Based Camp - Tract 1： Building an Abrahamic Faith Optimized for Interstellar Empires

00:00:00.000 you start practicing things you start doing the traditions and then you're like well i actually

00:00:04.580 believe this part and this part but not this part i don't know if my ideas are correct they're like

00:00:09.320 hypotheses from what i'm looking at in the world why would god need to like come down to earth

00:00:16.440 make himself a man and then have man kill him in order to forgive man like why not just forgive man

00:00:23.240 himself right and why would jesus sacrifice have a particularly strong meaning if jesus knew that

00:00:29.620 he wasn't really dying he was just immediately coming back to life as the most all-powerful

00:00:33.660 entity to ever exist and so many other things that didn't make sense like the temptation of christ

00:00:38.460 right it was like you can have all these kingdoms if you bow down to worship me jesus knew he was god

00:00:44.020 he already owned all those kingdoms it's a bit like a fired employee of microsoft offering bill gates a

00:00:49.900 burrito to bow down and worship him and live as his slave it's no but when i when i recontextualized

00:00:56.240 jesus was holy god but also not god at all why is that an important concept the moment that i text

00:01:05.040 realized like jesus man that is holy god but also not god is supposed to be man himself it's supposed

00:01:13.580 to be man in the cycle of martyrdom and not only that but it's an entity that is both holy god and not

00:01:19.460 god that must martyr itself to forgive man of his sins to forgive man of the things that make him

00:01:27.280 today not comfortable capable of joining this entity that exists outside of time god as a man must be

00:01:35.000 martyred to sanctify mankind only through the generational martyrdom of individual men 0.84

00:01:41.200 can maintain be sanctified and eventually join with god every element of the story was 100 true it just

00:01:50.580 wasn't a story about this individual whose life was being used to tell it it was a story about human

00:01:58.480 history would you like to know more let me just say i am so glad to be hanging out with you and speaking

00:02:05.800 again because we went for this long period where we stopped recording podcast episodes and i went

00:02:12.800 out door knocking to collect petitions to run for state rep in pennsylvania all day and you held down

00:02:18.020 the fort often with the kids crawling all over you the complete chaos and insanity while also working

00:02:24.760 and i i just i really missed you so first i love you i love seeing your face i love talking with you i love

00:02:29.700 your beautiful mind and i'm just so glad this is over i am glad petition collection is over too because i hated

00:02:35.480 that but so while i was in the midst of this hellish door knocking campaign in the pennsylvania cold

00:02:42.800 you went on this like sojourn of deep religious thoughts and every time i came home and every

00:02:51.740 morning you would be giving me these ideas that i just quite frankly i haven't had a chance to process

00:02:58.420 them because i was so freaking stressed out and sleep deprived like during this period that like i

00:03:03.800 couldn't i couldn't even so i really wanted to have a conversation with you where we go over some of

00:03:09.380 these ideas and and we can kind of like walk me through it this will happen because aporia which

00:03:15.800 i'll mention because i originally wrote a series of pieces for them they're like can you actually

00:03:20.460 write down what your family's religious system is because we talk about some ideas around it in the

00:03:26.180 pragmatist guide to crafting religion but honestly that was a much more nascent version like it was much

00:03:31.580 less developed than the iteration we have now because we frankly just done a lot more religious

00:03:36.720 studies since then and it was an iteration that when i crafted it it was like hypothetical it was like

00:03:44.260 okay this is what we could do for our kids we'll see how it works and then since then i've moved from

00:03:50.160 having this like hypothetical face to something that i much more deeply believe believe in which is really

00:03:58.020 interesting you know you you start practicing things you start doing the traditions and then

00:04:02.220 you're like well i actually believe this part and this part but not this part and i want to add this

00:04:07.420 part because you know i'm having a lot of theological discussions with people who are really deep within

00:04:12.200 different faiths which is which is helping me as well and then we have the secondary thing which is

00:04:17.200 you know a lot of i was like so i wrote the articles right like i wrote this short series and they liked

00:04:23.280 some of them but other ones are like this gets a little like too religious for us for for our

00:04:27.520 audience and i was like and to be fair you know like aporia like most of their articles that i

00:04:32.380 like see headlines for falling through my inbox or oh looking at this study or you know this about

00:04:38.060 populations or this about culture and it's not i've never seen anything on religion on aporia at all

00:04:44.020 at any point so this is quite the departure for them this wouldn't work for their audience yeah but

00:04:49.000 then i also started to think well i should write because i actually believe this stuff now and if

00:04:53.820 i think it's true i should at least write it down as some sort of canonical version of our family

00:05:00.380 faith system and because i believe it now i am not quite so resistant to people outside our family being

00:05:07.820 like this is compelling to me as well this is interesting to me i want to see this system so that

00:05:14.120 i can see if it's it's something that is this compelling to me as well and we've been we've been

00:05:18.520 asked multiple times where can i see a write-up of all this so i'm glad you're doing this yeah but i

00:05:25.040 also don't want to like if i'm writing quote-unquote canonical text one i need to be able to update them

00:05:30.340 but two because i don't i'm not like being talked to by god or something like that i don't know if my

00:05:36.900 ideas are correct they're like hypotheses from what i'm looking at in the world and and they seem

00:05:42.200 correct to me from what i'm looking at it seems like a logical synthesis of the world that i'm

00:05:46.600 looking at but it is not i have no way to say that this is true and this isn't true so one it needs to

00:05:52.260 be updatable but two it's also really interesting from the perspective of if we do end up creating

00:05:57.140 some sort of faith system that a community believes in around this one of the things that we believe

00:06:01.920 really a lot in is is transparency and not one individual being like okay i have a connection

00:06:10.320 connection with the divine and it has told me x and y we see this much more like the founding of

00:06:16.020 one of the protestant traditions where it's like an individual analyzing theological texts and being

00:06:21.280 like this is what i think it's probably meant from this by combining what the text is actually saying

00:06:26.960 with like logical analysis and so we were like okay how would we do this if we're creating something

00:06:31.840 like that and simone has this idea she's what if you wrote the text is like a candle like you wrote a

00:06:37.320 series of tracks which is what we're calling this like this the tracks but then we talk through early

00:06:44.000 drafts of the tracks like before she's even like counter-reviewed them so what we're going to do in

00:06:49.480 this series which will just be called like the track series and it'll have a track and then the name of

00:06:53.460 the track is i will write something that covers one of the main topics but is like much more thought

00:06:59.660 through than the script of one of our normal episodes and simone and i will talk through it every few

00:07:05.120 paragraphs so you're both getting like the first iteration of what one of these tracks looks like

00:07:10.880 as as i was writing it but also sort of what we were thinking about throughout the process so that

00:07:17.360 there is this sort of total transparency around this do you have any thoughts on that simone or

00:07:23.060 i'm just excited to be doing this because yeah i i really need to process everything you've written

00:07:28.200 in because you weren't able to do your normal editing because you were out there doing the

00:07:33.380 the street stuff so i got much more edited content without you really going over it exactly

00:07:38.360 so tract one building an abrahamic faith optimized for interstellar empires most traditional religions

00:07:46.780 in the world while relatively more resistant to prosperity induced fertility collapse are still facing

00:07:52.320 extinction just with a slight delay this buys these religions precious time to build better defenses

00:07:57.900 and acquire more allies for the coming trials those that indolently decide to return to a structure

00:08:03.940 and mindset that evolved within and was optimized for a pre-internet pre-ai world heck a pre-industrial

00:08:11.580 world blinded by arrogance and golden age thinking deserve their fate only through cultural innovation

00:08:18.420 does our species survive it need not be seen as all bad that the old ways have failed as this gives us a

00:08:24.860 chance to build something greater it is not lost on me that while the abrahamic tradition has been the

00:08:31.020 source of most of humanity's greatness over the last century it was also rejected by most of the great

