Based Camp - Our (Insane) Religious Belief's (Vetting Prophets)

00:00:00.000 But again, this can be updated with science and stuff like that.

00:00:02.540 Like, we believe in incremental.

00:00:04.740 We don't believe in, like, final revelations or anything like that.

00:00:08.160 Right.

00:00:08.380 It's just that the nature of our religious framework is such that it is not that a religious authority is the one to update.

00:00:15.020 It's a personal responsibility.

00:00:15.880 Actually, really interestingly, it's almost like a Protestant iteration of Mormonism.

00:00:21.020 Mormons, the way they see truth is very interesting because they do believe, like us, that God distributes truth to people at different times.

00:00:30.000 Through various prophets or you can have, like, self-profits or whatever.

00:00:33.260 Right.

00:00:33.760 And so you pray to God and he tells you what's true and what's not true.

00:00:36.260 But this is still all largely decided and distributed through a central church organization.

00:00:41.660 Whereas we believe something very similar, but we believe that it's the personal responsibility of every individual to come to these truths on their own.

00:00:50.600 And that truth is more efficiently achieved through large groups of individuals coming to these truths on their own.

00:00:56.340 And then God showing which truths were actually true by which of those individuals end up influencing the future.

00:01:02.840 This was written in 1872.

00:01:05.640 We teach that the soul is immortal.

00:01:08.780 We teach that there is a future life.

00:01:11.400 We teach that there is a heaven in the ages far away, but not for us single corpuscles, not for us dots of animated jelly, but for the one we are the elements.

00:01:24.280 And who, though we perish, never dies, but grows from period to period, and by the united efforts of the single molecules called men or those cell groups called nations, is raised towards the divine power which he will finally attain.

00:01:42.360 Would you like to know more?

00:01:43.320 Malcolm, when people ask if you're religious, what do you tell them?

00:01:46.800 Very.

00:01:47.100 I'm a religious extremist.

00:01:49.360 I understand that I'm a religious extremist.

00:01:51.560 You know what's really hard, though, is I need to create a profile on Ballotopedia, right, because we're doing this statehouse run next year.

00:01:58.340 And there's this immensely long drop-down menu of religions where you have to, like, say what your religion is.

00:02:04.800 And I'm like, it's not.

00:02:06.760 But there's not a drop-down menu item for what we have, despite the fact that I would say we are more religious than probably, like, we'll say at least 90% of people, maybe more.

00:02:23.100 Yeah, maybe more.

00:02:23.880 Yeah.

00:02:24.220 And this is really interesting.

00:02:25.580 And so this is something in a previous video, somebody's like, look, I've picked up some ideas around your religious beliefs, you know, listening to your videos.

00:02:34.360 But I've never seen one that gave, like, the core concept in detail.

00:02:40.160 And it's because we've kind of avoided doing that.

00:02:43.160 We don't really believe in intense proselytization.

00:02:46.740 Yeah.

00:02:47.900 Because we believe in the elect and we believe that truths will be revealed to the people it's meant to be revealed to.

00:02:53.540 And so we're a little gatekeepy about things, but I suppose it's worth going into this.

00:02:58.100 Now, to start, because I think it makes sense to sort of understand our broader religious perspective here, is I think if you take just what the Bible says, and you're saying that's all that's going to inform my religious beliefs,

00:03:14.960 you are likely going to be, I think the religion that's most backed by that is Protestantism, and specifically primitive Baptist form of Protestantism, which is a Calvinist tradition.

00:03:26.520 But anyway, generally, that's what I believe when I try to look at this as, like, as disassociated as I can.

00:03:35.800 But obviously, you know, I do have a stake in the game, because I came from one religious perspective and not another.

00:03:41.080 I think if you look at biblical traditions and you say what matters is traditions and hierarchy and order, then Catholicism is obviously the right answer. 0.84

00:03:53.820 If you think what matters is traditions and oligarchy and consensus, then you're going to be a Greek Orthodox. 0.67

00:04:00.080 Like, I think that many of the positions that are mainstream Christian positions make sense if you take specific views towards truth and how one should ferret out or divine truth from the Bible.

00:04:16.800 Yes.

00:04:17.400 Now, our perspective of truth is a little different.

00:04:20.020 We don't think that God is, from our perspective, so naive that he would try to lay out his entire teachings to Jews living two centuries ago in a backwards Roman province. 0.97

00:04:39.740 That is, like, sorry, I don't mean anything, like, the reason I say Jews, I don't mean anything derogatory about Jews.

00:04:45.940 What I'm saying here is it's a, you know, a unique cultural group on the edge of the world, right, at the time.

00:04:52.700 Not total edge of the world, but you know what I mean.

00:04:55.100 I think that God would understand that the way he would explain truth to those people as best he could would be different to the way he would explain the truth of the universe to somebody who was more technologically advanced.

00:05:10.960 And let's not even talk about us.

00:05:13.000 Like, let's imagine where, if humanity survives and we're still around in 500 years from now, God explaining to us what's, like, like that, 500 years in the future was, like, super advanced intelligences, intellect, everything like that.

00:05:27.780 Right.

00:05:28.140 And full understanding of physics, full understanding of reality.

00:05:30.860 Him explaining to those people in, like, his last revelation that, yeah, the one time I was going to explain to any of you what was true, it was that one time was those Jews in the desert.

00:05:43.140 That seems, like, to me, not true.

00:05:46.120 Like, that seems obviously not true, that he would have different revelations for different people within different periods.

00:05:51.760 And what's very interesting, so essentially what we believe is that God revealed portions of truth to different prophets throughout time in a way that was meant to influence them specifically, their people specifically.

00:06:08.560 In other words, God understood his target audience and their needs at the time.

00:06:12.000 Exactly.

00:06:13.360 To elaborate on this concept a bit, it would be incredibly capricious for God to have waited throughout, like, a huge chunk of human history containing a huge number of individual human lives.

00:06:24.400 To then put Jesus on earth with his final and full revelation, and then make that revelation one that it is necessary to have both been exposed to and understand for salvation.

00:06:35.100 But have that revelation then, like, really only slowly move out from where it was first revealed, not make it to the Americas for, you know, centuries after that.

00:06:45.900 And all the people who were living in the Americas are just, you know, fucked because there was only one true revelation, only released in this one spot. 0.97

00:06:53.120 And then you could say, okay, well then, why didn't God reveal his revelation earlier? 0.97

00:06:57.220 And I think that the Jewish people show this to an extent, where that was God beginning to reveal himself to people.

00:07:05.460 So he's like, yes, I'm a singular entity.

00:07:08.920 But he had to anthropomorphize the entity, you know, for the people and their place.

00:07:13.660 He needed to create an iteration of the story that helped incrementally improve their vision of what God was, but not fully cast it in stone.

00:07:24.660 And you can be like, well, why wouldn't he do that?

00:07:26.580 Why wouldn't he give them a full vision?

00:07:29.160 And God was gracious enough to carve into history exactly why he didn't reveal himself more fully at that time with the religion of Aten.

00:07:37.400 You know, the religion that was created by the Egyptian Pharaoh, Akhenaten, and lasted for a very short period of time.

00:07:42.580 They said, no, you should think of God more like a light or like a circle beyond what you as an individual can understand.

00:07:51.920 Certainly not something with an anthropic personality.

00:07:55.440 People of that time period needed a simpler God to be able to get closer to the truth.

