanks to reason.  Humans are not mere biological machines that eat, reproduce, and die, but beings that can think and feel and understand the very depths of reason, though Life does not go so far as to hold the spotlight on some of the most foundational truths about this.

Conclusion

Life is one of the best films to be inspired by Alien yet.  One thing that helps set it apart is embracing a more realistic scientific approach and a more thoughtful philosophical approach to the discovery of alien life than is typical, and the sincere humanity of even the characters with less screentime makes the desperation of the situation stand out all the more.  An abnormally bleak ending, grand cinematography, and the opportunity for the great cast to showcase drama acting (even for someone like Ryan Reynolds who is normally associated with comedy) strengthen the overall film.  There is a boldness and competence here that is so often missing, at least to this extent.  Yes, Life could have worked as a setup for Venom, but its self-contained, one shot story is in some ways darker precisely because there is no sequel to expand upon what happens next.  The isolation from established franchises left it free to be itself, sometimes mirroring elements of other films and sometimes going in its own direction.

Content:

 1.  Violence:  Blood is spilled in the low gravity setting of outer space again and again as the Martian creature attacks other organisms.

 2.  Profanity:  The likes of "fuck" and "shit" are uttered every now and then.