00:08:36.400 innovative scientists during said period this is a problem if we are choosing traditions to take to

00:08:41.960 the stars a cultural system that is differentially less compelling to its most inquisitive and productive

00:08:49.280 minds leaving them to be predated upon by the urban monoculture is exactly how we landed in this bad

00:08:55.880 situation to begin with however it is the very nature of the abrahamic tradition to intergenerationally

00:09:01.980 change and improve by infusing it with innovation we are not betraying it but embodying what makes it so

00:09:09.020 powerful so i was wondering if you had any thoughts on that first little intro there yeah i mean it is getting

00:09:14.720 me thinking about how resistant to change most people and traditional religions are abrahamic religions

00:09:19.960 included which is ironic to me because at least we collectively theorize that religion it came to be

00:09:29.720 uh just because we needed an adaptive mechanism for dealing with larger

00:09:35.720 civilizational grouping it was like our sort of program our evolving program sitting on top of our evolving

00:09:41.720 hardware yeah but i think another thing that's really poignant for me here is a lot of traditions

00:09:47.100 have this appeal to what we've been around forever and we haven't really changed and this is often just the

00:09:53.860 result of a lack of knowledge about their tradition if you look at something like judaism for example okay

00:10:00.020 the og abrahamic faith even in the talmud it said things like the modern jew knows things that like

00:10:05.580 moses would never know right you look at major strains of modern judaism like 0.99

00:10:10.760 kabbalistic thought this was not in early judaism a lot of these are completely new traditions and then

00:10:18.360 you look at the most common new jewish tradition the hasidic movement and i might do another video on

00:10:24.040 this but it can almost be thought of as a new religion i mean it still is a tradition within

00:10:28.580 judaism but it changes a lot of the presumptions of the jewish communities before its popularity

00:10:34.580 you look at something and now a protestant will be like well no protestantism hasn't changed

00:10:40.200 and i'm like okay first of all protestantism is fairly a recent innovation in christianity

00:10:44.940 was was the great reformation so that was a big change they're like no we were just going back to

00:10:49.460 the old ways of doing things and i'm like well i mean that's not true early christianity was not

00:10:56.360 structured like protestantism it was it was much more communalist than that and and in addition to that

00:11:02.420 if you look at these early communities you have the gnostics you have like that i could go in all 1.00

00:11:05.540 the different communities but they had a lot of really weird beliefs compared to modern christians 0.98

00:11:10.380 and then even within the protestant community you have popular ideas today like the rapture

00:11:15.400 it's just not a widely believed idea before if you go a hundred years ago it was not a widely

00:11:22.380 believed idea anywhere it was an incredibly rare idea is that so so people just kind of they're like

00:11:28.680 well that was a weird part of the book evidence for it in the bible if you take a few lines and

00:11:33.220 you sort of paste them together from different parts of the bible yeah it it's almost like a you

00:11:38.840 could say it's a truth within the bible that was discovered through further biblical scrutiny but it

00:11:45.360 was not something now there is some evidence that it might have been believed by a few rare very early

00:11:51.420 christian groups if you guys want to see a great breakdown on this look at religion for breakfast's

00:11:56.720 podcast on the rapture oh he's so great i might like to yeah i love his stuff but yeah so so all

00:12:03.440 of the abrahamic face it's not just that abrahamic face like evolved by breaking from the central

00:12:09.000 abrahamic church whatever that is to you they are just constantly in this state of evolution

00:12:14.300 mormonism mormonism today is nothing like the mormonism of joseph smith's time it is it has evolved

00:12:19.600 so much with iterative prophecies very interesting you know to me i mean so to say me as this outsider

00:12:25.500 saying let's evolve the abrahamic tradition this is not like a blasphemy to the abrahamic tradition

00:12:31.940 this is very in line with i think the spirit of all of the abrahamic it is the most traditional way

00:12:37.980 to go weirdly i grew up an atheist when thinking about turning back to the church i asked my dad why

00:12:44.980 he left because my kids would likely leave for similar reasons he said he left after being punished

00:12:50.340 in sunday school for trying to dive deep into the logistics of the noah's ark story he could not

00:12:54.960 figure out how all the animals fit without magic and if there was magic why was it not mentioned when

00:13:01.540 the story was so meticulous in other details if the story of noah's ark was meant to be a parable

00:13:07.080 why give exact measurements if my kids are going to be anything like me they would leave for the same

00:13:12.340 reason some churches solved this by taking a more metaphorical approach to the subject but the

00:13:18.160 churches that loosens restrictions on biblical literalism also loosen other rules that contrast

00:13:23.160 with social norms and thus lose their fervor of practice this is not something i want either

00:13:28.520 why is this the case because the metric they use to judge what parts of christianity they accept

00:13:34.100 in which parts they don't is how those parts contrast with what is socially acceptable to believe

00:13:38.940 not a single group has experimented with another system instead of bending the traditions of

00:13:44.180 christianity to conform to society my family evolves and fortifies them in the best interest of the

00:13:50.600 next generation we ask not what will prevent my persecution by secular society but what will lead

00:13:57.960 to the intergenerational flourishing of our family in fact we believe there is strong evidence from god

00:14:04.240 that this is exactly what we are commanded to do and any other course of action is to live in open

00:14:09.660 rebellion to god's will but that is for tract three so do you have any thoughts on that actually not

00:14:16.080 in particular what what kind of point are you trying to make it could be made a little bit i'm trying to

00:14:20.400 make here is that generally when forms of christianity attempt to involve themselves in sort of this organic

00:14:27.360 sense today yeah they always evolve in the same direction which is through conformity to mainstream

00:14:32.700 societal beliefs whereas i am trying to find sort of another north star to reform around okay so you're

00:14:42.400 really just trying to say that something went wrong at some point in human history and religion stopped

00:14:49.080 evolving to be adaptive to help humans adapt to new developments new technologies new civilizational

00:14:56.340 formats and started being about social conformity to maladaptive in many cases new formats right and

00:15:04.540 then that's where things started to fall apart right yeah so so a lot of people when they're like how can

00:15:09.780 i reform my tradition what they really mean is how can i change my tradition in a way that has me less

00:15:16.720 attacked by people in mainstream society and i'm coming at this from the position of how can i make this

00:15:23.660 position more durable to the pressures of technology that didn't exist historically and the challenges

00:15:31.400 of child rearing that didn't exist historically and the challenges of intergenerational traditional

00:15:36.040 transfer while really focusing on um keeping the fervor but not making it something that is spitting out

00:15:43.860 those individuals who have a real passion for scientific inquiry and questioning authority so i i want it to be a

00:15:52.180 church of of rebel zealots basically how do i build that well or in other words how do you create a religion

00:16:01.140 that maintains this tradition of leaning in to innovation and iteration in the form of improvement

00:16:08.440 rather than a religion that leans away from this time-honored tradition of abrahamic religions

00:16:14.480 and toward conformity and stagnation right yeah okay now i get it yeah okay read on well and there

00:16:22.140 have been other movements in the abrahamic faiths that have done this in many ways you could argue

00:16:24.980 that's what the hasidic movement was was it was an alteration of the jewish faith system around a new

00:16:30.580 optimization function um and it's done very well so how does this work in practice we ask our kids

00:16:40.280 a hundred thousand or one million years from now if their descendants are still alive do they think they

00:16:46.560 would be closer to the way they think of a man or the way they think of a god most reasonable people

00:16:51.580 would respond the way i think of a god keep in mind that we are very likely far less than a thousand

00:16:58.600 years away from being able to have an ai internet of things lattice wrapped around the globe that one

00:17:04.420 can pray to for intercessions that watches us and judges us and that can port our likeness into either

00:17:10.720 simulated heavens or hells and host us there for great lengths of time i don't say this because i