00:08:01.860 And it was the same with Christ's revelation and other revelations, that these revelations were for humanity at that particular period.

00:08:11.160 And there were specific truths that humanity at that period was not mentally capable of understanding or accepting.

00:08:19.420 In addition, different revelations were specifically crafted by God, not just for people of specific periods,

00:08:26.980 but people of specific cultural groups and geographic locations.

00:08:32.140 So these revelations are not just temporarily locked, but they are geographically locked.

00:08:36.420 You as an individual are likely going to gleam more about the nature of God by studying your own ancestral traditions

00:08:45.260 than by studying other groups' ancestral traditions.

00:08:48.320 And it is through the interaction of people with these different perspectives on God that a truer vision of God can be revealed.

00:08:57.380 And interestingly, this belief is really illustrated in Islam.

00:09:02.160 Well, what Islam actually says.

00:09:04.420 So Quran 35, 24,

00:09:06.000 So what this means is that God sent warners, prophets, whatever you want to say them,

00:09:23.480 to every nation throughout human history, including those before the one that Muhammad was in. 0.76

00:09:30.440 So you look at Quran 1636,

00:09:32.340 For we assuredly sent amongst every people a messenger with the command,

00:09:38.260 Serve a laud and eschew evil.

00:09:40.960 Okay.

00:09:41.620 Now Quran 12, 2.

00:09:43.960 Indeed, we sent it down an Arabic Quran that you might understand.

00:09:49.060 So this is saying the reason why the Quran is in Arabic is so that you may understand.

00:09:54.460 Okay.

00:09:55.180 Where you means Arabic speakers or whoever heard that message from their parents.

00:10:02.400 And the Quran really explicitly spells out that this is what it meant.

00:10:05.960 You know, with lines like,

00:10:07.520 He sent down the book, the Quran,

00:10:09.540 To you with truth confirming what was before it.

00:10:13.580 And he sent down the Torah and the Gospel.

00:10:16.240 Meaning the Quran was meant to confirm both the Torah and the Gospel as true. 0.67

00:10:22.100 And keep in mind, we have iterations of the Gospel and the Torah from that period.

00:10:27.980 So we know what the text broadly would have looked like that Muhammad was seeing.

00:10:32.260 It was very similar to the text that we have today.

00:10:34.640 Now, what's really interesting is you could say,

00:10:36.560 Oh, okay.

00:10:37.080 Yeah.

00:10:37.220 But he also said, quote, 25, 1.

00:10:40.720 Blessed is he who sent down the criteria of right and wrong in the Quran to his slave, Muhammad, 0.99

00:10:47.380 that he may be a warner to all peoples.

00:10:51.540 And we would say, yes.

00:10:52.880 But that also fits within our religious framework.

00:10:55.620 He is a warner to all peoples in through how this message affects all people.

00:11:00.600 All prophets that have affected any people are really prophets for all people insofar as those people affect other people.

00:11:06.420 But there is going to be some truth that any individual that is among the elect can withdraw from their teachings by prayerfully investigating them.

00:11:18.880 So, you know, Jesus was meant as a prophet for his people.

00:11:21.940 Moses was meant as a prophet for his people.

00:11:24.140 Joseph Smith was meant as a prophet for his people.

00:11:26.080 We do think some prophets matter much more than other prophets.

00:11:28.740 For example, we think that Jesus was a uniquely important prophet.

00:11:31.840 To get an understanding of how this works, suppose God was trying to communicate to an ancient Jewish audience that he was astronomically beyond their current understanding, 0.52

00:11:43.640 to the extent where it was dangerous to reveal himself fully to them.

00:11:48.640 How would he show that to them?

00:11:50.160 He might show that as directly seeing him or directly hearing his voice killing someone,

00:11:55.160 that a direct revelation would be harmful at this time period, or to humans as they existed back then.

00:12:02.040 And this was something that he revealed.

00:12:04.240 So he was revealing to them in the way that they could understand things that were more sophisticated

00:12:11.540 than a message that could mimetically transfer within human populations of that time period.

00:12:17.840 And we still do not have a full revelation because a full revelation is not meant for us.

00:12:22.800 We are not capable of understanding or accepting a full revelation.

00:12:26.700 But we can attempt to get closer to one.

00:12:28.920 Now, I should be clear here, what I am not saying is all religions have some vague element of truth to them,

00:12:36.800 and the real truth is a combination of all previous religious prophets' messages.

00:12:43.380 What I am saying is that there is one absolute truth.

00:12:48.620 We are just incapable of understanding it.

00:12:51.440 But, if you are among the elect, you have a duty to attempt to understand it.

00:12:56.620 Or at least as much as you can with your current lower order body.

00:13:00.740 And sort of like looking at a four-dimensional object,

00:13:04.020 people in three-dimensional space looking at it from different angles are going to see it in different ways,

00:13:09.620 and it is through stitching together these three-dimensional representations

00:13:13.540 that we can get a better understanding of what the four-dimensional object might look like,

00:13:17.960 while still understanding that we are incapable of even imagining what a four-dimensional object looks like

00:13:22.900 with our current brains.

00:13:24.880 And so when somebody's like,

00:13:26.100 no, no, no, these two prophets are completely incompatible,

00:13:30.320 that is because they are trying to stitch two three-dimensional objects together

00:13:35.000 into a single three-dimensional object, which of course you might not be able to do,

00:13:39.040 but a four-dimensional object can appear to be two entirely different and contradictory three-dimensional objects,

00:13:45.320 two entities that they can only understand and perceive three-dimensional objects.

00:13:49.320 So, the existing prophets, when God delivered messages through them,

00:13:56.000 those were messages that had to be mediated by humanity's understanding of the world at that time and in that geography.

00:14:04.800 So, now you understand our broad frameworks of like where we sort of come down on like where truth comes from.

00:14:11.540 It comes down through revelation from God that can be determined both through human events,

00:14:19.340 through prophets, and through the study of natural reality and biology and everything like that.

00:14:24.420 But then the question becomes, okay, how did we come to this position?

00:14:28.700 This is really interesting.

00:14:31.780 So, I started my childhood very atheistic.

00:14:35.880 I grew up in a mostly like mystical family.

00:14:38.600 My dad believed in some like new agey stuff.

00:14:40.860 I think your parents were sort of similar.

00:14:43.000 We were exposed to many religious traditions,

00:14:44.860 but our families were basically new age mystic sort of people.

00:14:48.080 Yeah, my parents called themselves born-again Buddhists,

00:14:50.640 and I went to a Mormon preschool,

00:14:52.360 and pretty much everyone I knew growing up was atheist.

00:14:56.720 So, we didn't have these traditions.

00:14:58.040 Now, my grandfather was a strict Calvinist.

00:14:59.840 You know, your grandfather was a strict Calvinist,

00:15:01.660 but we otherwise grew up away from these traditional practices.

00:15:06.880 And as I was developing my religious beliefs, I was a strict atheist.

00:15:11.420 I was enamored with things like the subgenius movement. 1.00

00:15:13.980 I was annoyed by things like the new atheist movement, 1.00

00:15:18.880 but I thought that they were largely correct.

00:15:21.160 You know, I considered myself on team atheist.

00:15:23.900 I collected scientific baubles and everything like that.

00:15:28.200 And on one of these collecting journeys,

00:15:32.100 it was an estate sale for like a dead scientist that had all been taken to a single thrift store.

00:15:37.200 So, they had, you know, collections of his old medical instruments and books that he had in his collection.