00:17:17.260 think this would be a good idea to build i am just pointing out this to contrast the technological

00:17:23.820 capacity we will have in a thousand years with what we will have in half a million the far future entity

00:17:30.860 will likely be far greater than what we could even imagine god to be to even attempt to hold a

00:17:38.300 perception of god in one's mind is idolatry as the highest and most complex being we are capable of

00:17:45.040 conceiving of is but a rat king when contrasted with god's inevitable glory for more information on

00:17:51.540 why we take idolatry so much more strictly than the existing abrahamic traditions see tract five so do you

00:17:59.120 have thoughts on that well i liked your reference to creating digital hells because my favorite

00:18:04.380 ian bank's book in the culture series is called surface detail and this is a major plot point of

00:18:10.780 it there's like a a large war essentially that that is being fought over a faction of the intergalactic

00:18:19.220 world of of sentient beings over whether or not these hells should exist yeah well and this is a

00:18:27.900 really interesting thing so a lot of if you looked at it like if you are at all understanding of like

00:18:31.860 brain scanning technology today and the technology that we're working on there's people who are like

00:18:35.840 we will have this technology and we will be able to upload people before i die no we very obviously

00:18:41.640 we've got a way to go but but very very obviously from for people who understand the technology

00:18:48.040 we will absolutely have this technology within 500 years so that being the case if we're talking even

00:18:54.340 a thousand years out we will essentially with technology be able to create a simulation of what

00:19:01.280 many people see the if i was to talk to our bronze age ancestors right or not even broad age during

00:19:07.280 the period of christ the powers they thought god had largely you know the ability to watch over all

00:19:13.560 humans all the time you could easily create an ai internet of things lattice to do that and then send

00:19:18.340 those humans to everlasting hell or everlasting heaven based on their like the point i'm making 0.91

00:19:23.080 is that the type of god we can imagine today that's the type of god that could theoretically exist with

00:19:29.120 technology in under a thousand years we're talking about half a million a million 10 million years from

00:19:35.660 now this type of god is likely so beyond our capacity for understanding now um and another one of these

00:19:43.740 tracks that i was writing earlier we were talking about people who try to worship god through

00:19:47.880 nature and use that as sort of their intermediary for connecting with god and i i'm like look the

00:19:54.340 the type of entity that we would be 10 million years from now is the type of entity that with the effort

00:20:00.400 that we take to snap our fingers could summon an entire earth with our existing ecosystem into existence

00:20:08.100 and then with a swipe of a hand send it out of existence again it is an entity that is so infinitely

00:20:13.580 more powerful than we have the capacity to understand that attempting to even conceive of

00:20:18.840 it we would argue and we have a longer track on this should be thought of as a form of idolatry

00:20:23.220 because it demeans it to such an extent and in many areas here you'll see that we take current

00:20:29.300 concepts within the abrahamic traditions and we go to an extreme level with them like the commands

00:20:35.980 about idolatry which we'll talk about in the future then we ask who is to say that this entity

00:20:40.920 relates to time in the way that we do perhaps this entity is subtly guiding its own manifestation

00:20:45.840 the day when mankind is finally worthy and unites with the god that has been watching over us from

00:20:52.060 the first days of life on earth as such we do not believe that one day man becomes god

00:20:57.840 but that one day man unites with a god that exists outside of time perhaps it is the entity our savage

00:21:05.660 ancestors saw as a god perhaps it watches over you and rewards you for fighting for a better future

00:21:11.000 for our species and punishes those individuals who succumb to past crafted to sate their lower

00:21:16.880 order desires such as pleasure or vanity but i suspect this entity is more clever than we give it credit

00:21:23.380 for it did not record these punishments and rewards into supernatural reparations but they are woven

00:21:29.460 into our very biology look at the famous movie stars and rock stars who have had all the hedonism

00:21:35.740 they could want and more social validation than any human could consume they seem to be some of the

00:21:41.920 least happy least fulfilled people in the world god wove into human neurology that the only true

00:21:48.320 happiness you will ever feel is that which comes from efficaciously living thoughtfully considered and

00:21:54.240 selfless values god need not bless those who live with austerity dedicated holistically to the great

00:22:01.680 human crusade god built us so our dedication to our family and the future allows us to bless ourselves

00:22:09.960 yeah i really like this because i love the idea of and the elegance of built in heaven and hell which

00:22:18.920 you totally see you know when people have lost their way and start doing things that you know run

00:22:25.380 against what one would think of as practical values from various different perspectives you do see them

00:22:31.040 suffer and then they're just building their own suffering and it just gets worse and worse and worse

00:22:34.740 and yeah i mean it's it's like a very expanded version of touch the hot stove get burned but on a like

00:22:42.180 ideological moral level many people in so many religious systems they use post-death rewards and

00:22:49.320 punishments which is so superfluous it's also so funny because the bible doesn't talk about afterlives

00:22:55.020 really and i was so confused it talks about them a lot less than most christians who haven't read the

00:23:01.620 bible would assume that the bible is talking about that that was me right i grew up raised buddhist and

00:23:06.720 then i read the bible in high school and i'm like where's where is heaven where is hell and where

00:23:10.520 where's the you know where devil demon things and right well and i think it's the lower orders of

00:23:16.220 christianity like the the the less sophisticated ones that have been infused was more like sort of

00:23:21.940 mysticism and tribalism and these pre-christian ideas we talk about this in in like the rise of

00:23:27.820 abrahamism what was it really this this abrahamic tradition it was a turning away from these sort of

00:23:33.380 forest animalistic worshiping mystics who are concerned about you know achieving a great wealth

00:23:40.240 in the in the afterlife basically whether it's a great wealth of hedonism or anything else

00:23:44.560 and and when would read talks really elegantly about this and i might insert a clip a day will

00:23:50.240 come when the current belief in property after death for is not existence property and the dearest

00:23:55.520 property of all will be accounted a strange and selfish idea just as we smile at the savage chief

00:24:01.980 who believes that his gentility will be continued in the world beneath the ground and that he will there

00:24:08.340 be attended by his concubines and slaves and what's really interesting about the way that humans are

00:24:14.520 actually structured is individuals who and it's not to say that there's not some individuals who

00:24:19.740 like outside of any purpose to themselves experience a ton of suffering in their lives we don't disagree

00:24:24.080 with that but i'm saying that for most people people who just dedicate their lives to a thing that

00:24:29.980 they believe has value and every day they wake up and they dedicate themselves to that thing

00:24:34.380 and they're effectatiously achieving results like they're not just pointlessly

00:24:37.900 they are happier people more fulfilled people more content people than the people we know who have

00:24:46.300 all of the wealth an individual could want all of the the validation an individual could want in fact i

00:24:52.720 would say that those individuals among the individuals we know are the most discontented individuals um

00:24:58.580 you don't need to wait till you get to heaven or hell for this reward to take place it takes place

00:25:05.140 within our lives because it's written into our very neurology and i think teaching our kids this truth

00:25:10.840 gets them to not overly sort of fantasize about the people who are mean to them or whatever being

00:25:15.540 punished afterwards when you learn to not care about those other people and just focus on your mission

00:25:21.260 that is when you are truly uh lifted individually within this life and that's just sort of coded into who we are

00:25:28.260 yeah yeah heaven and hell is is here and i mean that's that's not a novel concept at all right you

00:25:33.700 know people talk about that all the time but i mean you're not trying you're what you're trying to do

00:25:38.380 i think is thread together abrahamic traditions and what they actually seem to be sort of designed for

00:25:45.920 and meant for and what they have done in the past before they've started to break down

00:25:49.800 and and logic and reality which is quite interesting we'll talk about that because a lot of we rely on a lot

00:25:56.240 of textual evidence from abrahamic traditions to inform our faith and many of these pieces of textual

00:26:01.880 evidence seem to go directly against the daily practices of the individual faiths that claim to

00:26:07.940 follow these texts whether they are muslims or christians or jews which is really interesting and

00:26:12.840 it kept surprising me you know the wisdom i found in the texts that i didn't find in the communities

00:26:18.220 isn't that so calvinist of you though i guess like all religions ours has different iterations

00:26:24.620 of understanding for both our children the laity and its philosophers for the simple these future

00:26:29.900 entities are literal future police time traveling humans that care about them watch over them and

00:26:35.440 bless them however to adults these entities are referred to as the agents of providence and are

00:26:40.940 quite literally understood as being entities that we lack the capacity to understand just as we cannot

00:26:46.840 even conceive of a four-dimensional shape but may understand one in theory they do not travel to the

00:26:52.440 past or whisper to individuals but subtly influence probabilistic quantum events like changing the

00:26:59.040 flow of a river over centuries by expertly throwing in a pebble in just the right place at just the

00:27:05.880 right time and at the minutest level changing the stream's direction this system of multiple

00:27:12.260 interpretations of the same set of truths allows for both atheistic and atheistic interpretation of the

00:27:18.560 abrahamic tradition for example an individual could conceive of god's will as simply being revealed

00:27:23.880 by the organic success of some cultures over others within a competitive ecosystem similar to what adam

00:27:30.520 smith meant by the invisible hand of god but at the level of culture and ideas however one can also

00:27:37.600 interpret god's will as a tangible force being exercised by an actively engaged consciousness when we talk

00:27:43.800 about the prophets being the channels of god's will this can simultaneously have both a secular

00:27:49.720 and theistic interpretation this provides a framework that does not spit out those who choose

00:27:56.160 more atheistic interpretations of reality allowing them to both communicate with religious leaders

00:28:02.460 using overlapping terminology slash evidence and raise their children in the face in the same way

00:28:09.040 many of those who turn from traditional christian worldviews still practice holidays like christmas

00:28:15.060 well so what you've been talking about recently that i find interesting and there are different i

00:28:19.120 guess angles of this is you're talking about how religions have and i i do love how you've thought

00:28:24.420 about this a lot about how do children interact with religion versus how do distracted or like low mental

00:28:34.540 load capacity adults have capacity for religion versus like how do the nerds have capacity for

00:28:40.520 religion and religion really has to accommodate all of them in the context of this because we actually

00:28:45.900 as i'm pointing out here we accommodate an alternate audience that typically isn't accommodated by the

00:28:51.160 traditional religious systems so there is an interpretation of the teachings that i'll lay out here

00:28:56.140 for children there is an interpretation for adults slash like philosophers like people who wanted to get in the

00:29:03.400 philosophy of this but there's also an interpretation that works within a completely atheistic mindset

00:29:09.320 in that there is a theistic interpretation of everything that i will write in this but there is also an

00:29:16.220 atheistic interpretation of everything i will write in this and the atheist can engage with the theistic

00:29:21.460 philosopher within this tradition without any problems like they're both basing what they believe off of very

00:29:28.540 similar sources of evidence and using very similar terminology so for example adam smith's using the

00:29:34.780 term the invisible hand of god right you could say oh god planted this there so i could easily use that

00:29:39.300 term to to talk about this but then another individual could be like no it's just a very useful metaphor

00:29:44.940 for understanding how things are selected within a competitive ecosystem and superior things are collected

00:29:50.060 within a competitive ecosystem so if you're building a religion within this ecosystem what you're really

00:29:55.020 optimizing for is ensuring that the thing that's being selected for is something that you actually

00:30:02.140 value like it's actually a good thing and one of the metaphors that i'll use in a future tract but not

00:30:06.380 this one is like the mma it's like when the mma started and people don't know mixed martial arts it was this

00:30:11.760 form of hand-to-hand comment where they were like well let's just take the iterations of every tradition

00:30:17.340 that seem actually efficacious yeah and a lot of people they they have the same complaints they have about us

00:30:23.180 like the karate people they were like oh you can't do that you won't have the traditions you won't have

00:30:27.260 the spirit you won't have the philosophy and and and the chain they're like no let's just create one

00:30:32.140 that is efficaciously best and we believe that god has commanded this and we have evidence i think that

00:30:37.740 god has commanded this of us within the abrahamic tradition but but i think similar our detractors will

00:30:43.500 in a few hundred years be seen very similar to those people who stuck with tai chi and stuff like

00:30:48.140 that in a world of mma

00:31:00.060 everyone knows a tai chi expert cannot compete with an mma expert in actual combat or a karate

00:31:06.460 expert or anything like that right and so what are we optimizing for we're optimizing for what is best

00:31:10.780 for our children and we'll go into how we built the system to do that but it's it's i feel an interesting

00:31:17.260 analogy there yeah well this is nice in theory but if such an entity existed how would it tell us

00:31:24.620 it would reveal itself as best it could it would reveal to groups the truest iteration of itself

00:31:29.900 they were capable of understanding and in those revelations leave hints of its true nature to those

00:31:35.980 with the capacity for a more holistic understanding such an entity would find it impossible to reveal

00:31:42.140 itself to bronze age humans it even shows us this in the flows of history with the collapse of early

00:31:48.300 monotheism that did not anthropomorphize its god in the form of aknan instead it bestowed blessings on

00:31:56.220 the human tribe that had the closest intergenerationally durable accurate revelation of its nature the jews 0.88

00:32:03.340 and then revealed clearer iterations of itself through a succession of prophets i i i love this

00:32:10.940 because it's an extension on this like religion is best revealed to different audiences in different

00:32:16.940 ways so just as you know religion is better revealed to children in a very simplistic colorful

00:32:23.100 relatable way it's a it would of course make sense that religion in the past and that religious truths

00:32:28.780 in the past have manifest in ways to populations and locations in the past that are localized and

00:32:36.940 appropriate and of course you know the words and the scientific understandings that we have now

00:32:44.460 are incompatible with the words that religions you know presented to people in the past when you only lived

00:32:51.420 in a village and interacted with 15 other people in a cow you know you would need to use different 0.93

00:32:55.900 metaphors you need to use different story formats they use a lot of pastoralist metaphors right you

00:33:02.780 know those aren't relevant to a modern audience you look at the bible and it's always talking about

00:33:07.020 shepherds and stuff like no one's even seen a shepherd in i don't know 50 years but there's another thing

00:33:12.460 here that i think is really important to know so if you look at something like judaism or christianity

00:33:17.580 or something like that when they conceive of god today they they do not anthropomorphize him much it would

00:33:23.980 be seen as is almost sort of blasphemous to anthropomorphize god as having sort of petty

00:33:29.580 human emotions like anger and envy and and stuff like that that isn't the way that most of these

00:33:35.100 traditions think that god really works these days but if also those traditions are at least ones that

00:33:40.620 are like honest about their history if you look at the early jewish people the first jewish writings

00:33:45.820 the god that they believed in was an anthropomorphic god it was very similar to the zeus or something like

00:33:52.620 that it was the type of god get angry and flood the world it was the type of god who had these lower

00:33:58.700 order human emotions and so you may say well why didn't god just reveal its true self to these early

00:34:06.300 humans why didn't it just reveal that you really shouldn't anthropomorphize it this much it is so

00:34:11.340 far beyond the human capacity of understanding and emotional states and i think that god graciously

00:34:18.940 to us today wrote into history why it didn't do it it's like you want to know why i didn't reveal

00:34:24.700 a non-anthropomorphic version of myself here bam ancient egypt i took literally the most powerful

00:34:29.580 person in the world probably at the time which was the pharaoh of egypt easily the most wasn't it

00:34:34.300 akhnaten society had him become a non-anthropomorphized monotheist and you saw exactly how long that lasted 0.84

00:34:43.580 it was hold on i'm just checking to make sure it was akhnaten he was married to nefertiti right yeah akhnaten