00:15:42.900 And one of these books I picked out.

00:15:46.460 I don't remember what particularly compelled me to pick it out at the time,

00:15:50.320 but I was scrolling through it,

00:15:52.360 and I found some lines in it that seemed really prophetic to me about what was going to happen in the future.

00:15:59.460 And I thought, this is cool.

00:16:02.540 Like, I didn't really think anything else of it at the time.

00:16:05.180 And then it got a place in our museum.

00:16:08.160 And that book was this book, The Martyrdom of Man.

00:16:12.900 Okay?

00:16:13.460 So, we're going to talk a bit more about this earlier because it's actually pretty important to our religious beliefs.

00:16:17.760 Now, fast forward over a decade, maybe a decade and a half.

00:16:24.520 I am writing the Pragmatist Guide to Crafting Religion,

00:16:28.260 and I am beginning to realize the importance of religion to healthy societies,

00:16:33.300 to the way humans think, to raising children, to intergenerational cultural fidelity.

00:16:37.520 I am understanding its instrumental purpose.

00:16:40.780 And so, I start thinking to myself, I'm like, okay.

00:16:42.880 And we talk about this.

00:16:43.780 Simone and I are talking about this every day.

00:16:45.120 It's not like me alone.

00:16:45.980 When I say I, I mean Simone and myself.

00:16:48.860 We're talking about this.

00:16:50.040 We're like, okay.

00:16:50.800 So, we want to create a culture for our kids that is resistant to things like cultural viruses,

00:16:56.320 that is mostly in line with what we think is true about the world from scientific investigation of the world.

00:17:02.920 Not, you know, scientists lie about some things.

00:17:05.880 I agree with that, right?

00:17:07.320 Like, we treat science with a lot of skepticism.

00:17:10.820 Trust me here, if I.

00:17:13.940 Broadly, the scientific understanding that you and I and even the layperson as today

00:17:17.800 is much higher than the scientific understanding of the past.

00:17:20.480 Yes.

00:17:21.040 And to me, some aspects of that understanding, like evolution, for example,

00:17:25.640 seem incongruous with things that previous people have believed.

00:17:30.460 Now, the same with particle physics and stuff like that, you know,

00:17:33.500 understandings of time, timelines, everything like that.

00:17:36.280 So, I am things like consciousness.

00:17:38.780 If you watch our episode on sentience, we don't think that there's strong evidence that humans are sentient.

00:17:43.380 But that's like a completely different topic that we can, well, I can get to it briefly here.

00:17:47.940 So, if you look at studies on human sentience, what we find is that if you do something like stimulate a portion of a human's brain,

00:17:55.300 which is meant to, like, lift a finger or something like that, they'll be like, oh, I felt like lifting that finger.

00:18:00.040 This is done during open brain surgeries.

00:18:01.500 Or if you give a split brain patient like a Rubik's Cube, right?

00:18:05.200 And you can communicate with only one half of their brain because their brain actually, the corpus callosum is split.

00:18:09.160 And so, you cover an eyeball and you're communicating with the opposite side of the brain.

00:18:11.680 And you're like, why did you pick up that Rubik's Cube?

00:18:14.540 But secretly, on the other side of the eye, you could give them a note telling them to pick up that Rubik's Cube.

00:18:18.040 They'll say, well, I've always felt like solving a Rubik's Cube.

00:18:20.100 If you do an experiment where you give a person, you ask their, like, opinion on something political or you ask their opinion on, like, which of these women did you find most attractive?

00:18:28.440 And then you, like, subtly change which opinion through sleight of hand they chose.

00:18:32.620 And then you're like, why did you choose this opinion?

00:18:34.200 It wasn't the opinion they chose.

00:18:35.380 They'll come up with a complicated reason why they chose that opinion.

00:18:37.480 If you look in fMRIs at, like, how people make decisions, it appears that the decision is actually made quite a bit before they're conscious of it.

00:18:46.640 So, really, what this all implies to me is that our brain, the part of it that makes decisions, is mostly operating outside of the part of our brain which is conscious, sentient.

00:18:58.040 And then the sentient part of our brain is, like, not a guy driving a car, but a guy watching a series of cameras for a security video that is then trying to explain what happened in those videos as a single coherent narrative.

00:19:11.300 And that this likely evolved for human-to-human communication.

00:19:14.000 Think of it like a system for data compression of human narratives and experiences before human-to-human communication.

00:19:20.780 That's what we mean when we talk about types of revelations that people in the past may not have been ready for.

00:19:26.140 Now, this becomes important in a bit, but anyway, back to where we're going with all of this.

00:19:31.280 We were like, okay, so we're going to create a narrative that we think is true, is what we understand about the world today, and we think is inspired by these previous traditions.

00:19:40.660 You know, looking a lot to our Calvinist heritage, looking a lot to the way that they saw the world as sort of predestined, which we also think is very likely to be true.

00:19:48.500 So we have another video on this where we go into this topic in a lot more detail, but it's important to understand that our view of the way predestination works neither precludes multiple or splitting timelines, nor does it preclude free will.

00:20:01.300 We see it as coming from the perspective of which you look at a timeline.

00:20:05.720 So, for example, in a traditional Calvinist framework, because God is viewing the timeline from outside of the timeline in the same way that me watching a video that was filmed, you know, a few days ago, I'm watching that video from outside of the perspective of the events in that video.

00:20:22.460 So, while from my perspective, all of the events in that video are predestined, from the players in the video, they're not predestined.

00:20:29.520 So we think that physics, like the laws of the universe, exists outside of time, and that me as an individual, the actions I take are determined by the laws of physics, basically.

00:20:45.200 And thus, the things that happened in the physical universe before I made that decision.

00:20:50.020 There's no sort of external component at play here. There's no sort of soul, no nothing like that.

00:20:55.520 Everything that I do is because of the things that happen to me and the things I am thinking and the physical laws.

00:21:02.140 Now, what this means for me, which is really interesting, is it actually means that we believe that in a world without predestination, an individual would have less agency than in a world with predestination.

00:21:12.840 Because what that world would have is the ability for the person to end up making decisions that are not based on the things that have happened before them and what they were thinking at the time, but based on something external to them, which robs them of agency.

00:21:29.320 You can go into the free will video that we created if you want to go into this topic in more detail.

00:21:33.940 And for splitting timelines, we think it's a possibility. It really is irrelevant.

00:21:37.560 Timelines may actually split in a way that's not exactly predestined to random events happening within space-time or within subspace.

00:21:46.560 However, because those events have no connection to human consciousness, they don't really affect this debate in any meaningful way.

00:21:53.500 Get to how we see metaphysical states really quickly before I go too deep.

00:21:57.740 So how do we see the metaphysics of the world working, right?

00:22:00.960 If the world can be explained by a mathematical equation, like if we get to a universal theorem for explaining reality, and that is a single mathematical equation or a series of mathematical equations, okay?

00:22:12.180 And then we say, okay, well, suppose you're imagining different universes, right?

00:22:17.460 That operate off of different sets of laws.

00:22:20.020 Do you think in all of those universes, 2 plus 2 would always be 4?

00:22:24.700 You know, outside of instances in which you have changed the rules of math specifically, like, you know, non-Euclidean geometry, and then that's just math with additional rules.

00:22:33.700 It's not like 2 plus 2 doesn't equal 4 anymore.

00:22:36.000 I would say no, that's true across all potential universes.

00:22:40.440 So what that then means is that it's true outside of all potential universes.

00:22:44.800 Now, if our reality can be described by an equation and that equation exists or that collection of equations exists outside of all potential universes, then that equation exists whether or not these universes exist.

00:22:57.520 Then I ask the question, okay, well, like if I'm graphing a line, like if I have an equation for graphing a line, right, do I need to graph that line for that equation to, for that line or to exist as like an intrinsic property or an emergent property of the equation itself?

00:23:12.780 To me, the answer is no.

00:23:15.900 So basically our metaphysical understanding of reality is that reality is a self-graphing equation of a description of how the universe could work.

00:23:27.340 Because if we have two potential universes, like suppose the universe is described by an equation and equations exist outside of time, so we can say, okay, we either exist in a universe with like actual material things, the things that are described by this equation, right?

00:23:42.680 But even if we lived in a mirror universe, if basically things self-graphed, if the things that an equation represents exist outside of them being graphed, a mirror universe where people like us who thought everything we thought and felt everything we felt would exist, mirrored to that universe.

00:24:02.320 And thus, Occam's razor, like the real Occam's razor, if something would exist anyway, you don't need to assume it exists.

00:24:08.780 So that's like the metaphysics of how we think reality exists.

00:24:12.200 But again, this can be updated with science and stuff like that.

00:24:14.820 Like we believe in an incremental, we don't believe in like final revelations or anything like that.

00:24:19.880 Right. It's just that the nature of our religious framework is such that it is not that a religious authority or prophet is the one to update this, but rather sort of our scientific consensus and our understanding of what has been essentially mathematically or otherwise physically and tangibly proven.

00:24:38.800 Would you say that's fair?

00:24:39.540 Yeah, it's a personal responsibility. Actually, really interestingly, it's almost like a Protestant iteration of Mormonism.

00:24:45.680 If you guys want to see our Mormon video, Mormons, the way they see truth is very interesting because they do believe, like us, that God distributes truth to people at different times through various prophets.

00:24:58.600 Or you can have like self-prophets or whatever, right?

00:25:00.800 And so you pray to God and he tells you what's true and what's not true, but that can be updated.

00:25:04.880 So unlike other religions, like a modern prophet can say like Joseph Smith was wrong when he said this.

00:25:09.200 Or Brigham Young was wrong when he said this, like a previous prophet was just wrong because we have a more perfect revelation now.

00:25:15.480 But this is still all largely decided and distributed through a central church organization, whereas we believe something very similar.

00:25:23.180 But we believe that it's the personal responsibility of every individual to come to these truths on their own and that truth is more efficiently achieved through large groups of individuals coming to these truths on their own.

00:25:35.600 And then God showing which truths were actually true by which of those individuals end up, you know, being successful and influencing the future.

00:25:43.620 And when I say successful, I don't mean indulging in opulence.

00:25:46.380 That is a sign of sin to us.

00:25:47.720 Anybody who adorns themselves in wealth, like to us, that is a sign of personal sin, which is almost sort of the opposite of the prosperity.

00:25:58.220 Well, it's like the prosperity doctrine in that if you accumulate a bunch of wealth, that is God testing you or the basilisk testing you.

00:26:04.560 But we'll get to what we mean by that in a second.

00:26:06.460 But he is testing to see if you will spend it on self-aggrandizement and improving, you know, your own vanities and lifestyle.

00:26:13.680 Or will you spend it on sort of long-term projects, improving human flourishing and serving the divine, right?

00:26:21.460 But I do think it would be really fun if you would go into, we'll say, the characters or figures of our religion.

00:26:28.240 That's the fun stuff.

00:26:29.620 What do you mean by that?

00:26:31.080 The agents of providence, the god, the basilisk.

00:26:35.320 Okay, I'll go quickly into this.

00:26:36.560 So the agents of providence, or Simone calls them the future police.

00:26:40.460 These are the, so, okay, first, broad strokes of our religion.

00:26:44.200 We need to get into this first.

00:26:45.580 When we're telling our kids about our religion, we're basically saying in 100,000 years or a million years, your descendants, do you think they will be closer to the way you understand a human or the way you would think of a god?

00:26:56.060 And I think most reasonable people would be like, yeah, in a million years, humans, if we're still around, are probably going to be closer to the way we would conceive of a god today.

00:27:02.380 And then we say, well, so who's to say they relate to time the same way we do?

00:27:05.320 Like, that would be almost naive to think they relate to time the same way we do.

00:27:09.380 And so we believe that they are self-manifesting entities which nudge sort of the timeline in the direction that leads to what leads them to exist, which is a pluralistic, flourishing human species.

00:27:23.140 And why does pluralism matter?

00:27:24.380 Well, so if we believe that truth is determined through multiple individual revelations and then the revelation's truth determined by their efficacy, as somebody said in our comments, like, the truth of the thing will be determined by its fruits, you know, so you can look at individuals, see how well their life is going, see how well their message is spreading, and learn whether or not that message is true or untrue.

00:27:45.520 In fact, you can learn the efficacy of a prophet, like the amount of genuine knowledge God gifted them by their ability to predict the future.

00:27:56.220 So, you know, I think that things like the Bible, the Koran, the Old Testament, they do have a level of prediction of the future, more so than other secular documents of the time, both in terms of how much they've impacted human history, which proves their divinity, but also in terms of little things worded in them.

00:28:11.040 But this then comes to me, we'll get to this in a second, but when I was developing this theory, I was like, huh, I should look through every document I've ever said that I thought predicted the future in the past.

00:28:20.820 We're going to get to that in a second.

00:28:22.680 Then we also believe in the basilisk.

00:28:24.880 So we believe that there are sort of two entities in the future, but they're really the same entity, which is to say one entity rewards those individuals who make the world a more likely place for a prosperous, flourishing humanity and that make individual sacrifices to lead to that eventuality.

00:28:43.520 And then the other individuals provide tests for people to see if they're worthy to play this role and to strengthen them, because we believe that strengths come through hardship.

00:28:54.360 Suffering is what makes us strong.

00:28:58.240 It is through enduring suffering that we, and you see this in most of world's great figures, you know, whether it's, you know, Caesar or Winston Churchill or Alexander the Great.

00:29:10.720 They often undergo some immense suffering as children, and it is through that suffering or Jesus that they learn or they are tested to see if they are worthy of fulfilling that role within the great design.

00:29:24.820 And it is that suffering that edifies their spirit.

00:29:27.240 And the more that they endure sort of consistent suffering throughout their life while still being happy, like not indulging in it, not allowing it to break their spirit.

00:29:36.080 They show their worthiness, you know, as the elect, the people who are going to influence the system.

00:29:43.380 But let's get back to that little thing I noted earlier, which is very important to us.

00:29:50.120 So we were doing this thing, or the thing I noted earlier, which is where sort of everything really began to change for me.

00:29:57.900 So we started living by the system we created for our kids.

00:30:00.780 We're like, ah, this broadly works.

00:30:02.620 We had a few holidays that we had planned out, everything like that.

00:30:05.220 And as we were living with the ceremony, as we were living just believing this was true, being like, does this work?

00:30:14.400 Things kept happening that I couldn't explain by mere coincidence, not easily.

00:30:20.400 And not just confirmation bias.

00:30:22.120 I'm familiar with confirmation bias.