00:34:48.060 yeah that is why i didn't tell you and so i think that many ways like when i talk about

00:34:53.740 did god plant this idea of the invisible hand of god in adam smith's mind did god plant this with

00:34:59.340 akhnaten so that we today can examine history and learn why things were done in certain ways or

00:35:05.660 weren't done in certain ways in terms of revelation i believe yes but that's like the

00:35:10.380 non-atheistic interpretation i'm looking at this as like the force of evidence but it's it's it's

00:35:17.660 compelling and i think that yeah it was god and you'll see this throughout the system

00:35:22.620 when i think that many times if we ask why wasn't this revealed earlier well then go and investigate

00:35:27.500 because it might have been revealed earlier and you'll see that it wasn't intergenerationally

00:35:31.260 durable even they revealed to that primitive stage of humanity well it also reminds me like the lesson

00:35:37.100 that we learned when we acquired a business that had offices in two very different countries and

00:35:43.820 cultures the lesson that we learned where at first we were like no there is one way to manage people

00:35:49.260 it is the one right way it is the way that you and i were taught in our various business school

00:35:53.260 curricula and like culturally speaking right and that is the that is the way it could be cut is correct 0.99

00:35:58.700 and then the people who mentored us from whom we acquired the company were like no no no you know in

00:36:03.740 this in this country you have to crack the whip you have to talk to everyone as a group you have to be 0.99

00:36:06.780 kind of like a jerk sometimes and you know blah blah blah blah and then like in the united states 0.99

00:36:11.260 it's very different it's it's very individualistic you do this and that and we're like nah like we're 0.99

00:36:15.740 just going to do it the right way across both offices and it totally failed in that other

00:36:20.060 culture like our messages never landed and we were not helping our team thrive the way that they ought

00:36:25.260 to be able to thrive until you know we completely changed our tactics and messaging and then it did so

00:36:31.580 this just reminds me i think god is like that god yeah god is like that like if god wants humans to

00:36:37.260 thrive he's going to have to act in ways that work with their local cultural norms and social

00:36:42.300 formations and well in this this next passage talks to this very explicitly all right jesus was unique

00:36:50.700 among the prophets in that he recognized the jewish tribes revelation was meant for everyone

00:36:56.300 all men die it is not death that makes a man a martyr but living in accord with god's plan that does

00:37:03.660 jesus also taught us that god as a man must be martyred to sanctify mankind only through the

00:37:11.580 generational martyrdom of individual men can mankind be sanctified and eventually join with god

00:37:18.140 i find this to be an almost impossibly elegant solution to communicate a beautiful and sophisticated

00:37:24.780 truth of the universe to a man still so low and barbaric god wanted to paint a picture of the

00:37:32.460 martyr that sanctified mankind both god's son but also god still in human form the moments in all our

00:37:41.020 lives dedicated holistically to improving the future dedicated holistically to god's plan

00:37:47.020 jesus's life was the brush his blood the paint used to create the perfect portrait of the martyr for our

00:37:54.860 species when we were still so young so close to being just talking monkeys that appealing to an

00:38:01.420 all-powerful entity with child sacrifice still seemed reasonable to us this journey the journey of

00:38:07.500 understanding the abrahamic peoples have followed is beautifully painted by god was in abraham's life

00:38:13.660 we followed god believing him to be the kind of entity to demand a father sacrifice his child to be appeased

00:38:19.820 yet he made it clear there at the very beginning that he is not that kind of entity god did not tell a story

00:38:27.260 in which he demanded a father sacrifice his son because god wanted to but because it was abraham what

00:38:34.700 the abrahamic people expected of a god in those early days of man it is our barbaric expectations of an 0.99

00:38:42.140 entity that only wants what is best for us that makes him barbarous in our minds when in reality god always

00:38:49.420 gives us what we need to perform our roles in his plan this shows us how god uses prophets he uses

00:38:57.420 their lives to paint motifs upon reality i find it interesting how it is easy for people to grasp that

00:39:04.220 the story of the events of abraham's life is not really about abraham's life but about us but when we

00:39:10.780 point out the same is true about the events of jesus's life people struggle with the concept so i find

00:39:16.220 this really telling and this was a big realization for me as i was thinking about this is that the

00:39:22.940 story of jesus a story that didn't really make sense to me before i i was like why would god need to

00:39:31.580 come down to earth make himself a man and then have man kill him in order to forgive man like why not

00:39:38.940 just forgive man himself right and why would jesus sacrifice have a particularly strong meaning

00:39:45.340 if jesus knew that he wasn't really dying he was just immediately coming back to life as the most

00:39:49.900 all-powerful entity to ever exist and so many other things that didn't make sense but when i when i

00:39:54.860 recontextualized when i said oh no the story of jesus is supposed to be about like the story of abraham

00:40:00.300 it's supposed to tell us a truth about ourselves it's supposed to paint a motif upon reality

00:40:06.700 jesus's life was the art itself and this really changed how i related to this but it also relates to

00:40:12.620 this earlier point you were talking about when god first revealed this truth to this we as humans

00:40:18.140 were such a barbaric and petty species that he needed to use the story of a father sacrificing his 0.77

00:40:24.300 own son to appease a god basically and and yet the real god isn't like that at all he doesn't need

00:40:32.140 sacrifice of deities or humans or or anything like that to be appeased the sacrifice is a necessary

00:40:38.940 process of human intergenerational improvement of us sanctifying ourselves because we really

00:40:45.660 are now too sinful and too flawed to join god we really do have to improve and that improvement only

00:40:51.100 happens with this cycle of martyrdom right so in other words and this is very spicy you're saying

00:40:59.420 jesus was a figure to teach humans the importance of sacrifice in order to serve

00:41:09.180 future generations the greater good but a very complicated concept and in the next paragraph

00:41:14.780 i get to we'll talk about this complicated concept and i can leave it back with what we were just

00:41:18.700 talking about finally early christianity revealed the truth of the trinity which is critical to

00:41:24.140 understanding the agents of providence god and man as three distinct entities yet also the same entity

00:41:30.620 the ages of providence are so far beyond us as concepts like a singular or plural identity

00:41:36.700 male or female and even whether they are corporeal or incorporeal do not apply to them now so this goes

00:41:44.140 to what we were saying here a lot of things that like i didn't understand the purpose of the trinity

00:41:49.100 always felt weird to me right like it's okay you're trying to say that it's really important that we

00:41:53.900 understand that jesus was holy god but also not god at all and if you're trying to first why is that an

00:42:02.460 important concept and if that's an important concept why are you teaching that we're the trinity

00:42:08.060 where you're adding this additional element the holy ghost which you just don't really talk about

00:42:13.260 anywhere else or i don't understand why this is an important concept the moment that i text realized

00:42:18.780 like jesus man that is holy god but also not god is supposed to be man himself it's supposed to be

00:42:27.340 man in the cycle of martyrdom and not only that but it's an entity that is both holy god and not god

00:42:33.420 that must martyr itself to forgive man of his sins to forgive man of the things that make him today not

00:42:42.860 capable of joining this entity that exists outside of time every element of the story was 100 true it was

00:42:50.940 100 profoundly true it just wasn't a story about this individual whose life was being used to tell

00:42:58.620 it it was a story about human history and us so it wasn't just to teach the importance of martyrdom

00:43:05.820 it was also to teach this important concept man is a hundred percent god but also a hundred percent

00:43:12.220 not god then it also teaches this additional concept around the holy ghost which i didn't understand

00:43:16.220 before i was like what's the holy ghost why is this important why is it important we understand the

00:43:19.580 holy ghost is the agents of providence it's god in the plural and in the singular and then there's god

00:43:28.300 in just the singular which is god and then there's god as man which is jesus and it teaches us this