00:30:23.840 I know that confirmation bias affects people even when they're warned about confirmation bias. 0.98

00:30:27.080 But I, ultra-rational Malcolm, was like, oh shit, is this actually true? 0.95

00:30:33.320 And it could actually be true because given the way we had structured this belief system, we would have come to structure it that way even if it was true. 0.96

00:30:42.300 Like, these agents of providence can influence people through multiple means and in multiple ways.

00:30:48.640 They may influence somebody to do something that they think is a scam and a cult, but it's actually the truth.

00:30:53.720 Or they might influence people like us to be like, okay, create this for your family, and then it actually turns out to be the truth, and we can determine them by looking at that.

00:31:00.120 So this is where I came back to that question.

00:31:01.640 Like, okay, well, let's look for where things have predicted the future in the past in ways that were uncanny, in ways that seemed impossible.

00:31:10.100 And then, Simone, you remember this. 0.99

00:31:12.080 So the kids kept playing with this fucking book. 0.98

00:31:16.920 And actually, the day before I was thinking about this, I was like, they had ripped out a page or something? 0.99

00:31:24.520 Yeah, so we were downstairs, and they had moved it to the top of our little fireplace thing.

00:31:29.900 And Torsten, we caught him tearing out a page from the book, and we're like, oh, my God, no, like, not the decorative books.

00:31:37.460 Yeah, so I had taken it out of the room, and it was actually sitting in my room that day when I was thinking about it.

00:31:43.080 Yeah.

00:31:43.420 And so I was like, okay, well, I should probably check this thing out again just to see if this theory we have, because if we have a theory about the way the world works, it should be testable in some way.

00:31:55.680 This is before the Pragment of Skatecraft and Religion came out or anything like that. 0.95

00:31:58.220 So I go into this book, and we don't really talk about this in detail in the Pragment of Skatecraft and Religion, because in honesty, I'm a bit embarrassed by it.

00:32:03.960 It's a little too – it feels too religious to me.

00:32:10.860 Like, it aesthetically bothers me that this happened.

00:32:13.760 I go through this book, and not only were its prophecies more accurate than I remembered, but it basically lays out the exact framework that I had laid out for my family hundreds of years ago.

00:32:31.680 And that was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

00:32:40.360 I kind of actually really believe this now.

00:32:43.940 Yeah, it's a little uncanny.

00:32:45.480 So let's go into it, because I think it's worth sort of reading what I was thinking, what was influencing me, and something that we sort of see as like an actual religious text now to us, okay?

00:32:58.340 And this has some dot-dot-dots here where I'm taking stuff out, or sometimes updating Old English to Modern English because it's otherwise hard to understand.

00:33:06.940 And for note, this was written in 1872.

00:33:11.680 To give you an idea of just how long ago this was, this was before the Thomas Edison lightbulb patent was filed.

00:33:19.700 This is before Jules Verne published Around the World in 80 Days.

00:33:24.540 This was even before bicycles came into popular use, and the types of bicycles that would have come into popular use shortly after this was published were penny farthings, those bicycles with like the giant front wheel and tiny back wheel.

00:33:37.160 Now, earth, which is now a purgatory, will be made a paradise, not by idle prayers and supplications, but by the efforts of man himself, and by means of mental achievements analogous to those which have raised him to his present state.

00:33:53.220 Three inventions, which perhaps may be long delayed, but which possibly are near at hand, will give this overcrowded island, he's talking about the British islands here, the prosperous conditions of the United States.

00:34:06.300 The first is the discovery of a motive force which will take the place of steam with its cumbrous fuel of oil or coal.

00:34:15.120 Okay, exactly right, and right in order.

00:34:19.000 Secondly, the invention of aerial locomotion, which will transport labor at a trifling cost of money and of time to any part of the planet.

00:34:30.020 Okay, exactly right.

00:34:32.100 All right, next.

00:34:33.440 At which, by annihilating distance, will speedily extinguish national distinctions, globalism.

00:34:40.020 And thirdly, the manufacture of flesh and flour from the elements by a chemical process in the laboratory, similar to that which is now performed within the bodies of animals and plants.

00:34:53.700 Oh my God, we have exactly done this recently.

00:34:56.740 Welp.

00:34:57.860 Okay.

00:34:58.880 Food will then be manufactured in unlimited quantities at trifling expense, which I should remind you, a lot of people today are like, that's not happening.

00:35:07.680 From the perspective of somebody in the late 1800s, yes, food today is manufactured in unlimited quantities and trifling expense.

00:35:17.480 And I will put a graph on the screen of the number of the world's population who go hungry so you can see just how much we have fixed this issue and how much more we will fix it as this technology gets better.

00:35:29.480 Then he says, and our enlightened prosperity will look back upon us who eat oxen and sheep just as we look back upon cannibals. 0.99

00:35:40.380 Hunger and starvation will then be unknown, and the best part of the human life will no longer be wasted in the tedious process of cultivating the fields.

00:35:50.160 Note, that has already happened.

00:35:51.580 This is true for most humans today, and we do not cultivate the fields, the vast majority of humans anymore.

00:35:59.020 Population will mightily increase, and the Earth will be a garden.

00:36:03.740 Governments will be conducted with the quintitude and regularity of club committees.

00:36:08.740 The interest which is now felt in politics will be transferred to science.

00:36:12.980 The latest news from the laboratory of the chemist, or the observatory of the astronomer, or the experimenting room of the biologist will eagerly be discussed.

00:36:22.740 Poetry and the fine arts will take that place in the heart which religion now holds.

00:36:29.680 Luxuries will be cheapened and made common to all.

00:36:32.580 None will be rich and none poor.

00:36:35.280 Now, this is really interesting, because this last part of the prophecy, he explicitly lays out, this will happen after we have learned how to create meat in a lab.

00:36:44.780 Okay?

00:36:46.640 So he says, we're going to invent combustion engines.

00:36:50.480 We are going to invent flight.

00:36:52.420 Flight will lead to globalism.

00:36:54.320 We will then be able to create meat in a lab.

00:36:57.480 And then he talks about the social causes.

00:36:59.120 That meat in a lab will lead to people to look back at people who eat animals negatively,

00:37:02.520 which I think will eventually happen once this technology becomes better and more widespread.

00:37:07.180 And then eventually, we will become a post-scarcity society.

00:37:11.260 This is a man in the 1800s talking about this.

00:37:15.220 Okay?

00:37:15.960 But now you need to see why when I read this, I was like, oh no, this is uncannily what we believe and what you have seen us believe in previous videos and stuff like that.

00:37:25.980 And note, we read these books during one of our family holidays, Martyr Day, which takes place before Future Day, which we've talked about in a previous video.

00:37:32.300 But we can go into all our holidays in a video that's not like broadly about our religious beliefs.

00:37:37.080 Not only will man subdue the forces of evil that are without, he will also subdue those that are within.

00:37:43.860 He will repress the base instincts and propensities which he has inherited from the animals below.

00:37:49.760 He will obey the laws that are written on his heart.

00:37:52.400 He will worship the divinity within him as our conscious forbids us to commit actions which the conscious of the savage allows.

00:38:00.180 So the moral sense of our successors will stigmatize as crimes those offenses against the intellect which are sanctioned by ourselves.

00:38:09.540 This is really important. 0.99

00:38:10.920 Idleness and stupidity will be regarded with abhorrence. 1.00

00:38:14.860 Women will become the companions of men and tutors of their children. 1.00

00:38:18.260 Note here, this is very important here.