00:43:37.420 concept that just we as a species were not prepared for and i'll go over this later but when you take this

00:43:42.780 new framing to the story of jesus's life a bunch of events which felt very nonsensical when i was

00:43:49.980 reading them like the temptation of christ right it was like you can have all these kingdoms if you

00:43:54.940 bow down to worship me that makes no sense that makes no sense jesus knew he was god he already owned

00:44:03.100 all those kingdoms they already worshiped him why would he bow down to satan in exchange for that

00:44:08.460 when satan presumably wouldn't even have the power to do that outside of god and even what satan was

00:44:13.020 offering him was was trivial you know i'll use one of the later tracks the analogy i'm like it's a bit

00:44:18.220 like a fired employee of microsoft often offering bill gates a burrito to bow down and worship him and

00:44:24.940 live as his slave it's no the sinning it's so the the offer made there was an offer of trivial temptation

00:44:32.860 so why is it important that jesus overcame it when you recontextualize the story of jesus is being

00:44:38.780 about us being about our moments being about how we must make actually very meaningfully sacrifices

00:44:46.700 our lives because i say all humans die it's not death that makes us martyrs that's how we choose to

00:44:52.060 live our martyrdom that intergenerationally sanctifies humanity and makes us worthy of god

00:44:57.580 so it's not just a story about martyrdom it's it's the whole story the whole story is true and

00:45:03.340 meaningful okay i'll get to the next part okay unless you had something you wanted to talk about

00:45:08.940 no go ahead muhammad was unique in his understanding that different revelations

00:45:14.300 were for different communities quote and indeed we have already sent forth in every nation a messenger

00:45:21.100 saying worship god and avoid false gods with this revelation being for the arabic community as made

00:45:29.420 clear in quote indeed we have sent down as an arabic quran that you might understand in quote with you here

00:45:39.020 clearly being people who speak arabic now some familiar with what islam has devolved into might say

00:45:46.940 don't muslims believe very strongly that muhammad was the last prophet yes they do which is weird 1.00

00:45:52.700 because he didn't say that what muhammad said was that he was the seal of the prophets a phrase that

00:45:58.460 in context clearly means that he came to synthesize and affirm the teachings of the prophets who came

00:46:03.740 before him if he wanted to say he was the last prophet he could have said that he did not so why did he

00:46:10.940 use the rather odd and specific term quote seal of the prophets end quote because he was referencing

00:46:17.660 manichean literature where this term means to prove a prophecy i.e a seal of authenticity and this stuff

00:46:26.060 is all cited here this is like a well-documented thing and among historians he is very clearly and

00:46:32.060 explicitly saying that his prophecies build on the prophecies of the past and affirms those prophecies

00:46:38.620 however in a way muhammad was the last of the prophets insofar that he was the last of the 0.93

00:46:45.020 mystical prophets who believed god spoke to them directly with more recent prophets being logisticians

00:46:52.460 individuals who god communicates with through logic science and the writing of past prophets the core

00:46:58.940 of these is winwood reed whose teachings we will focus on in tract three but there were many among the

00:47:04.940 protestant reformers as well when man was still half savage the only tool god had to communicate with

00:47:10.700 him was what today we would call a psychotic episode but this form of revelation was severely

00:47:17.580 limited when contrasted with how he reveals the truth today so why why would early man you know only

00:47:23.980 really find revelation through psychotic episodes where they start you know like they develop schizophrenia and

00:47:30.060 they hear voices and stuff well god recorded that for us in history as well you could say what if a

00:47:36.620 group tried to fully understand god just by exploring the natural world i think this is what the greek

00:47:42.220 philosophers the early greek philosophers and they came to some truth through that exploration but there

00:47:47.820 were more profound truths like a monotheistic god the dangers of idolatry and other truths that we'll get

00:47:54.060 to as we continue to go through this that just could not be revealed to them through just like

00:47:58.780 logistically inspecting reality so i think in these what i think of today we would have called psychotic

00:48:05.740 episodes individuals seeing and hearing things that they they received information that could not be

00:48:14.380 determined by early man through just an investigation of reality but that later when individuals with

00:48:20.460 access to science and technology were studying what was in these early writings they could see truths

00:48:25.740 that weren't contained within them this to me comes to something like protestantism i think protestantism

00:48:30.700 is the purest and truest form of practicing what is actually written in the christian bible however i

00:48:37.100 also don't think that it is anything like any of the early christian practices and i think the people

00:48:41.580 who have actually studied the early christian practices would be capable of seeing that it is

00:48:45.500 individuals who had a more sophisticated philosophical understanding of reality and frankly we're smarter than the

00:48:52.940 the early christians who were able to go through these writings and see what god was actually telling

00:48:58.220 them that these earlier individuals was not and as such these early protestant reformers to me are fully

00:49:04.620 prophets they are prophets to me at the same scale you know whether it's you know uh martin lucer or john

00:49:11.260 calvin at the same scale as jesus or so muhammad and we argue later in our writings to me they're actually

00:49:16.860 perhaps even greater prophets than those individuals and that they relied on god's

00:49:22.620 gifts instead of having to have it basically laid out for them by god to determine what was true about

00:49:27.900 reality hmm yeah your talk about prophets is really interesting to me it's kind of like akin to

00:49:37.500 inventors in the world of industrialism and technology with all these different moral

00:49:43.100 inferences which i i also find to be really interesting so muhammad's revelation as a prophet

00:49:51.580 is important in that while jesus revealed that the abrahamic tradition was meant for all people

00:49:56.300 muhammad understood that not the same iteration was made for all people quote so let the people of the

00:50:01.420 gospel e.g the torah the bible etc judge by what god has revealed in it and those who do not judge by

00:50:07.900 what god has revealed in it are truly rebellious we have revealed to you muhammad this book was the

00:50:13.820 truth as a confirmation of previous scriptures uh end quote and you can see here again this is a

00:50:20.860 reoccurring motif in the quran and clearly what was meant by quote seal of the prophets end quote i.e.

00:50:27.260 seal of authenticity the reformation revealed to us that the interpretation of god's will is the

00:50:33.980 personal responsibility of the individual it should never be outsourced to a bureaucracy john calvin

00:50:39.100 taught us the truths of predestination was always hidden in abrahamic scripture and that this does

00:50:43.900 not conflict with free will if this is a confusing concept to you see the base camp episode can

00:50:47.900 determine its belief in free will joseph smith's brought the first primitive understanding that it

00:50:52.780 was man himself that eventually becomes god through martyrdom as a note we categorize joseph smith's

00:50:58.460 as a prophet of the logician category we explain why in tract five this idea of iterative

00:51:03.660 prophecy coming after jesus is less inconsistent with traditional christianity than one unfamiliar

00:51:09.260 with the bible might think as even jesus told us that there would be prophets after him quote

00:51:14.060 therefore i send you prophets and wise men and scribes some of whom you will kill and crucify 0.99

00:51:19.900 some of whom you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town end quote so take 0.98

00:51:25.820 the prophets like joseph smith's or muhammad who many might say we should not include within the

00:51:30.780 abrahamic pantheon does this not seem like a prophetic description of them both killed by

00:51:35.820 other followers of the abrahamic tradition but how will we know which prophets are the real ones

00:51:42.780 well paul tells us that in thessalonians 5 20 to 21 quote quench not the spirit despise not

00:51:48.780 prophesizing prove all things hold fast which is good at the abstain from all appearance of evil

00:51:54.620 end quote thus to use essential bureaucracy to certify prophets is a rebellion to god's will

00:52:00.060 as is denying the existence of prophets after christ even from the perspective of traditional

00:52:05.340 christianity however these prophets must also be tested how this is done is discussed in tract

00:52:11.260 three now a person might be asking quote how can you include individuals like joseph smith

00:52:16.540 and muhammad when we have stories like those of helen mar kimball and aisha proving them of low