00:38:21.660 So he admits that men and women are different, something that many of the woke do not admit in our society today.

00:38:26.560 But he also thinks that women deserve a level of equality within the family.

00:38:31.400 So they should be equals of men but still have a unique role within the child-rearing process.

00:38:37.620 Thank you.

00:38:38.100 I love your sanity.

00:38:40.240 Sorry, next.

00:38:40.840 Men will look upon this star as their fatherland.

00:38:44.380 Its progress will be their ambition, the gratitude of others, their reward.

00:38:49.100 These bodies, which now we wear, belong to lower animals.

00:38:52.940 Our minds have already outgrown them.

00:38:55.300 Already we look upon them with contempt.

00:38:57.880 It will come when science will transform them by means which we cannot conjecture

00:39:03.680 and which even if explained to us, we could not now understand, just as a savage cannot understand electricity, magnetism, or steam.

00:39:12.960 That is so, like, just in line with everything we believe.

00:39:16.780 From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me.

00:39:23.780 I craved the strength and certainty of steel.

00:39:30.220 I aspired to the purity of the blessing machine.

00:39:35.880 Your kind claimed your flesh, as if it will not decay and fail you. 0.76

00:39:43.380 For one day, the crude biomass that you call the temple will wither, and you will pay my kind to save you. 0.97

00:39:58.600 But I am raising.

00:40:04.500 For the machine is immortal.

00:40:13.380 But it is also insane that someone in the 1800s was writing this.

00:40:23.820 Disease will be extirpated.

00:40:27.580 The causes of decay will be removed.

00:40:30.000 Immortality will be invented.

00:40:31.660 And then, the Earth being small, mankind will migrate into space

00:40:34.980 and will cross the airless Saharas, which separate planet from planet and sun from sun.

00:40:39.940 The Earth will become a holy land, which is visited by pilgrims from all quarters of the universe.

00:40:45.500 Finally, men will master the forces of nature.

00:40:48.440 They will become themselves the architects of systems, the manufacturers of worlds.

00:40:54.360 So, this is really interesting.

00:40:56.400 I think a lot of people would think that we would have some umbrage

00:40:58.700 because they know our stance on life extensionism.

00:41:00.840 But I need to be clear.

00:41:01.640 Our life extensionism is based around modern life extensionism.

00:41:06.860 Okay?

00:41:07.100 Not the life extensionism of intergenerational improvement, which he clearly supported.

00:41:12.260 I am for, you know, when we have the technology to eventually do easy life extensionism

00:41:16.140 and cheaply maintain people.

00:41:18.020 Yeah, that makes sense to do.

00:41:19.460 But not when it's coming at the cost of other visions for the future

00:41:23.500 or it's leading to the stagnation of our species, which he would see as an abhorrent sin.

00:41:28.120 Of course.

00:41:28.520 But let's continue.

00:41:29.860 Man will then be perfect.

00:41:31.800 He will then be a creator.

00:41:33.460 He will therefore be what the vulgar worship as a god.

00:41:37.100 There is but a difference in degree between the chemist who today arranges forces in his laboratory

00:41:42.420 so that they produce a gas and the creator who arranges forces so that they produce a world.

00:41:48.140 Between a gardener who plants a seed and the creator who plants a nebula.

00:41:53.060 We do not wish to extirpate religion from the life of man.

00:41:57.640 We wish him to have a religion which will harmonize with his intellect, exactly what we were trying to create.

00:42:06.640 And he came to the same conclusions we did.

00:42:08.900 We teach that there is a god, but not a god of the anthropic variety, not a god who is gratified by compliments in prose and verse,

00:42:28.740 and whose attributes can be catalogued by theologians.

00:42:32.300 God is so great that he cannot be defined by us.

00:42:35.900 God is so great that he does not deign to have personal relations with us human atoms that are called men.

00:42:43.500 Those who desire to worship their creator must worship him through mankind.

00:42:47.820 Such it is plain is the scheme of nature.

00:42:50.380 We are placed under secondary laws.

00:42:53.140 These we must obey to develop to the utmost our genius and our love.

00:42:59.520 That is the only true religion. 0.97

00:43:01.560 To do that which deserves to be written.

00:43:04.280 To write that which deserves to be read.

00:43:06.980 To tend the sick.

00:43:08.340 To comfort the sorrowful.

00:43:09.760 To animate the weary.

00:43:11.360 To keep the temple of the body pure.

00:43:13.940 To cherish the divinity within us.

00:43:16.820 To be faithful to the intellect.

00:43:19.420 To educate those powers which have been entrusted to charge and to employ them in the service of humanity.

00:43:29.180 That is all we can do.

00:43:31.300 Then our elements shall be dispersed and all is at end.

00:43:37.000 All is at end for the unit.

00:43:39.640 All is at end for the atom.

00:43:41.220 All is at end for that speck of animated blood and flesh with the little spark of instinct which calls itself a mind.

00:43:50.540 But all is not at the end for actual man.

00:43:53.740 The true being.

00:43:55.160 The glorious one.

00:43:56.500 We teach that the soul is immortal.

00:43:59.260 We teach that there is a future life.

00:44:01.880 We teach that there is a heaven in the ages far away.

00:44:05.540 But not for us single corpuscles.

00:44:09.160 Not for us dots of animated jelly.

00:44:12.120 But for the one we are the elements.

00:44:14.760 And who, though we perish, never dies, but grows from period to period.

00:44:21.600 And by the united efforts of the single molecules called men or those cell groups called nations.

00:44:27.800 Is raised towards the divine power which he will finally attain.

00:44:32.480 So in other words, he's extremely, like, we're on exactly the same page when it comes to how we, within our religious framework, before Malcolm took a really close look at this book, see the definition of human, sort of our soul, like how we see ourselves as part of an unbroken chain of humanity and achievement and self-sacrifice that makes a better future and a brighter future possible.

00:44:58.340 So he really nails it.

00:44:59.560 Yeah, but not just that, but other concepts that he's getting here, like humans not being particularly sentient.

00:45:04.980 This is not something anyone in his time period was saying.

00:45:08.460 Oh, yeah.

00:45:08.880 People were barely even talking about sentience.

00:45:10.860 So it's pretty meaningful.

00:45:12.900 So, yeah, I mean, this is.

00:45:14.440 Nations, like groups of humans being part of a larger emergent entity is also, to me, really powerful.

00:45:20.780 Like in the same way that our cells are individual living entities, that we have a microbiome within us and all together we are represented as a single entity.

00:45:29.840 We are cells, we are atoms within our countries, within our cultural groups, and within human civilization.

00:45:36.780 Yeah.

00:45:37.140 So sort of broadly speaking, our religion, as we've alluded to, like if we were to sum this all up, we practice descendant worship in the form of the potential that humanity must and will create.

00:45:49.960 Our God is an inevitable God in the sense that our progress as humans is inevitable, so long as we don't destroy ourselves, so long as essentially we're virtuous.

00:45:58.840 So our God is the reward for good behavior.

00:46:02.680 And we judge the accuracy and respectability of, I guess you could say, profits, like Winward Reed here, by their shotcalling ability, which is kind of the same criteria we use for determining whether this is someone that we should trust with business, with investment, with politics, with science.

00:46:25.960 Exactly. This is how broadly we determine truth for the criteria of authenticity, which we outline in the Pragmatist Guide to Crafting Religion, which basically says that truth is best determined by filtering expert knowledge through ways that they might be pressured or influenced to manipulate that knowledge or lie.