00:52:22.220 moral character end quote even if those stories about them are true every single abrahamic religion

00:52:27.660 includes the story of king david uriah and basheba this story teaches us without any shadow of a doubt

00:52:33.420 that god does not take the moral character of an individual into account when deciding who he

00:52:37.740 chooses as prophets this criticism is important to dispel because the revelation brought by the

00:52:42.220 islamic branch of the abrahamic tree of revelations is often the most peculiar to individuals

00:52:46.780 who have not studied the quran how can multiple conflicting prophecies all be useful

00:52:50.860 revelations from the same god this is where our family's understanding of the quote-unquote

00:52:54.460 tesseract god comes in each previous revelation was a full and complete revelation in so far

00:53:00.540 as those people could understand it when people see contradictions between them it is like pointing

00:53:05.580 out that a cube leaves multiple irreconcilable two-dimensional shadows they are only irreconcilable

00:53:11.020 because you assume the shape you are trying to create out of them is two rather than three

00:53:15.260 dimensions a person trying to average the shadows cast by a three-dimensional cube on a two-dimensional

00:53:20.300 plane would average them as a circle a representation less accurate than any of the direct revelations and

00:53:26.620 thus sinful this is what muhammad was saying in the surah ala mahaidah 4757 all of those of the

00:53:33.980 abrahamic face of his time were best following strict interpretations of the shadow that was revealed to 0.97

00:53:40.620 them rather than attempting to average or convert between them however a person knowing that they are

00:53:46.700 attempting to construct a three-dimensional shape by looking at two-dimensional shadows

00:53:50.700 can come to an understanding beyond any individual revelation a tesseract is a four-dimensional cube

00:53:56.300 and while we can broadly understand its design and conceptually map it humanity lacks the biological

00:54:01.660 hardware to fully conceive of a tesseract the same is true as god and thus it is our duty to

00:54:06.700 intergenerationally improve that hardware it is not blasphemous to expand human intellectual capacity

00:54:12.300 through genetic and synthetic means but a religious mandate to not engage with these technologies to

00:54:17.740 the full extent possible to not intergenerationally improve is to live an open rebellion to god's will

00:54:23.660 so essentially you're saying that in addition to god being revealed to different populations in

00:54:30.060 different places at different times in ways that they were capable of processing god to the best of their

00:54:35.420 ability you know getting as close to the truth as possible you're also saying that different religious

00:54:40.300 different religious traditions are also different because they're showing different sides of an

00:54:46.140 incomprehensibly complicated god that really can't be articulated with means that we're capable of

00:54:53.420 digesting and incomprehensible to to our limited human intelligence now we have a commandment from god to

00:55:00.620 expand our ability to comprehend him that is one of the things that he wants for us and we argue why later but

00:55:06.540 actually so you look at islamic texts right and i think that islamic texts almost demand this type of

00:55:12.140 secondary revelation so even if you you assume whatever islamics do that this this mystical you 0.90

00:55:17.500 know he's the last of the mystical prophets well there's clearly something not explained by the

00:55:21.660 quran because it seems pretty clear for me if i actually read the text of the quran that muhammad was

00:55:27.180 saying that christianity and judaism are completely correct and their followers who follow anything other 1.00

00:55:33.740 than christianity and judaism even converting to islam they are truly rebellious to god that you 0.99

00:55:39.180 were supposed to follow the revelation that was to you yet we know today now what some muslims say is

00:55:44.940 they go oh yeah but he said that but since then the the talmud lately the jewish texts and the christian

00:55:51.100 texts have changed and that it used to be that these texts completely overlapped with the quran right

00:55:55.660 and and that there was no contradictions between them but this is categorically untrue we we know we

00:56:01.340 have found early iterations of the bible from around that period from around where muhammad lived

00:56:06.300 and they haven't significantly changed so he wrote this knowing god wrote this knowing that these were

00:56:13.100 not reconcilable within a two-dimensional plane within our human mind today and we needed to develop

00:56:19.020 a new system for understanding god and in that this new system was prophesized was in the quran

00:56:25.980 in saying that these things actually do all make sense together we just today you're better off just

00:56:31.500 following your traditions which is very interesting to me yeah definitely however we would be remiss to

00:56:38.860 not point out the ancillary benefit of this interpretation it makes it much easier to live

00:56:43.260 alongside abrahamic traditions without conflict groups typically attack those that are either very

00:56:47.660 similar to them or very different a distant but distinct ideological relation between groups can

00:56:52.380 serve to protect a minority population living amongst another group this benefit is further 0.97

00:56:56.940 fortified as the tesseract god concept gives us a religious mandate to guide those who might leave

00:57:01.740 abrahamic face back to conservative iterations of those face while also protecting those communities

00:57:07.580 from the dilution by the urban monoculture making us a useful and non-threatening player in a larger

00:57:12.860 cultural ecosystem this will be critical until after the affirmation mandate of in-group intergenerational

00:57:18.860 improvement is achieved securing our safety to be more specific because we believe god

00:57:24.220 shows his will through the competition of diverse ideas and perspectives to create a monoculture to have

00:57:30.140 the whole world under one religion is to silence the voice of god thus we benefit from more ideological

00:57:36.780 diversity within our communities we are only commanded to attempt to convert either those with so much 0.98

00:57:42.860 rebellious vitality in their heart that they would never return to their parent face

00:57:47.260 atheists or individuals of exceptional merit with merit being measured in competence industry

00:57:53.100 influence or utility to the aims of our group your average person will be harmed by this interaction with

00:57:58.780 god's word so i mean it's kind of an arrogant perspective but i think everybody knows that we

00:58:05.180 are a little arrogant and it does make us much safer to be around other groups and that most individuals

00:58:09.900 within a group we have a religious duty to prevent them from deconverting from the abrahamic face 0.99

00:58:15.660 and to build systems that make it less likely that individuals deconvert from the abrahamic face

00:58:20.380 but this isn't to say as previous i believe that we didn't have an individual to have any sort of outreach

00:58:25.500 i think we do but the individuals we have outreach to are the individuals who without us being here would

00:58:30.540 be deconverting to the urban monoculture or individuals that we specifically need to target

00:58:35.820 for the goals of our community because we believe that humanity has a specific path it needs to be on and sometimes

00:58:41.180 that path may require influence well something like that but generally uh it's a community that

00:58:47.260 we see is not targeting these individuals and another unique thing of our community which we'll

00:58:50.620 talk about later is you join it you stay a part of your tradition you would be a jewish individual

00:58:55.420 within our community a calvinist individual within our community a catholic individual within our community

00:59:01.500 your first and foremost source of biblical truth for you and your family is always going to be the

00:59:07.340 branch of abrahamism that you came from you just are sort of opening yourself up to the idea that the

00:59:13.820 other traditions may have held some truth that your tradition didn't and we are trying to build a

00:59:19.740 system that allows individuals as we said no central bureaucracy we are just determining a system that

00:59:24.220 an individual can use to determine what they think is true from examining these texts themselves i also

00:59:29.500 get the impression that it's kind of impossible to be a person of intense faith and conviction without

00:59:34.540 also being arrogant and the only lack of perceived arrogance in people with very strong faith comes

00:59:41.020 out of a an ancillary performative humility that's part of the practicing of that faith though that's

00:59:47.340 like just additional social positioning but i also see in like religious religiously driven humility

00:59:53.980 a huge amount of arrogance you know people wearing sackcloths people washing feet people acting as

01:00:00.140 as though oh yes you know the the meek shall inherit the earth that that is incredibly arrogant so 1.00

01:00:07.100 obviously as i come to actually believe this it's not just something i've created for my family

01:00:11.100 i do believe i i i have some duty to at least like record it somewhere or something like that because it

01:00:16.060 seems like it explains a lot of stuff i didn't understand about christianity when i was growing up