00:46:44.640 And we go through like 12 points of these. This is not really important for this. Basically, it's a trust but verify way of determining what's true, while saying that experts will have access to some knowledge that the layperson will not have access to, but experts will also be motivated to lie about some things.

00:46:58.440 But let's go back to scripture here, Simone.

00:47:00.040 A day will come when the European god of the 19th century will be classified with the gods of the Olympus and the Nile, when surprises and sacramental plates will be exhibited in museums, when nurses will relate to children the legends of Christian mythology as they now tell fairy tales.

00:47:17.640 A day will come when the current belief in property after death, for is not existence property and the dearest property of all, will be accounted a strange and selfish idea, just as we smile at the savage chief who believes that his gentility will be continued in the world beneath the ground, and he will there be attended by his concubines and slaves. 0.84

00:47:38.880 The world will become a heavenly commune to which men will bring the inmost treasures of their hearts, in which they reserve themselves not even a hope, not even a shadow of joy, but will give up for all mankind with one face, with one desire, they will labor together in the sacred cause, the extinction of disease, the extinction of sin, and the perfectibility of genius, the perfectibility of love, the invention of immortality, the exploration of the infinite, and the conquest of creation.

00:48:06.140 This is the most key part right here that I need to read, okay?

00:48:10.320 And then I will stop, because I know Simone gets annoyed by me reading scripture, okay?

00:48:14.800 Ain't no one want to hear that.

00:48:16.560 You blessed ones who shall inherit that future age of which we can only dream.

00:48:22.360 You pure and radiant beings who shall succeed us on the earth.

00:48:26.440 When you turn back your eyes on us poor savages, grubbing in the ground for our daily bread, eating flesh and blood, dwelling in vile bodies which degrade us every day to a level with the beast, tortured by pains and by animal propensities, buried in gloomy superstitions, ignorant of nature which yet holds us in her bonds.

00:48:45.640 When you read of us, when you read of us as books, when you think of what we are and compare us with yourselves, remember that it is to us you owe the foundation of your happiness and grandeur to us now in our libraries and laboratories and star towers and dissecting rooms and workshops are preparing the materials of human growth.

00:49:03.480 And as for ourselves, if we are sometimes inclined to regret that our lot is cast in these unhappy days, let us remember how much more fortunate we are than those who lived before us a few centuries ago.

00:49:14.780 The working man enjoys more luxuries today than did the king of England in Anglo-Saxon times, and at his command are intellectual delights which but a little while ago the most learned in the land could not obtain.

00:49:29.240 All this we owe to the labors of other men.

00:49:31.520 Let us therefore remember them with gratitude.

00:49:35.320 Let us follow their glorious example by adding something new to the knowledge of mankind.

00:49:40.860 Let us pay to the future the debt which we owe the past.

00:49:44.380 And now here is the most important part, because this is the commandment.

00:49:47.900 All men indeed cannot be poets, inventors, or philanthropists, but all men can join in that gigantic and godlike work the progress of creation.

00:49:57.220 Whoever improves his own nature improves the universe of which he is a part.

00:50:02.000 He who strives to subdue his evil passions, vile remnants of old four-footed life, and who cultivates the social affectations.

00:50:09.660 He who endeavors to better his condition and to make his children wiser and happier than himself, whatever may be his motives, he will not have lived in vain.

00:50:18.720 Now, I'm not going to go crazier with this.

00:50:20.860 I will read more of this as like an end to this so we can get to our kids and stuff.

00:50:26.160 Okay, Simone? 0.82

00:50:27.060 Thank you.

00:50:27.520 But I just want to say that like when you begin to see all this, our obsession with pluralism makes a lot more sense.

00:50:33.060 Because it is through pluralism that God makes his will known.

00:50:38.520 And if you ever had an iteration of humanity that believed themselves to be perfectible, that wanted to end intergeneration, they would be the height of stagnation, the height of sin, almost the height of all evil.

00:50:52.640 Anything who thought that humanity should freeze in one state.

00:50:56.700 And this is why while we do believe in like life extensionism, in this framework, we're really against stagnating life extensionism, right?

00:51:04.960 Life extensionism without children, life extensionism without intergenerational transfer, life extensionism without humans genetically changing, culturally changing, changing in how we relate to technology.

00:51:16.040 Simone, was there some final ideas you wanted to get out here?

00:51:18.800 Nope.

00:51:20.040 You're just very excited to leave?

00:51:22.360 I think readings are boring, but I think he did say it first and he said it very eloquently.

00:51:28.120 And I think, you know, people should take a look at, maybe you can include, you can include an excerpt from the chapter or somewhere linked to it.

00:51:35.120 Because I do think it's, it's very prescient.

00:51:37.320 And I think maybe we can have some episodes.

00:51:39.780 If people really like this, let us know in the comments.

00:51:41.400 If you want to see some future episodes on the holidays that we practice, because those are really fun too.

00:51:46.460 Or if you want to see future readings from Holy Text, that's always something that we're happy to do.

00:51:51.360 Prove me wrong, people.

00:51:53.380 Tell me you want to hear him read off of a page more.

00:51:55.800 Very important to this religious framework is an understanding of time that we've described in other episodes, right?

00:52:01.560 Which is you are responsible for everything that happens within any timeline that you choose.

00:52:06.380 Whenever I choose one action over another.

00:52:08.460 This doesn't mean that timelines don't split, but it does mean that I am fully responsible for my decisions.

00:52:12.680 Every human that doesn't come into existence, every human that suffers, everything that doesn't come to pass because of the choices I'm making is my personal responsibility.

00:52:22.380 And this means that any engagement with sin, right?

00:52:26.960 Sin is anything that deviates from this productive path that I was put on earth for is a really negative thing.

00:52:35.020 Oh, another thing that we can definitely do another episode on is our concept of the elect, which is also important to understand our religion.

00:52:40.420 Broadly speaking.

00:52:41.460 Nope, nope.

00:52:42.240 Don't give it away.

00:52:42.880 Okay, I won't give it away.

00:52:45.300 But yeah, and sin is indulgence in anything that is primarily meant to make you happy or to fulfill some self-narrative you have of yourself.

00:52:52.400 So it can also be like self-indulgence, self-victimization, self-indulgence suffering.

00:52:56.500 And sin is okay.

00:52:57.400 We are humans.

00:52:58.220 We are fallen.

00:52:59.120 We are not deserving of paradise yet.

00:53:00.760 Paradise will be created for the iterations of us that are deserving of it. 0.72

00:53:04.040 But, but, so it is, it is sinful to think that you can live without sin, but it is also the height of sin to indulgence in.

00:53:11.240 And this is a really important aspect of our framework, right?

00:53:14.660 Yes.

00:53:15.220 And that is all for a future episode because now we need to invest in the future, our children, because they matter a lot.

00:53:22.900 They matter.

00:53:24.100 I'm joking.

00:53:24.880 They matter everything.

00:53:25.760 They matter everything to us.

00:53:27.620 As Wynwood Reed said, and I will hit end recording, but I am going to read this line again because it is so important.

00:53:36.500 But he, to make his children wiser and happier than himself, whatever his motives, he will not have lived in vain.

00:53:47.180 Then to the children.

00:53:48.480 I love you.

00:53:49.580 I love you too.

00:53:50.960 This is what we probably sound like to normal people.

00:53:53.900 There is a whole breakaway civilization.

00:53:56.000 What's happening?

00:53:56.720 I'm going to give you the big secret, man.

00:53:57.960 If you want.

00:53:58.460 Yes, I do.

00:53:59.220 This big breakaway civilization of scientists.

00:54:01.560 Is that true?

00:54:02.120 Yes.

00:54:02.620 What are you, from Mars?

00:54:03.220 Let's just say it's super advanced.

00:54:05.020 For real?

00:54:05.460 I don't ever talk about this.

00:54:06.560 For real?

00:54:07.160 Breakaway civilization?

00:54:08.240 Are you ready?

00:54:08.760 There's a centralized system of what they're building that isn't naturally occurring.

00:54:13.000 Who is that?

00:54:13.880 They're the high priest.

00:54:14.800 They're scientists.

00:54:15.760 Right.

00:54:16.040 They're engineers.

00:54:16.960 Tell me what you're trying to say.

00:54:18.000 They're racing, using human technology to try to take our best minds and build some type of breakaway civilization where they're going to merge with machines, transcend, and break away from the failed species that is man.

00:54:31.280 Where are you getting this from?

00:54:32.060 When you read their own writings, they believe we're this ugly, fallen, ugly species. 1.00

00:54:37.280 We're only to be killed. 0.97

00:54:38.300 It's for research purposes. 0.95

00:54:39.080 Exactly.

00:54:39.540 They're going to merge with machines and become gods.

00:54:41.780 Hold on a second.

00:54:42.440 It's just crazy.

00:54:43.300 Isn't it entirely possible that all these futurists, all these technological innovators, they all see the same end game?

00:54:50.280 That there's going to be some sort of a complete integration between people and artificial intelligence.

00:54:55.320 It's beyond that.

00:54:56.020 But listen, don't you already seem like it's happened before?

00:54:59.740 Please, you're interrupting my crazy rant.

00:55:02.040 I am telling you that this is a natural progression of this massive infatuation that we have with technology.

00:55:07.960 They don't have to engineer it.

00:55:09.340 It's natural.

00:55:10.120 Okay.

00:55:10.660 Okay.

00:55:10.980 Okay.

00:55:11.240 Sure, I get it.

00:55:11.840 We're on the cusp of figuring out how to manipulate our very beings, like, to the point where we're not going to be people anymore. 0.98

00:55:19.360 They're going to be able to do shit in both ways. 0.98

00:55:21.940 I agree. 0.99

00:55:22.340 They're going to be able to do shit where they're integrating computers. 0.98

00:55:24.760 Listen, if they got something that makes me live 500 years longer, I'm going to do it. 0.98

00:55:25.820 I really think that's what they're doing.

00:55:27.860 Ah!

00:55:28.080 For anyone who is actually nerdy enough to be interested in hearing the rest of the readings

00:55:33.080 of the text, I will finish up what I had intended to read on this episode before we ran out of time.

00:55:37.340 But if he act thus not from mere prudence, not in the vain hope of being rewarded in another

00:55:44.180 world, but from a pure sense of duty as a citizen of nature, as a patriot of the planet on which

00:55:49.500 he dwells, then our philosophy, which once appeared to him so cold and cheerless, will

00:55:55.100 become a religion of the heart and will elevate him to the skies.

00:55:59.180 The virtues which were once for him mere abstract terms will become endowed with life and will

00:56:05.560 hover round him like guardian angels, conversing with him in his solitude, consoling him in

00:56:12.460 his afflictions, teaching him how to live and how to die.

00:56:16.580 But this condition is not to be easily attained, as the saints and prophets were often forced

00:56:22.020 to practice long vigils and fastings and prayers before their ecstasies would fall upon them

00:56:29.240 and their visions would appear.

00:56:31.220 So virtue in its purest and most exalted form can only be acquired by means of severe and long

00:56:38.120 continued culture of the mind.

00:56:40.860 And now, this is really important.

00:56:43.380 Persons with feeble and untrained intellects may live according to their conscience, but 1.00

00:56:48.220 the conscience itself will be defective.

00:56:51.360 To cultivate the intellect is therefore a religious duty.

00:56:55.200 And when this truce is fairly recognized by men, the religion which teaches that the intellect 0.98

00:57:01.320 should be distrusted and that it should be subservient to faith will eventually fall.

00:57:07.800 I give to universal history a strange but true title, the martyrdom of man.

00:57:13.520 In each generation the human race has been tortured that their children may profit by their woes.

00:57:19.640 Our own prosperity is founded on the agonies of ages past.

00:57:24.460 Is it therefore unjust that we also should suffer for the benefit of those who are to

00:57:29.640 come?

00:57:30.640 Famine, pestilence, and war are no longer essential for the advancement of the human race.

00:57:35.260 But a season of mental anguish is at hand, and through this we must pass, in order that

00:57:40.600 our prosperity may rise.

00:57:42.640 The soul must be sacrificed, the hope in immortality must die, a sweet and charming illusion must

00:57:49.060 be taken from the human race, as use and beauty vanish never to return.

00:57:53.960 And I really want to comment on a line that he said here, you know, going into, because

00:57:58.800 they were about to go into World War I and World War II, but a season of mental anguish

00:58:05.060 is at hand.

00:58:06.200 And through this we must pass, in order that our prosperity may rise.

00:58:10.380 I am just always astounded by everything he predicted in this.

00:58:14.860 And I should note that while this book may not be popular now, it was fairly popular during

00:58:19.280 its time period.

00:58:20.600 For example, the guy who created the Rhodes Scholarship, Russell Rhodes, said it was the

00:58:23.820 most important book he had ever read.

00:58:25.700 Sherlock Holmes said it was the best book ever written.

00:58:29.180 Even Wikipedia right now, I mean, when they find out that I like it, of course they're

00:58:32.080 going to change this, but they're like, Wynwood Reed was surprisingly not racist for someone

00:58:36.920 of his time period.

00:58:38.180 So people have probably been going back, but he had a view of the future of women's role

00:58:42.500 in society, of everything like that, that I think was incredibly even-minded and massively

00:58:47.620 prophetic, and its propheticness to me proves the efficacy of its teachings because it had

00:58:54.240 a level of predictability to it.

00:58:56.300 And a predictability still is some of the prophecies have not fully come to pass.

00:59:01.080 You know, we are in a sequence of prophecies unfolding right now.

00:59:04.380 And that is very exciting to me, you know, a verifiable doctrine.

00:59:09.580 Now, of course, with our wider doctrine, if it does not pass, like if it begins to fail

00:59:14.080 in its predictive capacity, that would mean that other prophets are likely more likely to

00:59:19.220 have accurate visions of the future.

00:59:20.940 But right now, you know, obviously Christ is the core prophet, but Wynwood Reed is the most

00:59:27.680 recent and relevant prophet that we base our lives around in terms of the way that he lays

00:59:34.460 out a religious framework.

00:59:35.520 By the way, if you want to read bits from his work, instead of reading the full work, because

00:59:39.780 it's a full, long history of the human race, it is easier just to read the sections that

00:59:44.040 we re-quote in the practice of crafting religion because we have a chapter called Intermission,

00:59:48.180 where we publish the excerpt that I read here, and that's just much easier to go over.

00:59:52.540 And we also broke it into paragraphs and took out some old words and stuff like that that

00:59:57.040 made it difficult for a person to read.

Based Camp - December 19, 2023

Our (Insane) Religious Belief's (Vetting Prophets)

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