01:00:20.940 and now it makes perfect sense to me and i'm like well shit if i actually believe this then i at least

01:00:25.420 have to record it somewhere but it also means i believe that i have a understanding of god to

01:00:30.060 something that's not held within these other communities yeah but and what i'm saying is i

01:00:33.820 don't think you can really do something and really believe in it without looking arrogant so it's just

01:00:39.100 you know this is not to say we see all iterations of these traditions as equal in stagnant pools parasites

01:00:46.060 breed if we allow our hearts our traditions or the flame of human intergenerational improvement to

01:00:51.900 stagnate parasites of the human spirit will erupt and siphon our vitality we can see this in the

01:00:57.260 abrahamic traditions that have stagnated where have their great thinkers gone their great scientists 0.95

01:01:02.060 their great philosophers their spirits have been feasted upon by the very parasites they cultivated in 0.99

01:01:09.020 pools of gold and vanity god righteously removed his favor from them and it is plain to any familiar

01:01:16.140 with their past greatness god does not hide his dissatisfaction with those who live in rebellion

01:01:21.580 god moves the focus of his favor with each successive revelation god's favor reverberates

01:01:28.540 throughout history like a sonic boom and is almost impossible to ignore it can be used to

01:01:33.740 both confirm the authenticity of otherwise questionable revelations like muhammad or the reformation deny

01:01:40.140 the authenticity of others like the bahai and to find the locations of revelations that were not

01:01:45.420 lightly recognized in their time for example there was likely a yet unconfirmed revelation in renaissance

01:01:51.100 italy this trend pointed us to the most recent revelation which happened in 1872 within the

01:01:57.900 victorian gentleman science community while we will go deeper into this revelation in future tracks

01:02:03.340 the next we'll discuss demographic collapse in the context of god's plan for our species demographic

01:02:09.020 collapse is not a capricious accident but a critical part of god's plan for us so that's it i i find this

01:02:17.820 last concept one i want to pontificate on a little bit because it's it's it's really important to me

01:02:23.020 i'm sort of confirming for me that this is an accurate revelation this idea of an iterative revelation from

01:02:28.700 god when i look at history typically after one of these revelations happens this group ends up having

01:02:35.420 enormous and keep in mind this isn't a prosperity doctrine we are not talking about financial wealth this

01:02:41.500 group it has an enormous amount of philosophical and scientific wealth you know after the initial

01:02:47.660 christian revelation after the initial muslim revelation after the protestant reformation after

01:02:53.100 the revelation of winwood reid these communities exploded in their philosophical and scientific output

01:03:00.540 in a level that is almost inconceivable when contrasted with other groups right like you're like wow like this was a

01:03:08.300 genuine explosion of output and then the output will succeed go nowhere like contrast muslims during 1.00

01:03:18.140 the period where they were such dominant forces in science that western scientists would write their

01:03:24.300 papers with muslim sounding pseudonyms because nobody took anyone else seriously to what the faith

01:03:30.860 has become today i don't know what i can call that other than god's favor turning from them

01:03:36.380 now and to me this is one of the things that makes me really believe that this is true you know you

01:03:40.860 see this was a catholic church when the catholic church was so grand and it had all these great

01:03:44.780 philosophers coming out of it and then there's just this dearth of of genuine to me people are like

01:03:50.220 name some communities that god's eye has turned from and i hate to say it i mean i think it's most

01:03:55.100 communities these days um i think the last place he had his focus was on the gentleman scientists of of of the

01:04:01.580 world of sort of the uh mid 1800s mid 1950s and and we saw an output from them uh that was to me

01:04:10.940 really unparalleled except of what you see in other parts of but what's interesting about this is it also

01:04:16.300 allows you to look for revelations and confirm revelations so they said one in renaissance italy there

01:04:21.500 was probably one in athenian greece there was probably some truth delivered to the people of athenian greece

01:04:27.100 um that kicked off this period of scientific explosion there when i was editing this i started

01:04:32.700 thinking okay well then where else would that mean there was probably a prophet in history

01:04:36.940 and i got to thinking about alexander the great and then i was like okay so then what would the

01:04:42.220 alexander the great prophet be and i was like oh obviously aristotle his personal tutor alexander

01:04:47.260 the great is what happens when you give someone a prophet as their personal tutor and so this is

01:04:52.940 something that when i'm this is a very protestantized system like i'm saying i don't have the answers

01:04:57.900 i have this system for determining how you look for truth in reality but the searching for truth

01:05:04.300 it's not just up to the individual it is a religious mandate of the individual to search

01:05:08.860 for their own truth and to not have other people tell them what's true i'm just giving like this system

01:05:13.260 that i have that seems to have a lot of things make sense to me now that didn't make sense to me

01:05:17.260 historically and and it is compelling to me religiously now when looking at my knowledge

01:05:22.940 of history i'm like this is really unaccountable through secular means this explosion of productivity

01:05:28.620 we see after every one of god's revelations but it also allows you to add this element of science to

01:05:33.340 it which is to say when i say science i mean confirmability disproveability this is how you

01:05:37.580 confirm a real revelation or this is how you disprove a real revelation well and with what you're saying

01:05:42.460 too is when religions seem to be when when god seems to have looked favorably upon different

01:05:48.620 faiths is when they did pursue in the name of religion typically evidence-based innovation yeah we go

01:05:57.740 through this this is god's gift it's logic it's philosophy it's it's it's so you see how god benefits

01:06:04.540 humanity and that god clearly values these things and these ways of approaching things

01:06:09.180 that makes sense i don't know did you find that compelling or i mean because as everyone loves to

01:06:18.540 point out we take such consequentialist views to everything of course we're going to assume that

01:06:24.060 the person who gets the good results is doing something right and then look back through history

01:06:28.540 and think ah these people got good results what were they doing right and then try to find patterns so

01:06:32.940 it's interesting that you say that because to me i almost view it as not really good results but

01:06:36.620 an explosion of human vitality like really living within these communities and and so to to recreate

01:06:43.420 that we need to refine god's word as as we are commanded to do and this is why you have this iterative

01:06:48.860 prophecy is because god is turning his attention to the group that has the most accurate vision of what

01:06:54.940 he was actually trying to communicate but that vision requires time um and it requires exploration and it

01:07:02.300 requires logic it requires his gifts to logic and pragmatic logic to to ferret out and yeah i i like

01:07:11.260 that aspect as well but it also allows our like faith to be disproven if people don't choose this and if

01:07:17.420 the people who choose it don't end up flourishing philosophically and intellectually then we haven't

01:07:22.220 actually stumbled upon anything true at all this is just self masturbatory stuff within our family so yeah

01:07:28.300 well i think this is quite interesting and i look forward to going through the next ones with you

01:07:32.700 glad you're finally breaking it down well i love you encouraging me to do this stuff and talking

01:07:37.100 through this with me and dealing with my like religious nerdiness which is not what you married

01:07:40.700 into you didn't know you were no like these past two weeks has been exactly what you and i are all about

01:07:45.740 that that you do out there a high risk highly speculative thinking and strategizing and planning and

01:07:52.940 philosophizing and i'm out there doing highly repetitive incredibly dumbed down work like

01:08:00.060 knocking on doors and asking people for signatures that's what we do so i'm really glad that like when

01:08:04.780 i was doing extra of what i do best which is just repetitive grunt work you were out there doing what

01:08:09.740 you do best which is you know highly intellectual well i'm sorry if some of this has been repetitive

01:08:15.900 for other people but i'm trying to canonize like idle ideas i've had on my show and so i need to

01:08:20.300 you know put them into this condensed format here so thank you for your time today i love you let's

01:08:25.660 get the kids

Based Camp - February 16, 2024

Tract 1： Building an Abrahamic Faith Optimized for Interstellar Empires

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript